Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Something is off in this story. Early on, it recounts the story of a homeless man who, along with his girlfriend, was maced by private security guards (contracted, apparently, to Google) for not clearing off a public sidewalk.

That's bad, but it's not just that: it's a crime, and also a tort. No security company that allowed its employees to pepper-spray nonviolent people on public walkways --- or, really, anywhere --- could long remain in business.

If something like this is actually happening, Google's opponents don't need to generate outrage. They just need to get onto the streets of Venice with cameras, capture it happening, and help the victims make criminal and (lucrative) civil complaints against one of the largest corporations in the country.

What am I missing here?

View on HN

> What am I missing here?

You can do pretty much what you like (short of mass murder) to homeless people and no-one, including police, gives a fuck.

Many homeless people have adversarial at best relationships with police and will be reluctant to seek police assistance.

That's just not true. In many places, it may (unfortunately) be the case that there's no recourse when the police assault homeless people. But ordinary citizens have no presumptive right to use physical force against other people in anything but self defense. Private security guards are nothing but ordinary citizens.

The really famous cases of nonviolent people being pepper-sprayed are instructive: they're university police, a special class of private security guard actually deputized to use force.

I'm not here to argue that the homeless aren't abused, or aren't getting a very raw deal with the law and law enforcement in general. I'm just saying that the details in this particular story seem off. Again, they should be getting this on camera. Those videos could be worth a lot of money.

how many homeless people have the means to sue sombody?

And even if a case was offered pro bono (extremely unlikely before a huge media circus) how many could even reasonably be capable of bringing suit then?

how many police desk officers are going to give a shit about the rambling complaints of some homeless man they wish would just dissappear?

If you really find it so incredible that homeless people end up abused, no matter what some corporate policy claims, you lack perspective.

This is the powerful pushing out the weak in full display, guess which side has easier access to the law.

Lawyers take cases on contingency if they look like obvious wins against someone with deep pockets. The victims don't need to pay a cent.

Is "a guard from the google security team maced me" an easy win? What kind of evidence would be necessary to secure a win?

Hence the suggestion to go out and film this.

If this is indeed such a common occurrence it wouldn't be hard to gather evidence.

Imagine the submitted article had video.

Do you think we wouldn't have people saying things like "there seems to be something off about this. We still only have one video, and it doesn't show what happened before the guard maced the homeless person. Maybe they were being aggressive?"

We see similar comments in every thread where someone alleges injustice. (Often for good reasons - we don't want an uninformed pile on based on one person's account.)

No, I think if you had video of a security guard macing a woman or a dude with both hands full of water jugs on a public sidewalk, you'd have plaintiff's lawyers coming out of the woodwork.

Again: if it were police doing this, different story (ironically): it is much harder to sue a municipality, and there is an unfortunate presumption that police use of nonlethal force is almost invariably justified. But none of that is the case with private security.

I'm a little skeptical about the pepper spray accusations myself, but there's no question that a Google security guard harrassed and attempted to intimidate the people making that documentary short film while on a public sidewalk. It's right there in the video on the page.

Even if a homeless person would go to the police, given what i know about US police they'd likely be blown off. Additionally the evidence situation for something like "getting maced by a security guard" is fairly low. Also your suggestion would possibly come with its own set of legal problems. (Entrapment comes to mind.)

Heck, if you read the article more closely, the security people actually use the police against the homeless.

While I'm not sure I agree with you, let's stipulate that you're right. That's why I'm saying that people who believe Google is sponsoring unprovoked attacks on the homeless should go capture these events taking place with their own cameras.

Ordinary citizens (and that's what security guards are) cannot in fact pepper spray someone on a sidewalk, or even trespassing in a building, simply because they won't leave. If they do, it's battery. It's a pretty cut-and-dried issue.

Ironically, if this were an accusation about the police in Venice violently removing the homeless from in front of a giant corporation's building, I'd have much less trouble making sense of it.

I agree with most of it, and hope this would be done. However the questions that come to mind is:

- How often does this happen? How much cellphone camming would need to be done?

- Would the results be legally admissible, especially when you hang around recording things hoping to catch someone in the act?

- Would the results be enough to get a cop to care? Or maybe a lawyer to care?

I don't know the answers, but maybe the answers would help clarify why nothing is being done.

> Google's opponents don't need to generate outrage.

We just don't seem to have an issue with "outrage" when the topic involves encryption. I don't see an issue with this article bringing to light bad practices.

If this article opens up a broader discussion, involving any business participating in such disgusting practices, all the better.

> No security company that allowed its employees to pepper-spray nonviolent people on public walkways --- or, really, anywhere --- could long remain in business.

What evidence leads you to this conclusion? Can you recall an instance in the US in which any company or any public agency was shut down or even dramatically reformed for abusing non-violent homeless people?

Empathy?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com