Hacker News Reader

Comment by self_awareness | Hacker News Reader

Full disclosure: I'm not American, and I don't really follow recent news from US, so I certainly don't know much about the protests, haven't been there, etc, etc.

Having said that, here's my 3 cents from a bystander perspective...

I've seen some videos from this list. Lots of them are taken in an environment when a person violates the law in some way, often in front of the police officer. I'm not saying that every video has a situation like this, just the few I've encountered. So if the job of the police is to enforce the law, maybe the protesters should rather try to change the law instead of trying to oppose only the lowest execution layer of the law enforcement? I mean, trying to do the opposite of what the police officer says the citizen should do, seems to be a unintelligent thing to do, from my perspective.

Downvotes are welcome ;(

View on HN

People do the opposite of what the police say in other countries, but it does not end in police brutality.

Dealing with people who may be unintelligent, drunk, mentally unstable, or distressed etc is part of the job.

That's... not true...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaEOeyANSVM

in Poland we had an 'a protest of entrepreneurs' recently against government lockdowns caused by covid-19, and there was some pushing with the police (even a candidate for the president has been detained I think)

This doesn't change the fact that the protest did violate the 'no gathering' rule, so the police could be used to enforce this rule. It's all I'm saying.

If people would respect the law, however pointless it is, then police wouldn't be able to do anything at all.

Other counties is not strictly a category that includes all other countries.

The issue here is police breaking the law, and then the law not being enforced.

You do know that enforcing the law is the reason we have police in the first place?

You're saying if people would only not break the law, then the police would not misbehave. Yes, that's true of course, for there would be no police at all.

So is the point then that police are naturally bound to misconduct, and it's the fault of citizens that they misbehave? This argument reminds me of the idea that men are naturally bound to sexually assault women who dress 'provocatively'.

In every civilized country there are rules for what police can and cannot do. This is very important, as they are the primary institution which can legally use violence. If these rules are not held in high integrity, which they are not, then the legitimacy of this violence is eroded and trust in the nation state evaporates.

The only point I was trying to make is that you've written it yourself: the police is allowed to use violence. How can you enforce the law for parties that ale not cooperating? You can do it only by using violence. And in some videos, I see a lot of people that are not cooperating. That's all.

No more input from me, since I've already lost lots of karma for the original post ;p

Also I don't want to get into the how-women-should-behave territory, sorry ;)

The police are allowed the reasonable use of force when there is probable cause to support it. They are not allowed the unlimited use of force whenever they feel like it. That distinction is critical to this entire issue, and a lot of the outcry is over excessive use of force.

Even framing it as you are — as violence — is already the wrong mindset I would want an officer to have. They should be using force, not violence, as a means of last resort to de-escalate a situation and ideally to cease any violence that's occurring.

The point of protesting is to voice the need for change. That includes law.

Also, is it reasonable for routine traffic stops or harmless questioning to end in death? Is it worth it? Is it fair?

I'm not sure anyone's really against police enforcing the law. That should not have to result in a misconduct of the police officer though. Is that controversial?

> maybe the protesters should rather try to change the law instead

That's what most of the protesters are trying to do. In fact they tried for years even without any protest and it didn't work. People lost their job because they kneeled down.

You can't kill someone for 20 bucks and not listening. Meanwhile forgiving officers misconduct that led to someone losing his life.

There is fundamental problem with police recruitment and ways to keep them in check and they need to let experts find and cure it. It's wrong to ignore it as much as it's wrong to blame every police officer for it.

Sometimes the most effective way to demonstrate the injustice of a law is to publicize its enforcement. Much of the brutality captured on video recently is, strictly speaking, legal. But there's little support for changing the law without the public getting a visceral sense of how bad it is.

> Much of the brutality captured on video recently is, strictly speaking, legal.

We must not be watching the same videos. I've seen a lot of behavior by police, captured on video, of criminal assault. Just because someone is breaking the law does not give an officer carte blanche with regards to force. (And I've seen a lot of videos where the victim of police brutality is not clearly breaking the law, and if anything, seems to be following it.)

This isn't the video list thread...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com