Hacker News Reader

Comment by UncleMeat | Hacker News Reader

Not like this.

If you are mad at somebody at work and you hit them a little bit that is egregious and completely unacceptable behavior that should end your career and is an actual crime. Even just hitting somebody a little bit is wildly off base for ordinary and healthy human interaction when angry.

Beating somebody to death is many levels of escalation beyond that. You don't need a superior to tell you not to do that. I am extremely confident that there will be exactly zero situations in my entire life where I am so angry at somebody that I even want to beat them this badly, let alone actually act on it.

This is about police institutionally seeing the populace as inhuman worms who deserve to suffer. This is not about emotions running wild.

View on HN

> If you are mad at somebody at work and you hit them a little bit that is egregious and completely unacceptable behavior

The difference is that under no circumstances does an office job require violent interaction where as for a police officer, their job does sometimes require violent interaction. And in that sense, what these officers did is even worse and should be punished worse than if an office worker used the same violence: we empower police officers to use violence to intervene when necessary. We give them weapons and leeway to use force. To take advantage of that power could arguably be considered worse that if a civilian does it.

A police officer's job only very rarely requires a violent interaction. A reckless driving stop doesn't require that. Even a suspect fleeing from the police doesn't require that. The only time a violent interaction is required is if somebody is actively and imminently threatening other people.

I absolutely agree with you that we grant absolutely immense power to the police and they must use it with the most extreme possible care. Instead, we've created a system where cops see regular people as enemies to be crushed and where they can solve every one of their problems with extreme violence.

Tyre was viciously beaten to death for running, for aggravating the cops.

I've never understood why they even chase these people. They have their damned car and are able to identify them. Just go to their house afterwards and pick them up? They can run but they can't hide, and using violence like if they get away they are gone forever is just ridiculous.

I also don't understand it. I can only imagine that cops have internalized this sort of action as an ordinary expectation for them. I don't know if that is caused by their own training and culture - but I wouldn't be surprised if media plays a role. How often does a cop dramatically chase down a criminal in a TV show? All the time. And they are always considered right to do so in those stories.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com