Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

If police officers here in the UK started talking about having a Warrior midset there's be an outcry. It would be a major scadal that would put the credibility of the police force into crisis. (Brit here, so obviously I have no real right of a say in US internal affairs, but I visit the US from time to time).

I can see where it comes from, US officers are armed, and need to be so because they frequently face armed criminals. They have to deal with a different situation. The problem is that those members of the US public that are not armed and actualy have no intention of criminality, or if they do in a minor and non-threatening form, are being dealt with by armed police officers expecting to deal with armed violent thugs. That's a recipe for utter disaster.

There's no easy answer to this. It's right to support police that have to deal with life threatening situations daily. But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.

You've never been to Police College in the UK. I have.

'Officer Safety Training' is all about banging in the concept of "There is no such thing as no threat. There is only a known threat and an unknown threat." It's even on posters around the college showing a police officer talking to an old lady carrying some shopping.

I'd describe it more as a siege mentality than warrior. However it leads to officers drawing batons in completely inappropriate situations and causing all sorts of problems for no reason.

I'm thankful firearms are not routinely issued as these same officers would just as quickly draw a gun and completely fuck a totally innocent situation into a major incident for no reason.

I had colleagues who were proud to be nicknamed Tackleberry. Not a good situation.

>> But equally the non-violent public do not deserve to face potential threats to their life and violent coercion in routine interactions with law enforcers.

It is really not "the public" at large, at least not in many cases. The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians, as it was so obvious in the shocking incident in Texas.

This case, which sort of crystallized the problem, all started with a typical overweight Walmart white-trash female attacking a group of noisy (?) children in the pool.

For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white. Not to mention the huge incarceration rate for minor offenses, and the proportion on non caucasians there.

I used to come to the US at least once a year, staying for up to 2-3 weeks on holiday. I haven't in a long time, and I will probably not anytime soon.

It's increasingly becoming a sad and scary place.

The incident in Texas in only shocking when one considers the slanted reporting that the media is doing. Those kids were trespassing, were violent with minors, and flatly refused to listen to police officers. The reporting of this is nothing more then a propaganda piece. We have large populations of minorities who feel entitled to behave badly without any consequence because the color of their skin.

How does one get from "a few kids being rowdy and not listening to police officers" to "x group of people has entitlement issues"? Seems like quite a disingenuous stretch.

edit: to be clear, I'm talking about the video specifically, not the parent comment's general perspective.

Watching the video, while has was telling the girl to get on her face, several teens were encroaching and yelling. The one he chased with gun out came up behind him and made a motion that looked like he was feinting pulling out a gun. I think the events in Ferguson and otherwise and causing some to become a bit more cavalier, as if they've "earned" the right to act that way during a police action due to what has happened elsewhere.

When you say "some" and "they" do you mean "black people"? I only ask because the parent comment specifically talks about minorities. If so, that's a unfortunate dichotomy that you have created.

If anything, the safer generalization is that cops are the ones that have a history of acting recklessly in their interactions with non-police. Especially considering that they are civil servants, whose job is to protect all people with equal consideration.

Sorry, I was only discussing the video; I failed to read the parent comment fully (which was quite bigoted). Looking at the video specifically, you see a lot of brazen action, and you have to wonder what is emboldening them.

I was right there with you until your last sentence veered off into racist territory.

Racism is stating a superiority of one race over another. The last sentence was controversial, at worst an overgeneralization, but not racist.

Can we please stop this politically correct nonsense of calling any controversial comment involving race racist?

To say that "black people" have an entitlement problem, and not "all people", is to imply that this is a flaw that non-blacks do not share, or at least to a much lesser degree.

And buddy, that is implying the superiority of one race over another. Which is racist.

So you're saying that you implied something from the parent comment and that by further implying from your first implication led you to believe the OP was racist?

Do you also find it racist when prominent black people criticize what they term "entitlement" problems amongst blacks? (Not that the OP specifically mentioned "black people" but I want to follow your line of reasoning.)

Stating a group of people has entitlement issues isn't Racist. Racism is denying people the ability to do something based on their race. I am not denying anyone access to anything. I am simply stating that I see an issue with how allowing people to continually play the race card emboldens them to believe there are no consequences to their actions.

You're right, it was less racism than bigotry. Stating that a whole race of people has an entitlement issue is bigoted.

Why not just say "blacks", anyway? Everone knows what we're talking about here, but if you say "blacks have an entitlement issue", it's harder to pretend that you're not a bigot.

From what I've read, most of the teens were invited by another teen who lived in the community (including the one who was slammed to the ground for mouthing off to the cop). Apparently, some additional teens who were not invited showed up which is what prompted someone to call the police but when this particular officer arrived on scene he didn't attempt to distinguish between teens who were invited and teens who were not and instead just started subduing every black kid in sight.

That is not what happened. First there were more then a "few" uninvited teens. Many of them jumped over the fence. They were being aggressive the young children who were there. They were not heading the warnings of adults. There was more then one police office there and they weren't subduing everyone in site. This incident occurred because the "victim" in question was aggressive and unresponsive to the police officers commands. Yet that portion of the video "some how" didn't make it onto the main stream media.

How sad to see such a thoughtless outburst, with fabricated facts, unsubstantiated assertions, and avoiding the real questions.

While I hope our society has progressed a little, something like this post often reminds me how many people embrace thoughtlessness and anger.

The police seems to be profiling and directing excessive force towards non-Caucasians

Law enforcement has always directed this kind of treatment towards non-whites in the US. What has changed is that there are now cameras everywhere so the officer's word isn't enough anymore and they have begun to subject middle and upper middle income white people to the same kind of treatment that used to be reserved for black and brown people.

For the outsider, the US looks a very unpleasant place to be if you're not white.

Racism isn't a US-only problem. There are incidents of European soccer fans making monkey noises when black players come onto the field. In some parts of Africa, there are issues with the government seizing land owned by whites.

It's not even always about race. Every Irishman with whom I have ever spoken has told me stories about how they and/or their (grand)parents were treated by other Europeans.

I don't know if it's possible to fix the underlying cause of these problems. Whenever people think in terms of "Us vs Them", they find justifications for doing all manner of terrible things to each other. It's just that police are the ones tasked with enforcing the laws of a society so when the laws reflect this conflict, so does the behavior of the police.

And we will always think in terms of "us vs. them" because we're monkeys, and we've evolved highly intelligent brains to, among other things, protect our bananas from the monkey tribe next door.

But we are getting better at overruling our monkey instincts with reason and compassion. So that's a good sign.

My belief is that it's primarily about access to one resource. Wombs. Everything else is ancillary.

What makes a racist more irate than anything? Seeing one of "Them" with one of "Our" women.

Denying good housing, education and employment to the "other" group will make them less able to compete for females from "our" group.

There are versions of this on display in the animal kingdom as well. Male lions are known to kill cubs sired by other males so that they can replace them with their own offspring. In the Gombe Chimpanzee War, females were kidnapped, raped and killed as a method of destroying the "other" group.

I also agree, humanity has come a long way and is getting better.

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