<story><title>Police complaints drop over 90% after deploying body cameras</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/police-complaints-drop-93-percent-after-deploying-body-cameras/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JPKab</author><text>Feel free to post the source for your statistic, because the studies I&amp;#x27;ve seen showed that  blacks are much, much more likely to be subject to police encounters a (probably due to a mixture of profiling and densely populated, high crime areas caused by a legacy of red lining and other discriminatory housing policies).&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But if you look at all the cases of police shootings in the FBI database and compare the cases of white dudes waving knives at cops vs the sample of black dudes waving knives at cops, the police are N times more likely to shoot and kill the the black dudes.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This study directly contradicts your statement:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;upshot&amp;#x2F;surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;upshot&amp;#x2F;surprising-new-evid...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that drives me crazy about these &amp;quot;privilege&amp;quot; discussions is how insanely qualitative and emotion driven they are.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s the outcome for a white kid born in a trailer park vs. a black kid born in a wealthy suburb?  Is class privilege completely nullified by racial privilege, meaning the white kid is likely to earn more than the black kid as an adult?  The data doesn&amp;#x27;t show this, and puts a much heavier weight on class and geography being the bigger barriers.&lt;p&gt;The result of these emotionally driven discussions is that once again, Americans are focused on race being a primary driver of inequality and distracted away from the much bigger issue of class.  It&amp;#x27;s a very convenient tactic for the corporate elites who own our government and want to prevent real change.  Racism is a convenient target, because it allows people to blame a problem whose solution doesn&amp;#x27;t involve massive overhauls of tax policy to better redistribute the wealth that is accumulating with the .01%.</text></item><item><author>mrgoldenbrown</author><text>I doubt you&amp;#x27;ll find anyone saying this stuff doesn&amp;#x27;t happen to white folks at all.&lt;p&gt;The issue is that given the same set of circumstances, a black person is more likely to be searched&amp;#x2F;shot&amp;#x2F;whatever than a white person.  In the case of police shootings, yes some white dudes have been shot as well as black dudes.  But if you look at all the cases of police shootings in the FBI database and compare the cases of white dudes waving knives at cops vs the sample of black dudes waving knives at cops, the police are N times more likely to shoot and kill the the black dudes.  (I can&amp;#x27;t recall exactly what N is but I think it was 5 or 6).&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re going to &amp;quot;burst bubbles&amp;quot; when talking about privilege, I encourage you to learn about intersectionality first.  Otherwise you&amp;#x27;re bursting a straw man version of the concept, which doesn&amp;#x27;t achieve anything.  Privilege exists on multiple axes, and you still have white privilege even if you&amp;#x27;re poor and don&amp;#x27;t have class privilege.</text></item><item><author>JPKab</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d hate to burst your bubble, but this shit happens to white people all the time.  Just not the white people that HN folks are surrounded by (urban, upper class, educated).&lt;p&gt;I grew up in a poor, rural area of Appalachia, and this shit is routine.&lt;p&gt;Your assumption that the race of the victim is the reason the cops are cool with it is based on zero evidence other than your own preconceived notions.  I&amp;#x27;ve had my car seats slashed open in a vain search for drugs after I&amp;#x27;d already been handcuffed and laid on the pavement with zero fucking apologies, and I&amp;#x27;m not black.&lt;p&gt;Just because you live in a sphere of the world where white people are all rich and privileged doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that it&amp;#x27;s like that in the rest of (most of) America.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>I wondered what the ethnicity of the person raided was, and of course he&amp;#x27;s black.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why there&amp;#x27;s no shame or embarrassment from the officers. That&amp;#x27;s why the Black Lives Matter campaign exists: the police have, in this case, done a substantial amount of damage to someone&amp;#x27;s life but not killed them. And there&amp;#x27;s not even an acknowledgement of that.</text></item><item><author>hvidgaard</author><text>That is absolutely terrifying to read!&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  The striking thing about the footage is, again, the utter mundanity of the raid.
  A family was just violently raided over an unmeasurable amount of pot. A man was
  arrested over that pot. The money he needed for his business was taken from him.
  Yet there’s no shame or embarrassment from the officers. There’s no panic that
  the whole thing was captured on video. That’s when it hits you.  They don’t think
  they’ve made a mistake. This is what they do. The lead officers later tells the
  camera, matter-of-factly, that the raid turned up “a personal use amount of
  marijuana.” Perhaps realizing that he was also on camera back at the police
  station promising a much larger stash of drugs, he adds, “It happens. Drug
  warrants are, you know, 50-50.”
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
If they raid a home on the pretense that he has a large stash and is selling, fine. But when it turns out to not be true, they better pay for damage - no matter what else they find.</text></item><item><author>jcrei</author><text>In many cases, the police doesn&amp;#x27;t care that they are being filmed. There&amp;#x27;s this new documentary coming out called Do Not Resist, and there was an article on the WSJ about it with the following quote &amp;quot;The most disturbing thing is that it simply doesn’t occur to the sheriff that the footage might be disturbing. He has no problem letting a film crew show this massive contraption built to withstand roadside bombs in a military convoy lumbering through his small town, because the notion that military vehicles aren’t appropriate for domestic policing is foreign to him.&amp;quot; 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;the-watch&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;do-not-resist-a-chilling-look-at-the-normalization-of-warrior-cops&amp;#x2F;?utm_term=.5364143bb8d8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;the-watch&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mancerayder</author><text>&amp;quot;The result of these emotionally driven discussions is that once again, Americans are focused on race being a primary driver of inequality and distracted away from the much bigger issue of class. It&amp;#x27;s a very convenient tactic for the corporate elites who own our government and want to prevent real change. Racism is a convenient target, because it allows people to blame a problem whose solution doesn&amp;#x27;t involve massive overhauls of tax policy to better redistribute the wealth that is accumulating with the .01%.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d upvote this tenfold if I could.  I think the race discussion in America pits us &lt;i&gt;against one another&lt;/i&gt; and creates Trumps and anti-Trumps, instead of pinpointing the elite (both the leaders of the Trump and anti-Trump camps are elites).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s horrifying how far away we are from talking about class.  Racial privilege exists, but by focusing on it as the number one priority, the number one problem in America, we&amp;#x27;ve turned it into a wedge issue.</text></comment>
<story><title>Police complaints drop over 90% after deploying body cameras</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/police-complaints-drop-93-percent-after-deploying-body-cameras/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JPKab</author><text>Feel free to post the source for your statistic, because the studies I&amp;#x27;ve seen showed that  blacks are much, much more likely to be subject to police encounters a (probably due to a mixture of profiling and densely populated, high crime areas caused by a legacy of red lining and other discriminatory housing policies).&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But if you look at all the cases of police shootings in the FBI database and compare the cases of white dudes waving knives at cops vs the sample of black dudes waving knives at cops, the police are N times more likely to shoot and kill the the black dudes.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This study directly contradicts your statement:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;upshot&amp;#x2F;surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;upshot&amp;#x2F;surprising-new-evid...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that drives me crazy about these &amp;quot;privilege&amp;quot; discussions is how insanely qualitative and emotion driven they are.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s the outcome for a white kid born in a trailer park vs. a black kid born in a wealthy suburb?  Is class privilege completely nullified by racial privilege, meaning the white kid is likely to earn more than the black kid as an adult?  The data doesn&amp;#x27;t show this, and puts a much heavier weight on class and geography being the bigger barriers.&lt;p&gt;The result of these emotionally driven discussions is that once again, Americans are focused on race being a primary driver of inequality and distracted away from the much bigger issue of class.  It&amp;#x27;s a very convenient tactic for the corporate elites who own our government and want to prevent real change.  Racism is a convenient target, because it allows people to blame a problem whose solution doesn&amp;#x27;t involve massive overhauls of tax policy to better redistribute the wealth that is accumulating with the .01%.</text></item><item><author>mrgoldenbrown</author><text>I doubt you&amp;#x27;ll find anyone saying this stuff doesn&amp;#x27;t happen to white folks at all.&lt;p&gt;The issue is that given the same set of circumstances, a black person is more likely to be searched&amp;#x2F;shot&amp;#x2F;whatever than a white person.  In the case of police shootings, yes some white dudes have been shot as well as black dudes.  But if you look at all the cases of police shootings in the FBI database and compare the cases of white dudes waving knives at cops vs the sample of black dudes waving knives at cops, the police are N times more likely to shoot and kill the the black dudes.  (I can&amp;#x27;t recall exactly what N is but I think it was 5 or 6).&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re going to &amp;quot;burst bubbles&amp;quot; when talking about privilege, I encourage you to learn about intersectionality first.  Otherwise you&amp;#x27;re bursting a straw man version of the concept, which doesn&amp;#x27;t achieve anything.  Privilege exists on multiple axes, and you still have white privilege even if you&amp;#x27;re poor and don&amp;#x27;t have class privilege.</text></item><item><author>JPKab</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d hate to burst your bubble, but this shit happens to white people all the time.  Just not the white people that HN folks are surrounded by (urban, upper class, educated).&lt;p&gt;I grew up in a poor, rural area of Appalachia, and this shit is routine.&lt;p&gt;Your assumption that the race of the victim is the reason the cops are cool with it is based on zero evidence other than your own preconceived notions.  I&amp;#x27;ve had my car seats slashed open in a vain search for drugs after I&amp;#x27;d already been handcuffed and laid on the pavement with zero fucking apologies, and I&amp;#x27;m not black.&lt;p&gt;Just because you live in a sphere of the world where white people are all rich and privileged doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that it&amp;#x27;s like that in the rest of (most of) America.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>I wondered what the ethnicity of the person raided was, and of course he&amp;#x27;s black.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s why there&amp;#x27;s no shame or embarrassment from the officers. That&amp;#x27;s why the Black Lives Matter campaign exists: the police have, in this case, done a substantial amount of damage to someone&amp;#x27;s life but not killed them. And there&amp;#x27;s not even an acknowledgement of that.</text></item><item><author>hvidgaard</author><text>That is absolutely terrifying to read!&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  The striking thing about the footage is, again, the utter mundanity of the raid.
  A family was just violently raided over an unmeasurable amount of pot. A man was
  arrested over that pot. The money he needed for his business was taken from him.
  Yet there’s no shame or embarrassment from the officers. There’s no panic that
  the whole thing was captured on video. That’s when it hits you.  They don’t think
  they’ve made a mistake. This is what they do. The lead officers later tells the
  camera, matter-of-factly, that the raid turned up “a personal use amount of
  marijuana.” Perhaps realizing that he was also on camera back at the police
  station promising a much larger stash of drugs, he adds, “It happens. Drug
  warrants are, you know, 50-50.”
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
If they raid a home on the pretense that he has a large stash and is selling, fine. But when it turns out to not be true, they better pay for damage - no matter what else they find.</text></item><item><author>jcrei</author><text>In many cases, the police doesn&amp;#x27;t care that they are being filmed. There&amp;#x27;s this new documentary coming out called Do Not Resist, and there was an article on the WSJ about it with the following quote &amp;quot;The most disturbing thing is that it simply doesn’t occur to the sheriff that the footage might be disturbing. He has no problem letting a film crew show this massive contraption built to withstand roadside bombs in a military convoy lumbering through his small town, because the notion that military vehicles aren’t appropriate for domestic policing is foreign to him.&amp;quot; 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;the-watch&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;do-not-resist-a-chilling-look-at-the-normalization-of-warrior-cops&amp;#x2F;?utm_term=.5364143bb8d8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;the-watch&amp;#x2F;wp&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>droopybuns</author><text>&amp;gt;&amp;gt;Another thing that drives me crazy about these &amp;quot;privilege&amp;quot; discussions is how insanely qualitative and emotion driven they are.&lt;p&gt;Asserting another person&amp;#x27;s privilege is a specific tactic for silencing speech.  It is literally a method of supression if you believe in freedom of expression.&lt;p&gt;The positive side of this is that once you realize this, you can treat people who focus on &amp;quot;privilege&amp;quot; with the exact same tools you use on Mormons and Jehovas Witnesses.  Race theorists behave in ways that earn them uncomfortable status in the BITE model.</text></comment>