Protests - George Floyd

Scodiddly said:

Cops aren't supposed to kill guilty people either.

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Well, sometimes accidents happen. It certainly isn't the white police murdering black people conspiracy theory...smashing, looting stealing, etc...'protests' that arose out of it. Each case has to be looked at separately. It is what it is...and nothing more.

JohnRoberts said:

True...  nobody is saying that they are?

JR

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Just something to bear in mind when the "he was no angel" argument starts up.  Doesn't matter what George Floyd was doing, he was straight up murdered. 

Scodiddly said:

Just something to bear in mind when the "he was no angel" argument starts up.  Doesn't matter what George Floyd was doing, he was straight up murdered.

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He wasn't murdered. That's ridiculous. Do you know what murder is? Preconceived...

He was killed accidentally during an arrest. This is a perfect example of overblown nonsense.

desol said:

Do you know what murder is? Preconceived...

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You obviously don't know what it is.  1st degree murder is the only one that requires  premeditation.

An officers response should be proportional to the situation and crime being committed.  This was clearly excessive and I don't see how any reasonable person can argue  otherwise.  So please stop with your inflammatory bull ***t.

Scodiddly said:

Just something to bear in mind when the "he was no angel" argument starts up.  Doesn't matter what George Floyd was doing, he was straight up murdered.

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He was killed. The legal system will determine what crime(s) occurred.

This trial in the court of public opinion seems more tilted than usual.

The death of George Floyd has become an icon for a different larger argument. Too close inspection of the specific facts surrounding this one case can prove inconvenient to both sides. 

JR 

john12ax7 said:

You obviously don't know what it is.  1st degree murder is the only one that requires  premeditation.

An officers response should be proportional to the situation and crime being committed.  This was clearly excessive and I don't see how any reasonable person can argue  otherwise.  So please stop with your inflammatory bull ***t.

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Accident.

With the way the word murder is being used in terms of this event, it ain't 'murder'.

:

Accident: An unforeseen event that is not the result of intention or has no apparent cause.

The police officer had over 8 minutes to rethink what he was doing. He was constantly reminded of what was happening by George Floyd, he was suffocating him. Yet he remained kneeling on him. That was his conscious and deliberate decision, the exact opposite of what makes an accident. Twisting this event into an accident is absolutely ridiculous.

volker said:

:

Accident: An unforeseen event that is not the result of intention or has no apparent cause.

The police officer had over 8 minutes to rethink what he was doing. He was constantly reminded of what was happening by George Floyd, he was suffocating him. Yet he remained kneeling on him. That was his conscious and deliberate decision, the exact opposite of what makes an accident. Twisting this event into an accident is absolutely ridiculous.

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Nonsense. I heard the whole thing. He kept kneeling on him (like most officers probably would) when your resisting arrest like he was.

There was a bunch of resisting that went on before the actual kneeling part. They couldn't get him into the car, etc. It was an error on the part of the officer.

desol said:

Accident.

With the way the word murder is being used in terms of this event, it ain't 'murder'.

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Are you being intentionally obtuse? You seem to have no clue what the definition is.  Intent to kill is not a requirement, even an accident can still be murder

john12ax7 said:

You seem to have no clue what the definition is.  Intent to kill is not a requirement, even an accident can still be murder

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I know what the definition is.

"Intent to kill is not a requirement, even an accident can still be murder"

You're right...but I would more call that man-slaughter.
man·slaugh·ter
/ˈmanˌslôdər/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: manslaughter; plural noun: manslaughters

    the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.

desol said:

I know what the definition is.

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It does not appear so

desol said:

...but I would more call that man-slaughter...

    the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.

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Legally malice aforethought can be a variety of things including acting with gross negligence, behaving with extreme recklessness, or intent to cause harm (but not kill). It does not necessarily mean planned or malice towards another.

Was the officer negligent? Was the officer reckless? Did the officer intend to hurt him? If at least one of these is true,  it is murder not manslaughter.

Because they knew each other, and had a history of competing for income as bouncers, there may have been some forethought for exacting humiliation or reprisal that set the tragedy in motion.

john12ax7 said:

It does not appear so
Legally malice aforethought can be a variety of things including acting with gross negligence, behaving with extreme recklessness, or intent to cause harm (but not kill). It does not necessarily mean planned or malice towards another.

Was the officer negligent? Was the officer reckless? Did the officer intend to hurt him? If at least one of these is true,  it is murder not manslaughter.

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He simply didn't believe him when he was saying he couldn't breathe, on account of the amount of resistance the officer had experienced already. The claim is...police officers are intentionally murdering black people.

desol said:

He simply didn't believe him when he was saying he couldn't breathe, on account of the amount of resistance the officer had experienced already. The claim is...police officers are intentionally murdering black people.

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That's a rather uncomfortable conclusion for some people to reach.  Which is why we keep seeing attempts to explain it away, to make the dead guy somehow responsible.

Scodiddly said:

That's a rather uncomfortable conclusion for some people to reach.  Which is why we keep seeing attempts to explain it away, to make the dead guy somehow responsible.

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GF was responsible for the arrest and for resisting arrest. The officer made a mistake by not believing him. That's all and that's exactly what happened. Everything else is a conspiracy theory.

desol said:

The claim is...police officers are intentionally murdering black people.

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The claim is that systemic racism leads to a higher incidence of minority deaths. The science is clear that that is actually the case.

Now what would be racist is if one were to argue that black people are inherently more violent, criminal or hostile against police and that this were the reason for the higher incidence. Again, the science is clear that this argument is wrong.

Imagine the same scene of the Floyd arrest but with a 20 year old white blond woman. How likely would it have been for the officer to let her slowly asphyxiate over agonizing 9 minutes?

Or in the cases where black children playing were shot by police officers, how likely would it have been if these children had been white?

The problem is that certain inherent characteristics - without any empirical basis - are projected on an entire ethnic group. It is so much part of the culture that people imagine their unconscious racial biases to be natural and find justifications for them.

Now the next step is to imagine yourself being part of a group all the time (every day of your life) that has inherent negative characteristics prescribed upon them. So much so, that your parents had to teach you how to behave specifically as a member of that group when you encounter authorities, so you do not get harmed or worse.

Just imagine.

living sounds said:

The claim is that systemic racism leads to a higher incidence of minority deaths. The science is clear that that is actually the case.

Now what would be racist is if one were to argue that black people are inherently more violent, criminal or hostile against police and that this were the reason for the higher incidence. Again, the science is clear that this argument is wrong.

Imagine the same scene of the Floyd arrest but with a 20 year old white blond woman. How likely would it have been for the officer to let her slowly asphyxiate over agonizing 9 minutes?

Or in the cases where black children playing were shot by police officers, how likely would it have been if these children had been white?

The problem is that certain inherent characteristics - without any empirical basis - are projected on an entire ethnic group. It is so much part of the culture that people imagine their unconscious racial biases to be natural and find justifications for them.

Now the next step is to imagine yourself being part of a group all the time (every day of your life) that has inherent negative characteristics prescribed upon them. So much so, that your parents had to teach you how to behave specifically as a member of that group when you encounter authorities, so you do not get harmed or worse.

Just imagine.

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That's fairly dramatic. Each case is it's own case and has to be looked at individually.

desol said:

That's fairly dramatic. Each case is it's own case and has to be looked at individually.

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He's describing the aggregate effect of all of the individual cases (and he's not wrong), so why do we need to look at everything individually?  Chrysler cars of the 1980's were known to have horrible repair records:  in fact, the Chrysler Imperial had one of the worst repair records in automotive history.  Are you saying that it's invalid to say Chrysler's in the 1980's were crap, because some had failed brakes, some had electrical problems, and other's blew engines?  That we can't say, overall, compared to Fords, a Chrysler was four times more likely to need repairs?

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793

Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups. Black women and men and American Indian and Alaska Native women and men are significantly more likely than white women and men to be killed by police. Latino men are also more likely to be killed by police than are white men.

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And note that this is per capita.

He's describing the aggregate effect of all of the individual cases (and he's not wrong), so why do we need to look at everything individually?

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Of course both individual and aggregate data points are useful depending on what is trying to be teased out.

Generally, I think aggregating by race for any attribute causes problems, since inverse relationships get inferred or misinterpreted across race (NMAAHC taking down its 'Aspects & Assumptions of Whiteness' chart comes to mind).

Apart from being a whole hell-of-a-lot less violent, police must own the loss of trust and erosion of civic cohesiveness caused by racial profiling. The privatized prison system and its financial interests need examining as well; the for-profit models must not include incentives for enforcers to make quota.

desol said:

That's fairly dramatic. Each case is it's own case and has to be looked at individually.

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It is dramatic for the people directly affected by it.  That's why they are protesting. And this time, thankfully, a lot of those not directly affected are protesting with them.

The science has looked at individual cases as well as at the aggregate. Now is the time to do something about it.