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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33986 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Football player Tyreek Hill was arrested the other day during a traffic stop. Because he refused to keep his tinted windows rolled down for the officers, they commanded him to get out of the vehicle. Because he refused to get out of the vehicle, the officers forced him to the ground for a detainment. In Florida, officers have the right to command you to keep the window low enough for (1) communication and (2) officer safety. This appears to be a universally agreed upon fact before this event, as for instance in a video by a criminal defense attorney specifically about a Floridian just two weeks ago, and in legal advice proffered online just a month ago.

Let us assume that the officers knew who Tyrell Hill was, which isn’t a given because of the arresting officer’s thick Latino accent. They would have every reason to treat him with precaution because of his domestic violence and assault record, meaning that a concern for officer safety is legitimate despite the subject’s fame. And really, even thinking about a subject’s level of fame before enacting a law or police procedure should make us recoil. We don’t want to do that, right? We should treat everyone the same. The typical talking heads, of course, are calling this police brutality.

I am interested in how this scene would be treated if the subject were of a different appearance and nature. Tyreek, a 1%er super-wealthy person of privilege, is extremely rude to a working class minority police officer. Let’s imagine some white CEO stammering to the minority police officer, “don’t knock on my window… I’m going to be late… don’t tell me what to do!”, while ignoring the officer’s requests. We would all agree that this behavior is unacceptable. We would rightfully delight in his retribution, being placed on the ground in subservience to the Law. The comments would read like, “white man realizes the law applies to him”. But Tyreek, a (former) criminal, has a social privilege that would never be afforded to a white CEO: he is a star athlete and the public implicitly expects less of him because of his genetic nature. I can understand the public behaving like the public, but it’s annoying to see media figures excusing the behavior, too.

He got pulled out of the car and onto the ground with such ease that I can just imagine the locker room barbs he will be subjected to.

Second - there was one moment at exactly 02:00 when I thought for a moment that he was gonna get out of the car aggressively. Him putting the window down exactly one inch didn't help his case.

The cop escalating the situation with pulling him out of the car was rushed. I think that if he had given him more rope he would have hanged himself enough to justify the force since he obviously had absolutely no intent of complying.

When a cop pulls you over you put your window down and say "good day officer". Then you wait and you are polite.

Yeah, I agree here -- the officer showing more patience would have just lead to a video that was more flattering to the officer.

Signaling games. Not wearing a tie to an interview for a job where you know they expect you to wear one signals a lot about you. Suppose 0.1% of people stopped by the police during traffic stops are so dangerous that they lack the ability to appear cooperative and pose a genuine threat to the welfare of the police. Having the police think you're in this 0.1% is very bad for you, so you will avoid giving that impression unless you have no choice or desire a confrontation with the police.

I'm not sure how this got in my feed, but I've seen a lot of videos on X of police radically escalating situations beyond what's necessary. It often includes legal commentary on citizen rights and self-defense. Things like a police PITing a pregant woman and flipping her car for not pulling over fast enough during a stop. Police harassing a guy working on his car in a auto-shop late at night because its "suspicious". Cops bodyslamming a dad who's taking his autistic son for a walk at 6am and not carrying his ID. Surely there is a sampling bias here, but I do get the general sense that this closer to the norm than not.

I'm not sure exactly why people on right in the USA are till on the "thin blue line" team. Perhaps its because the median cop is more conservative. Perhaps its being more comfortable with authority and generally being more conscientious - leading to less altercations. Either way, I think theyre in for a rude awakening in the coming years. This doesn't strike me a stable equilibrium. The state pays the police. There is a chain of command. The state has a lot of tools. They can make the job miserable so the right leaning cops leave. They can implement vaccine requirements. Look at the UK police system for an example of where I think we're going. It seems like a total historical accident that this hasent happened already. The UK practically has political commissars enforcing western liberalism on anyone who sticks their head up. I have no doubt that TPTB want that for the USA. The only reason it hasnt happened already is that theyre dealing with thousands of individual police departments as opposed to like 10.

I think it’s more of a benefit of the doubt thing. Most critics of police are people who have very little experience in those kinds of roles. They’re giving an opinion based on the aesthetics of the situation, where it looks bad on video.

Here’s the thing though. While shootings are rare, the fact is that guns in the USA are so common that every encounter must be treated as though the subject is armed and prepared to use their weapon. Which throws a lot of good faith out the window. Guy won’t roll down the window, especially a tinted one — it must be assumed that behind the tinted glass the suspect has and is preparing to use a gun. If the suspect reaches for something it must be assumed to be a weapon. Reaching for your waistband again, a cop cannot assume anything other than this is reaching for a concealed weapon. Asking someone to assume good faith doesn’t work when being wrong is potentially lethal.

Then you have the officer’s gun which precludes a lot of the silliness of people suggesting that cops use Judo to put people on the ground. Except that this puts the officer and his gun within reach. If he doesn’t have full control of both hands during the encounter, the suspect can simply grab the gun and shoot the officer. Deescalation can’t be done unless the officer has complete control of the scene.

Surely there is a sampling bias here, but I do get the general sense that this closer to the norm than not.

You mean that the norm is the 50th percentile for disproportional violence within police interactions? So you think that these interactions account for at least the 25th percentile of police interactions, as in, 1 out of every 4? I can't prove you wrong, but I personally disagree. This sounds to me to be a direct case of the Chinese Robber Fallacy. With the number of cops in the country, you can cherry pick these examples all day and never stop. What is the reason you think the sources you're watching aren't playing that numbers game?

It's clearly not close to the norm in the sense of "normal distribution", but it's closer than it should be in the sense of "normative". Back when the pregnant woman got run over you could find de jure support for the victim in pre-existing Arkansas state publications, and the state police settled out of court later, but if the cop who ran her down wasn't fired then in some de facto sense wasn't any norm against that superseded by a "let the vehicular assailant get away with it if they're a cop" norm they consider more important?

And the taxpayers of the city are always the ones on the hook. Every time the city has to settle a lawsuit because of cop shitbaggery, if we can't force the police union to chip in, we should at least take away some of their shiny toys. No you don't need a fucking APC in middletown usa.

Surely there is a sampling bias here, but I do get the general sense that this closer to the norm than not.

No, it’s not even remotely close to the norm. Please expose yourself to more information. Please watch the massive corpus of police bodycam videos available all over YouTube, which will show you the exact opposite of the impression you are forming based on an extremely biased sample.

But isn't the sample on Youtube also biased? Presumably no-one is watching 8 hours of body cam footage where nothing happens on either side? Its going to be biased towards something interesting, or exciting or violent happening.

Which is why number of videos showing x isn't a good measure of how many times x actually happens?

The sample on YouTube includes channels dedicated to showcasing videos that make cops look bad, other channels that are dedicated to making cops look good and/or arrestees look bad, and channels dedicated to just documenting reality with as little commentary/slant as possible. You’re correct that obviously videos of a completely incident-free traffic stop are unlikely to make it to YouTube, but in this case the scenario that Nybbler is discussing would fall under the category of “interesting/notable interaction” and therefore we can certainly glean information about its likelihood by comparing the corpus of available video to the claim at hand. There are in fact huge amounts of videos of people rolling up their windows on police, with various outcomes, and we can draw conclusions from them.

Sure, not arguing he was right necessarily, just that everything that we see is going to have an "interesting" bias, so we can't tell from that what the chances of something going wrong are overall. They are going to look much more exciting than they are overall.

I'm not sure exactly why people on right in the USA are till on the "thin blue line" team. Perhaps its because the median cop is more conservative. Perhaps its being more comfortable with authority and generally being more conscientious - leading to less altercations

You clearly know why the right says it's for police.

"Thin blue line" is not a content free slogan, it doesn't just mean "pro-cop". It says something about the right's view of society that explains why they're pro-cop. The right has told you why and you clearly heard them.

Is the right so insincere that their given explanation doesn't suffice and we need to speculate ?

Why does the right say it, then?

  • Boring answer: it’s the price we pay for stability
  • Statistical answer: they want high sensitivity more than they fear false positives.
  • Snarky answer: they thought Jack Nicholson played the protagonist in A Few Good Men
  • Wordcel answer: thousand word essay on the Hobbesian state of nature
  • Calvinist answer: the consequences of false positives only fall on those who are already damned.
  • Race theorist answer: see above, but for different reasons
  • Marxist answer: class struggle against the proles
  • Hanson’s answer: signaling lmao

If I had to guess at a bog-standard conservative belief… The average Republican voter probably thinks policing is difficult and unpleasant but necessary for a social contract, that they’d prefer a heavy hand to an absent one, and that the consequences of policing mostly fall on criminals who asked for it. But I’m not an average Republican voter, and I’m sure plenty of them would give a different explanation.

What’s yours?

The average Republican voter probably thinks policing is difficult and unpleasant but necessary for a social contract, that they’d prefer a heavy hand to an absent one, and that the consequences of policing mostly fall on criminals who asked for it. But I’m not an average Republican voter, and I’m sure plenty of them would give a different explanation.

More or less, with a side of 'the alternative to a social contract is a brutal failed state' and 'policing is the first job of the state' and 'the difference between an absent hand and a light one is not real'. Also fuck criminals. Especially with increasing education polarization there's a substantial undercurrent of 'well thieves should get hanged anyways, so if the police knock them around a little harder than they're supposed to they're still getting off light'.

I agree with this. People who don’t like the police tend to assume that the alternative to over-policing is peace. But if the cops cannot stop crime (or more properly are not permitted to use tools at their disposal to effectively stop crime) the alternative is this falling on the general public. Which has none of the advantages of using police (who can be controlled to some degree because they’re deputized to enforce actual laws, and to respect the rights of citizens) and thus becomes a problem of every person in the general public carrying a weapon and deciding based on only concern for themselves and their families whether or not to use that weapon. Vigilante Justice will become the norm, to approval of normal people who want law and order so that they can safely go to the store or even to the park without fear. They’ll approve because they don’t want their stuff stolen and will protect it.

Why does the right say it, then?

They literally think the police are the bulwark between order and chaos, as the phrase implies?

I'm asking why we shouldn't take them at their word. If progressives say "teachers shape the future" enough that it becomes a cliche that their enemies use to describe their position do we need to wonder why progressives are still on the pro-teacher bandwagon despite obvious problems with the educational system? Do we need to wonder what progressives mean by this? Shit happens, no institution is perfect but if you believe in it you don't throw out the baby.

If I had to guess at a bog-standard conservative belief… The average Republican voter probably thinks policing is difficult and unpleasant but necessary for a social contract, that they’d prefer a heavy hand to an absent one, and that the consequences of policing mostly fall on criminals who asked for it.

More or less my model but, as with anything in America, sharpened by partisanship and the perception of bad faith on the other side.

I think you can get many conservatives on board for certain things like civil forfeiture being bad. Or even that something like what happened to George Floyd Sonya Massey was wrong. The problem is that it's an iterated game and it never stops at that cop.

Same reason progressives don't want to yield on teachers or public schools.

It's just a difference in which criminals you're more OK with roaming the streets.

If we grant that these police are themselves criminals, and I honestly don't think the Right has much problem seeing that if presented in a sufficiently neutral way, the Left simply has a different view of which criminals should be permitted to [burn, loot, murder, etc.] and why that is preferable, and use every justification you listed to argue for that.

policing is difficult and unpleasant but necessary for a social contract

Which implies that the rank comes with certain privileges. The reasons people will give the "snarky" answer get at this but I think it's actually the most realistic answer, and is also why there's very little movement on ending the practice of no-knock raids and other property destruction [burning], civil forfeiture [looting], and qualified immunity [murdering].

The Left functions exactly the same way, they simply assign those ranks differently.

Most republicans admit that problem cops should face consequences/be dismissed before they literally kill someone.

Yes, but they generally don't believe in problem cops. Unless the cop is literally caught doing rape or murder, they side with the cop in all cop/citizen interactions.

Even this is not really true. The right wing gives police grace in the face of criticism because they, imo rightly, don't believe their opponents are acting in good faith.

The discussion is not really about whether there're bad cops, anymore than the education debate is about there're bad teachers (where I'm sure a right-winger can accuse progressives of refusing to grant this when it comes time to defend teacher's unions)

Which mirrors how the Democrats generally don't believe in problem criminals and side with the criminal in all criminal/citizen interactions (rape or murder can make either D or R reconsider, but is far from guaranteed to do so).

In fairness, polite society has basically zero crime [and zero desire to commit crime] to the point that the populace's demand for crime exceeds its supply (and this has been true for most of the last 60 years, though it did spike hard in the '80s; the State filled some of the power vacuum with a massive expansion in regulations, saw that nobody pushed back, and as such continually seeks new and exciting criminals per popular demand). Much like one's choice of beer, traditionalists prefer domestic perpetrators of crime where progressives prefer the imported stuff.

IIRC, if you actually look at beer preferences by brand, republicans drink better beer than democrats. I suspect that a big part of this is race effects.

That's a big stretch to do both-sidesism. Not believing in problem criminals is a whole lot less understandable than not believing in bad cops.

More comments

I'm not sure exactly why people on right in the USA are till on the "thin blue line" team.

Maybe it's "the last time we had a broad anti-cop sentiment sweep the country, it resulted in riots, and a skyrocketing crime rate"? Perhaps the fact that said last time was a mere 4 years ago also played a role?

Either way, I think theyre in for a rude awakening in the coming years.

I actually agree with you, though the American system is more democratic and decentralized, so they might stave off the kind of stuff that Europe is imposing on it's population.

I basically had the same initial reaction and Hill was certainly being a jerk. Rolling his very tinted windows up while the police were talking to him would definitely make anyone nervous. But having looked at the ProtectAndServe thread on the matter, I’ve come around the general consensus that the police escalated the situation way more than they should have. They really did not need to take him to the ground forcibly after he opened the car door. Tyreek Hill’s bad behavior led to bad behavior on the part of the police. Many such cases.

From that thread, this dude had a pretty sensible take:

To me I see multiple things, officer was in the right in their actions. That however doesn’t mean it was the right decision. This is a situational awareness thing where there’s no threat to officers and pulling this guy out is just going to create headaches. Hill clearly didn’t want to wait, explain to him he can roll down his window and cooperate or this is going to take a lot longer. He’s detained either way, let him calm down and either waste more of his time or cooperates.

My opinion is if someone wants to make things difficult I’ve got all the time in the world, I’m on the clock either way. Only person who’s wasting their time is the one who’s not being paid to be there.

I do think this depends on the officer's assessment of whether Hill posed a threat to him. If he knew who Hill was (and he probably did), just taking this approach would have made sense.

I do think this depends on the officer's assessment of whether Hill posed a threat to him. If he knew who Hill was (and he probably did), just taking this approach would have made sense.

My guess is that if he didn't know who Hill was, or if he actually thought Hill was a threat (even if he did know who he was), this ends with a few rounds through the window, killing Hill.

What percentage of traffic stops do you think result in deadly force?

I dunno, but to listen to cops and their apologists you'd think that all of them would involve deadly force (on the part of the person stopped against the cop) if the cops weren't so insistent that the stopped person respect their authority.

You completely dodged the question. You made an explicit assertion that if the police had assessed Hill as a threat they would have shot multiple rounds into his window. How actually likely do you assess the probability of this outcome? Or are you just idly talking out of your ass, venting unspecified frustration about police, with no attempt to engage with the underlying statistical reality?

Yes, I say if some ordinary person rolls up the tinted windows between them and a cop at a stop that's already contentious, the cop is going to put a few rounds into the window and say he was afraid the driver was using the tinted window as cover to get out their own gun. And one "Hoffmeister25" would be among the first to defend said cop. There's no statistical question here -- most people don't do what Hill did, after all.

So what percentage of contentious traffic stops in which the driver disobeys police instructions do you think have the police open fire first?

Because there are a lot of dashcam and bodycam vids which show, undeniably, that the vast majority of police do not do what you are claiming they do. How many do you think you'd need to see to think differently?

Of course there’s a statistical question; there is some number of drivers who do, in fact, roll up their tinted windows, and of that subset of police interactions, there is a percentage in which this resulted in the discharge of a firearm by police. I’m asking you to estimate what that percentage is.

What I can tell you is that I have personally watched probably over a hundred police videos in which the specific scenario you’re describing - a driver rolls up the window on a police officer during a traffic stop - takes place, and I cannot recall a single one in which that alone has resulted in the officer firing a weapon. Furthermore, it would not be difficult - although it would be prohibitively time-consuming - for me to comb through the thousands of hours of police bodycam videos posted by the dozens of YouTube channels I follow which are dedicated to compiling just such videos, and to find you copious counterexamples to your claim.

Flatly, you just do not know what you’re talking about. The use of deadly force during traffic stops is infinitesimally rare in this country; police pull over more than 500,000 drivers every day in this country - more than 20 million motorists every year - and yet less than 1000 individuals are killed by police each year. (Apparently the current tally for 2024 is 836.) Traffic stops comprise only 7% of police uses of deadly force each year. There’s just no plausible reading of the data to support your assertion regarding how common the scenario you’re imagining actually takes place.

Let us assume that the officers knew who Tyrell Hill was, which isn’t a given because of the arresting officer’s thick Latino accent.

I would be shocked to find a Cuban police officer in Miami that isn't familiar with Tyreek Hill.

I think it's unduly charitable to describe Hill as (former) criminal. He's an absolutely terrible person that keeps doing things like this. He's a guy that beat the shit out of his pregnant girlfriend, broke his child's arm, and assaults people that he just doesn't like. If he wasn't the fastest guy on the field, probably ever, he would probably have been suspended.

Let’s imagine some white CEO stammering to the minority police officer,

If the arresting officer has a thick Latino accent, he is a working class minority police officer.

Football player Tyreek Hill

That's a gross mischaracterization. He was Miami's MVP of 2022. It's like not recognizing Zlatan in Sweden.

which isn’t a given

He was in a mclaren. That's a $400k car. So, the officers should've at least known that he was rich.

In Florida, officers have the right to command you to keep the window low enough for (1) communication and (2) officer safety

The officer asked him to keep his window down. And within the next few seconds, he did. The officer had no reason to escalate, drag him down and cuff him with the aggressiveness that they did. The stats for police officers shot from a McLaren is zero, and will stay zero. He puts his window down, then unlocks the car and is stepping out. The office still drags a clearly cooperating suspect onto the floor for no freaking reason. If the officer's life was at risk, then the suspect (Tyreek) would not have unlocked the car, had both hands up and let them grab him.

He is entitled. Yes. But, he was cooperating.

They would have every reason to treat him with precaution because of his domestic violence and assault record, meaning that a concern for officer safety is legitimate despite the subject’s fame

Officers don't have a person's record available off the top of their head.

We don’t want to do that, right? We should treat everyone the same.

Yeah. We don't want random people to be dragged out of their car if they're cooperating. Why did they double jump on him at minute 2:00 ?

Let's not pretend like people are going to be treated the same, ever. Old money families have multiple hit-n-run deaths on their hands. The police politely go to their houses and ring bells. So if you're rich, the system clearly treats you better. Set the money aside, and this is still baffling. I was poor and I have been stopped a couple of times for suspected speeding. I am not white, but the police were always nice. They took my license. Did the math. Realized I wasn't really speeding by enough and let me go on a warning. A normal human-human interaction.

Miami is not Baltimore. The police offers are not fighting gangs to death on the daily. Why so much hostility ?
The arrest is fine. That manner of it is, really odd.

that would never be afforded to a white CEO

Are white Americans that blind to how they're treated in the US ? Upper class whites (admittedly coastal) are treated like kings. Their usual attire, demeanor and tone signals authority. And white / coloreds alike fall in line.

I want to avoid making this about race. I'd rather talk about policing at large.

American police aren't dying in the line of action. It is a safe & boring blue collar job; traffic policing in coastal cities is doubly so.

Why so twitchy ?

he was cooperating

The officers are entitled to ask you to keep your window down for communication and safety. They asked him a number of times and explained the reason. This is easy to abide by and he failed to do it. You should watch the video. All of this is clear with no ambiguity. “Keep your window down” -> “don’t tell me what to do”.

The officer had no reason to escalate, drag him down and cuff him with the aggressiveness that they did

You are wrong, as they did have a reason, which is his failure to follow simple commands repeatedly, like literally 10x in a row.

The stats for police officers shot from a McLaren is zero

This is a category fallacy. McClaren selects for the non-criminal because the high end of wealth selects for the non-criminal. But Tyreek Hill earned his wealth anomalously, as the 1% of millionaires who are professional athletes (probably 0.5% of 8figs are professional athletes). Indeed, he already has a criminal record which includes assaults. Tyreek Hill is not the normative member of McClaren drivers, the relevant category he belongs to is “black wide receivers in NFL” — before I look it up, would you kindly tell me if you think this category commits more crimes or fewer crimes than the average American?

the relevant category he belongs to is “black wide receivers in NFL” — before I look it up, would you kindly tell me if you think this category commits more crimes or fewer crimes than the average American?

Well, did you look it up? I'm not going to go through the criminal history of every black NFL wide receiver, but back in 2010 SI did a roundup of wide receivers with legal problems, and identified 6 (plus Chad Johnson, who didn't have any legal issues at the time other than being a diva, and Plaxico Burress, who wasn't in the league, and Marvin Harrison, who was investigated but never charged). Antonio Bryant wasn't on the list but I know he had legal problems while at Pitt so I'll include him, too. There were 178 receivers in the NFL in 2009. I didn't tease out the white receivers but there were so few of them that they didn't make a statistical difference. That gets us to a ballpark estimate of 4% of NFL receivers who have been arrested, at least in 2009. Considering the estimates of all Americans with a criminal record range from 30%–40%, I'd say that NFL receivers commit significantly fewer crimes than the average American. I'm sure there were receivers in 2009 with criminal records I didn't know about, but I doubt it's 10 times more. If you actually have statistics on this, I'm all ears.

the relevant category he belongs to is “black wide receivers in NFL” — before I look it up, would you kindly tell me if you think this category commits more crimes or fewer crimes than the average American?

Wide receivers are not running backs.

I agree with a lot of your post. But...

That's a gross mischaracterization. He was Miami's MVP of 2022. It's like not recognizing Zlatan in Sweden.

This misunderstands football. I watch a lot of Eagles football, and I would not recognize AJ Brown or Devonta Smith in the street. Normally, when I watch the game, he has a helmet on. Before even getting into cross-racial identification issues.

Hill's a lot easier to recognize if he's throwing the peace sign or beating up some guy on the docks.

Outside of guys that get significant endorsement deals, I just don't really see them enough.

That and when I showed a table full of Polacks headshots of Jalen Hurts and Deshaun Watson to judge trustworthiness.

If anyone's been shot at from a McLaren it's very likely to have occurred in Miami.

The cops also have a tendency to fuck with the drivers of supercars, as in Justin Bieber's Miami arrest for "drag racing" at 27mph in a 30mph zone.

That's a gross mischaracterization. He was Miami's MVP of 2022. It's like not recognizing Zlatan in Sweden.

I think you grossly underestimate how famous (and how broadly famous) Zlatan is and overestimate how famous Tyreek (and athletes in general) is.

Zlatan has won best footballer 12 times. He is easily the most accomplished Swedish footballer of all time, not just another good footballer. He has been one of the most famous Swedes for some 26 years. In the 2010s he was the most written about famous person in Sweden, all categories. He is probably better known than the king.

Tyreek is just another good footballer, who is from another state and who's played almost his entire career for another state's team.

I don't fucking know who the left mid fielder for lets say Borussia Dortmund or Manchester City is. I have no idea who the vast majority of the Champions League players are and im not uninterested in soccer, I'm just not very interested. I certainly wouldn't recognize them.

If you're not into football I'd wager you have no idea who Tyreek Hill is unless maybe if you're from Kansas city.

The stars on your own city’s football team are a bit more recognizable.

If you're following football then sure, but if not i don't think a new transfer from out or town is notable enough for one expect the non-interested to be even aware that they exist.

Normies know who the star players on their local football team are, even if they weren't there last year. Knowing the stars of other teams maybe not unless they're super super famous. There's a pretty good chance they don't know their faces, but the cop would recognize the name.

The site just ate my fairly long response and I can't be bothered to retype it.

I disagree and think you vastly overestimate the broad fame of athletes. People do not know the names and faces of athletes in sports they're not actively interested in unless they're written about a lot individually, over a long time. Many people won't know even a single current athlete in many sports.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the man named Zlatan Ibrahimović is not, in fact, of Swedish descent.

Yeah yeah, Swedish birth and upbringing, not descent.

Football player Tyreek Hill

That's a gross mischaracterization. He was Miami's MVP of 2022. It's like not recognizing Zlatan in Sweden.

Dude, I live in Miami and I have never heard of this guy until today. Bubbles are a thing.

I don't know FL laws, but in my state the underlying offense of misdemeanor agg speeding and reckless driving is cause enough to ask him out of the vehicle and impound it, take him to the station, etc. In some cases the same is true for the tinted windows. Not that it is common, but it certainly is considered part of protocol to be used sparingly. If he was going 50+ over as some initial reports indicated (none confirmed yet AFAIK) it would be edging into it being fairly common for police to arrest and tow. Especially with a car like that which probably costs $500k+

During the video it sounds like the cop says 6 over at one point, and according to an article I read Hill admitted to doing 55 in a 40 zone, which seems bad but is really only the bare minimum to attract attention, especially considering that he was on a 4 lane road. To put this into context, on I-78 outside of Pittsburgh state police will regularly do "crackdowns" where they're only pulling over people doing at least 80 in a 55. Either way, he wasn't charged with speeding, but Careless Driving, which is code for he was weaving in and out of traffic and probably going a little too fast. I got one of these myself once for making an abrupt lane change when I realized I was about to head up the wrong exit ramp. Not exactly something they normally impound the car over.

Yeah, now that we have more info it looks like it was not a true agg speeder. It does seem, based on the number of R/Os though that there was a prolonged chase. Whether Hill is just an oblivious idiot, or there wasn't a good place to stop is probably never to be determined.

I’m glad you made this post and not me, because I realized almost immediately that I was not going to be able to write about this in a way that comports with the standards of this forum. Seeing Reddit immediately cry about how hard it is to be a black man in America and about how “the police in this country” - and especially ”Florida police” (DeSantis is Hitler, Florida is a fascist police state) - have a horrible track record and should never be given the benefit of the doubt made me want to throw my phone across the room.

I seriously have no idea what it’s going to take to resolve the “two screens” issue we have when it comes to policing in America. Things that are obvious and intuitive to one camp - “it’s wrong for police to treat you roughly you just because you’re being an uncooperative asshole to them” or “police are authoritarian bullies who must be vigilantly critiqued to prevent them from abusing their power” - are totally alien and clearly wrong to the other camp. Add the race angle and all of the attendant myths and slander that have accumulated around the issue thanks to a coordinated campaign of lies by the media, and you have another situation that has suddenly and bizarrely become a scissor.

Things that are obvious and intuitive to one camp - “it’s wrong for police to treat you roughly you just because you’re being an uncooperative asshole to them” or “police are authoritarian bullies who must be vigilantly critiqued to prevent them from abusing their power” - are totally alien and clearly wrong to the other camp.

As someone that's generally not much of a fan of the police, it remains wild to me that people aren't capable of viewing an incident and electing to believe that there isn't really a good guy in the picture. The cops in this video seem like they probably are authoritarian bullies that were unnecessarily rough because they didn't like the way Hill was acting. Nonetheless, this is easily avoided by not being a total asshole that tries to roll up your dark tinted window in their face. Personally, I would want the car impounded just for the tint even if there was no other infraction. I hate that shit. It just isn't very hard to find Tyreek Hill to be a completely unsympathetic asshole while also believing that the cops are petty authoritarians that acted unprofessionally.

This is my response to most conflicts. There is very rarely an interpersonal conflict where all parties involved act perfectly, or even with complete good faith. The cases where someone's clearly wrong, and someone's clearly right, don't make it to the public consciousness -- they don't have enough toxoplasma.

Everyone wants to think in black and white and see a victim and a perpetrator. There are certainly crimes like that, crimes of random targeting and heinous violence. But my view is that we live in a world of victimized perpetrators and perpetrating victims.

I have a little prayer I think of whenever I come across a conflict online, and find it hard to decide the truth of the situation:

I will what is good, and I do not will what is bad. If someone has done wrong, I will that they receive their recompense; if someone has been wronged, I will that they receive justice. If someone has been falsely accused of wrong, I will that the truth is known; if someone has falsely accused someone of wrong, I will that they recant. If someone is in sorrow, I will them to have joy; if someone has joy, I will that they have compassion on those who sorrow. If someone speaks falsehood, I will the pursuit of the truth; if someone speaks truth, I will that their words reach those who believe falsehood. In all places and all times, I will the good, and I do not will the bad.

Tyreek Hill's job is to catch a ball and run. The cop's job is to enforce the law. Tyreek Hill being kind of an asshole to someone who is, after all, his enemy in that moment is not nearly as concerning as the enforcers of the law being authoritarian bullies based on the slightest excuse.

Football players thinking they can get away with murder and being nasty about the concept of rules applying to them isn’t really an isolated incident, and it’s fairly endemic with football players- college ballers get away with shit on campus constantly.

Extremely true, and yet another reason why the assertions that “as a black man Tyreek Hill has to be extra-careful not to invite wanton police violence upon himself” is laughably opposite from the actual truth.

The police in this case have that "when I say jump you say how high" mentality. Which isn't totally unreasonable but also you don't need to shove a guy onto the ground because he's moderately uncooperative/bitchy. Like at one point they ask him to sit down, he says hold on, and a cop shoves him down, and this is after he's been handcuffed. It's not some super shocking police brutality but just kinda unnecessary.

The police in this case have that "when I say jump you say how high" mentality.

Would your mentality be different?

I've posted about this before. Watch police bodycam videos. The speed at which ho-hum traffic stops turns into "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" is frightening. One of the things cops are doing is assessing how compliant you're being. If you're being compliant, they can make some assumptions about the next 15 - 30 seconds. If you're not, they're operating on the assumption of "this could go bad right now."

because he's moderately uncooperative/bitchy.

It's interesting how this "moderate" lack of compliance often precedes attempted lethal violence. The number of criminals saying, "I'm going to reach for my gun and shoot you after the count of 10" keeps declining every year.

"but just kinda unnecessary."

Funny how "unnecessary" a lot of actions become when the conditions for death are present. Again, your average patrol cop is dealing with so many unknowns where the penalty for misjudging them tends towards loss of your own life, your partners life, maiming, or endangering other bystanders. Offending the sensitives of a single individual as a rough hedge against those other outcomes seems like a pretty obvious tradeoff, no?

For everyone who thinks that police are predisposed to tyrannical behavior and/or are drunk on power, I would offer that their job description is "interact with highly emotionally activated individuals on a daily basis, often with a very real threat of violence."

I've posted about this before. Watch police bodycam videos. The speed at which ho-hum traffic stops turns into "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" is frightening.

Boo hoo. If they can't handle it, they should find another job. Compensating by treating everyone they stop like a potentially-perfidous enemy surrendering is not compatible with liberty.

For everyone who thinks that police are predisposed to tyrannical behavior and/or are drunk on power, I would offer that their job description is "interact with highly emotionally activated individuals on a daily basis, often with a very real threat of violence."

Everyone stopped by them is interacting with highly emotionally activated individuals with a real threat of violence, and it isn't even their job.

Boo hoo. If they can't handle it, they should find another job.

This is exactly why we have a national shortage of police officers. That lack of cops hits the most vulnerable communities the hardest.

Compensating by treating everyone they stop like a potentially-perfidous enemy surrendering is not compatible with liberty.

Literally all you have to do is be polite and compliant. If you're male, go out of your way to demonstrate the compliance so your perceived threat level decreases. If this is offensive to your righteous moral code, I question how you are able to function in society at all. Everyday is filled with tiny sleights between strangers. If you become hypersensitive to them, that's on you.

Everyone stopped by them is interacting with highly emotionally activated individuals with a real threat of violence, and it isn't even their job.

You can't possible be making this equivalency in good faith. Your honest contention is that cops are running around 10 our of 10 jacked up and angry and use their weapons (or threat of them) in every encounter?

Boo hoo. If they can't handle it, they should find another job.

This is exactly why we have a national shortage of police officers. That lack of cops hits the most vulnerable communities the hardest.

I don't think we have a national shortage of police officers because cops aren't allowed to treat anyone they stop like surrendered enemy soldiers. Because in fact the cops ARE allowed to do that.

You can't possible be making this equivalency in good faith. Your honest contention is that cops are running around 10 our of 10 jacked up and angry and use their weapons (or threat of them) in every encounter?

No, my contention is that they are highly emotionally activated individuals with (that is, posing) a real threat of violence to everyone they stop.

Because in fact the cops ARE allowed to do that.

Perhaps technically. However this seems to be changing with public scrutiny, and officers are more exposed than ever to having their actions in high pressure situations being put under the microscope of thousands of armchair experts

Fully agreed. Their job is to protect and serve and that includes the people they suspect of crimes. They aren't dictators, and people going about their business are allowed to be rude and uncooperative within the boundaries of the law. It is not their job to be nice and compliant to the cops. It is the cops job to manage those interactions while understanding the authority they are exercising is not their own but is gifted to them, and that putting themselves at risk on behalf of the people is their job and that those people not acting maximally deferential is not an excuse to exercise that authority.

Their job is to protect and serve

It is not. A policeman's job is to enforce the law, which they can be selective with.

'Protect and serve' is just good PR.

uncooperative within the boundaries of the law.

Is refusing a lawful order by a police officer not the opposite of this? Seems an oxymoron

Well that's the rub isn't it? What orders are lawful? And which SHOULD be lawful. If an officer lacks probable cause for a traffic stop for example, then none of his orders may be lawful at all. If the orders are "not reasonably designed" to meet the officers lawful goal, then they may not be lawful. If their goal is unlawful then their orders too are unlawful.

An officer does not have the authority to make their orders lawful, that can only be determined by the laws of the location, and many officers are simply incorrect. Like the one who arrested a nurse who would not hand over a vial of a suspects blood without a warrant. He insisted he was giving her a lawful order and arrested her for failing to obey, yet he was not. In the case of Sandra Bland, the officer ordered her to put her cigarette out, and arrested her when she did not. Had she not killed herself in jail we might have an answer as to whether that is an unlawful order, even though it was nothing to do with the reason for the stop.

Simply put a police officer's authority has limits, and many things they may tell you to do may not actually be lawful orders.

https://goldsteinmehta.com/blog/pa-superior-court-ordering-driver-to-roll-window-down-is-a-stop

Here, because the police did not have probable cause, their order to roll down the window was held to be unlawful. And since that led to them discovering the driver was drunk, all that evidence was attained unlawfully and thus thrown out. In order to get past that, police tried to claim it was merely a consensual encounter, where the citizen can terminate it at any point, and thus he consented to rolling the window down, but this was held not to be the case. Here had the driver refused to roll down the window, he would have been refusing an unlawful order, and thus not committing a crime. Of course he couldn't know that until afterwards.

Now that is an entirely different question as to whether it is smart to be as minimally cooperative as the law requires you to be. Almost certainly it is not given the power disparities involved. It's unlikely the cops would have been willing to walk away had the driver refused in the above case after all.

Cops aren't even in the 10 most dangerous jobs and most on duty deaths are car accidents.

Their odds of being killed by guns are lower than the average citizen. At 1 in 11,800

Regular citizen odds are 1 in 8,000

Cops need to chill out. The math says so.

You don't see commercial tree trimmers freaking out on people all the time and mag dumping when an acorn hits their own vehicle's roof. https://abcnews.go.com/US/deputy-fires-weapon-after-mistaking-acorn-for-gunshot/story?id=107229338

FLMAO

Comparing the homicide rates of police and "average citizen" is flawed. The “average citizen” is not the same thing as the “average law-abiding citizen”. The cohort used to calculate the risk of death due to homicide for the "average citizen" includes violent criminals who make up the vast majority of homicide victims. This group is excluded from joining the police force creating a sampling bias that distorts the comparison you’re making.

Additionally, you're conflating the risk level after implementing mitigation strategies with the inherent danger of the job. Police engage in work with high-severity hazards of varying likelihood. They employ risk mitigation strategies that reduce the potential severity (e.g., wearing ballistic vests) and the potential likelihood (e.g., situational awareness training).

The effectiveness of these risk mitigation strategies likely contributes to the lower fatality rates among police officers, masking the inherent dangers of the job. So claiming police officers have a low risk of being killed, so they don't need to employ such strict mitigation techniques, is flawed. It's akin to arguing that because few firefighters die on the job nowadays, entering burning buildings isn't actually dangerous and firefighters overly cautious.

The comparison to commercial tree trimmers is also flawed, as the nature and unpredictability of threats faced by police officers are fundamentally different. Unlike tree trimmers, who face primarily environmental hazards, police officers confront unpredictable, potentially hostile human actors. This introduces a level of situational volatility and stress that is not comparable to most other professions, including high-risk manual labor jobs.

I hear what you're saying and some of those are valid points. I would add that when comparing to other dangerous jobs, they all take mitigation and safety equipment into account as well. They don't just count tree trimmers killed without a helmet. Criminals, just like cops, are also citizens, their lives do count towards statistical death rates and can be included in national averages. A counter point is that not all cops work in places like south side chicago, yet most act like they do. I certainly understand that it can be a stressful job when no one is ever really happy to see you and you're dealing with a lot of the worst people on their worst day, I've had good and bad encounters with cops, 99% of the time while driving; I'm always polite, there really was no excuse for the bad encounters and it certainly soured me on the whole profession from a young age.

To quote the late great Warren Zevon. -"The Sheriff's got his problems too, he will surely take them out on you"

Their odds of being killed by guns are lower than the average citizen. At 1 in 11,800

This is extremely disingenuous example of lying with statistics. Sure that’s true of cops OVERALL. Cops don’t work the same environments, the same cities and the same suburbs. The places where all these altercations happen are usually highly violent and high crime locales where officers do indeed have higher fatality rates. This stat also ignores injuries - oh sure you merely got shot through the spine and paralyzed but you didn’t die, so chill out!

I compared apples to apples. I didn't count all the citizens that only got paralyzed or injured as well. Some citizens live in higher crime areas where they are more likely to be killed by violence. I fail to see your point here.

Cops have lower odds of getting shot than the average citizen but how do those odds stack up to the communities they come from? Young men in the places that drive that average up don’t have the clean records to be cops.

People come from different places with different odds. That doesn't change that fact that being a cop is safer than being an average person overall.

My odds of getting a needle stick injury are objectively pretty low. My odds of getting HIV (or something else) from a stick are even lower than that.

You'd better believe I shit myself just a bit whenever I handle a needle in the process of making sure those odd don't become real.

Yep, us civilians better be a lot more on edge than cops based on those stats. Considering on average a non-cop has a 50% higher chance of being murdered.

The point is that I have to deal with a low likelihood event on a day to day basis, which I have the training to avoid, but it lives rent free in my head altering my decisions, and it doesn't happen in part because it's more likely for me than the general public and because I use that worry and training to avoid it.

Looking at your stats you have a 1 in 50 chance in a given year, so I can see your worry. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493147/

The risk isn't the stick which is relatively rare but not unheard of, it's going on to end up with an infection. From your article:

"However, after a needlestick injury developing HIV is not common at all. In fact, from 1981 to 2010, there have only been 143 possible cases of HIV that were reported among healthcare professionals. Of these only 57 of the exposed workers seroconverted to HIV. Percutaneous needlestick injury was the known cause in 84% of these cases. Other infections acquired from exposure were 9% by the mucocutaneous route and 4% by both routes."

Those numbers are a bit more in line, and involve a similar anxious thought process of "okay how carefully do I follow the occupational health guidelines after this stick."

I've posted about this before. Watch police bodycam videos. The speed at which ho-hum traffic stops turns into "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" is frightening. One of the things cops are doing is assessing how compliant you're being. If you're being compliant, they can make some assumptions about the next 15 - 30 seconds. If you're not, they're operating on the assumption of "this could go bad right now."

My father was in the Coast Guard. During training, he almost failed out because of a fatal mistake in one "shoot/no shoot exercise scenario". It was a routine check of yacht, where instead of complying with his request, an old grandmother went about her business getting food out of a picnic basket. Now, my father's not the sort to shoot an unarmed old lady just for not complying immediately - after all, perhaps she's just getting a sandwich or a drink to offer the nice young man? - so when she pulled a gun out of the picnic basket and shot him... well, exercise failed.

So your father almost failed out of the Coast Guard for not pretending to not believe in stereotypes.

Well, nobody is forced to be a police officer and interact with "highly emotionally activated individuals" on a daily basis. I'm still in favour of giving police at most the right to violent self-defence that the normal person gets (except perhaps no duty to retreat), and perhaps even less on account of having special privileges and hence responsibility. If any existing police are unhappy with these terms, they should be fired and replaced with new hires who are; in the event that there is then actually some difficulty filling police positions (which would surprise me) we could discuss next steps.

In the event that there is then actually some difficulty filling police positions (which would surprise me) we could discuss next steps.

Surprise!

Follow the logical outcomes. If we tell police officers "If you don't like it, you can quit" some amount of them will. People (despite what they post on social media) want police. That means we have to re-fill those police positions that have quit. Who takes the job? We've already self-selected out the median reasonable person, right?

You see where I'm going. This becomes a doom loop down. Throw in the fact that being a cop doesn't exactly pay great and you're getting people who aren't really meant for the job taking the job. The primary issue I see it cops today is pretty plain - many are obese.

If you create a working environment that is extreme, you get extreme (in one direction on the other) candidates filling those roles. In some cases, this is preferred - you want high performers or the deeply committed. In policing, I would argue you want something like "the modal reasonable person" as a cop.

Sounds like a great idea, with a few caveats:

  • This is limited to a small jurisdiction
  • Specifically, the one where you live
  • You don't get to move out

A part of me can't believe we're redoing the whole police brutality debate, before the dust really settled after the last one.

I've been in Europe for the past three years or so, where US-style police brutality is not really an issue, but otherwise I'd almost accept these terms except "you don't get to move out of a small jurisdiction" would be a huge imposition completely orthogonally to any sociopolitical experiments performed there. Do I get to have the rule follow me to whatever small jurisdiction I move to instead?

Also, do you actually expect some negative consequences for people other than members of the police from such a policy (which ones?), or is your presumable opposition just based on its consequences for police themselves? To be clear, I'm not actually in favour of anything that looks like police abolition - on the contrary, I am pretty sympathetic towards sending them to round up petty thieves and ethnic gangs, disparate impact be damned. I just think that policing is in the class of necessary occupations engaging in which invariably induces moral corruption and decay, and whose practitioners therefore should be shunned and restricted in their rights vis-a-vis regular people, rather like medieval executioners or burakumin (but without heredity or compulsion because we are past such medieval injustices). I don't think the European middle ages suffered from a shortage of executioners, at any rate.

Also, do you actually expect some negative consequences for people other than members of the police from such a policy (which ones?), or is your presumable opposition just based on its consequences for police themselves?

Sorry, I missed this originally. I expect both, or rather one leading to the other. Once it becomes established that cops can get into trouble for overstepping their "no better than a civilian" line, they'll just avoid hazards and do the bare minimum required to do their job. Once that becomes apparent, the criminals will start becoming more bold, and if you defend yourself against them the cops will go after you, because you're the easier target.

just think that policing is in the class of necessary occupations engaging in which invariably induces moral corruption and decay

I don't disagree, but I think they need rights beyond those of a civilian to be able to do their job.

and whose practitioners therefore should be shunned and restricted in their rights vis-a-vis regular people, rather like medieval executioners or burakumi

Like I said: cool idea, as long as you try it out away from me, and are forced to live with it's consequences.

I don't think the European middle ages suffered from a shortage of executioners, at any rate.

Because it put food on the table, and starvation was always an option for some people back then. There is a reason why western countries increasingly have recruitment problems for the less pleasant jobs. The only people being willing to be police officers under your scheme would be immigrants I'd wager. I don't know a single person who I could imagine willingly signing up to this.

And yet people still willingly sign up for the military, which is far more dangerous than policing ever could become. Do you know any people who did? I reckon that there are actually many for whom the idea of being authorised to engage in violence has enough of a draw that they would be willing to take considerable risks and encumbrances for it, but they might be underrepresented in the sort of circles rat-adjacent debate addicts like us are overrepresented in.

Actually the military is the poster boy for this problem in most prosperous western countries to my knowledge. Btw yes, I know some people who signed up, though most of them a generation above mine. They constantly have to lower requirements because the only people nowadays willing to sign up would have been considered unfit for service in the past.

I've been in Europe for the past three years or so, where US-style police brutality is not really an issue

I've been in Europe my entire life, and it not being an issue has nothing to do with limiting the police to civilian self-defense rights.

Do I get to have the rule follow me to whatever small jurisdiction I move to instead?

Absolutely not, the rule is meant to limit the damage your ideas would do, and this would let you spread it throughout the world.

Yeah. The real and constant threat of firearms in US Policing means the dynamic is fundamentally different to most other nations.

you don't need to shove a guy onto the ground because he's moderately uncooperative/bitchy.

Why not? Why is it the responsibility of the officers to be calm and gentle, and not the responsibility of the man who has just committed a serious criminal infraction (speeding is obviously a major cause of auto accidents in this country) and then refused to comply?

As someone who watches probably about a dozen police bodycam videos per day, it’s extremely easy to notice patterns in the kinds of things that immediately cause traffic stops (and police interactions more broadly) to go south. The percentage of videos where police are unnecessarily rough and aggressive with individuals who are respectful and compliant is close to zero; it’s abnormal and concerning when someone is this immediately resistant to police’s simple commands, and it causes the officers to be wary about what such a person is capable of.

I don’t feel remotely sorry for some rich entitled man-baby who thinks the law doesn’t apply to him and that police are beneath him because he can run fast. I don’t even care about Hill’s laundry list of prior criminal acts, since there’s no evidence they played any part in the way this traffic stop went down; his own actions and attitude in that moment were quite sufficient on their own.

Why is it the responsibility of the officers to be calm and gentle

Because if they can't, they have the option of pursuing a different career.

Who said anything about “they can’t”? What I asked is why should they? You’re assuming that the default state is police being calm and gentle, and that a deviation from this represents a failure by police. But why shouldn’t the default expectation be that uncooperative assholes get treated roughly by police?

When Officer Alice interacts with ordinary citizen Bob, Alice could have opted out of the situation by pursuing a different career. Unless there is a similar way for Bob to opt out of the interaction, imposing on Alice a requirement, which not everyone is capable of fulfilling, is fairer than imposing the same requirement on Bob, as the former case allows those who cannot fulfil said requirement to exist in some other societal role, while the latter does not allow them to exist at all.

Admittedly this argument is dependent on the proposition that There Is No Such Thing As A Human Being Who Is Unworthy Of Life; however, societies which reject this axiom tend to feature piles of skulls.

Unless there is a similar way for Bob to opt out of the interaction

???????

The way is for Bob not to commit an infraction which necessitates the involvement of the police in the first place. Bob is not part of a randomized undifferentiated mass; he is part of a much smaller subset of the population - people who have been pulled over under suspicion of a crime. Obviously I am not saying that nobody ever gets pulled over despite not actually being guilty of the suspected offense. However, generally speaking the person getting pulled over has done something wrong to merit the interaction in the first place.

"Generally speaking" isn't good enough. In this example, Bob didn't do anything wrong.

Denying that individual human beings matter, rather than the 'general' state of the community, is another path lined with skulls.

At no point in your post did you specify that Bob had not done anything wrong. Why is Officer Alice interacting with him in the first place? If it’s not to detain him for questioning and/or citation related to a criminal matter, then there won’t be any lawful commands for her to give him, and thus nothing for him to disobey/fail to comply with. Your hypothetical inherently implies that Bob has at the very least been suspected of doing something wrong.

More comments

it’s abnormal and concerning when someone is this immediately resistant to police’s simple commands, and it causes the officers to be wary about what such a person is capable of

Replace this Tyreek with the most shrill and annoying Karen you can imagine. She's also immediately resistant to police's simple commands, but would she get the same treatment as a 192lb very muscular (very) black dude? I doubt that.

That's already covered by the "shrill Karens are less capable than 192lb men" clause, no matter what absurd statements came out of the bird-watcher or Citibike situations.

Something like this?

From my libertarian days I remember some amount of police brutality stories involving white women, so I wouldn't bet on it if I was you.

But even if you're right, I'm not sure this is wrong.

As someone who watches probably about a dozen police bodycam videos per day,

Are you the PD or one of our shadow state attorneys?

Just a man with access to YouTube.

But why

It's all so tiresome. Why do these guys keep getting the benefit of the doubt?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyreek_Hill#Legal_issues

There's little doubt in my mind that he's going to end up bankrupt and that his laundry list of crimes will only grow longer. He reminds me a lot of Antonio Brown who was also a lowlife who was (briefly) the best receiver in football:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Brown#Legal_issues

Just three years after retirement, he is already bankrupt.

Brown, who made more than $80 million in a 12-year NFL career, according to Spotrac, listed his estimated assets as $50,000 or less

The less said about this police incident the better. I am nearly 100% sure that Hill bears all the blame.

I'd just like to point out that there is (at least in my state) a legal limit for window tint that is essentially never enforced, just like the legal limit on exhaust volume (violations of these two are correlated). It's remarkable that literally nobody cares about this anymore.

These are 2 huge pet peeves of mine as well. Garbage people gonna garbage, unfortunately, motorcycle guys are the worst for blowing out your ear drums as you're walking down town, don't leave them out. I don't get it "I LIKE IT LOUD AND DARK!!!" Insanity.

I absolutely hate dark tints. The inability to make eye contact with drivers is frustrating and makes them less predictable. That the people with tints tend to be erratic young men that think they're hot shit probably doesn't help either.

Just by the by: when I bought the car I have now, it had pretty dark tinted windows. I drove it like that for a while, and then took it to a tint shop to get the tint removed. The tint guy thought I was nuts, but seriously - I could not see what I was doing. Driving at night was impossible.

Since that experience, I keep a large distance from cars I see on the road with heavy window tint. My sense is that only can they not really see, but they are not drivers who are choosing to optimize for safety by any means either. Anyway I think it's a good law, and I wish it were enforced.

A somewhat similar event happened a few months ago with noted rich white man Scottie Scheffler. Public opinion was strongly on Scheffler's side, even though he violated the traffic pattern implemented by law enforcement.

People intrinsicly feel that important people deserve certain privileges. Faceless nameless CEO from CapitalCorp doesn't get the benefit of the doubt, but popular celebrities attending their prescribed functions do. People also expect cops to be judicious in the excersize of their power.

This is apparently the best footage we have of what happened: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mnWeQfNMLmM&t=14s

Scheffler was not aware there had been a pedestrian death, and several PGA-marked vehicles like Scheffler’s were able to enter the course without a problem, O’Connell said. But a passenger bus attempting to enter was halted and told to turn around. Gillis was on the scene stopping vehicles so the bus would have room to pivot, and Scheffler’s car was among the first to reach the point where Gillis was stopping traffic, O’Connell said.

It's not entirely clear what happened but the cop claimed that he got 'dragged' by Scheffler's car which is clearly BS, Scheffler stopped and seemingly complied after that. Sending him off to have his mugshot taken was a ridiculous overreaction.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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