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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33969 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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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.

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