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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33952 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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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.

a whole lot less understandable

The Left wants society to be punished for breaking their desired laws.
Criminals happen to be the perfect vehicle for this. Therefore we should expect the Left to treat criminals the same way [they will complain about how] the Right treats police, and is what we observe.

That's a big stretch to do both-sidesism.

It doesn't actually matter what those desired laws are (or how obviously destructive, corrupt, and selfish that desire is). The fact they are desired is the only factor.

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.

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