Our Boys In Blue

[beatbandito]

John Crawford III, the young black man shot by police last month (no, the one one where the cops that did it are getting off [the other one, with the fake weapon {not that one, the one in the walmart}]) was shot with-in the first second of contact with police, without raising his 'weapon', in an open carry state. Followed by the police 1) opening fire 2) confirming the kill and inspecting the 'weapon' 3) ordering everyone to leave the store. In that order.

All helpfully narrated by the 911 call in the recently released surveillance videos Warning: ends with a man being gunned down for no reason.

[beatbandito]

My boss had a racoon get caught in the netting of his daughter's soccer goal. They called the town who said they couldn't do anything about it while it was still alive, but the police would have to do something about it. He called the police and about a half-hour later they showed up and without giving any warning or even indication they were there, proceeded to shoot the racoon. Three times.

[Classic]

There's a tasteless joke to be made here involving a racial slur.
...
But I hope that's as close as we come to making it.

[Büge]

SWAT team throws flashbang grenade into a baby's crib during a raid, are not charged and won't pay for the hospital bill

[Thad]

I expect the civil suit will go differently.

[Mongrel]

A lengthy and sensible article decrying the current levels of police violence and corruption. From Frank Serpico.

[Mongrel]

First hoodies and now "Why are your hands in your pockets?"

America is going to have to move to Belize and get a lot more comfortable with nudity, otherwise it looks like you'll all be arrested every winter.

[Joxam]

I'm not defending that cop because obviously there is a point when you tell a caller to get fucked when they call the police but I think the actual problem here in america is that everyone is afraid of every fucking thing.

Tamir Rice, John Crawford, and to a lesser extent (he didn't get killed) this guy would be just fine and been able to go about their day if a concerned citizen hadn't called the cops on them. Add to this the dozen of cases in the last year or so about parents having their kids taken away or being charged because concerned neighbors or park patrons have called the cops on their parents for letting them do anything from play outside alone to play at the PARK alone and quite frankly, I'm starting to blame the public more and more.

As much as I think reporting actual CRIME is an important part of maintaining our society as a whole, I cannot say I'm comfortable with how 'call the cops' is being used by some people.

Anecdotally my neighbor has called the cops on us for things ranging from, William wrestling with his dog (the dog might kill him!!!!), to a too loud game of monopoly in our dining room (you guys might KILL each other), and even leaving the dogs outside unattended in our fenced in back yard to take poops (alone might KILL THEM).

[Grath]

I'm not defending that cop because obviously there is a point when you tell a caller to get fucked when they call the police but I think the actual problem here in america is that everyone is afraid of every fucking thing.

The two times I've been involved in the cops being called (minor fender bender, saw some hooligans in the park who ripped some parking sign out of the ground and were fucking around) were relatively justified. (The hooligans, one of 'em was actively on probation - how fucking stupid can you be?)

One of the people in the Tai Chi class I was taking in the park when the latter event happened apparently calls the police so often she has the non-emergency number memorized - she lives in one of the college-student-cheap-housing ghettos in town and calls the police every time the college students who are living just a bit off campus (usually for the purposes of getting drunk and rowdy) get drunk and rowdy.

[Mongrel]

I'm not defending that cop because obviously there is a point when you tell a caller to get fucked when they call the police but I think the actual problem here in america is that everyone is afraid of every fucking thing.

Tamir Rice, John Crawford, and to a lesser extent (he didn't get killed) this guy would be just fine and been able to go about their day if a concerned citizen hadn't called the cops on them. Add to this the dozen of cases in the last year or so about parents having their kids taken away or being charged because concerned neighbors or park patrons have called the cops on their parents for letting them do anything from play outside alone to play at the PARK alone and quite frankly, I'm starting to blame the public more and more.

As much as I think reporting actual CRIME is an important part of maintaining our society as a whole, I cannot say I'm comfortable with how 'call the cops' is being used by some people.

Anecdotally my neighbor has called the cops on us for things ranging from, William wrestling with his dog (the dog might kill him!!!!), to a too loud game of monopoly in our dining room (you guys might KILL each other), and even leaving the dogs outside unattended in our fenced in back yard to take poops (alone might KILL THEM).

Your first sentence hits on something that might be related - a fear of liability. People don't want to tell someone to get fucked and take it easy because the root fear is what if this is that one time in a thousand when something bad happens?!??!

It is fear, I agree. Whatever anyone thinks of Mike Moore, that was always the one point he made that I agree with completely, that there's such a strong current of fear running through American culture. On the other hand, when we talk about police incidents like this I guess in a very roundabout, perverted way this behaviour is a good sign, because it also sort of shows how people's perceptions have shifted: The world is so safe at the moment that even little incidental things seem dangerous.

There's also a gambler's fallacy that comes to mind. I know a math nerd sort of guy who spent several years making good money playing poker before the big online gambling shutdown a couple years back and one of the things he would always say was that one of the hardest thing to do is keep following your plan when do the right thing by the odds but lose money anyway, because odds are just that: Odds. But you have to keep doing the right thing and follow the plan. You can't fall into a trap where you get burned and then change your plan or your behaviour just because an extremely unlikely event screwed you over. Or if you win big on a hand the odds had you pegged to lose. It's even harder if it happens again. It's amazingly hard - even for a guy like that who really knows all the odds by heart and has them internalized - to stand back and recall the larger picture.

People just assign outsize importance to wacky one-off events. This is a natural thing humans do. Sometimes it's not so bad - the preventative measures you can take to prevent a re-occurrence come at a minimum of cost and aren't much trouble. But then sometimes you get, say, the post 9/11 security regime.

[Büge]

Your first sentence hits on something that might be related - a fear of liability. People don't want to tell someone to get fucked and take it easy because the root fear is what if this is that one time in a thousand when something bad happens?!??!

Culture has been conditioned through countless stories of the one-in-a-million shot, either of extremely good luck or extremely bad.

[Mongrel]

And we've been also making fun of that for about as long, too

I always remember the story of Han Fei (a pretty harsh guy) mocking the Confucians, comparing them to a farmer who once happened to see a rabbit collide with a tree stump, breaking it's neck, and who forever stands by the stump, hoping for another rabbit.

[ocksi]

The Black Swan is a really great (non-fiction) book studying the relative importance of one-off events that have huge impacts. Highly recommend.

[Mongrel]

Yep. Seems like that term is actually being adopted as the de facto descriptive phrase for the phenomenon these days, largely because of that book.

[Friday]

The illusion of control is important to human beings when dealing with random events.

When making my game, I asked my friends (out of curiosity) if I were to design a simple gambling mini-game within the game involving three chests, an entry fee, and a 1 in 3 chance to win money (think Zelda) if knowing how the internal mechanism works would bother them.

Consider the following scenarios:

1. You pay the entry fee and enter the room. At this moment, the contents of the chests are randomly determined. One has a big win inside, the other two lose. You move your character to open one chest.

2. You pay the entry fee and enter the room. You move your character to open one chest. At this moment, the contents of that chest are randomly determined, with a 1/3 chance to win big and a 2/3 chance to lose.

The probability here is equal, you'll win 1/3 of the time regardless of which method is used and which chest is picked. But interestingly, all my friends told me they would prefer method 1, "because it gives the player a measure of control." One went so far to tell me that if I did make this mini-game, and ended up using method 2 because it was easier to program, not to tell her because it would ruin the game for her because she'd know that it didn't matter what chest she picked.

This may seem unrelated to the discussion being had here, but I think it is. Control over random is a big thing, even if by definition it's an oxymoron.

[Friday]

WHY DID I GET CANCER

"because you picked the left chest"

oh

[François]

There is a very slight difference in that a sort of superhuman able to see through the chests (or, say, Link using the Lens of Truth) would win with method 1 every time, while still having the 1 in 3 chance with method 2. In some abstract way this makes winning skill-based instead of luck-based, even if the skill in question is in fact impossible to possess in the real world.

[Büge]

NYPD decides to sit out New Years Eve.

[Mongrel]

One can only dream of the police protesting like this in perpetuity.

[Classic]

I agree, except, I feel like "when they have to" actions include harassing PoC disproportionately to white people.

So much like the push for more bodycams and less reliance on police testimony, I feel like it's a tiny step.