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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Do you also live in a nation where the primary victims of police malfeasance (by raw numbers) have been so thoroughly erased from the discussion by the "pro-reform" block that most of that block think they are actually the most privileged demographic when it comes to police/justice system encounters?

Does being "erased from the discussion" matter more than the actual injustice being committed in the first place? Also the discussion isn't erased, you are having the discussion right now and we both seemed to be able to find out about white people getting fucked over by the police just fine. Should we let the police slide because MSN talked about the wrong cases too much?

Should we let the police slide because MSN talked about the wrong cases too much?

The ways progressives talk about police reform to combat injustice make me believe that they think it is fine to "let police slide" when it is people like me who are impacted by it, that it is not actually injustice in that case. If you want me to support your solution to "actual injustice", you damn well better prove to me that the injustices committed against my demographic are also going to be solved by it. Progressives seem to go out of their way to avoid doing so and expect to gain my support solely through emotional blackmail. Fuck that.

It doesn't matter what the progressives talk about. The police aren't progressives, the voters by and large aren't either, and nobody is capable of criminalizing being white. Using twitter progs as an excuse to do nothing about real police overreach seems like looking for an excuse to me.

The police aren't progressives, the voters by and large aren't either

As a whole, true, but I think you need to look specifically at the areas that have the biggest crime problems. Someone who happily lives in the suburbs has almost no say over what policing looks like in the urban core.

I wouldn't care what progressives talk about if they also didn't come in and disrupt local government planning meetings, sabotaging years of bipartisan efforts that had been steadily making progress (eg, on topics like @what_a_maroon brought up) by being an intransigent minority insisting that any solution involve directly confronting racism and sexism.

I get that it's real satisfying to talk shit about your outgroup, but I really don't care about that. I want for policing to be just, and the American custom of anti-white racism just isn't a factor.

What country are you in?

I'm from the Netherlands.

Everyone just wants policing to be "just". The problem is that not everyone agrees on how to make policing more "just" or even what "just" policing is. The "pro-reform" block in the US currently claims that the primary reason that policing is unjust is racism and sexism, and thus focus on policies that they believe would reduce racism and sexism. They also claim that white men, the largest demographic victimized by police malfeasance, categorically cannot be victims of racism or sexism. They regularly erase them from narratives about justice reform (eg see my comment on the old site discussing declining white support for BLM) and strongly overestimate victimization of other groups. Do you really think that alienating the largest group of victims by implying their victimization is "just", unlike the "unjust" victimization of other demographics, and downplaying their victimization while exaggerating others' "just isn't a factor"?

The "pro-reform" block in the US currently claims that the primary reason that policing is unjust is racism and sexism, and thus focus on policies that they believe would reduce racism and sexism.

While there's certainly a lot of that, I think a lot of the policies that are proposed actually are orthogonal to the -ism angle. Yes, hiring more black or female cops is unlikely to do anything. But things like removing qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture, body camera policies with actual teeth, a separate body and prosecutor for investigating allegations, etc. would help all victims of police abuse.

Yeah. Cool. And if the pro-reform block didn't do these things - such as they don't here, because white people are (even more of) a majority of people around, they'd still get nowhere. It's a red herring. Take away BLM, take away the Bezos-sponsored Huffington post-tier editorials, take away the identity politics, and you still don't get reform. It just isn't the kind of cause normal people are going to identify with, because the chief victims of this injustice aren't average people so much as those down on their luck.

Well, no, the chief victims of police injustice are the perpetually badly behaved who are not serious criminals. Saying that they are ‘down on their luck’ implies they have ever had good luck.

We WERE getting some reform. Body cameras were the main thing driving it; either cops were behaving better with the cameras or the cameras exposed that there was a less of a problem than expected; either way, they were having an effect. BLM opposes body cameras.

I wouldn't really be happy about body cameras in their current incarnation, either. Police officers are free to turn them off, departments cheerily hoard footage they don't want out in the public, conveniently lose footage that gets clamored for, and only release theirs when they think it's helpful. There are good arguments in favor of body cameras, and I'd be glad to see their use expanded, but as-is they're more for reasons of CYA than because the police suddenly realises transparency is important.

If police turn their cameras off and then get accused of misconduct, I assume they are guilty unless there's some other strong evidence to the contrary. I expect most other people do as well. Ditto for footage that otherwise mysteriously goes missing. I'm not up for searching up examples at the moment, but I do believe I've seen cases where cops being prosecuted for misconduct had the fact that they'd turned off their body-cams used against them in court.

I think it is reasonable for departments to withhold bodycam footage from the public unless it is called upon to prove a specific incident, for the same general reason why I would not accept a desk job that required an active webcam piped to my boss every minute of the day. No one wants to live or work in a true panopticon. If someone accuses a cop of misconduct, they should get video to prove the question one way or another, but they should have to register the accusation first.

My understanding is that body cam footage can be requested by defense attorneys, who can peruse it for anything relevant to their client's defense. That does not strike me as CYA for the police. It seems entirely plausible to me that cameras mainly serve CYA for the police, because the police generally play by the rules and now they have cameras to prove it, rather than because they regularly break the rules and can sufficiently work around the cameras to not get caught.

No one wants to live or work in a true panopticon.

Sure, but if you're going to be a registered agent of the state able to kill and commit violence, then yes, the citizenry should be able to see absolutely everything you do while you're acting in their name. You don't get to have all the rights that come up with being a violent agent of the state, if you don't want the responsibilities as well.

I don't think operating in a literal panopticon is actually one of the responsibilities of a police officer. If you disagree, assuming you don't live anywhere near me, I encourage you to pursue such policies with your own police, and see how that works out for you.

And to be clear, I have no problem with police having their actions recorded, so they can be verified after the fact. That doesn't require their actions to be broadcast to everyone live.

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