OK, but let's contrast `greg_douchette thread` TGDs #1 and #2. #1 shows a woman wanding around holding a sign. A mounted policeman rides up behind her and just rides right over her. There's enough context to see that it's obviously completely unprovoked, and that either the officer did it on purpose, or there was criminal negligence in his training of how to handle a horse (and/or the training of the horse on how to avoid trampling people).
Now take for example `greg_douchette thread` TGD #2. That shows the instant that a man with a shirt that says "NYPD" on the back shoves a woman onto the ground. Obviously that was pretty violent.
EDIT: I more or less retract the analysis below; more information here:
Leaving my original post for posterity / discussion.
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But I've seen that same scene from a different video (sorry don't have he link to hand), and it raises a lot of questions for me. The person wearing the shirt doesn't have any other equipment on -- no helmet, no belt or walkie-talkie or anything. He's not standing side-to-side with a bunch of police facing off against protesters. There's a long stream of people mixed together, meandering in the same direction. Is this actually a protest? Is the guy in question on duty, or is he just trying to get home like everyone else?
And from the other video you can see that just before the incident, the woman was walking backwards in front of the guy. My best guess is that the guy was off-duty (or trying to get off-duty), just walking somewhere, and that the woman came up to him and was verbally harassing him. Eventually he got fed up and shoved her out of his way; but because he's huge and she's tiny, he shoved her about 5x harder than necessary, causing her injury.
These to me are very different things. In the first we have a man who is clearly on duty, doing something clearly dangerous, to someone who is clearly doing something peaceful and constitutionally protected. In the second, we have a man who may not be on duty, having someone harassing him to his face, and responding in a way that isn't obviously going to cause her injury.
But you wouldn't be able to tell any of that that from the video linked in this spreadsheet. So that makes me question -- of the 700 videos listed, how many are like #1 and how many are like #2? Maybe a lot of people don't care, but I do.
I watched close to 100 of them last night from Greg's thread, I saw very few "minor" ones like your #2, most involve people being shot / struck by batons, cars, gang tackled and beaten by multiple people ...
I'd put the ratio at something like 85/15.
Most of them are individual or small group acts that are completely unacceptable, fire them immediately sort of things (indiscriminately pepper spraying non-protestors walking down a public street, firing a tear gas canister into a person just standing around's chest, an insane amount of gang tackling, pummeling, and neck kneeling given the context of the protests)
Some are insidious but not necessarily criminal, just groups being tear gassed, military style shows of force, etc.
A small but real minority of vidsos are what I'd call products of anti police bias, ambiguous context, or (at least imo) felt out of context.
But also "verbally harassment" of police is largely Constitutionally protected, but yes, tons of videos of people being arrested, often violently, simply for using words.
As a whole, Greg's thread is terrifying. Our police training here is piss poor.
There was a video, I think from LA, where some protesters on one side of the road yelled at rit police on the other side of the road. Usually, not a big deal. And then a couple of officers decided to pull out a guy from the group, who happened to be black, pull him to the ground, beat him with batons. Pepper spaying a woman next to him. All while being filmed. In June 2020.
Despite being disgusting, unwarranted, racist and unacceptable, the sheer amount of stupidity, ignorance and arrogance this shows is just mindboggling. And makes that totally inentional.
Now take for example `greg_douchette thread` TGD #2. That shows the instant that a man with a shirt that says "NYPD" on the back shoves a woman onto the ground. Obviously that was pretty violent.
EDIT: I more or less retract the analysis below; more information here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/nyregion/nypd-officer-vin...
Leaving my original post for posterity / discussion.
---
But I've seen that same scene from a different video (sorry don't have he link to hand), and it raises a lot of questions for me. The person wearing the shirt doesn't have any other equipment on -- no helmet, no belt or walkie-talkie or anything. He's not standing side-to-side with a bunch of police facing off against protesters. There's a long stream of people mixed together, meandering in the same direction. Is this actually a protest? Is the guy in question on duty, or is he just trying to get home like everyone else?
And from the other video you can see that just before the incident, the woman was walking backwards in front of the guy. My best guess is that the guy was off-duty (or trying to get off-duty), just walking somewhere, and that the woman came up to him and was verbally harassing him. Eventually he got fed up and shoved her out of his way; but because he's huge and she's tiny, he shoved her about 5x harder than necessary, causing her injury.
These to me are very different things. In the first we have a man who is clearly on duty, doing something clearly dangerous, to someone who is clearly doing something peaceful and constitutionally protected. In the second, we have a man who may not be on duty, having someone harassing him to his face, and responding in a way that isn't obviously going to cause her injury.
But you wouldn't be able to tell any of that that from the video linked in this spreadsheet. So that makes me question -- of the 700 videos listed, how many are like #1 and how many are like #2? Maybe a lot of people don't care, but I do.