# Police overreach could be uniting us, but it's not. Why not? It's as easy as black and white **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 11, 2015, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253 "2015-06-11T13:55:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/21 "2015-06-11T16:30:12Z")
> [@The\_Understander](#): > > Done.The italicised modifier all is irrelevant No, it’s not. > [@](#): > > , added after the fact as a rather humiliating fig leaf to cover the thrust of your thesis. Added by you. And I’m not playing this silly game any longer. The OP said this was all about race, and offered his “white” example as the Waco biker incident. It’s up to him to prove what percent of white people sides with the bikers. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/22 "2015-06-11T16:34:02Z")
> [@Lightnin](#): > > I think a very large part of the problem is the political divisiveness we’re seeing in the US right now. I suspect that many on the Right are seeing the pool party and Trayvon Martin as a “liberal cause”, and are putting themselves on the opposite side- because liberals are always wrong, donchaknow. And they’ve got the entirety of Fox news telling them that they’re right when they choose that side. Ugh. FoxNews gets about 1-2% of Americans watching it each day. You need to come up with some better proof for your assertion than that. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/23 "2015-06-11T16:35:29Z")
> [@orcenio](#): > > Don’t forget the wilful blindness of racists (and more sadly, the indifference of non-racists). Totally. The charge of racsim knows no bounds! ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/24 "2015-06-11T16:39:41Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > No, it’s not. You were asking him to prove that some white people are united? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/25 "2015-06-11T16:45:19Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Wait. Why is the “thrust of his thesis” supposed to be “all” but the “thrust” of the OP’s thesis isn’t? > > The OP says: > > Is the “thrust of that thesis” _all_? > > **John Mace** said: > > The “thrust of his thesis” is _all_? > > That’s some flexible thesising. This interpretation misses the mark by so far that it could only be disingenous, in service to a point of view held prior to any statement made. To be blunt, your risible attempt to emphasize the word all absolutely emphasizes what little ground you have when trying to equivocate for **John’s** blunder. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/26 "2015-06-11T16:46:27Z")
> [@PatriotX](#): > > It seems likely that folk react differently to situations involving their own ox. > > The questions remain around how we decide which ox is ours I s’pose. Indubitably. ---
**Author:** ![Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/27 "2015-06-11T16:46:44Z")
What do you sound like when you aren’t being blunt? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/28 "2015-06-11T16:48:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > No, it’s not. > > Added by you. And I’m not playing this silly game any longer. The OP said this was all about race, and offered his “white” example as the Waco biker incident. It’s up to him to prove what percent of white people sides with the bikers. Pentagons don’t have four sides. Quick, what percentage of pentagons did I mean? ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/29 "2015-06-11T16:50:49Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Ugh. FoxNews gets about 1-2% of Americans watching it each day. You need to come up with some better proof for your assertion than that. John, can you cite the 1-2% number? Seriously, I am not goading you. I’d really like confirmation. It is a pleasant surprise, and much lower than I would have thought, if true. Seems like everyone over 60 is glued to that damned station. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/30 "2015-06-11T16:51:29Z")
> [@The\_Understander](#): > > Pentagons don’t have four sides. > > Quick, what percentage of pentagons did I mean? If you told me this makes sense to you, I would believe you. If anyone else told me that it made sense to them, I wouldn’t believe them. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/31 "2015-06-11T16:52:42Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > If you told me this makes sense to you, I would believe you. If anyone else told me that it made sense to them, I wouldn’t believe them. Unsurprising. Thanks for sharing. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/32 "2015-06-11T16:54:33Z")
> [@The\_Understander](#): > > Pentagons don’t have four sides. Which months have 28 days? All of them. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/33 "2015-06-11T16:55:25Z")
> [@](#): > > As I wrote when a Tea Party/Libertarian-type friend of mine on Facebook linked to a similarly-themed story about the Waco shooting, “I wish you would be so upset when cops killed unarmed black teenagers.” The situations were different and resonate with people for different reasons. I think you are jumping to the conclusion that all of this is black/white instead of actually looking at the REASONS libertarian/Tea Party types consider Waco to resonate. > [@](#): > > That’s when it hit me: It’s as simple as race and stereotypes, isn’t it? No, it’s not, at least not with the examples you chose to use. Waco and the biker gang shoot out don’t resonate with some right wingers because the folks were ‘white’ (you seriously think that biker gangs from LA are all white??) but because of the gun control and overbearing gubbermint type issues. > [@](#): > > In a related issue that is less black and white (pun intended), the militarization of local police forces has many detractors but mostly and most vocally from the left. Why isn’t it that the right - who often point to the second amendment as something that allows them to fight against tyranny from the state - as vocal? Heck, when Obama decided to limit the sale of some military weapons to local police, some conservatives decided that was a horrible idea. Again, it’s complex. Also, a lot of libertarian types DO feel alarmed and are opposed to the police being given the opportunity to buy surplus military gear. I don’t know what the wingnuts on your off the wall web site think, but I know plenty of libertarians who are extremely alarmed about the cops getting military gear and who oppose that (hell, I know libertarians who think the cops should be disarmed and our military should be cut back to a few hundred soldiers and maybe a plane or two plus the coast guard :p). You are mixing and matching different and often complex stances from different groups then attempting to boil them down into broad assertions that just aren’t valid. Are SOME conservative types ok with the police being armed with military gear? To be sure there are. But usually those types aren’t the ones riled by Waco or the biker shootout either. And generally those who ARE riled about those events are VERY concerned about the police being militarized, regardless of the color of who the police are shooting. > [@](#): > > Obama did something and some on the right instinctively have a problem with it? I wonder why… Because that’s the way our political system has devolved. When Bush was at the helm do you seriously think that the left didn’t instinctively and reflexively oppose whatever he was proposing? You can, of course, find examples where they didn’t, and I can find examples where Republicans support some of what Obama has done or is doing. The point is that this trend has gotten worse and worse on both sides and I don’t see that changing any time soon. If a Republican is elected in the next presidential election I’ll be militantly unsurprised if Democrats support much if any presidential policies, and the same goes if a Democrat is elected from the Republican side. > [@](#): > > Seriously, if it’s not biases brought about through stereotypes on race, then what else explains these discrepancies with how Americans look at the actions of the police? The ability to identify with the victim (leaving aside your horrible examples and actually answering the question you should have just asked). I think in a lot of cases what you have is the perception of criminals, thugs, gangsters, whatever defying authority and getting what they brought on themselves on one side and kids, victims, innocents just minding their own business and being harassed or attacked by the ‘white’ police establishment who is racially targeting them. Personally, I think that this IS a black verse white issue (we’ll leave aside all the other ‘races’ who just don’t seem to matter), but it’s also a class issue in a lot of cases as well. As another poster pointed out, we don’t get too riled when we see the police beating the crap out of some white trailer trash type in a wife beater tee shirt and missing teeth, nor does anyone seem to be all that concerned when, say, the Albuquerque or LA police shoot yet another Hispanic with or without good cause. It just doesn’t get on folks radar. I think that what people consider to be ‘police overreach’ is going to vary, and whether you think it is or isn’t happening in any given case has to do with how much you identify with the victim (or with the police) and what your general world view is wrt how you feel about the police in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Understander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3da27b/32.png) [@The\_Understander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Understander)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/34 "2015-06-11T17:09:08Z")
> [@PatriotX](#): > > Which months have 28 days? > All of them. Which is why, if someone were to say that months have 28 days, and I were to quote them as saying that all (excuse me, _all_) months have 28 days, I would not be mischaracterizing their position. Right? ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/35 "2015-06-11T17:15:00Z")
The OP conflates libertarians with conservatives. Libertarians have always conflated the police with government power and have always been skeptical of police powers. Conservatives believe that one of the few legitimate uses of government power is the police. Conservatives and libertarians are allied but they are not identical. The reason that different instances of police “overreach” are treated differently because they are different. A thief who attacked a cop getting shot and killed is entirely different from a bunch of bikers shooting at each other in a parking lot. I read alot of conservative media and for the most part they were on the side of the hispanic in the Trayvon Martin incident, the white guy in the Mike Brown incident, and the black guy in the Eric Garner incident. It seems like it is the other side who is trying to conflate a bunch of separate incidents into a nationwide theme. Finally it is not true that libertarians and conservatives don’t take up for black victims of police overreach. It was Radley Balko at the libertarian magazine Reason who first made a national story of the Cory Maye imprisonment, libertarian blogger Orrin Kerr represented him on appeal, and influential blogger Instapundit was instrumental in publicizing the case throughout the internet. Writers at the conservative National Review wrote several articles about Shaneen Allen, who was arrested in New Jersey on a gun charge after bringing her legal gun from Pennsylvania into New Jersey. The conservative NRA then succesfully lobbied Chris Christie to pardon her when the prosecutors would not back down. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/36 "2015-06-11T17:19:47Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Ugh. FoxNews gets about 1-2% of Americans watching it each day. You need to come up with some better proof for your assertion than that. To add to your point. I suspect even saying it’s “1-2%” is probably an overestimate. I think Bill O’Reilly only gets a few hundred thousand viewers a night. There’s a tendency here and elsewhere for us to really exaggerate how much influence many media outlets actually have. For example, how many people reading this had even heard of the website mentioned in the OP’s first post. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/37 "2015-06-11T18:40:57Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > To add to your point. I suspect even saying it’s “1-2%” is probably an overestimate. > > I think Bill O’Reilly only gets a few hundred thousand viewers a night… Yes, it’s only the highest rated of their programs that break the 1% barrier. If you want to point you finger at “right wing” news sources, I’m guessing that talk radio is a much bigger player. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/38 "2015-06-11T18:51:29Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I’m guessing that talk radio is a much bigger player. This. And I think I might argue that both FOXNews and talk radio influence the political discourse in excess of their actual viewing/listening numbers. But I’m not sure that’s quantifiable. Then too, while the overall numbers are small as a percentage of the population, they are much higher as a percentage of, say, older white conservatives. . ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/39 "2015-06-11T18:56:04Z")
[FOX is the number one news source for 8% of Americans.](http://www.gallup.com/poll/163412/americans-main-source-news.aspx) Talk radio, another 1%. So roughly 9% of Americans get their news with a right wing twist- that’s significant. I believe that has led to the current polarization as now we have one side of the spectrum with its own version of reality. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253/40 "2015-06-11T19:07:44Z")
> [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](#): > > If you look at the website [The Conservative Treehouse](http://theconservativetreehouse.com/), they have a lot of posts concerning the [Waco Biker gang shooting](http://theconservativetreehouse.com/category/waco-twin-peaks/page/2/) - mostly all of them (and the comments) seek to place blame at an overzealous police force using unnecessary and even unconstitutional violence in the incident. > > The same website has dozens of posts concerning the recent Texas Pool Party, the shooting of Freddie Gray and those posts take on a different tenor. In those posts, victims are denigrated and the police are vilified - even in cases where actions of the police have already been deemed incorrect by the police department that employed them or the district attorney who has pressed charges. > > As I wrote when a Tea Party/Libertarian-type friend of mine on Facebook linked to a similarly-themed story about the Waco shooting, “I wish you would be so upset when cops killed unarmed black teenagers.” > > That’s when it hit me: It’s as simple as race and stereotypes, isn’t it? It’s hard to definitively compare different stories. But FWIW, my own perspective is the opposite - that people make a much bigger deal if a black person is the victim of police brutality than if a white person is. As it happens, I personally know guy who was treated much the same way as the black girl at the pool party. He was an elderly guy in his 60s and he pulled over his car to help out his niece who a cop had pulled over to give a traffic ticket. He tried to talk to the cop and the cop told him to buzz off, and he kept arguing about it and apparently touched the cop’s shirt in the course of trying to get his badge number. The cop told him he was under arrest for assault and he said OK he would go to the police station in the cop car but didn’t want to be handcuffed, at which point the cop knocked him down and jumped on his back exactly like he did to the girl. All in front of many witnesses. Did you ever hear of this story? Did the cop have to resign from the force? (Actually he claimed he injured his back in the course of beating the guy up, and went on disability for a while.) And what’s more is that a lot of people supported the cop. Very few people looked it with a microscope to see if that amount of force was justified, and many people said hey he should have buzzed off like he was told and after he didn’t he had the rest coming. (He was in fact prosecuted for assault but pleaded it down to - IIRC - disorderly conduct.) As I see it, there’s a pre-existing narrative of police brutality against black people, and a lot of aggrieved people predisposed to see things that way, and a lot of activists eager to promote it, so when something like that happens to a black person it’s the end of the world. But when it happens to a white person there’s no similar narrative and no constituency, so it doesn’t get nearly as publicized, and what people do hear of it think well that kind of stuff happens and maybe it was really the guy’s fault anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/police-overreach-could-be-uniting-us-but-its-not-why-not-its-as-easy-as-black-and-white/722253.md?page=3)