Is this a difficult Cartoon to Understand?

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the joke makes sense to me but I do not want bias y'all.
what does it mean to you.
-Jake

It's an argument about statistics: the idea that the tapes of police behaving badly do not represent police behavior as a whole (ie, those who are caught are just 'bad apples') vs. the idea that the bad behavior that is caught on tape is also representative of other bad behavior by other police which occurred without any recording devices active.

It seems to have about five different immediate interpretations.

With my disabilities, I like John Callahan's cartoons, but his website is often partially censored. His orbit use
to have the redirect:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/arts/ ... 010&st=cse

In public places I count & track my locations by recordings/GPS to catch gaps & events. 360-Full video is still too expensive. The ADA versus State Law is still up-in-the-air otherwise.

Tadzio

I kind of made the connection with the bad apples, but because I didn't really find any humor in it, I just assumed it was over my head. It's hard for me to be able to tell whether a joke is over my head if I can't find the humor in it.

not at all. i got it straight away. i think the problem may be a combination of people taking the cartoon literally, and having a generally different outlook on law enforcement from yourself, i.e. either don't consider or don't believe the notion of the "rotten barrel".

maybe I should not make statistic jokes.
stats come to me easy but apparently.
But apparently I was born on the wrong planet.

I get the joke but the way the response is phrased broke my parser. should that be 'are' instead of 'do'?

Well this was pretty obvious. It's saying that police brutality and the reporting of it isn't an isolated incident but a systematic problem. What does it mean to me? It depends big time. Some police departments are rotten to the core, for others it's a matter of isolated incidents. The NYPD and LAPD do have a pretty nasty track record but I don't think this speaks for all police departments or even for all divisions within the LAPD and NYPD.

I dunno

"arent you glad they are [ caught]?."

Or

" arent you glad they do [ get caught]?"

Either way is ok.

But, yes...its funny how those rare bad cops land in front of cameras while the breeding population of hundreds of big foot creatures that swarm the pacific North West manage to avoid the camera lense.

bugs the hell out of me too.
I will have to find the cartoonist and pop him one.

Not really. The thing is, I don't really agree. Most of the cops out there are just working-stiffs. They aren't necessarily nice people off-the-job, but the worst thing they generally do on the clock is just avoid work if they can help it. I agree with the sentiment that abuse is more widespread than the videos show. However, this doesn't mean we should start cross-examining the average beat cop. In places where it really is a problem, though, something should be done.

The cartoonists' point about unlikely statistics is based on the premise that cops aren't routinely on video. I dispute that premise. Cops, like everybody else, are routinely on video, regardless of what they're doing. But that footage is meaningless and doesn't go viral on youtube or wind up on the news. I'm probably in half a dozen video records just by going through a day's errands. Security cameras are ubiquitous. So are people with phone cameras in their pockets.

so most instances of police behavior are video taped?

More & more instances of police behaviors are being video taped, but, as with business security cameras, the camera's ownership/possession modifies the probability rates of survival/availability of the recorded evidence.

In many instances, the destruction of the video evidence has also been recorded, and those persons making these recordings have experienced unpleasant police responses. In one recording, the Chihuahua was in trouble for being in the picture unleashed, with the officer against the hood of a vehicle resolving a crime-less traffic stop informally.

Businesses were previously at number one for "selectness" of survivability of video evidence, as for instances, customer fakes injuries:::video most likely survives, customer injured from business's neglience:::video most likely "lost". A few pending cases allege that victims have been removed from video range for further assault, with only the "removal" video surviving at times. Another case had people in violation of the law for making video recordings in their own residences as police unexpectedly enter with great force. Officials also challenge that they don't watch their own videos without timely cause and/or notice before destruction (or with survival, any responsibility of actions recorded).

Many people are arrested for making/taking videos/pictures in public places.

Tadzio

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyHMbHHtArE[/youtube]