Talk:police brutality

police brutality
The first and second defs are SOP; the third def is bullshit that would die in RFV ("I was attacked by a police brutality"?). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:44, 5 April 2015 (UTC)


 * What strange wording! Definitely reduce it to one sense, at least. Equinox ◑ 00:45, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * A combination of the first two defs would be non-SOP if either the illegal or unjustified parts were part of the term's meaning, but I don't think that either are accurate. Any brutality can be called this, even if it's justified and in a country where it may be legal. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:48, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * At the very least, it should be heavily edited to get rid of the anger and loaded words that permeate the entry: "wanton extreme and inhumane duress, typical of a beast" isn't exactly npov. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:06, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Wiped the slate clean and wrote a new, consolidated definition. Keep. I don't consider this one SOP because the meaning is narrow. The term "police brutality" is restricted to acts of unjustified violence committed by police officers in the commission of their law enforcement duties. An off-duty police officer punching a man for harassing his wife in a bar wouldn't be considered an instance of "police brutality." -Cloudcuckoolander (talk) 08:50, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I would keep more or less as rewritten. If a police officer uses "brutal" violence to take down a dangerous criminal, this is not what is typically considered "police brutality"; the term is reserved for "brutality" that is in excess of what the situation requires, of a kind that law enforcement officers are supposed to be trained to avoid. bd2412 T 14:14, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * brutality has a long-standing definition of "The use of excessive physical force e.g. police brutality." I don't see the distinction you give; if an officer uses brutal ("Savagely violent, vicious, ruthless, or cruel") force, then it is police brutality; if the police officer uses large but necessary force to stop a dangerous criminal, it's not brutal.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:53, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete as SOP.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:53, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * X brutality = brutality practiced by X > delete. --Hekaheka (talk) 08:06, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * There's even a specialized sense at to cover this. Ergo, delete. Renard Migrant (talk) 15:51, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
 * This is still more precise than that sense of brutality. A schoolyard bully or a random guy starting a bar fight can use force than is "excessive" for the situation, although neither of them has the legal right to use any force. Police brutality is an abuse of the authority to use force. bd2412 T 13:23, 7 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I consider those the same thing. The force is excessive because they don't have the authority, legal or moral, to use it. Renard Migrant (talk) 14:13, 7 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep completely idiomatic. It's actually euphemistic for police assault, nothing to do with being ‘animalistic’ or ‘unintelligent’ (OED definitions of brutal). Ƿidsiþ 08:41, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
 * As I pointed out above, it is completely SOP with our definitions for brutality. Whether or not it is SOP with OED doesn't seem relevant, nor does whether or not it is SOP with brutal, which may or may not have much connection to brutality in actual usage.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:54, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, but consider the ‘In a Jiffy’ test at WT:IDIOM. ‘Brutality’ in that sense is something that comes from euphemistic phrases like “police brutality’, which the word has a very specific meaning. I actually also suspect that this term passes the PRIOR KNOWLEDGE test as it has a specific meaning in legal/criminal terms, see e.g. here. Ƿidsiþ 07:43, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Delete. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:06, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Keep. Idiomatic but lacks WT:CFI attestations. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 20:55, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. bd2412 T 19:07, 31 May 2015 (UTC)