Why police could seize a college student's life savings without charging him

Which is an awful thing to say about the police, but is probably reasonable advice to give.

That's not to say I support the actions taken here, of course.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming

It sounds like you are in Norway, it might just be impossible for you to think of these solutions because of the lack of context. Not putting you down, it would be just as impossible for me to have a valid opinion about anything going on in Norway because I am completely ignorant of your laws and environment.

I am not disputing these problems are in a range from less-than-ideal to horrible. However, the term often used in product design "form follows function" might be applicable here.

For example, our police force's "form" is a result of the "function" they have to serve, which includes a country with 300 million guns, higher crime rate than a lot of countries and, currently, a situation where segments of the population are advocating killing cops. And, in fact, cops have been killed just sitting in their cars doing absolutely nothing more than existing.

Again, not proposing this is the police force I want. Yet one has to understand things in context before forming an opinion. I know lots of cops. I train at a local Aikido dojo that is run by a retired FBI agent. Probably 80% of the students are in law enforcement (police, CHP, correctional, anti-terrorist units, FBI and undisclosed). A number of them are friends. We go have lunch and dinner together and talk about these things. They are very concerned that every time they put on their uniform they become targets for maniacs. They'd love to be able to walk around without their guns when in uniform but, today, in the USA, that would be suicidal. And today, in the USA, for a cop to approach contact with a civilian not prepared for the potential of a gun being pointed at them would be just as dangerous.

That, BTW, is one of the problems we have today in this country. Nobody talks to anyone in an effort to understand what's going on yet everyone has an opinion. Sit down with a cop for a two or three hour heart-to-heart conversation and your view of their reality will be very different. Don't think of them as an image on TV. Think of them as your brother, sister, father or mother.

The sick and the poor? That's an entirely different problem. Again, go through the mental exercise of developing a solution --a realistic one-- before forming opinions. You can't just say "do it like Norway" or "do it like France", because we are not Norway or France. We have our own laws, problems, culture and dynamics. And so, the solutions have to be had in the context of an entire society.

In my opinion the USA is going through some of the phases Latin America has gone through in terms of what's happening with government and the poor. In order to understand what I mean you have to understand Latin American history going back to 1492 and probably a bit before that. I am not going to go into the details, there's an excellent set of videos that paint a strong evidence-based image of the problem. If you don't speak Spanish you can turn on subtitles and google translate (not a great translation but it might do). Here they are:

Short one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkYEXS16dZA

In depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WylR8EvhnE

There are a couple of lines in these videos that hit the "poor" problem in the US right on the head. Please remember the context here is Latin American history, not US. I am simply proposing there are important parallels (not a match, parallels):

"Populism: It's the shortcut through which politicians play with people's passions, dreams and ideals to promise them the impossible, taking advantage of the people making decisions outside the bounds of logic and reason as they focus in their misery. It plays with necessities of the population to impose a dictatorship."

"Populism has such love for the poor that it multiplies them."

The latter one is particularly powerful. When politicians play the people for their own benefit nothing good can come from that. I feel very strongly that the Latin American historical experience is a time machine for aspects of the US experience. They are probably fifty years ahead of us in populism and it's effects.

A populist uses the population for votes during elections yet needs them to stay poor and miserable after winning the election or they lose their "base". They do this by promising to fix their problems and, ultimately, not doing anything for them. The poor staying poor is good for the populist. They appease them with gifts that might feel good but do not, ultimately, solve the real problems. YouTube is full of videos going back to 2008 with people in absolutely rapture about the Obama era solving all their problems. Obama promised the parting of the oceans and beyond and, of course, just like any good populist, delivered almost nothing. The poor are still poor, the uneducated are still uneducated and we have worst problems than we had seven years ago.

And so I ask, before forming an opinion about anything --not just the US, anything in your life-- take the time to really understand it from the inside and develop solutions on paper. Opinions without solid context and deep solution analysis aren't very valuable.

BTW, we are all guilty of this. Most of use react to things rather than taking the more difficult road of investing time and mental effort to dig deep into something before shaping an opinion. People will, for example, down vote this post without investing the four hours, or more, that it would take to research and truly understand. Nobody is going to go to the local police station and engage a cop in a conversation to understand what being a cop feels like. And nobody is going to devote a couple of hours to watch those videos and another two or more hours to research what they learned and develop context. That's just the way things are. Again, we are --me included-- all guilty of this, which is part of the problem.