Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
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Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#2Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this.
You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing.
In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and locking them away.
The way US police tend to operate fits well within a justice system that is focused on draconic punishment instead of rehabilitation and reintegration though.
Some people need a guiding hand to find back into society. In the US you're liable to get kicked into the mud and danced upon instead.
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#3Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and lockin…
> In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and locking them away.
This sounds false to me outside of some Western European areas but I don’t have data to support it
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#4Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and lockin…
As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public.
In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#5Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and lockin…
As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public. In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.
Classic chicken or egg...
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#6Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and lockin…
> In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and locking them away. This sounds false to me outside of some Western European areas but I don’t have data to support it
The situation is similar to what the parent describes in the Czech Republic (which is considered eastern Europe).
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#7Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and lockin…
As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public. In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.
It's because you only hear about the bad things. Sure there are some crazy cops like everywhere else. But all in all I'm certain most cops are good people who just want to help citizens and remove the bad guys.
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public. In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.
Classic chicken or egg...
Violent crime was at extremely negligible levels in the fifties. In just 3-4 decades to the 90s it ended up increasing (per rate) by around 800%. That's a part of where the hyper-tough on crime laws came from, and it's also when you started seeing an increasing militarization of the police.
Violent crime then decreased by about 50% to 2014, though that still of course leaves us at a level multiple times higher than where we started. And it's now back on the rise. Here are the raw numbers [1]. They're quite interesting to consider.
Something I'm quite curious about on Hacker News, preempting the downvotes can people explain what they find offensive about data?
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#9> Cooperating with law enforcement is often morally and practically unthinkable for the city’s most vulnerable
The article has a really big blind spot, in that it fails to mention the Drug War even a single time.
If you want to understand why America's police act like an occupying army- the militarization of weapons and approaches, the festering hostility between the police and the policed, the heavy-handed suspicion and disregard for those under their protection- then you have to start with the Drug War.
Policing against victimless crimes is fundamentally a different endeavor than policing against normal violent or property crime. In a rape, assault, or robbery there's a clear victim to come forward. Crime gets reported, police investigate, criminal gets arrested, community improves from having a violent psychopath off the streets. It's a simple formula, everybody's happy.
But when you're trying to police the crimes of drugs or prostitution or illegal lemonade stands, there is no aggrieved party. Just two or more people engaged in a mutually voluntary transaction. Hence there's no way to stop this activity besides butting into people's lives, violating their privacy, kicking down doors, and harassing random people on the street. You're no longer hauling away lunatics that hurt people. You're arresting mothers, sons, and boyfriends who are just trying to make a living.
If you want the police to be respected and valued by the communities that they police, then focus on restricting their activities mainly to victim-centric crimes. The resolution of which provides tangible value to the policed. Adopt a Portuguese-Style approach to drug policy, where usage and low-level dealing of drugs is decriminalized and treated as a health rather than criminal issue.
Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve
#10Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and lockin…
I would agree that most US police are not qualified to deal with the issues of trust. Part of that is that they don't have the training, part of that is that there are centuries of bad history in the way of it, and part of it is that for police to do this in a better way would require a lot more police per 1,000 citizens, which is hard to get political support for.
I'm not sure that it's true that "most other countries" police work the way you're saying. There's a good book on the problems of policing world-wide, " The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence by Gary A. Haugen,Victor Boutros".