Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

There's no need for police to be first-responders in purely medical situations. It's unfair to expect that police also take up the burden of medical care. While we are at it, it's also silly that the fire department responds to non-fire medical incidents in their big ass fire truck. Doing so compromises their abilities to handle situations where their expertise is explicitly required.

Every town in America does not need a SWAT team. Thsoe should be specialized agencies that serve a particular region and have a limited number of deployments.

If we were building a system from scratch today, people would not suggest dumping these duties on beat cops.

Police are just people. Protesters are just people. Every one of them has to decide what they will and will not abide.

It's not a matter of protesters not being able to stop the extremists among them. They're not even trying. They don't even want to.

The problem is that most people (including here in these comments) are rationalizing the actions of these extremists, hence the misapplied MLK Jr. quote. This is an implicit endorsement.

A black police officer was killed by extremists. There is serious violence and burning by extremists. These acts are being implicitly endorsed. In the same way Trump implicitly endorses the behavior of his movement's extremists, by not vehemently denouncing it and distancing himself from it.

It doesn't require training or an oath to condemn extremists and seek to exclude them from your movement. It just requires principle.

So a police detective? I don’t really see how renaming police detectives “Investigator” or some similar name shuffling changes or resolves anything. Unless you’re suggesting farming these tasks out to the private sector. I guess towns could contract with PIs or a private detective agency, but I find it hard to believe such a privatized agency would be any better than sworn LEOs in terms of corruption, brutality, etc.

The comparison with a fire marshal is instructive; according to Wikipedia “Fire marshals may be sworn law-enforcement officers and are often experienced firefighters.” In other words, just like in the case of police detectives, it’s seen as a good thing for them to have experience and authority.

> There's no need for police to be first-responders in purely medical situations. It's unfair to expect that police also take up the burden of medical care. While we are at it, it's also silly that the fire department responds to non-fire medical incidents in their big ass fire truck. Doing so compromises their abilities to handle situations where their expertise is explicitly required.

I don’t think acting as EMTs is a big part of police calls. As you note, the FD often responds to such purely medical incidents as they are better trained and have better resources.

I agree that the use of SWAT teams for small towns should be looked at. In my opinion, these specially trained officers should be part of state police or big cities only. State police could support local PDs if needed.

In general, your post is about some types of police reform.

It doesn’t interact with the post I originally responded to, which posited that “police” are “very much not necessary” in modern America.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/31/lets-get-this-motherf...

And this is the kind of insult I used until I was 12. Either address the argument or don't. Bless us lesser beings with your wisdom.

"Don't you have the balls to attach your speech to your semi public internet presence"

Pretty easy if all of your opinions are borrowed from others.

If you actually consider every issue for yourself then you're going to need to have discussions/disagreements.

And in modern "leftist" culture it's absolutely not permitted to disagree on certain issues. There is a correct way of thinking and any deviation makes you an enemy. You're either onboard wholesale for everything (making you a second class "ally" if you're out of the relevant racial/gender group) or an enemy.

I want to live in a good world as much as anyone. I have no belief in the superiority of any race or sex. I absolutely would have supported MLK Jr. and I'm fairly certain of this because my parents did and I have a lot in common with them.

And yet I find myself dismayed by the whacky thinking that has infected part of American culture. There is a new world in which racism isn't racism if it's aimed at certain racial groups and violence isn't violence if it's against police or certain racial groups. Permanently destroying people's lives is okay now too, as long as they made some kind of mistake related to a hot issue.

This stuff is insane and totally counter productive. The majority of people are too smart and good to buy into this perverted worldview. Most people are never going to come around to the worldview where it's not-so-bad to kill a police officer that is responding to a break in.

What we should hope to see is a separation process, where the extremist crazy people and ideas are abandoned.

There seems to be a hostage/hijacking situation, where the majority are being cowed/controlled by the extremists, dooming the movements to failure.

An enemy of racial equality couldn't organize better sabotage than what the people involved are seemingly doing on their own.