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Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

nytimes.com

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Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#241

Post by 835Temporary »

II2II wrote: post #212
dfxm12 wrote: post #48

Finally, officers said they were asked to handle too much; they were constantly thrown at tangled societal problems like mental health breakdowns or drug overdoses, they said, for which they were ill-equipped — then blamed when things went wrong. Yes. Untrained people should not be sent to deal with these issues. Hopefully, this leads to municipalities actually training people to deal with these issues instead of con…

I doubt that it is that simple. By the time police are called in, it likely is a police issue: a crime has been committed or there is an imminent threat of violence. Having specially trained people to deal with those issues may marginally improve the situation, but they will end up being the police in all but name. The blame will be shifted away from the police and the burden will be put on the new organization. What…

Yes. This is a conversation I have had with many friends.

Police are misused, imo, by society to clean up macro issues, one person at a time, that police have no ability to control outside criminal investigation.

Police are where "the rubber meets the road" for policy failure and unrecognized socioculturally trends. They are easy to blame for up-the-pyramid authority while being the only easily visible aspect of a ineffective, corrupt gvt.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#242

Post by IncRnd »

ijustlovemath wrote: post #29
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #10

Sounds like 'defund the police' is stupid, self-defeating sloganeering that makes no sense given what its apparent settled-upon meaning (only settled upon many months after becoming popular).

The meaning of "diverting funding to other resources" has been a consensus in the community for a very long time. It's only recently that "defund" has been conflated with "abolish," which has always been a very very small niche of the police reform community.

Defund literally means, "prevent from continuing to receive funds." So, when people hear "defund the police" they rightly take that to mean "stop funding the police".

I don't know what community you refer to, since many people who I've seen call for defunding of the police want the police abolished.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#243

Post by busterarm »

Supermancho wrote: post #170
busterarm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Law enforcement can be dangerous but it's only #22 in occupational death rates. The original post has been edited to no longer make the claim about policing being the most dangerous, but a direct refutation is not whataboutism.

The original post didn't say "the most dangerous" but "one of the hardest". That's what it said when I made my comment and my comment is within 3 minutes of the parent -- and I had been reading comments for a good few minutes before then.

On the long tail of possible professions, #22 is pretty damn close to the top.

There was no direct refutation made and the comment is CERTAINLY a Whataboutism.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#244

Post by brutusborn »

zepto wrote: post #149
brutusborn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our language is full of ambiguities, and this is one. Both interpretations are listed in the Cambridge dictionary. The truth is: clarity require lots of words, and that makes a terrible slogan. Most people react stronger to a slogan than a nuanced discussion, so the messy slogans will remain.

That doesn’t mean a bad slogan like Defund the police isn’t just divisive, ill-advised, and harmful.

Of course it doesn't. But it does show how hard it is to come up with slogans. Can you think of a 'synonym' that isn't divisive, ill advised or harmful in any way? That's a high bar.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#245

Post by objectivetruth »

tiahura wrote: post #229
GekkePrutser wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine how they become this way. With most offenders being from minority groups it's hard to keep an open mind if you're having to chase after them every day. Even though these problems are societal, not really caused by the minorities themselves but rather lack of opportunities etc But if you're on the business end of society's failures on a daily basis I can imagine how this changes one's opinion. I've worke…

“Even though these problems are societal, not really caused by the minorities themselves but rather lack of opportunities etc” That’s the line of thinking that keeps many of them in that situation. We need to be honest -African American culture is largely dysfunctional and self-destructive. 120 years ago my ancestors were dirt poor, they didn’t have “equitable” opportunities in education, housing, or employment, yet…

Helpful hint: you are actually visiting the website "Hacker News" but I think you were looking for "Stormfront."

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#246

Post by dfxm12 »

blacktriangle wrote: post #74
plank_time wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paranoid mentality that any call could kill you is the exact reason why so many unarmed black people are shot. If you can’t carry out a day’s work without the unreasonable fear that you will be shot, and any action makes you “fear for your life” so that why you emptied your clip into a car, then you shouldn’t be a cop. Cops needs to have cooler heads and this should be measured and verified before allowing them t…

Except "so many unarmed black people are shot" is a lie. A larger per-capita percentages of unarmed whites are shot than blacks.

Any number more than 0 is too many. "Cops shoot unarmed white people too" is not the defense of cops you think it is.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#247

Post by yardie »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #101
yardie wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know different cops. The only cops I've met are mildly racist and intellectually lazy. Sure they were occassionally nice to have a beer with. But then they'd start talking and leave no doubt they aren't one of the good apples. Imagine getting a JIRA ticket thinking, "fucking Java bug, again. Only way to fix this is to yank the power cord out." Honestly, delivery people have to put up with way more shit and don't h…

I’ve had a completely different experience than you. Cops who I’ve known have been pretty normal, compassionate people. They routinely tell me the most important skill in effective law enforcement is your ability to communicate.

Something tells me you don't get detained enough by the police because you "match the description"

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#248

Post by slibhb »

ceejayoz wrote: post #144
throwkeep wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sitting member of Congress: "No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed." https://mobile.twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1381745303997... Sitting member of Congress: "We can’t reform this." https://mobile.twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/13817027443... Activist with 475k followers whose name is currently: "DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE" https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome Ben & Jerrys: "T…

Highlighting "a very very small niche" of politicians/activists isn't really debunking the "a very very small niche of the police reform community" claim. I like Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, but they can hardly be claimed to be the mainstream portion of Congress, or even Congressional Democrats.

The entire point of the slogan is that it can reasonably be interpretted as both a call for measured reform and a demand for radical change. Activists switch between these interpretations at will.

Also, within activist circles, the most radical interpretation always wins. You're on HN and so you claim you want to "divert resources" but within "ACAB circles," the winning argument is always the most radical (prison abolition, prison = slavery, police are modern slave catchers, violence against police is justified). This pull to the extremes is what disturbs me about radical movements. It's possible that these movements have a positive effect when they interact with moderates and some kind of compromise is struck but the movements themselves are quite scary.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#249

Post by jcims »

nradov wrote: post #19
_fat_santa wrote: post #3

Policing has to be one of the hardest jobs in our modern society, I honestly couldn't event imagine the stress. Imagine picking up a JIRA ticket at work and not knowing if that ticket is going to a run of the mill bug fix or something that can kill you. That's just out of the realm of possibility for an SWE but for a cop it can be any one of the calls they take on a daily basis. I've always had respect for cops becau…

Law enforcement can be dangerous but it's only #22 in occupational death rates. Lumberjacks and roofers are far more likely to get killed. https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...

Yes and flying is safer than driving.

Re: Police have been quitting in droves in the last year

#250

Post by myfavoritedog »

johnhenry wrote: post #192
GekkePrutser wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine how they become this way. With most offenders being from minority groups it's hard to keep an open mind if you're having to chase after them every day. Even though these problems are societal, not really caused by the minorities themselves but rather lack of opportunities etc But if you're on the business end of society's failures on a daily basis I can imagine how this changes one's opinion. I've worke…

Let's not ignore the fact that minorities neighborhoods have historically faced higher levels of scrutiny from police. It's not just that offenders are from minority groups... Consider that police are going out into minority groups looking for offenders.

I saw a stat a while back that showed that any higher levels of policing of minority communities was directly attributable to higher levels of disturbance reports from within the communities themselves.

So police aren’t just looking for offenders in minority communities. They’re going where the communities are asking them to be.

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