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How much do we need the police?

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Re: How much do we need the police?

#341

Post by dmode »

tathougies wrote: post #118
socialdemocrat wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here is this complete disconnect in how Americans think about this. As a European you point out that cops are trigger happy and shoot people 100x more frequently than say in London. Then Americans respond "well we have way more guns so cops are on the edge and shoot more easily." Well how about introducing some gun control then and reduce the number of guns in society? But no, Americans don't want that. So many A…

Gangs aren't affected by gun control though -- most gang guns are gotten illegally (when they're not being supplied by the government of course). Moreover, states with strict gun control, like California, have more gangs than others. Chicago used to ban guns entirely but its murder rate was higher than today, when guns are allowed (by the Supreme Court). And inequality is not what leads to gang violence. We have less…

Why are American gangs not affected by gun control but European gangs are ? Is this some sort of American exceptionalism ?

Re: How much do we need the police?

#342

Post by Consultant32452 »

metrokoi wrote: post #340
Consultant32452 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a farmer has a tractor stolen from him it is not acceptable to track the criminal down and use force to take it back, that is the job of the police. That's just hiring someone else to use force to take it back. So we at least agree that taking it back by force is the right thing to do. I'll even go so far as agreeing with you that it's morally justified to hire someone else to do it for you. I suspect our area of…

I would rather have a group of people trained on how to apprehend criminals with the minimum force necessary and with rules and regulations to follow than have untrained, armed citizens going to retrieve their goods. Would the farmer have the freedom to search any property they please? A criminal would not let the farmer search his property, and if the farmer insisted with force he could be threatening an innocent pe…

First of all, I want to say that I don't support roving gangs of mercenaries. But just as a thought experiment... which do you think is likely to kill more innocent people: roving gangs of mercenaries in a stateless community where most are armed or the US government?

edit: changed vigilantes to mercenaries for consistency

Re: How much do we need the police?

#343

Post by dmode »

tathougies wrote: post #81
jbay808 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This framing of the police seems very strange to my Canadian sensibilities. I'm curious about whether Americans largely agree with this description.

Canadians do not have violent warlords on their streets. You don't understand what it's like to live in our (mainly South Western) cities, and live with threats of drive-by shootings, vandalism, and getting caught in gunfire. My dad worked driving around downtown LA and surrounds for 20 some odd years and there was more than a few times he was caught in gang-based gunfire. This was in the 80s and 90s mostly, and thin…

Lol, most gangs are coming from Central America and Mexico ?? Have you even heard of Bloods and Crips ? The most legendary gangs in the US ?

Re: How much do we need the police?

#344

Post by WalterBright »

wwwwewwww wrote: post #336
WalterBright wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been printing blogs for hundreds of years. See "Common Sense". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

Getting a blog such as "Common Sense" printed in those days was much harder then getting a firearm.

I'm not so sure about that. Firearms in those days were custom made by hand one by one by specialized and highly skilled (i.e. expensive) craftsmen. A firearm was a prized possession, and often a work of art.

A pamphlet might be typeset in an hour by the unskilled printer's apprentice.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#345

Post by teddyh »

dang wrote: post #271
remember_george wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how George Floyd moved to Minneapolis to do ministry work I bet he didn’t even know the bill was counterfeited.

We've banned this account for trolling. Doing this will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I fail to see the trolling you evidently can see. Can you explain?

Re: How much do we need the police?

#346

Post by kolinko »

geofft wrote: post #273
warkdarrior wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You haven't armed the populace, you haven't set up civilian watches Isn't that reinventing the police, just with a different name?

To some extent, But, for instance, while private citizens may have guns for self-defense, they're unlikely to have tear gas, rubber bullets, armored vehicles, Stingrays, etc. And community watches that are run by actual community members are likely to have a very different set of priorities from a professional police force. I'm not at all saying that this by itself would eliminate racially-disproportionate violence d…

Have you ever lived in a country that has a well functioning, nonviolent Police? E.g. somewhere in Europe?

Have you ever lived in a country where people don’t have weapons? It is like night and day really - I never heard of a shooting in my neighborhood, and when Police shoots someone unarmed by accident, it is nationwide news (in a nation of 40M, I remember one situation happening a few years back).

edit: I found some stats for my country. Every year, for 40M population Poland: 125 uses of guns by Police (warning shots etc), around 25 times shot towards a person, 1-2 people killed.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#347

Post by remarkEon »

elliotec wrote: post #297
wolf550e wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their budget is reduced, the police will choose where to cut services in such a way as to inflict maximum fear in the population, to cause their budget to be restored. They will, for example, say they cannot investigate the rape of a white woman, supposedly because lack of funds. But they will have plenty of funds to harass poor and non-white people for maybe smoking pot, but mostly for being poor and/or non-white…

This is so obvious. Defund the police, and regulate their roles. Prioritize rape/violence/home invasion, deprioritize protests/drugs/etc., and as you say punish offenders. This is obvious.

>This is so obvious. Defund the police, and regulate their roles.

>deprioritize protests/drugs/etc

Yeah, already done that. And it's miserable. My parents came to visit (from the midwest and right before the pandemic) and were absolutely appalled at seeing needles on the street when we went out to dinner. I don't blame them, really. I blame the people who pretend that shrugging at enforcing drug laws is some sort of "justice". It's not, it's political nihilism. And we've run this test 1000 times at this point across the country. Some will say that "it's not that bad", and to them I say "yeah ... I've been in worse places around the world too". Which is a snide way of saying that I'm really annoyed that people are okay with third world standards of living in the USA because they have this inverted sense of "justice".

Re: How much do we need the police?

#348

Post by renewiltord »

ikeyany wrote: post #198
birdyrooster wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By civilizing the police we also mean affirmative action to bring the demographics of the officers in line with the people they serve. Removing guns wouldn’t have saved Eric Garner or George Floyd.

Other ways of turning policing away from "tacticool" policing and towards community policing: offering cops more $$$; requiring a degree or two; placing residency requirements (x cops in a precinct must live within y miles of the community they are to serve) to help weed out the bully types. That can be done in a reasonable amount of time.

They make between $200k and $500k and still shoot rubber bullets at helpful protestors in San Jose so maybe throwing money into a hole isn't super useful as a strategy.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#349

Post by 082349872349872 »

cheesecracker wrote: post #321

[flagged]

In countries where people are nicer to each other, there is less police brutality. It would take much more time, but I think more Fred Rogers and less GI Joe (or whatever their current equivalents may be) is likelier to provide a more lasting fix than any of these short-term policy proposals. WWJD?

Re: How much do we need the police?

#350

Post by renewiltord »

dmode wrote: post #341
tathougies wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gangs aren't affected by gun control though -- most gang guns are gotten illegally (when they're not being supplied by the government of course). Moreover, states with strict gun control, like California, have more gangs than others. Chicago used to ban guns entirely but its murder rate was higher than today, when guns are allowed (by the Supreme Court). And inequality is not what leads to gang violence. We have less…

Why are American gangs not affected by gun control but European gangs are ? Is this some sort of American exceptionalism ?

I've noticed over time that things that can be done elsewhere on the world are impossible in America according to most Americans. I even particularly like America because it has more of the sort of liberty I like but it also has some of the most unbelievable defensiveness.

For years, fibre was impossible in America. Turns out it wasn't. For years, bicycling was impossible in America. Turns out it isn't. Nothing is really possible in America. It's too diverse here, or too big, or too sparse, or has too many people, or has too few people, or too many cultures.

Even electric cars weren't possible because America is too big for you to charge on your ride. But it's not.

I think that's still the thing I like about the Bay Area in real life compared to the online America. In the online America, the current state is fully optimal under the constraints. It cannot improve. It is actually hyper-optimized to these constraints. In the Bay Area, there are no boundaries. Some fool will decide that freely available electric scooters are the future of urban transportation and some other fool will decide that laying fibre is a winning prospect and some other fool will decide that high-end bus services have value. Then it'll turn out that despite the assumptions of online America that the country is hyper-optimized to the constraints, the constraints don't actually exist, and of these three fools, none are fools, and one is very very right.

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