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Comment by Doxin | Hacker News Reader

> The purpose and function of calling the police is generally to bring lawful force to bear against someone who has committed a crime.

Only in america.

> Their job is not to resolve domestic disputes

Only in america.

> Any time you call the cops on somebody, it should be done with the expectation that they may be arrested and taken to jail

Only in america.

Just because the American police force is awful and only really good at escalating situations doesn't mean that that's the best they can do.

The polices job is "Protect and Serve", not "Escalate and Worsen", if that requires temporarily filling the role of emergency counselor so be it.

For example every dutch police car carries a couple teddy bears they can hand out to children in traumatic situations such as car crashes. Sure you can argue that it isn't the polices job to soothe children, but you'll be very glad that they still do when it's your kid hurt.

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Please don't post nationalistic rhetoric to Hacker News, regardless of which nation you favor or disfavor. Ratcheting up indignation levels is bad here, and so is grandiose generalization.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14245012 and marked it off-topic.

I absolutely agree with everything you said with one exception.

> "Protect and Serve"

Everyone thinks that the police's job is their motto. It was some strategic messaging, but they came up with that. Police weren't created to protect and serve. Going back to the foundations of the country's policing strategy, police exist to maintain order. That's why they arrest protesters, shoot unarmed guys who are noncompliant, arrest people for selling cigarette singles. That subtle shift in how we perseve their job explains vertically all of their behavior as of late.

Interesting you chose those specific examples. Police killing black men in those instances did the opposite of what you claim. They turned orderly to disorderly.

That's because they don't exist to protect order as such. They exist to protect a particular social order.

> Going back to the foundations of the country's policing strategy, police exist to maintain order

Very un-Peelian policing. Could you give more background on how and when the foundations of US policing strategy were laid, because it seems to be very fragmentary and local?

I hate to cheap out and just send you to a history podcast, but it really is a great collection of remarks on the history of policing in the US.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/serve-protect-a-history-...

It's well worth a listen, the entire series is great as well

"Only in America" is hyperbole. I'd buy "more frequently" but, realistically, the advice is still sound in any part of the world: don't call the cops if you don't want someone to get arrested.

For those down voting, here are the stats from Australia, courtesy Wikipedia:

"Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) shows that during the 2009/10 year police took action against 375,259 people, up by 4.8 percent from 2008/09 figures."

So, that's 375k "actions". Even if you assume that a lot of those won't end in arrest, that's still a lot of arresting.

Downvotes are likely because those stats are completely useless in supporting your point.

> Only in America" is hyperbole.

Yes. Yes it is.

> The advice is still sound in any part of the world: don't call the cops if you don't want someone to get arrested.

The advice very much isn't sound in any part of the world, and I suggest you go live in a place with a friendly police force for a while.

Your statistics prove nothing. You're taking a random country and asserting that the statistics for that country are true everywhere. Furthermore without arrest statistics it's a rather hollow argument.

Unfortunately it is the same in most of other part of the world, it is dangerous to assume that police is your friend.

Yeah, have a chat to my Iranian friends about their experiences with the Shah's police.

Not saying that America is that bad, but it bugs me when people explicitly state that only America has a problem with policing. It's pretty widespread.

It happens to be where I live, so I guess it seems less random to me.

The largest Dutch cities are at best medium-sized in total population and density compared to American cities, though, and a lot richer in wealth per capita. For example, using 2015 numbers, Amsterdam with 848k people (4.3k per sq mi) wouldn't place on the top 10 list of largest or densest American cities. San Jose, California at #10 has over a million people (5.3k per sq mi).

New York City (#1) has 8.5 million people at a density of 27,012 people per square mile. In other words, NYC has over half of the population of all of The Netherlands and roughly 20 times the average density. I don't think you should assume that anything about policing strategy in The Netherlands can be applied to these fairly radically different environments.

Edit: I can't reply to the comment below this about education spending. Let's look at the data:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GB.ZS

"Expenditure on education as % of total government expenditure (%)"

> Netherlands 12.1%

> United States 13.3%

Or maybe the difference is just that money goes into education instead of militarization of the police.

That can't be right. And it isn't. Maybe you mixed up imperial and metric units?

Amsterdam has 12.7k people per sq mi[1]. Not NY-dense, but certainly more dense than San Jose.

I am sure that Dutch police get longer and higher education than their US colleagues, on average. But more importantly, I think the culture in the police here is completely different, they attract a different type of character. In the US, using the "soft" approach is not popular with politicians and voters, so the police seems to have developed into an "army-light", attracting mostly "tough guys" who like the use of force.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam

The nominal ratios spent on education actually do not matter much with a basic comparison because it is not a metric of how efficient that money is used and if citizens get equal benefits from the spending. I am quite certain the Netherlands is better at govt. spending than the US.

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