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Comment by abtinf | Hacker News Reader

Are Australian police trained and measured on their ability to resolve civil disputes on the spot?

They're trained to keep the peace. 'Measured', I don't know about.

I can imagine they're personally motivated to try and resolve things without resorting to arresting someone as that would result in paperwork/processing/etc back in the office.

It's not too uncommon to see police get involved in negotiating disputes where there's no specific powers they can exercise (other than removing/arresting the person for trespassing/breaching the peace/failure to obey a 'move on' order).

Have the cops turn up makes both sides treat things a bit more seriously - the store manager wants them gone ASAP to stop making a scene, and will be more likely to do whatever it takes to escalate the issue to someone more senior if the police ask.

..sort of.. I agree that is probably a civil dispute, but that doesn't help if the outcome is "violently arrest someone on camera" What they are supposed to do is act with authority, use their position to resolve situations efficiently and rapidly. They almost always end up between unions and corps during strikes for example- and these sort of "civil" disputes often escalate into violence. So, solve it before it gets there. (15 years LE, LE trainer in use of force, recently retired)

Imagine if American police could be trained to use negotiation tactics, and de-escalation methods.

They are.

Remember: If it's in the news it's rare. This means that Police violence in America is rare, and Police negotiating with an ISP is rare.

How is 1188 rare? 100 people a month is absurdly common.

http://killedbypolice.net/

Can't really make that argument without considering the population of a country, right?

Wikipedia has the numbers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country#...

Per capita, at least 5 times more people die in the US from police firearms compared to similar countries. Compared to Australia, its about 80x (per capita).

Out of a country with a population of 320+ million, with 750,000+ "sworn officers" (able to make arrests) [0], 1188 is not "absurdly common", especially as that count is an overestimate of the objectionable cases (by how much is difficult to determine).

The issue with police shooting deaths is not that there is a high likelihood of an individual dieing tomorrow (for reference, drunk driving deaths are 10x police shooting deaths [1]), but the injustice of innocent people being killed.

Accurately representing the problem, and avoiding the "all police are terrible" comments is vital to actually trying to fix this, as a solution necessitates actively working with police, the vast majority of which have not, and will never, shoot anyone.

[0]: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/nsleed.pdf

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...

It's a small number of deaths per capita, but quite large per police interaction. So it's possible that the knock-on effects are worse than the injustice. The police would be much less useful if no one ever called them, and why would I call them if there's a significant chance of them killing me or someone else?

Police shooting people is rare in US in absolute numbers, but it's higher per capita, and worse yet, it keeps going up (and the crime rate keeps going down, esp. violent crime, so that can't be the explanation).

No, this was exceptional. Try having a mental health issue, call Lifeline with suicidal thoughts and see what happens. They call the police, hours later after the episode has ended the police turn up, refuse to listen to you or your loved ones and you get to stay overnight at hospiral with no medical attention whatsoever (yes, you read that right - no medical attention).

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