Jesus this reads like it's from some super corrupt 3rd country, not the US.
In India. Police supplies thieves with information. Guards the scene while the theft is ongoing. Shares the spoils, and then harasses the complainer. And to put it mildly this is like a low key operation I just described. They do a lot lot more.
It's like an extended branch of the mafia. Most sought after jobs in India after civil services.
Recently in Bangalore a police guy was caught on cam stealing a journalists scooter.
I used to think the USA was a "safe" place. Maybe it is compared to Somalia but it isn't compared to Japan or Singapore. Once I got used to the safety of these places I never feel safe in the USA anymore.
I used just take it for granted there were bad parts of town and that even in the good parts of town I should be leery of people, avoid dark alleys etc. Don't walk alone at night, etc. Then I lived in these other places where that concept mostly doesn't exist.
As a concrete example it's common sense in the USA if I get a 3rd party car stereo I should get a removable car stereo and always take it out or hide it. I had 5 of them stolen and my car once and just took it all as "sucks but that's that way life is, my fault for forgetting to take the stereo out or not buying a lojack". But it's not the way life is. It's the way we've let it become.
There's lots of other examples and AFAIK most of it is cultural. An example, find a dropped wallet. In USA/Europe a large percentage of people have the attitude "score for me! found free money!" Not sure if that percentage is 20% or 80% but in Japan (and I think Singapore) the more common response is "OMG, someone is really going to be in a tough spot. I'd better try to get this back to them if possible". In the USA even if people had that attitude they might rationalize that the police won't care and it might be true the police don't care which is just another symptom of the same problem.
I have no clues how to spread the nicer culture to the West. It seems the opposite "me me me" culture is impossible to fight.
PS: these kinds of posts always illicit irrelevant responses of the problems in Japan and Singapore. I'm not saying Japan and Singapore are perfection. I'm only pointing out this one area where they do better.
That being said, I wouldn't throw all of Europe in with them in this case. I lost my wallet for the first time a few months ago in Prague. The ones who found it went through the effort of finding my contact information (I only had my student ID in my wallet, no contact information whatsoever, my mistake) and when we met up and it was returned to me all the money was still in it.
Although that is only one personal case, I spent around 5 months touring 15 different countries in Europe and witnessed people leaving laptops at the coffee shop unwatched and just leaving their bikes completely unsecured in front of the subway entrance as part of their commute, which are both pretty strong signals that many of those nations share a culture where theft simply isn't common.
Swipes like that break the HN guidelines. Can you please edit them out of what you post here? Your comment would be better without that sentence, and maybe also the patronizing bit at the end ("these kinds of posts always illicit irrelevant responses").
What you (the global "you") experience in the world and the results of your interaction are not a template, and other people's experiences may sometimes preclude them from truly realizing, appreciating and unpacking why people in other social groups might see interactions with the constabulary (keeping in context with this comment thread) or other systems of society a bit differently.
As a matter of personal perspective, the suggestion to break one's bubble isn't a swipe, but a request to entertain the thought that one's preconceived notions about a given affair might change with the knowledge that their experiences are not universal and exposure to a different angle.
Maybe the curt nature of the suggestion doesn't meet some arbitrary ideal of discussion, but that doesn't invalidate the root point of the suggestion.
Matter of perspective, no, Dan? Would it have been less of a pejorative to borrow a phrase from the latest incantation of our discussions of race and culture in the US to say "check your privilege?"
Granted this isn't the place for a protracted discussion on dialogue here, I just find the strong reaction to what is a very important clarion call to evaluate ones own biases and experiences against a spectrum of biases and experiences shared by every other human being, however curt or brief, taking it the point of calling it a "pejorative" an interesting reaction-IMO.
Maybe I should have left it out or maybe written something else like "Is it possible you're experiencing the world in a bubble?". In any case too late to edit (the option does not appear)
It's definitely a matter of interpretation. But the online medium is fragile, and if one person (me in this case) reads it as a swipe, usually a lot do.