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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

Not sure about the UK, but in the US the police have no formal duty to protect you. No matter how much warning/info/evidence they have that someone will be victimized, and no matter how easy/reasonable it is for the police to prevent it, citizens are generically not entitled to compensation for failure to be protected. Rather, the police's mission (both formally and as a functional matter) is overwhelmingly about catching and punishing criminals after-the-fact, and they have wide discretion to choose which crimes to enforce on. So the only protection is in the form of criminal disincentives (which are extremely important, of course).

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> in the US the police have no formal duty to protect you

This is one reason why, at least in the US, you should never talk to the police if you're suspected of a crime -- even if you're innocent and it seems that your innocence will be blindingly obvious to them[0]. Anything you say can and will be used against you, and by the rules of evidence, nothing you say to the police can be used for you in court. (Tell them you have a lawyer friend who will never let you live it down if you say anything without speaking to your attorney first.)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

(IANAL)

> (Tell them you have a lawyer friend who will never let you live it down if you say anything without speaking to your attorney first.)

Don't do this unless you really have a lawyer friend. Lying to the police, even when you haven't committed a crime otherwise, can be prosecuted as obstruction.

It's better to simply say that you will not answer questions without an attorney present, then just stop talking.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I worked alongside law enforcement for most of my adult life.

We can always vote and legislate for something better. From my experience in the US, police vary from decent people just trying to serve society, to up-armored mall cops on power trips. If you give them assault rifles, tanks, and unlimited surveillance, you encourage the worst among them. A guy wearing a uniform and trained in de-escalation instead of "verbal control" could do some good.

> We can always vote and legislate for something better.

How? Which political party or independents promote a policy to reduce police powers?

And even if there were, or are, any politicians with such a policy we ought to be more suspicious of them!

Yeah, it is not going to happen through such ways. No way. Whoever would want to do it would be getting pressure from influential people on multiple fronts. Let us play with the thought though. Who would go through such risks? What would they gain from it?

The trick is to spin it better.

It's not "reducing police power", it's "even better training, tools and techniques for our hard-working police officers".

> How? Which political party or independents promote a policy to reduce police powers?

Policing is mostly local, so I think this is an area where there's a real chance to make things better. National politics are hopelessly tribal in the US, but city/county level politics are much less so. Go to city council meetings. Pay attention, and complain if they try to buy leftover military hardware like a BearCat[1]. Vote for and talk to your councillors. Organize a petition to de-militarize your local police force.

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

We can always vote and legislate for something better

Aren't you assuming that people want something better? I don't know if that is true. Many people refuse to believe cops can be bad (due to ignorance or whatever other reasons)

That’s correct. The extreme percentage of police duties are only to document crime.

On the bright side, you can carry a firearm in the US.

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