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Comment by unishark | Hacker News Reader

> The general view of police and government as your "friendly helper" as opposed to enemies.

The US has a much more negative and adversarial view of govt in general, but in polls a large majority has a much more favorable view of cops versus other govt agencies. Certainly it's a terrible generalization to say americans view cops as enemies.

One import factor here is where specifically you live. Police in the US are local systems which totally differ based on local laws and culture. In a place like Los Angeles County, with its high crime problems, cops are a lot more jaded and defensive. Meanwhile in the small beach cities in LA, the cops are very helpful and mellow.

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> One import factor here is where specifically you live. Police in the US are local systems which totally differ based on local laws and culture. In a place like Los Angeles County, with its high crime problems, cops are a lot more jaded and defensive. Meanwhile in the small beach cities in LA, the cops are very helpful and mellow.

This is not my understanding at all. I have a ticket that has all kinds of nonsense in a relatively low crime Overland Park, Kansas: reckless driving, bla bla bla. What I really had was a flat tire and I was stopped on the side of the road. Not that it matters because in any case the officers arrived on the scene more than ten minutes after I got the flat tire. I don't blame the officers: they can't admit it but I'm positive they have a quota to meet so they do this kind of nonsense.

It's just as terrible a generalization to use polls that don't consider a great many of the people harassed and oppressed by police forces (immigrants, PoC, incarcerated, poor neighborhoods, homeless people). Yes, people feel both ways about cops, and that lack of uniformly friendly relationship across the populace is the whole point brought up by GP.

To their exact sentiment

> The general view of police and government as your "friendly helper" as opposed to enemies

...the key phrase is "general view" and not "enemies". The general view in america is more varied, as a function of the diversity of people, experiences and opinions, for better or worse.

On the contrary a poll is about the best possible way to make generalizations. It uses random sampling to make estimates about a population. Otherwise the loudest get all the attention, certainly a big issue when it comes to cops lately.

I guess polls might miss homeless people, though there aren't enough to swing the numbers noticeably. I don't see why they'd hate cops especially.

I wonder how incarcerated people in Japan feel about cops. Have you seen ho they treat prisoners?

Homeless people would be more likely to have a negative view of cops because cops arrest them for loitering/sleeping in public/being a nuisance?

And polls might not include incarcerated people, yea. That will make a bigger difference in the US stats (0.65% of the population incarcerated, vs Japans 0.05%).

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