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Comment by eric_b | Hacker News Reader

I agree. The bad apples have to go. My concern is that we want to "hurt" the police rather than fix the systemic issues.

It seems that the Minneapolis police department has had excessive force issues for years. That feels like a leadership failure to me. In that case you'd look at the Chief, the union rep, the Mayor and any other folks who can change the culture but don't.

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> That feels like a leadership failure to me. In that case you'd look at the Chief, the union rep, the Mayor and any other folks who can change the culture but don't.

Yeah, I agree 100%, and this is why the "few bad apples" angle falls apart. This is a widespread problem with the culture of many police departments. It's not enough to fire the murderers themselves, we also need to ask:

- Who hired them?

- Who trained them?

- Who supervised them?

- Who looked into the previous excessive force complaints and decided they weren't a problem?

Reformists have had decades to work in and the outcome is that we just see more impunity, more hardware, and more money spent on policing to the detriment of all other social services. The approach has failed dismally and it's time to take a more drastic approach.

Was thinking about looters. The police is a system that should find better solutions. It also need to police itself as you mention. It's a culture thing, so very easy to improve!

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