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Comment by tomnipotent | Hacker News Reader

I don't think anyone is against more police, but rather the tactics used and how that money is spent. Twenty years ago, police deploying tasers was an outlier. In 2020, it's become normalized and happens thousands of times a year. There's no reason we can't have better trained, restrained police at the same or greater budget. It's the tactics that are in question, and qualified immunity which allows bad actors to do as they please with little-to-no impact to themselves (thanks to local governments picking up the tab).

Let's not pretend we didn't just see 57 police officers resign from a volunteer position because two of their own were caught on camera pushing a 75-year old man to the ground and held accountable because "just following orders".

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Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm against more police. I think communities would be better served by an increase in social workers in most cases. Drug usage and homelessness won't be solved by imprisoning people and forever branding them as criminals. You need bridge housing, treatment programs, and services for these people. And an educational system that is well funded, regardless of the community it serves. I think criminalizing social issues has proven to be pretty ineffective, generally harmful, and really expensive. I'd recommend checking out "The End of Policing" for a thoughtful, well-reasoned argument for decreasing the number of police. The ebook is free: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing

I am fine with more police if we entirely redefine police to mean social workers, counselors, community assistants, etc.

And if they didn't carry guns nor drive unmarked cars. Police should be seen and they should be seen interacting positively with the community, not patrolling in a gradient of (un)identifiable vehicles.

I live in a country where most of this is true.

Unfortunately, there are now so many care workers that many people with issues are getting fed up with all the people that come to their house for all kinds of help (think a care worker for finance, one for mental issues,one for physical issues,one to help the person get back to work, one for the kids etc. etc.)

So if there will be a shift from 'police as is', to more like a care worker system, this would be something to consider.

But other than that, it seems to work well. The police is considered your friend. They pretty know each of the people that have issues or who ever committed crime.

They continue to offer help to them,but will make sure they also get off the streets when they become a potential threat.

There continues to be a lot of criticism from certain groups within our country that wants the police act tougher, but I think the majority of people are happy with how the police does it's job here.

There is also a wijkagent - "neighborhood cop". Actual policeperson (with gun and all) that has "office hours" when they are walking around the neighborhood talking to people (even just for a chat) at the playgrounds, business owners and so on. People come to them with problems. There is a website where you can look up wijkagent for each neighborhood. Sometimes they're also active on Twitter, FB... Works quite well

It's very important that police is connected to the community they police, and cares about that community. My impression of police in the US is that that is rarely the case in cases where this police brutality occurs.

I'm fairly happy with Dutch police. They're visible and approachable. They're not perfect; there was a case in the 1990s where they cracked down unreasonably hard on a peaceful student protest. And in that case, it turned out that many of those cops were indeed looking forward to a fight, which is a dangerous and harmful attitude. Those instances are fairly rare, though.

Yes, no one is perfect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plCdrFYm5b8

Even so, no tear gas, no beatings, and despite the protesters resisting as much as they non-violently can, the police are not using any violence beyond pulling and shoving them into the bus.

I was thinking more of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIwrdriLiZc

(It's surprisingly hard to find anything online about events before 2004. This was all over the news at the time, but now it looks like it never happened. My quality newspaper lacks proper archive functionality for searching more than a year ago. Search engines and Youtube have never heard of this, frequently returning 0 results.)

What country do you live in?

The Netherlands. I assume for some more Northern European and Scandinavian countries it's about the same.

I am an American living in Netherlands, and policing is very different here. Think Dutch police (or at least Amsterdam police) have a much more positive impact on neighborhoods than American police (or DC / San Francisco police). I have seen more mediation and deescalation between neighbors from police in a few years in the Netherlands than decades in America.

This is a tangent, there also seems to be way, way less paperwork in routine police work in the Netherlands than in America.

Those aren’t police. They are part of the social safety net and community wellness.

How would you ask a police officer to react to a criminal brandishing or firing a gun in public or at him?

How would you ask detectives to work cases against gang leaders if they cannot conceal their identity?

@malnourish has a good point, though. Quite often police respond to calls that require a social worker or mental health professional. And in some of those cases, the police decides that a bullet is the best solution to the problem that they are equipped to provide. Many problems require very different solutions, and many police officers are not equipped to provide those solutions. That is a major problem.

Either police officers need to be trained as social workers and mental health professionals, or part of their work needs to be taken over by those that have that training.

Immediately stained by the simplistic naievety of:

> And if they didn't carry guns nor drive unmarked cars.

Except this is how many other countries work, so how is it even remotely simplistic or naive?

What 'many other' countries?

Every country has unmarked cop cars in use alongside high visibility marked cars. Every country has armed officers in addition to unarmed officers.

Given the US has liberal gun laws, how would that even work? It's shortsighted & reactionary unless you want people who are already in dangerous situations to be lambs led to the slaughter because you'd like to think you live in a unicorn reality.

> Those aren't police

... from Latin politia "civil administration," from Greek polis "city"

I agree with all your points; and while we’re on the subject of optics reform, I have an entirely unsubstantiated pet theory that if we made police uniforms pink, we would see abuse of power drop substantially - the idea being to create a very different (visual and emotional) image of what a police officer is and what they do, and the pink specifically serving the dual purposes of a) reminding police that their job is less about force and more about supporting the community, and b) filtering out any men whose sense of masculinity is so withered/warped that they’d take issue with the standard uniform of a highly-esteemed servant of the community.

> I think communities would be better served by an increase in social workers in most cases

I couldn't agree more. I think there's an appropriate ratio of police/population, though I don't think I'm even remotely qualified to speak on that subject. But when I think about the "police/prosecutorial/prison-industrial complex", I can't help but hope that the only real path to a long-term solution is actually giving a shit and genuinely wanting to help people get better, vs "justice".

One thing that must happen is we must impose enhancements to penalties for crimes committed by law enforcement/police.

Assault, battery, theft, etc., by a police officer is inherently worse than that by an ordinary citizen. They have abused the immense power, privilege, and trust of their position and there should commensurate consequences.

NPR carried a segment talking about making free market liability insurance mandatory for police, with departments only paying the average rate.

There needs to be a neutral third party to assess risk, because all of the current stakeholders are biased (executive government, judicial government, community organizers, police unions).

What about paying it out of the pension fund that way they police their own? Dump public sector unions (who organize against the people) as well.

> Let's not pretend we didn't just see 57 police officers resign from a volunteer position because two of their own were caught on camera pushing a 75-year old man to the ground and held accountable because "just following orders".

I have a slightly different take on this, and to be clear, seeing that video was absolutely shocking and made me feel nauseous and even light-headed.

The officers were part of a unit that was specially trained by FEMA to do exactly what they did;

> "The unit’s training is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA’s, Field Force Operations course. It’s a three-day training which covers skills including baton-holding positions, mass-arrest procedures, and riot-control formations, according to the website." [1]

Suspending the officers is deflecting the blame from where it really lies. The state (politicians) deployed that team to do exactly what they did, and knew or should have known that people would be hurt as a result of those tactics.

I guess you could imagine some sort of active riot scenarios where people are under attack by a mob, and where those tactics are specifically necessary to essentially rescue hostages..., but the situation they were actually deployed into was not remotely that from what I understand.

I think of it this way. When we look back at Tienanmen Square, do we blame the person driving the one tank at the front of the column, or do acknowledge that every driver in every tank was not strong enough to refuse to follow those orders, but ultimately the leaders of the regime are to blame.

That's why I think making the story about the officers is actually missing the point, and further blaming the other 57 officers who resigned doubly-so. The officers are resigning because they are being hung out to dry to take the blame for the leader's mistakes. I was hoping to see the "57 officers resign" story used to pivot the blame onto the police and political leadership rather than reinforcing the notion that the blame is just on bad actors / bad apples.

There are systemic issues with the system, and this is a perfect example of where officers are being trained to act in exactly the wrong way, and then being deployed inappropriately. These weren't rogue officers. The criminal case to charge is not so much assault by an individual officer, but reckless endangerment by the people who made the decision to deploy an aggressive riot control team out into the general populace.

[1] - https://cdp.dhs.gov/find-training/course/PER-200

> When we look back at Tienanmen Square, do we blame the person driving the one tank at the front of the column, or do acknowledge that every driver in every tank was not strong enough to refuse to follow those orders, but ultimately the leaders of the regime are to blame.

Both. It's the whole "just following orders" thing. It's not an excuse. You (the officers) know for a fact that it's wrong to push a 75-year old man down to the ground like they did. You don't need anybody to tell you that, and no training manual is going to tell you that it's ok or not ok to do so.

The 57 officers resigning, good. They aren't quality police officers that we need on a police force. It doesn't matter what training tells you - and if they can't see that, then good riddance. There are plenty of people out there who can make fine police officers.

Lots of people are against more police. Those take up between 50-70% of the taxes is many communities.

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