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Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

I highly recommend Jane Coaston of Vox for a follow. Her recommendations are:

1. End qualified immunity

2. Curtail the power of police unions

3. We need fewer laws

I don't think I could agree harder with this. It sounds like the "disband the police" movement is an elaborate implementation of #2. Now we just need #1 and #3.

https://twitter.com/cjane87/status/1267898762845880321

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Patrolmen shouldn’t carry guns. I know that wouldn’t have helped George Floyd, but we need to ratchet down societal acceptance of violence.

If a situation warrants firearms, it should at least warrant a radio call to the station for armed backup.

I don't think taking weapons away is enough. Police aren't trained to provide long-term solutions to domestic violence, homelessness, mental illness, or drug addiction, which are often tasked with solving. The typical solution law enforcement offers to these situations is to jail someone. Rightly, people don't want to go to jail and the situation escalates. And as we're witnessing all over the US, the police are often responsible for this escalation, and that escalation leads to violence.

I think we need people trained in non-violent intervention who can offer long-term solutions to the problems these people are experiencing. Why not just replace a patrolman with a social worker who can call the actual police should the situation escalate?

I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think a lot of the situations you describe need a peace officer with legal authority to arrest. They mostly don’t need deadly force, and I think the walking threat of deadly force that gun carrying cops represent changes the situation often for the worse.

Is she a journalist or a social/political activist? Shouldn't she pretend to have a bit of objectivity and not become part of the news itself?

Twitter has been the greatest tool to expose the news industry and journalists for what they are. Propagandists and political activists with an agenda.

That said, I agree with those recommendations. I'll add one more. Police departments should almost exclusively hire from the communities they "serve" and/or require police officers to live in the community that they "serve".

The idea that the corporate press has ever been different is a myth. Do you really think the corporate press gave Reagan a fair shake? Do you know the history of the bull shit William Randolph Hearst pulled? It's always been like this. It's just before we didn't have social media where they could be called out on their bull shit in real time. Coaston is biased but she's open about that bias and makes a noticable effort to be fair to her opposition.

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