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Comment by spaetzleesser | Hacker News Reader

I really hate that in typical US manner this issue gets pushed to the extreme so in the end a reasonable discussion can’t be had but it’s only a fight with everybody digging in and not listening to each other.

Abolishing the police was always nonsense but there are plenty of areas where police is overused and too aggressive. In my view there shouldn’t be police in schools or hospitals. The drug war causes a lot of unnecessary arrests and aggravation with a lot of neighborhoods. Bad cops often stay in the force without consequences for clearly bad behavior. Cops don’t have enough training so they aren’t prepared for difficult situation . The list goes on and on.

Addressing these issues would be good for cops, citizens and also public budgets. But instead the country chooses to have this stupid fight where the interested parties spend a lot of time distorting other views. Reminds me of the typical healthcare discussions. It’s very sad.

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I think the thing you're missing here is that the distortion (see the use of the word abolish here, the proposal is defunding) is completely deliberate.

This divide didn't happen by accident, it's the product of decades of deliberate political choices.

Totally that this is manufactured and a lot of people see problems only as something that’s related to winning an election. Still a sad state of affairs.

Social media algorithms amplify the most engaging content, and extreme versions of political statements are very engaging. I don't think it takes deliberate messaging tactics by one side or another for our current political climate to emerge.

The strategy has been in place since the 1960s. Read up on the history of anti-abortion in the US.

It wasn't like this a few years ago. Outraged responses are a feature of outrage culture, which is pretty recent. Media have been pushing it to drive clicks, and sell ads on cable TV, for years. Grifters push their instagrams, their vlogs, their books.

I think the decline started when University produced generation after generation of supposedly educated people that had no skill other than fanning the flames.

And social media has been the A-bomb against rational, paused discourse.

You need police in hospitals to maintain security for the patients in there. It's not uncommon to have incidents with people from the outside trying to assault/murder someone they know in the hospital. Criminals shot on the street still have to go to the hospital and this leaves an opportunity for their would-be-murderer to come in and finish the job.

Schools, it's sad but I'm in favor of school resource officers. Those people were good to have around and can serve as a role model.

You can call them “school resource officers”, but that doesn’t magically make them good. They are typically a role model for high school bullies who want to continue to bully after graduation (aka be a police officer).

> They are typically a role model for high school bullies who want to continue to bully after graduation

Are you saying that bullies are more likely to become cops if there's an SRO around? I'd really, really like to see a source for that.

They were not. The school resource officer when I was in high school used to tailgate student to get them to speed then write tickets. Entertainingly, his son was quite the cocaine enthusiast in high school. Now his son is the resource officer. Cops in schools is a waste of time and money.

Issues have to get pushed to the extreme because politicians drag their heels otherwise.

Corruption is the best business to be in. Police departments have no interest in oversight, beyond the amount necessary for leadership to protect their positions of power. And Police Unions are generally very powerful and dominate local politics.

> I really hate that in typical US manner this issue gets pushed to the extreme so in the end a reasonable discussion can’t be had

That's kind of the intention. It's easy to argue against "Abolish the police! Anarchy for everyone!". Not so much against "maybe we shouldn't send people with guns drawn to respond to unarmed individuals going through a mental health crisis" [1].

None of the real proposals for policing reform that have come out the protests are calling to get rid of the police. Pretending that they want that is a political fearmongering tactic.

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

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