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Comment by john_moscow | Hacker News Reader

Well, how many people wearing masks (pre-pandemic) would be trying to avoid getting identified while committing a robbery? How many people pushing the officer away would be trying to attack them next? Does police have a way of knowing in advance, whether this exact mask-wearing arrest-resisting individual is actually a threat?

I don't think it is entirely fair to put 100% of the blame on the police. A much healthier solution would be to try de-escalating general tensions between the police and the population.

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"I don't think it is entirely fair to put 100% of the blame on the police. A much healthier solution would be to try de-escalating general tensions between the police and the population." Right, its not the fault of the armed people with godlike power to kill, arrest and detain to their hearts content based on nothing but a feeling or bias. Its the fault of the people being harassed and killed for not properly genuflecting before the the ones killing them. I am sure your user name is meant to be in jest but I am having a hard time thinking you are not just a human bot in a call center that is bad at their job.

Well, the day-to-day job of these armed people is to deal with other violent, and often armed people, before they go out on the general public.

Besides, there are quite a few cities that have considerably limited the police power by now. Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland for example. The safety of regular law-abiding people has considerably dropped. Murders are up, gun sales are up, almost every type of violent crime is up.

If you don't like police, go ahead, move to one of these cities. Or at least, search for some videos from them on DuckDuckGo.

I find it very disheartening and hypocritical to hear anti-police rhetoric from people living in 7-figure-property neighborhoods, completely shielded from the problems that the police is supposed to solve.

And no, I am not a human bot in a call center, I happen to be a Canadian that is actually satisfied with the way RCMP works here. And I don't understand why our southern neighbors would rather shoot themselves in their feet and have their cities burnt, than try to copy some techniques that do make police more efficient up here.

I'm not a person living in a 7 figure property neighborhood, and the cops definitly make this worse.

If you want to know about how great the RCMP, you should read how nice they are to help local police departments to give free one-way tours into the forest at night in the winter to minorities, by very helpfully shielding them from the evil bureaucrats.

Based on OP's arguments, I am not so sure he sees this as a bad thing.

I am sure you are satisfied, your police force kills civilians at a rate 1/3 that of the US. What techniques work there that we are ignoring? Does your police force use de-escalation? Majority of ours does not.

Perhaps the problems that the police are meant to solve are in part caused by the police? If I was always treated as a suspect after a while I may start to become resentful. If I was a minority representing 13% of the general population but represented 38% of the prison population I may start to become resentful and argue that there is a problem. Your argument that just because people live in peaceful 7-figure neighborhoods they should be grateful to the police for suppressing the riff raff, poor and minorities is very grating, classist and very much racist.

The NYPD has a budget of $10 billion dollars, and the only limits imposed on it were to please stop beating, murdering, framing and raping people. If those limits are too stringent I am not really sure where to go from here.

Let me give you some anecdotes.

I have been ticketed for speeding on both sides of the border. RCMP makes is extremely professional. The whole conversation almost sounds like getting a bill from a roofer guy, explaining how to pay it and why you should check your roof more often. U.S. cops have a lot more of the "Ha-ha, now you're mine, bastard" attitude. I was extremely polite and complying both times.

Police often camps out in public events, like car shows, building trust with people. Silly things like giving stickers to kids and letting them climb on police ATVs for pictures, or officers showing off the tech in their cars to car enthusiasts.

When it comes to controversial topics, optics is everything. When a couple of student protestors blocked a major train line protesting against an oil pipeline, and commuters got really pissed off, since they couldn't get to their workplaces, the officer arresting them looked like a 60+ year old grandma with the "stop fooling around, kids" look. Nobody got hurt and the media got zero chance to blow it to any kind of a scandal.

"U.S. cops have a lot more of the "Ha-ha, now you're mine, bastard" attitude." I am not sure how this helps your argument. You are saying that right off the bat the cops were aggressive for no reason and you were polite. How is that situation any ones fault except the cops?

Just to give some local context about Portland. We're getting some reforms pushed through, and it's now very likely the Mayor will lose his runoff election to someone that has promised far more substantial reforms. That said, the police continue to behave in unaccountable ways including blatantly violating the law on camera. This is going to be a very prolonged fight for reform.

Explaining how the US got to this state is a long discussion, but it helps to understand the origin of the police here in the south was to catch escaping slaves, and in the north was to keep "undesirables" out of wealthy neighborhoods. In more recent times politicians have used the War On Crime rhetoric to motivate people out of fear to vote for them, even though actual violent crime has been steadily falling.

The Canadian approach to police violence is the starlight tour -- rather than bringing someone to jail, drop them off in the middle of nowhere to freeze overnight.

Some parts of the US could take this approach, but there's a lot of places in the US that are either too nice out or there's too many fast food restaurants/Starbucks to take shelter in

They don’t have a way of knowing! Exactly!

This is why we shouldn’t be employing people whose job it is to snatch people they don’t know anything about, who just assume you’re a threat until YOU PROVE that you’re innocent.

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