Comment by remirk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by remirk | Hacker News Reader

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You are saying you would like people to actually improve the country, but are saying defunding the police counters that.

When people say they'll want to defund the police, they are not saying there should be no police. People want a different police. There are structural problems that are not easily fixed, as we have seen. Making a new police-like organisation from the ground up is a way to fix those structural problems. I'm not sure if I agree that is the best solution, but people that do are trying to improve the country that way.

In fact, all people that are protesting do want to improve the world. But they realise that they are held back. See climate change and inequality. Those problems cannot be fixed without getting the people in power to help.

Destroying inner cities is not helping. Pulling money away from the police in the middle of crime spiking and giving it to experimental task forces that have little in the way of experience is not a great idea. Portland just decided that to combat all of the shootings and crime happening in the city's parks they will add more unarmed park rangers. This should go well...

> Destroying inner cities is not helping.

I wholefully agree with you. That is harmful. Though, it is only a small subset of the people who are guilty of that. So we should speak to those people instead of the whole group that is critical of the current police force.

> Portland just decided that to combat all of the shootings and crime happening in the city's parks they will add more unarmed park rangers.

Well, you have got to start somewhere. That are structural problems in the police force which aren't going away anytime soon. We should do something about that. We've learned that arming police more certainly isn't helping.

I'll be surprised if, in 10 years, we wouldn't conclude that Portland's efforts were helpful to come to a solution to the problem. Solving problems, also what OP is talking about, is a long term effort.

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