Officer grab a 73-year-old woman, threw her to the grass, and twisted her arms

I think the police officer is in the wrong here, but imo the problems started because Walmart called the police. I have a friend who has worked in lost prevention at 2 different national chain stores, and both of them (at the time at least) had a policy that anyone stealing less than $40 of merchandise was pretty much left to go without much confrontation, or perhaps without any confrontation whatsoever. This story is an excellent example of why that policy is in place. If Walmart had let her go she would have stolen less than $14 worth of things. Even had it been malicious and intentional, so what. I can't imagine Walmart would decide, in retrospect, that this was worth less than $14.

Abolish the police. It is a criminal institution of thugs and mercenaries. “do you need to be arrested?” There is no excuse for any police department to exist anywhere at any time. It only serves the rich and the powerful and their needs.

Law enforcement is different than community caretaking and the people who execute the responsibilities and authority of these necessary societal functions should be different people. There should be sheriffs deputies and highway patrol officers to handle matters of purely criminal felony and civic disorder(speeding included in the last with substantial risk of the first) and all misdemeanor crimes considered matters for community caretakers(who should guilt and manipulate people into civically orderly behavior while providing them benefits that police won’t offer, like addict rehabilitation, employment opportunities, social and practical skills training, psychological therapy, interventions, and diverse other roles). Then for any serious violent situations we should have civil militia agencies with fully trained, bonded, and sworn militia members who are authorized to carry and to use lethal force and specifically equipped with comms to coordinate their activity with sheriffs departments(no authority to arrest, provides civilian muscle to assist in law enforcement protection). Of the three, only the latter should ever be authorized to use lethal force in anything but a self defense scenario, and the community caretakers should primarily be armed with non lethal methods.

None of this would apply of course to places like detroit where it does make sense to shoot first and ask questions later, but i defer my racist leanings by suggesting communities with internal issues should be under a mandate to internally recruit their policing. Eliminate the excuse and you eliminate the problem.

None of this would be hard for any western nation to accomplish All of the countries and locales where elements of this structure already exist are way happier places to live. There is no excuse. The only reason we have the structure we do is because of unmitigated authoritarian elitism. Defending it means defending totalitarian mindsets.

What’s the HN angle here?

(Never mind... misunderstood something important.)