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Comment by Ar-Curunir | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think most cops “are miserable”. They’re in that position because they enjoy being in power.

The officer at the polling place I worked Tuesday in Brownsville NYC went out and bought everyone cold water cause the community center was so hot. That was nice of her.

I think a lot of the NYPD are fairly average humans who probably don't really enjoy... tackling people or whatever.

Definitely hear a ton about the one's that do though. And there's some real pricks for sure as we saw during footage of the summer protests and police response.

> The officer at the polling place

I’m sorry, the what now?

there was an election in NYC recently, and police were at the locations where folks cast ballots.

> police were at the locations where folks cast ballots

Is that normal? That seems massively inappropriate to me.

Yes it is normal. They are there to enforce the regulations around no campaigning within a certain distance, and other voting related laws. Plenty of crazies showing up insisting on inspecting ballots and stuff, and poll workers delegate dealing with this to cops.

Yeah, I think it's fairly normal to have an officer outside of or at the entrance to a polling location. They're not actually in the room with poll watchers, etc., and certainly nowhere near the private voting booths.

It has never felt inappropriate to me – maybe because I typically vote at a public school, where it's normal to see a crossing guard or public safety officer outside.

Seeing cops in public schools is also weird to people outside the US.

Also metal detectors at schools. Very weird and unimaginable in Europe

It's not normal. In fact there was a police officer from Florida if I recall correctly who was reprimanded for voting in their uniform. It's considered potential voter intimidation to have a police officer standing around at a polling place.

Oh man! Wait till you go to Penn station and see military/police (the line is blurry) on patrol:

https://i.redd.it/v1qol3qqfoq41.jpg

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-jtf-empire-shield-members-...

My understanding re: polling is for "election security" which... was a big deal nationally for better or worse.

Having some security at a polling place feels extremely appropriate. Any private security would run the risk of being partisan. The military would run the risk of having the ruling party order the military to do intimidation. Local police are the right choice.

But aren't police unions partisan in the US? Is a police officer standing outside a polling station representing their union's politics? Must feel so to some people.

They're standing there as the institution, not their personal opinions or unions. I think it's pretty benign.

Maybe, but at some point, every single human is partisan. Police officers aren't affiliated with a party, officially, so they are at least semi-neutral. And since local police live in the same community, they're incentivized to be civil to their neighbors. Who would want the scandal of doing something nefarious in their own town's polls?

Is it not? I think police's duty at polling place is to maintain order, nobody shouts, breaks the line, becomes violent, break things, creates chaos. If sny objection, follows the procedure calmly n within law.

They are most of the time near entrance. They are never near anywhere you cast the votes.

At my polling place (an elementary school gymnasium) the officer was in the entrance/hallway on his phone the entire time. Probably some easy OT for a day of more or less basically being a hall monitor.

Part of being a police officer (perhaps a huge part) is simply being present and visible. This "presence" generally coincides with any large gathering of people.

It seems completely normal to me for a police officer to be there and to have not to have been needed. Sounds like a peaceful event.

Presumably-armed police loitering outside a democratic process even when there's nothing going wrong seems very strange to people outside the US.

Places where where the police are there to ensure people vote the right way should be concerned. The US (and the other countries where readers of this likely live) doesn't have a history of forcing people to vote "the right way", which in turn means nobody worry's about it. Those (perhaps the majority of people on earth!) who live in a place where how you vote isn't actually something you are sure is your personal choice have reason to be concerned.

I thought police unions in the US often explicitly declared support for particular candidates? That'd be unthinkable in most countries.

The unions do. However the police officers do not do anything about people voting against the union candidates. That is police officers may want you to vote some way, but they still defend your right to vote against them. (at least for now)

I don't think it is helpful to use language like "loitering".

The police are present at high school football games, beaches during the summer, festivals, parades, large town meetings, etc. That isn't "loitering", that is just standard policing.

FWIW, the US has very decentralized policing, which is different than many other countries where the police force operates at the national level. Not sure if that is affecting the way people are thinking about this though.

If you told me the FBI was present at a voting location I would wonder what is going on. Local police officer, nope.

> The police are present at high school football games, beaches during the summer

These aren't normal for a western democracy, if you were wondering.

I can't speak for "western democracy", just my experience in the US.

It's a rule of thumb that roughly 10% of the NYPD receive 99% of the complaints and claims of excessive force. 90% of the NYPD is fine. The issue is that there is no meaningful oversight mechanism to correct the 9% that behave inappropriately sometimes, or the 1% that are serial offenders and are dangerous to the public. Other cops stay silent about it because there's nothing more dangerous to health and career than being a cop that rats out other cops. The civilian oversight board can't even look at records without the permission of the police.

Brief article about police complaints data:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/datablog/2020/aug/04/new...

Example of the ineffective oversight:

https://www.propublica.org/article/my-family-saw-a-police-ca...

Most megalomaniacs I know aren't particularly happy people. I don't think the sudden outbursts of rage that we've come to know from cops are because they're zen inside.

I don't think so either - but the ones that are being punished aren't in that position because they're happy with or believe in department policies.

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