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Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

One of my friends recently had her car damaged in a hit and run accident while it was parked. The cop who came to take the report bitched about how "the laws" make it hard to catch criminals, but pointedly didn't do anything about actually trying to gather evidence other than take a report.

This is typical of most police reactions to crime: they'll fill out some paperwork so you can file an insurance claim but they won't bother to do any actual investigation. We don't need armed people roaming the streets to do that, it's a clerical job.

After watching cops openly ignoring mask mandates over the last year and a half while they take their half-hour coffee breaks (drinking coffee for which they don't pay), I think that yes, we should literally abolish the police and replace them with something better. Right now, we're giving guns to the guys who were bullies and jerks in high school and acting surprised when they continue to bullies and jerks.

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>I think that yes, we should literally abolish the police and replace them with something better.

It’s really easy to say that but I have heard of no viable proposals to actually replace the police with “something better”. Nor do such proposals ever elaborate on how the new system would operate without vagaries and wonderful nice-to-haves like unconditional free housing for the homeless and UBI. It’s extraordinary easy to say a hypothetical system would be better. But how do you actually implement it?

I also think those brutish types you mentioned from high school might be the only kind of people willing to accept the dangers and anti-social elements that officers have to put up with. If you thought working in retail was bad, the kinds of people the police have to deal with are in a league of their own.

Some of the models I’ve seen involve staffing social workers to accompany officers on calls with the charge of defuse situations and connecting people with services. It sounds promising. In any case, they both frequently interact with the same usual suspects- might as well be from the same car.

Furthermore, that kind of partnership may diffuse some of the sort of macho banter between cops that seems to lead to embarrassing headlines.

I understand the thought behind this but in practice it is a bad idea.

You put the social worker in dangerous situation by putting them on the frontline before the situation can be assessed. The social worker feels unsafe and needs to rely in the armed police. This dependency creates a bond and they become part of the thin blueline family. In the end you are back in the same situation.

The other thing to consider is a social worker is many parent's worst nightmare. If they find the smallest issue during a police call your kids could be taken away. Many people are afraid to call the police because they will call a social worker. I see this policy affecting single poor mothers in a much worse way compared to now.

The other issue is a social worker isn't a hostage / crisis manager. They are trained to do very different things.

> I understand the thought behind this but in practice it is a bad idea.

So far it is turning out to be a rather good idea, and every claim you make regarding why this would be a problem is, in fact, untrue.

I’ll concede that advocates for defunding don’t have a great answer to violent criminals (although for some reason, the poor track record of our existing police is never called into question).

But by even the most generous of estimates, only around 4% of police time is actually spent on violent crime [1]. Surely we can start by defunding the 96% of situations that don’t require paramilitary personnel, and figure out how to deal with violence if and when we get to that last 4%.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/upshot/unrest-police-time...

I say get them out of looking for speeders and light-runners, first off. That can be a whole other job.

Boom, you now need... what, 1/3 as many cops? Even that many? Might even help at least a bit with the whole "driving while black" thing if the people tasked with this are just looking for traffic violations and aren't fishing for other things (unless you're dumb enough to offer them up, and they'll be recording, obviously)

> I say get them out of looking for speeders and light-runners, first off. That can be a whole other job.

Massive surveillance or pull-overs: pick at least one.

Pull-overs? That person better be prepared for shots fired in America.

Interesting dichotomy. Red-light cameras are a sort of proto form of surveillance policing. It’s an interesting case study, where you have some celebrating the safety they purportedly provide, others accusing them of being a corrupt cash grab, and several states outright banning them. For many, driving is a form of negotiation between themselves, other drivers, pedestrians, and the roads. The cameras don’t play fair; they throw away all context (it was 4am with nobody around, it was icy and a sudden stop would have endangered somebody etc). They have ended marriages when cheaters are caught with the wrong person or in the wrong place. They subvert established norms. They work, but we don’t want them to. Are they better than paying a police officer to do that job? Better than no enforcement? The jury seems to be still out on this topic, but it could prove instructive to future automated enforcement initiatives.

> The cameras don’t play fair; they throw away all context (it was 4am with nobody around, it was icy and a sudden stop would have endangered somebody etc).

How is this less fair? One of the biggest criticisms of the police apparatus is discretionary enforcement of the law. I bet Black motorists would overwhelmingly support a system blind to the "context" of the driver's skin color.

The danger of traffic stops is severely overstated: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/daunte-wright-da...

>It’s really easy to say that but I have heard of no viable proposals to actually replace the police with “something better”. Nor do such proposals ever elaborate on how the new system would operate without vagaries and wonderful nice-to-haves like unconditional free housing for the homeless and UBI.

Police should only be involved when an armed person is needed. Things like filling out police reports of crimes, noise complaints, and traffic violations can be handled by social workers who can call in cops when needed. That will allow for a huge reduction in the police force.

The proper approach is not to replace the police, but to transform the police, by implementing systems to systematically weed out any crooked, violent, lazy, and unprofessional officers. Such systems have already been implemented for many other professions, just not for the police, due to police unions and their huge influence on politicians. So the progress is very slow.

Progress may not be as slow as you think. Proliferation of body cameras on officers has done a lot to prevent bad behavior. Cops can't plant drugs/gun on someone, or lie about the facts of what happened very easily anymore. It also protects good cops from false allegations.

They sure have time to write marginal/dubious traffic violations?

I live in Marin County, and they wonder why voters won't pass their bond initiatives.

My father's best friend was a lieutenant in Oakland PD. They were so close he gave my father a "Get out of jail free card". It was just a business card which was signed on the back. If you commited a crime, you pulled out the card; you were let go. My father got out of a DUI with it. (I don't think they are handed out anymore?)

His friend was a level headed cop, a bit liberal for a cop even.

My father always wanted to hear about the big cases, or criminals they caught.

He finally told my father the truth. He told him we play chess in the basement for a good part of the day. He wasen't a beat cop. He was up their in rank.

My father was incredulous. He just didn't like the idea of government employees not out fighting crime.

I remember telling my father, I'd rather have a cop by a landline, rather than zooming around irritating citizens with pesky driving citations.

We finally agreed on something.

>His friend was a level headed cop

A cop that lets people drive drunk without consequences is not level headed to me. Nor is one that specifically lets their friends be above the law, especially for offenses that endanger others.

I would rather have cops ticketing motorists with excessively noisy vehicles, excessively bright lights, and who are not paying their vehicle taxes.

> A cop that lets people drive drunk without consequences is not level headed to me. Nor is one that specifically lets their friends be above the law

The cop that let him drive drunk wasn't the "level headed" one, but a different one who pulled him over and decided to give him a pass based on the "get out of jail free" card.

Those cards are not uncommon. They won't get you out of everything (it is up to the discretion of the cop you show it too) but they will get you out of a lot. [0]

I think such obvious corruption and double standards should be illegal, but hey, what do I know?

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gxa4/pba-card-police-court...

Yes! I think a lot of people would get behind "Fix The Police" over "Fuck the Police".

Both partisan sides have this weird cognitive dissonance where liberals support all unions except police unions while the right backs police unions unquestionably.

I'm independent because the party I wish we had would not be fighting for more or less government, it would be fighting for high quality efficient government!

Yes! There is such a thing as good government, and to me that means good people with a well-defined purpose and adequate resources. Not everyone can agree on exactly what that should look like, but I take umbrage with the notion that good government doesn’t and can’t exist.

Fix the Police has produced many feel-good policies that have not had an impact. Defund the Police at least gets people's attention. It may be opening the conversation to a range of options, but I’m afraid it may be also reflexively hardening some opinions.

How do you define efficient government?

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