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Comment by sethammons | Hacker News Reader

> political persuasion and education level

Sorry, I'm not following. My understanding is that the job attracts bullies and I see bullies from all political persuasions and all education levels.

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The police job attracts most people who do not have a college degree, are white, and lean into conservative/justice-heavy politics. Many of those people are bullies. That doesn't mean anything about people that do not have a college degree, or white people, or conservative/justice-heavy politics, it just means something about the police job and the people who agree to take it. We're looking at probability of (white AND lower college education) given (bully AND police officer), not probability of (bully) given (white AND low college education).

The closer you get down to beat-cop-that-interacts-with-citizens, the less likely you are to find a four-year degree or "conventionally liberal" beliefs. (Not that a college education or liberal beliefs confer any useful predictors about common sense, wisdom, ethical beliefs, or honesty.) This implies that anyone with a four-year degree and conventionally liberal beliefs is going to have a hard time understanding or influencing police officers by using any tactics that work on other liberal college graduates.

I agree with you that there are bullies from all political persuasions and education levels, but a very specific type of aggressive personality self-selects into the police job at a higher rate than in other jobs that require a similar background. Additionally, even if 99% of police officers in the US weren't aggressive and weren't bullies, that still leaves 10,000 "bad cops". It doesn't take many "bad cops" to make people angry and uncomfortable with the police in general.

In case my original message wasn't clear, I'm actually criticizing U.S. supporters of police reform for wanting police work to be perfect and ethical without actually volunteering to become police themselves. These (mostly left-leaners) entrust the enforcement of civil society to a group of people who mostly don't respect or agree with them, which is ineffective and hypocritical.

Agree with a lot of your points, but I think you're asking for an unrealistic amount of self-sacrifice. Not to equate film to rl, but we're all familiar with Serpico, right? You think these power-hungry bullies are just going to let you infiltrate their gang and make changes for the greater good?

Maybe you're talking about leadership/management positions? But, even then, you're talking about one of the stronger unions in country and a group of employees who will fight your attempts at progress.

Again, I agree with just about everything else, and there isn't an easy solution, but I think your criticism is either unclear or misplaced.

It's interesting that you focused on leadership/management as an option--no, I actually really am talking about going to the academy, learning about escalation of force, patrol work, and basic procedural law, and then manning the city streets.

I'm not expecting left-leaners to go in and "take down the corrupt cops from the inside", just to go in and do police work. Most cops that get away with murder don't appear to be nakedly corrupt or part of an overt/explicit conspiracy to commit murder and theft; they're just incompetent, malicious, and protected by the brotherhood.

I have the same criticism of left-learners in other fields, like business and engineering. I come from a very left-leaning community and family; they will talk up one wall and down the other about things like bank loan disparity, police response disparity, treatment by retail employees disparity, etc. but very few of them actually consider becoming a loan officer or a police officer or a grocery store owner and then choosing how to treat people that would normally be treated poorly. People in my familial and social circle want to work $70-100k white collar administrative jobs and tell everyone else how to run society, when it would be far more effective if everyone with their same viewpoints simply become part of society and ran it themselves.

More self-sacrificial behavior and working in "real" jobs would also solve a lot of problems with what I saw as a flaw in liberal/left thinking. It's hard to be friendly and forgiving to thieves and violent robbers when it's your retirement plan that's getting jacked up twice per year and losing a third of profit to theft and another third to taxation.

> The police job attracts most people who do not have a college degree, are white, and lean into conservative/justice-heavy politics.

12.4% of police officers are black, compared to 11.9% of the US population. "White" is slightly over-represented as well. Both of these are mainly a result of "Other" and especially "Asian" being significantly under-represented.

The primary disparity is by sex. 84.5% of police are male.

https://datausa.io/profile/soc/police-officers

The percentage of police officers with a four year degree is ~30%, about the same as the adult general population.

Despite the fact that racial proportions match up fairly well with the population, I still have a very hard time believing that personal politics and intelligence/education levels match up with the population as well.

Good cops become bad cops, fired, or dead. None of those things are helpful. You can't change the system from within, especially not starting at the bottom.

If the US were to adopt the requirement of a police candidate having an A-level (or whatever the local equivalent is called, I can't figure it out), I predict the problem would solve itself within a generation. This requirement is not just an idea, but tried-and-working policy elsewhere.

And it's a requirement, or highly preferred in a lot of US jurisdictions as well.

Based on political contributions, police officers have donated their money to Democrats and Republicans almost in equal proportion for quite awhile... until 2018, when they became overwhelmingly Republican.

https://archive.md/bacrC#selection-1400.0-1404.0

What about based on internal beliefs and voting patterns? A "police" administrator at the city level is liable to donate a lot more money than a rural patrolman.

> I see bullies from all political persuasions

Absolutely not in equal amounts. The far right loves to infiltrate police forces while the far left is often very untrusting of the police.

I think the commenter you're responding to was just mistaking my assertion that most bad cops match a particular demographic due to the type of person to become a cop for an assertion that you can tell someone will be a bully if you know what their demographics are.

I think the recently-departed administration in the U.S. has done a good job of helping bullies self-select themselves into its party.

I find that bullies can be found in equal proportions in both parties, but I do agree that the type of bully who is willing to walk the street with a gun in the name of justice does have a more welcoming home in one major party than the other.

You should talk to some homicide detectives, or even the people who deal with the day-to-day issues at the street level in downtown areas. The things they see on a regular basis are pretty mind-blowing, and not just per-incident, but cyclically and systemically. Their perspective on government policy and it’s effects are far different than ours by the nature of their jobs. That is a partial factor in how they vote and how they donate, particularly as of late.

Their life experience is dealing with the disproportionately bad aspects of society, just like you probably have a disproportionately good existence. There are assumptions and biases that come from both these exposure models.

And maybe it’s just a problem with their delivery, but if you hear a political party (unfortunately the loudmouth fringe more often than not) incessantly talking about how you suck, should be presumed to be an evil murderer, and advocate policies that you feel put your daily safety at further risk, you might rethink your donations and voting history as well. Not defending the bad cultures and actors whatsoever, but there’s more room for nuance in discussing the issues we have policing this large, individualistic, culturally heterogenous, heavily medicated and critically unmedicated country. The problem is a hard one, so easy simple answers should be viewed with skepticism. There is no “just do what Norway does” answer to the problem that can be made in good faith.

Oh, I completely agree with you. My views on police are mostly based on first-person reports or bodycam footage of what detectives, highway patrol, etc. have encountered. I also have some personal experience with witnessing a violent arrest up close, and was incredibly grateful for the police in that instance. People who pitch hardcore police reform have absolutely no idea what the police deal with, and their childish demands to "abolish the police" are missing a ton of context about the depths of depravity and evil that exist within society.

I don't think that necessarily factually disqualifies anything I said already, though. The police are a necessary branch of the state monopoly on violence, but right now in the U.S. I don't think the demographics and tendencies of the police force line up with our collective expectations for transparency, honesty, trust, and justice. There are too many opportunities for intimidation and corruption that are taken and defended.

Edit: Also you're completely correct about one political party listening to and supporting the police.

> … one political party listening to and supporting the police.

Well, not the Capitol Police.

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