Comment by csours | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csours | Hacker News Reader

We say: Hey, the police are killing us, could you please stop that.

No, we need to be tough on crime. It's just too bad that some people die, but I need to feel secure.

We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, could you please stop that. It looks like we need to reboot the justice system.

No, we need to be tough on crime. Why do you want the crime rate to go up?

We say: Hey, the police are still killing us, we need to abolish the police.

No, we need to be tough on crime. Why do you want everyone to be murdered in their beds?

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Imagine just showing up at each of those exchanges, what would it look like without the history if you just saw a point in time.

We all live with an internal moral history - what we thought was righteous and unrighteous at any point in time.

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In my canned example at the top, I didn't talk about the actual changes that took place in policing.

There's just no way for me to write my whole viewpoint on this situation in a comment. If it's possible for you to do that, then maybe you don't want a complex society with people who want different things and have different points of view. I deeply understand this perspective. It would be so nice if everyone just agreed with me. It would be so nice if everyone had the same moral history and there was no deep division and hatred. But that's just not the world we have. People are complicated and want different things. People have histories that lead them to believe a certain way.

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Anyway, I think any police organization or system of justice should be based on reduction of harm.

The solution isn't "throw more police at crime".

It's multi-faceted. It's not just make work/life more worthwhile either because there are places with relatively high unemployment but also low crime.

It's about civics and what society sets as acceptable boundaries and enforcing those boundaries and punishing those that stray too far.

Looks at the USA's wild west. It went from rampant violent crime to acceptable social order. The impetus often was locals wanting to transform from territory to union member state. The country required certain control over crime and usually the solution was to bring in sheriffs to control crime, bring in schools to teach civics and bring civilization (law and order) to a lawless place.

We all have a little policeman in our heads.

Where 'policeman' is a metaphor for justice and predictability. That in and of itself is not a bad thing to want.

>The solution isn't "throw more police at crime".

For clarity, do you mean that more police alone won't fix the problem by itself?

While I agree, I think more police could be part of the solution, or at least it's not an unreasonable point to bring up in the discussion.

Just hiring more people in a broken system is almost never a silver bullet, but there are times when it may be warranted as part of the solution. It's interesting to me how biased we are in application of this principle.

There was a particular discussion on HN where it seemed the prevailing opinion was "just hire more nurses to solve the healthcare problem." People were lambasted for hinting at the need to fix the systemic issues as well, because just throwing more people into a broken system rarely gets the results we want. If you ask nurses, they'll say you need to hire more nurses. If you ask police, they'll say you need to hire more police. It was hard for most to accept that idea when it comes one domain but not the other. I can't tell if it's something unique about the problem or just our biases leading the discussion.

>For clarity, do you mean that more police alone won't fix the problem by itself?

Yes. Sometimes we do need more police but the police alone cannot solve the issue. You also need a working system of justice and a system where people know they will be held responsible for wrongdoing (all around) and a system to handle people who need mental care (along with laws that allow the state to assume care for those incapable of caring for themselves) but again, we'd require the state not to abuse its power...

I still think there is normally acceptable behavior and non-normally acceptable behavior. Of late, we've swung too far on, "everything is normal". You wanna shit on the street? You wanna run sit naked in a restaurant? You wanna use intravenous drugs and get high in a playgrouund? You wanna just rummage and dump things from the supermarket aisles into your bag and run out?

The issue in the US at this point in time is that as soon as something becomes a partisan issue, people filter into their groups, and nothing can get accomplished.

The right should want to reduce police spending as part of fiscal conservatism. The left should want to reduce police spending for social issues (and reallocate money towards social services, maybe).

But noooo, it's now a political problem.

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