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Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

> The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.

We really need to have a reset on law enforcement in this country. I don't think anyone's happy with the police anymore, federal or otherwise.

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That's manifestly untrue. There's probably a way to write that sentence to make it much less trivial to refute, but it will make a claim much more specific than "nobody is happy with the police". As written right now, the opposite is closer (somewhat) to the truth.

Unless you're a lawyer or a lexicographer, in a good faith conversation with someone smart, you rarely have to talk about the meanings of the words you're using. So if you have to, it's a sign that you're talking to someone stupid or intellectually dishonest. - Paul Graham

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1598272844106174466

Totally disagree with that statement here on HN. The word “conversation” is doing a lot of work. Hehe

In face to face conversation with others, word choice is not critical because in conversation you can work out what someone means or intends over time. Written form is just not the same.

No, it's true. Same with domestic intelligence - they're all rotten. Ask anybody.

Unless you identify anything with a political scope and then you're back to adversarial positions.

It's mostly meaningless to cite popular support for anything that doesn't clarify how it'll be completed by Congress.

People are willingly allowing broken policies as long as their perceived harm is greater on their perceived "enemies"

There are lots of us who are happy with police. It's a hard job, and now it's politicized. Everybody's an armchair quarterback. It doesn't pay well. And bad guys sometimes try to ambush and kill you.

Still not convinced? Talk to some family members of cops. I am confident you'll come away with a new point of view.

I very briefly dated someone whose brother was a police officer when I lived in DC, and prior to grad school I was encouraged to consider law enforcement by the very field office I’m complaining about a little over ten years prior to this thread.

I find your comment condescending considering it’s in reply to an admittedly emotional rant stemming from the fact my local police failed so thoroughly in their mission it made an FBI agent’s eyes go wide and say they’d open a civil rights investigation.

(Though maybe they were more focused on the fact I also very bluntly said “I’m not a Russian spy” and listed off the people making want to re-enact the scenes from the hit HBO television series “The Americans”.)

Being a police officer is less risky than say, a construction work flagger, but people feel coerced into giving them unearned respect since a construction work flagger can’t misunderstand on purpose and shoot you dead if you don’t kiss their butt like they’re an aggrieved military officer in 1930s Germany they will lie through their teeth and not follow through on their claim that they will do their damn job.

Please pick up a copy of “Rise and Fall in the Third Reich” and get back to me before replying again because I think you have no grasp of history.

I was in the military and served in country. I get it's a dangerous job with arduous hours and on average pay that doesn't match the areas they serve.

That doesn't mean the principles and guidelines that drive our policing forces don't need a rewrite from time to time. I'm less critical of individual cops, and less inclined to blast the profession, but what I said is the best way I can express disatisfaction without getting personal or rude, to be quite honest.

I have 3 officers in my family, 1 of them being a parent. I’d have to disagree, but not strongly. So would they, they are a lot of fair criticism of how police are trained these days and a fair level dislike. My family members needed a degree, require extensive training comparably, and had more programs with the community.

Even talking about the police as a collective from the perspective of the US is odd. So many departments are different, they are not fully one entity.

The most important thing is that it is just that, a job.

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