It is a really bad idea to make soldiers do police work.
They were not recruited with the kind of mental stability in mind that you need to deal with all the BS cops need to deal with.
They were not recruited with the kind of mental stability in mind that you need to deal with all the BS cops need to deal with.
I honestly can't tell if this is meant to be serious or in jest.
I agree with the sentiment, but the reality is neither are cops.
Among soldiers that type is way more common as they are not being filtered out since they are not exposed to it. (The NCO:s being mean in boot camp is not the same thing since the soldier is a subordinate.)
My main point is that people seem to severely underestimate what the police deal with. I would not think that soldiers as a group would cause more problem than say Walmart clerks (lets pretend they would get proper training) if given weapons and power to patrol subways.
I've made this argument a lot of times with friends. I hyperbolically claim that the average police is a better person than a Walmart clerk, and I got a lot of shit each time. There is this saying that "power corrupts" but I rather believe that "power gives the ability to show that you are corrupt".
Among Walmart clerks there are probably people that really really can't "take shit" that would never pass basic training of soldiers due to anger management issues. So like, the claim could probably be 'cops > soldiers > Walmart clerks' in handling civilians without bad outcomes.
In addition to having to pass a medical records screen, most US servicemembers come from the middle three socioeconomic quintiles of the population. It is literally a middle-class institution. Yet the trope lives on of the supposedly stupid military member who only joined because they had no options.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-bragg-new-york-manhattan-ny...
“crime across the five boroughs is nowhere near the levels seen in the 1990s, and while there was a rise in 2022, those figures are already trending down this year.”
Your perception of your own personal safety is not an objective measure of crime
Reported crime is not an objective measure of crime and should not form the basis of a policing strategy.
When police cease to act on reports of crime, people have no incentive to report crime (except for major property crime which might be covered by insurance, and things like murder).
This is why we can't trust the crime stats where I live (San Francisco).
>Reported crime [...] should not form the basis of a policing strategy.
and:
>When police cease to act on reports of crime, people have no incentive to report crime.
Logically, then, reported crime should form the basis of a policing strategy, since it creates an incentive to report crime.
Past policing strategy means that current crime stats are unreliable. These current crime stats should therefore not form the basis of a future policing strategy.
If we're optimizing for getting results today, policing strategy should not rely on the flawed crime stats we have today.
If we're optimizing for the long term, then sure rely on crime stats, but first make it easy to report crime.
People will report crimes that:
- they think the police will do something about, and/or
- they need to report in order to file an insurance claim
If your car window gets smashed and you're not going to report it to your insurer lest it raises your premium next year, and if you know the police aren't going to investigate, why would you report it?
I would guess, on average, that they're more mentally stable than, on average, police considering that many go into national guard service to fund their college aspirations.