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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

Police unions in some districts are incredibly strong. New York City is famous. That means when you try to charge the police, none of the other officers will want to testify against bad behaviour. Plus, there is bribery-lite with stuff like "Fraternal Order of Police" where you can donate money (no idea what they do with it), get a sticker for your car and you will be statistically much less likely to be pulled over in your car. (Really, I wish I were joking.)

A deeper question: Why don't other highly advanced democracies decay in the same way? For example: Why hasn't the same happened in Japan or Denmark or Portugal?

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We were supposed to have an aggressive internal affairs department, federal investigations, and federal prosecutors to address the possibility of local/state police corruption, since the prospect of that corruption was raised in the 1970's (or, depending on your perspective, the 1900's to 1930's).

The problem is that since the rise of the 1980's white conservative 'crime and punishment' voter we don't have executive-branch leaders who are willing to regard police overreach as a form of police corruption; In the bootlicker's mind, everything is an honest mistake as long as the police are hurting the right people.

> A deeper question: Why don't other highly advanced democracies decay in the same way? For example: Why hasn't the same happened in Japan or Denmark or Portugal?

My pet theory is that multi-party, coalition-based systems help a lot.

You have my vote! Multi-party systems really do seem less extreme as an outside observer.

my cousin's husband is a cop in Philadelphia. my cousin has a "courtesy card", signed by him, declaring that she's family. she shows it along with her license when she gets pulled over for speeding, and they let her off with a warning.

it's a literal get out of jail free card.

Sounds like Russia

Can confirm, NYPD has these as well. Between this and the ghost cars they drive, the illegal parking, flouting traffic laws, use of their law enforcement function as a political cudgel to be deployed and withheld on demand depending on the prevailing political climate - it is hard to see them as anything but an occupying gang.

I think the part you are missing is the sheer scale of our public services in the US. Sure it's like that in some parts of the country but in other parts it's completely different. A quick Google says that the US has ~18,000 police departments (by comparison, Germany has 16 and Japan as 1,250), I'm sure some of them are fantastic and others are corrupt hellholes, all depends on where you are.

>get a sticker for your car

In some cases, larger donations get you different stickers showing your level of 'support'.

> Why hasn't the same happened in Japan or Denmark or Portugal?

The purpose of police and their training matters a lot. That is not to say that police in other countries are saints, they just have a much different role in societies in western Europe compared to US.

I suspect the number of cops per capita also matters a lot. The U.S. seems to have very few by the standards of western countries, especially European ones, even though we have a more violent society.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/police-officers-per-1000-...

There are a lot of reforms that would have to be carried out to U.S. departments to essentially keep from just turning new recruits into more bad apples, but some of the problem may be that from the cops' point of view they just don't have time to deal with any crap. It might be weird to suggest that part of the problem with bad cops is not enough cops, and it's definitely not an excuse, but I bet it's a reason.

Don't assume the best of European countries. If and when they decay, you won't find out about it. The US is different because US people are loud. I submit this discussion as proof.

By the way, Japan is always different. As the saying goes, they are just like us, only more so. So, eventually, they will also decay and when they do, they will decay just like us, only more so.

    > Japan is always different

This is an interesting point. To generalise, I would say that Northeast Asia is significantly different (culturally and economically) compared to EU+USA+CAN+NZ+AU.

Both (South) Korea and Taiwan are considered highly developed. They also do not experience this type of "democracy decay" (my term). If anything, they are expereincing the opposite. Personally, I think this is due to both are still relatively young as democracies, so their democratic institutions, when tested with difficult issues, continue to strengthen.

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