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Comment by fakedang | Hacker News Reader

Why is police stationed in the subway a bad thing? In civilized countries, they barely do a bad thing but are very helpful in deterring would-be offenders, or helping out the subway staff. Most of the time, they're lowly constables and recruits doing national service.

Of course, NY subway police is something else, and that's a very NY thing.

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> Why is police stationed in the subway a bad thing?

Mostly, it's just a waste of money. Just move the fee collection to taxes and you can free literally hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to stationing cops and stop pretending that fare skippers are going to financially cripple the city. Cops can't keep up with the kids anyway.

> Most of the time, they're lowly constables and recruits doing national service.

"Service" is a reach given most of what they do is... nothing. Literally just standing around as a physical manifestation of security theater. If they want to be useful they can build housing or distribute food or bring people healthcare.

It's "national service". A concept perhaps alien in the US, but basically most countries have a programme where eighteen-yr olds have to go through service in a government job, either in the army, police, fire or EMT. I mentioned that as the comment above mentioned the IDF.

Police standing around in subways is still a deterrent from bad behavior, especially when coupled with a justice system that doesn't reward criminals. See Japan, Korea, Singapore, Dubai, Israel, etc.

Well, until the cops start actually serving the public rather than being (again) security theatre, I stand by my skepticism. I understand other countries have much less organized-crime-like police cultures.

National service is not a concept that's alien to the US, it's just one that was massively delegitimized by the government sending tens of thousands of young men and women off to die in Asia, for ends many would characterize as "meaningless" or "evil", in hindsight. Abuse and exploitation of patriotism leading to distrust and deflated enthusiasm. (This is a dynamic Israel might want to pay attention to.)

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