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Comment by ta8645 | Hacker News Reader

That's incredibly naive. Spend some time watching police body camera footage. By and large, the police are doing exceptionally well in hostile and difficult circumstances. We're all safer because there is a real counterforce to tough guys, mafias, and paramilitary strong men. They don't exist or are heavily controlled, because the police are a powerful force for good. Taking away the police would create a power vacuum that would be filled faster than you can imagine; and by people who will treat us all much worse than the police ever have.

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And yet, many wealthy countries have no worse problems with crime than the US, despite having a fraction of our police forces (per capita) and prison populations.

The real naivete is thinking the US police force is the best policing model on the planet, when that's demonstrably false.

America's crime problem isn't caused by the behavior of police while arresting people.

If you make that conclusion after watching police camera footage, aren’t you making a classic survivorship bias fallacy? Those films are not a randomly-selected representative sample. Those films that you watched were those films that

1. Were allowed by the police officer themselves to be recorded in the first place (i.e. the cameras were either deliberately switched on, or at least suffered no timely “camera malfunctions”)

2. And also only films which made it through the filter of being considered suitable for publication, after the fact.

What you have actually been watching are carefully-selected propaganda pieces that, even assuming they are indiviually true and unaltered, are undoubtedly presenting a false view, supporting the powers that select them.

Such videos are not the only basis on which to make the argument I put forth. But you'll also find many sources of police videos that are not "released" by the police, but secured by FOIA requests. There are of course examples of videos with police planting evidence, or using excessive force, or other unfortunate things. But by and large, you'll see over and over, the police behaving admirably and in the public interest.

> you'll see over and over, the police behaving admirably and in the public interest.

Where do we see that? The police camera footage? As I explained, those are not reliable.

Note that I am not arguing against police in general; I agree with you that they are necessary. But your stated source is fundamentally flawed.

No, it's not fundamentally flawed. It _may_ be flawed, but just because you imagine that the available videos are somehow skewed in one way or the other, does not mean that you're correct.

As I stated, if it was simply one source of the videos, with one agenda, then perhaps you'd have a stronger argument. But in fact, that are many more people who are interested in the videos that expose police corruption, and they tend to be more circulated than the others. That is the benefit of the FOIA; as citizens we can get access to police body cam videos, when anyone alleges that there has been malfeasance in a given case.

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