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Comment by true_religion | Hacker News Reader

I agree with this statement. While it's not 'your job' to save the child, if you've already started along the path, you might as well see it through to the end.

If you never found the child's parents, you'd have to call CPS. Being prevented from finding the child's parents, just necessitates you move that step forward.

Of course, it's not 'your job' so technically you could abandon the child at any point but it does feel a bit heartless to give a kid hope, then say 'meh you're on your own, this is too troublesome'. As for just leaving the child with others who are complaining, I doubt that's a good idea. They were making no move to help, and bystander effect will probably keep them from ever doing a thing.

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This response may be practical but it's sad and indicative of the problem at hand. Society is so distrusting and litigative that the sensible way to help a child is to call the cops?? those ACAB guys that kill dogs?

I'm not even saying you're wrong necessarily, but the whole situation is fucking cooked.

How do we learn to trust each other again?

I find it ironic that you talk about distrust but then use ACAB, which I assume means "all cops are bad" (cursory googling).

Cops experience professional deformation. Most of the other humans they see at work have been bad or have been involved in something bad. This eventually has an effect on anyone. It's not a good effect. They start to expect it in other people, they start to assume the only folks they can trust are the ones they usually see doing the "right" thing (other cops). This turns them into bad people.

The effects only get more pronounced in a society where literally every lunatic could have a gun and could therefore murder you at the drop of a hat. Trusting a strange situation will mean your death, eventually. It's inevitable.

This is therefore not a matter of distrust, because you don't need faith or trust to know certain things about the transformative effect this would have on people. They live under mortal threat every second they're outside in uniform. They're going to be monstrous.

Exactly. I've worked for cops (taking care of police orphans/half orphans) for three summers when I was younger.

They're ultimately good guys (well, as good as any random guy is, not worse not better) but their experience of the society turns them into distrustful, clanic semi-sociopaths. The fear of other people reactions is ingrained.

The one that marked me is that they were afraid of local teens chatting up with our teens and learning they were police children, and passed that fear to all kids by saying extremely weird and violent shit they probably believed, but were ultimately lies. They wanted the children, most of them orphans, to avoid talking to regular kids outside of the camp, and lie if they did.

Not bad guys inherently, but clearly fucked up by their job.

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