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Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

That may be - it should be noted that criminals in the US are also much more violent and brazen then most of the rest of the planet. If your criminal population is packing heat the response tends to be much more aggressive. Its a bit cat and mouse.

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This is a perfect summary of that "toxic and deadly" culture. Why are police treated as a dumb tool that will always respond to violence with more violence? Why is the onus on the criminals to deescalate the situation? Why doesn't the duty of enforcing the law come with a bigger burden to keeping the peace? And why do the police not have any culpability in violence they helped escalate?

You don't think that is a response to their knowledge that cops will often shoot and kill them on sight along with the incredibly harsh criminal punishment?

In the EU if you get caught doing a crime, yeah you will get charged and punished, maybe take a billy club to the leg during an arrest, but nothing too extreme and you go to jail for a bit, maybe pay some fines, but you live and learn. In the US there is a good chance you get shot right away, if you aren't shot the cops will likely beat you and abuse you doing the arrest, the prosecutor and court will try and dump a decade+ long sentence on you even if there was no violence involved and the material value is only a few days worth of work, and the prison is a horrible environment by designed that often fucks people up mentally.

Harsh punishment for crimes is rarely a very good deterrent against crime, it just makes people who were desperate enough to resort to crime more desperate and determined to escape capture. If I had a decent bank account I could probably get most charges lowered to something acceptable in the US, but most people committing low level crimes usually don't have lawyer money and will have their life ruined with a ridiculous sentence.

Crime is down. Not because we have aggressive cops that shoot people a lot. https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in-u-s-cities-mid-year-...

That's what happens when cities stop reporting crime statistics

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-d...

Murder is down in line with the rest of crime. What that tells you is that even crime that's hard to fail to report follows the general trend.

Down from a massive peak in 2020/2021 when cities tried the "lets not enforce crime" approach. Still elevated from pre 2020 levels.

Not trying to dispute your conclusions, but I'd be wary of using the peak Covid years as a reference.

Okay, and? As long as crime is below its peak level, there’s no need to apprehend criminals?

Shooting people and high speed chases are bad tools for apprehending criminals. They are more likely to harm innocent people than criminals. Facing off with "violent and brazen" criminals doesn't change this, but also the fact that crime is down suggests US criminals are in fact, neither more violent nor more brazen than those in areas where police use less destructive methods.

> also the fact that crime is down...

This is not a fact. What is a fact is that many police departments stopped reporting crimes, so there are fewer crimes being reported, not that there are fewer crimes being committed.

https://www.aol.com/thousands-police-depts-stop-reporting-00...

There are myriad reasons why, but stemming the upward trend of reported violence makes politicians look better and we all know how honest politicians are.

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