Comment by bjourne
4 months ago
I think bored cops are a much bigger threat to Democracy than most crime. It's ironic that the less crime and the more efficient policing the less free we become.
4 months ago
I think bored cops are a much bigger threat to Democracy than most crime. It's ironic that the less crime and the more efficient policing the less free we become.
You don't deny that in the US, criminals do much more damage (death, injury, PTSD, destruction of property, unjust denial of use of property, the opportunity cost of avoiding certain places because of the danger of crime) than police do; do you?
In your answer, please stick to to concrete harms to actual people (living now or in the future) excluding any harm that is a harm only to an abstraction like Democracy or Freedom.
"in the US" Cause the US is the whole world? Cops may be less of a threat to Democracy in a third-world country, such as the US, precisely because rampant crime means they have less time to spend curtailing the freedoms of mostly law-abiding people.
'Rampant crime' doesn't mean that cops are doing something about it.
Solving crime is hard work, and dealing with criminals is dangerous work[1], and why would you work hard or risk your life[1] when you can do neither (and can instead brutalize or harass law-abiding people who won't fight back)?
In Seattle[2], emergency police response times are, on average, 70 minutes. Non-emergency response times are 3 hours.
(Meanwhile, the city's third-highest-earning cop was cited for falling asleep in their patrol car in a bus lane, while clocking in overtime. She should be breaking rocks with her teeth in state prison for overtime fraud, not given a badge and a gun... But the whole department is rotten to the core.)
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[1] Of course, America's cultural obsession with guns and violence means that cops often assume that anyone they are dealing with is actively planning to murder them... And are quick to pre-emptively use (in)appropriate levels of force.
[2] Which is not overrun by 'Rampant Crime' despite what professional liars on television zooming in on a single burning trash can might say.
I specified "in the US" because I don't know enough about crime or policing in the rest of the world for my thoughts on them to have any value.
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Over hiring of cops post-COVID is a major issue. Most municipalities spend more than 50% of their discretionary budgets on police salaries, benefits and pensions. Governments keep on hiring what will be expensive liabilities taxpayers will be on the hook for, for decades, since cops can retire at 45 and will draw from their pension until they die.
Indeed. I think people have been paying too much in taxes. Once tax revenue is diminished, all of this wasteful liberty-harming spending is supposed to correct itself. Regular workers don't have much of a choice in how much they pay, but businesses do.
> Indeed. I think people have been paying too much in taxes. Once tax revenue is diminished, all of this wasteful liberty-harming spending is supposed to correct itself.
My friend, the only thing that's going to diminish is public services that actually help people. The police state is the primary state organ dedicated to protecting people with political power from the hoi polloi, it's the one thing that's never going to go away.
If the past few thousand years of history is any indication, these people will wring every last cent out of you to pay a professional warrior class that will protect them from you.
Oh you're not wrong at all, but the police state can conceivably be much weaker, as I have seen it to be in various other countries, where the police mostly only affect people who're actually a harm to those in power, not bothering with enforcing stupid laws like anti-abortion laws. If I am not mistaken, the rich people with power don't really have that much to gain with anti-abortion laws, at least not in the short term. So yes, the police are not going away, nor should they, but even in the pessimistic case, they merit alignment with what actually preserves the rich and powerful. The US is a special case where anti-abortion laws are used as a means to get and maintain some votes, but I foresee it as slowly coming closer to the global median.
Got to get rid of frivolous seizures/fines too. Back in the '09 crash police in my state were ticketing people like crazy, for even the tiniest infraction, due to reduced tax revenues. They'll never willingly give up their salaries so long as a single route is left for them to suck up the cash.
Quite true. Do you have any solutions that come to mind?
I sold my car and have been at peace ever since. No more tickets. Believe it or not, but even when I lived in the distant suburbs, it was generally feasible to bike to the office, particularly if one lives very near to work. Now I live in more crowded suburbs where I can rely on Uber/Lyft or public transportation. If I had to purchase a means to transportation, it's most likely to be an ebike, potentially even a three-wheeled one. The main time when they aren't good enough is in deep winter when the temperature is about 10F or less. Always wear a helmet and highly reflective clothing when on these things, and mind the speed.
That's a given, because non-political crime (treason, insurrection, election fraud, coups, conspiracy to engage in any of the above) isn't a threat to democracy.