Comment by hollerith

4 months ago

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.

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hollerith

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bjourne  4 months ago

"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.

  • vkou  4 months ago

    '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.)

    ---

    [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.

  • hollerith  4 months ago

    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.

    • ThrowMeAway1618  4 months ago

      >I specified "in the US" because I don't know enough for my thoughts on them to have any value.

      Yep. There. FTFY. And you're welcome.