Comment by bdangubic
5 hours ago
> Anyone who wants policing to be effective and cares about crime / public safety would like them to have the best tools.
This depends on what the “cost” is for this “safety,” no?
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
The public safety issue has been ignored and denied (and "defunded") to the point where measures like this now appear necessary.
That seems like the general mantra that's currently being adapted to justify all sorts of power grabs and expansions of surveillance all over the world. "We would really rather not do this, honestly! But the crisis is just too pressing, and has been left unaddressed for too long. You all just couldn't behave, and now we're going to have to do it the painful way. This is just what is needed, it's the natural outcome."
But surely, it's not the entire world that's suddenly experiencing these waves of perceived crises, right? The statistics to justify tough-on-crime enforcement are useful for the proponents, but it's not the statistics that prompted them to act. They have their own reasons, and some marketable justifications just happened to be lying around. If they weren't there, they would find some other numbers or some other category of criminals that must be urgently pursued, anything to justify the power grabs. Reducing crime won't stop them.
no, they don’t