Comment by weakfish
3 days ago
I think you’re spot on about specialization. Police are chronically under-trained and unequipped to deal with such a broad swathe of what they’re expected to, from speeding tickets to mental health crises. As long as there’s a combination of ill training, high pressure situations, and bad pay, there’s going to be terrible outcomes.
I definitely think that there’s a ton of ways in which the American police state is a horrible shitshow that attracts power-hungry assholes, but I also think that the nature of the job as it is currently set up inevitably will lead to mistakes from cops who wouldn’t have violent behavior otherwise.
That doesn’t excuse it, of course, but it’s important to understand the circumstances that create horrible outcomes.
> the nature of the job as it is currently set up inevitably will lead to mistakes from cops who wouldn’t have violent behavior otherwise.
What if we focused available resources less on arming police with military equipment and more on better training? For example, the $80B+ that Congress gave ICE (an agency that previously had budgets closer to $10B) could be used to train officers on better community engagement, de-escalation strategies, suspect identification (to avoid relying on things like race, ethnicity, or language), and trigger discipline. It may come at the cost of having fewer MRAPs, body armor, or shock gloves[1] but could result in fewer civilian deaths.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/ice-electric-shock-gloves-85ff746...
I absolutely agree! Maybe the rest of my comment didn’t emphasize it enough, but that’s exactly where I was going with my point. The incentives and training (or lack thereof) are wholly militarized and not suitable for real community engagement.