zlacker

>>js2+(OP)
I know folks don't always click through, so I'll highlight what I found most insightful:

> Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. ... They have the legal capacity to use violence in situations where the average citizen would be arrested.

> So when we turn a problem over to the police to manage, there will be violence, because those are ultimately the tools that they are most equipped to utilize: handcuffs, threats, guns, arrests. That's what really is at the root of policing. So if we don't want violence, we should try to figure out how to not get the police involved.

> Political protests are a threat to the order of this system. And so policing has always been the primary tool for managing those threats to the public order. Just as we understand the use of police to deal with homelessness as a political failure, every time we turn a political order problem over to the police to manage, that's also a political failure.

>>js2+G5
I think that’s made much more true because that’s the image police forces in America have of themselves. “We’re here to beat up the bad guys”. Police here in Australia are far from perfect, but they are much more seen as part of the community. They don’t even carry firearms any more.

In Australia I wouldn’t hesitate to contact the police or talk to them on the street if something happened. (Just like I wouldn’t hesitate to call an ambulance if someone gets hurt). When I lived in the Bay Area that attitude seemed naive and stupid / dangerous.

>>joseph+8b
Police in the small US college town I live in is pretty much part of the community. I personally know many of the officers - and they are fine people. Even so, they are still a target for antifa agit-prop tactics. The playbook is always the same, catch the one cop that said or did, or appeared to say or do, the wrong thing, once, and you can tarnish the entire department, the entire profession, forever. And it works. Somehow we lost all perspective and have come to expect that our officers, whose jobs regularly confront them with mortal danger and the darkest parts of human nature, will always display the same perfect virtues we carefully signal everyday on Facebook.

>>zarkov+xl
> whose jobs regularly confront them with mortal danger and the darkest parts of human nature

Police officers in the US face 12.9 fatalities per 100,000 workers. In comparison, construction workers see 14.3, agricultural workers see 17.7, farmers and ranchers around 24 and truck drivers 26.9.

As for the rest of your argument, if the 'fine' police officers don't do anything to stand up to the bad police officers or adhere to the blue wall of silence: Then they are not fine people.

>>fzeror+MR
Also, the average homicide of working age males (87% of police are male) is about 10 per 100,000. This is slightly higher than the rate for police (about 8-9 per 100,000). The remaining 4.9 per 100k police fatalities are mostly car accidents, which is also pretty small considering how many miles they drive every day).

I can understand how it might feel scary, though. Just because they don't have much worse outcomes than the average American of their demographic doesn't mean that they don't have more terrifying experiences than average. That's not an excuse, though. Abusive parents are often reacting to past trauma that was inflicted on them, but we still shouldn't allow them to abuse their children. Protecting the public in a constitutional way needs to be the top priority. Officer safety and wellbeing come close behind, but they should still always be in second place.