zlacker

I know this is hard for some people to accept, but the police deal with the worst dregs of society every day so you don't have to. They get pissed on, stabbed, punched in the face, shot, and killed working for less than 1/4 of the pay of many software developers do. We bitch about JavaScript vs Golang while they have to wonder if the next person they pull over for a speeding ticket is going to pull a gun on them. They have no binary way of knowing who means them harm and who doesn't. It's an extremely delicate judgment call made in split seconds that often means the difference between life and death. In the meantime, how many murdered people's family members have you had to console in the past few weeks? How many rape victims have you had to listen from? How many dead bodies have you scraped off the pavement? How many suicides have you investigated? Nobody is in favor of excess force being applied to people, but I cannot support the over-the-top rhetoric about the by and large good people that work in the police force either.

>>chrisc+(OP)
> It's an extremely delicate judgment call made in split seconds that often means the difference between life and death

How come cops in many other countries are so much better at making these judgement calls than in the US?

>>chrisc+(OP)
Good thing those good people in the police force are doing everything they can to rat out the bad ones and restore their reputation. Oops.

>>FDSGSG+t
Are they? I prefer to ignore value comparisons not based on numbers.

>>austin+Z
German cops fired 85 bullets _total_ in 2011. Florida cops shot almost 200 bullets into a UPS truck, killing a hostage and bystander in 2019.

>>austin+Z
It's just one stat but the number of killings by law enforcement in the US is by far the highest in the first world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...

The gap with other first world countries is absolutely enormous.

>>chrisc+(OP)
> It's an extremely delicate judgment call made in split seconds that often means the difference between life and death.

Like kneeling on someone's neck for minutes. Yeah. I hope you dropped this: /s

>>austin+Z
Yes they are. Ask anyone living in the UK, for a good comparison.

Cops here are very well trained in de-escalation. Something American police probably never heard about.

>>chrisc+(OP)
I know this is hard for some people to accept, but the police in a free and democratic society are ultimately accountable to the citizenry yet some police behave as if they are only accountable to themselves. They shoot, club, pepper spray and choke people and yet only start to face justice for these actions as a result of a literal uprising.

Everyone accepts that the police have a hard job to do, yet the system has grown to shield bad officers from justice and reduce public accountability. This is a system driven by institutionalized racism.

>>chrisc+(OP)
I'm 100% with you on this. I see it as the worst job in the world. Everybody is against you and all you are trying to do is keep people safe. I do not think that it is acceptable however to shoot somebody that is on the ground with multiple people on top of them.

>>august+E1
There were 2174 incidents of murder/manslaughter in Germany that year... given that context, "85 bullets _total_" sounds like a massive orgy of violence on the part of German LEOs. There were 6 times that many murders in the US that same year, manslaughter not included.