zlacker

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+(OP)
we should convert 80% of cops with guns to investigators, and civics officers who teach civics and encourage civility in the communities in which they live. we don’t need that many cops with guns on the street, as there’s very little violent crime relatively speaking.

>>js2+(OP)
I think it’s insane to expect police to handle those issues. The only thing they can do is “clean up” after the problems that society has otherwise failed to deal with. The very nature of their role is adversarial with the citizenry. They’re also under no obligation to protect anybody from anything. They carry guns to protect themselves, not you and me. If somebody intents to harm you, the best you could reasonably expect from the police is that the perpetrator will be prosecuted once they’re done with you.

>>clairi+u3
If you believed such a role was appropriate to establish in society, why on earth would you want the police doing it?

>>js2+(OP)
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.

>>js2+(OP)
This framing of the police seems very strange to my Canadian sensibilities. I'm curious about whether Americans largely agree with this description.

>>Americ+m5
You do need some people to be in charge of violence. If you make that their only job you'll be in a situation of hammers seeing nails wherever they look. You'll be much better off assigning that unavoidable violence duty to people whose main responsibilities and qualifications lie elsewhere.

>>usrusr+E7
> If you make that their only job you'll be in a situation of hammers seeing nails wherever they look.

That depends entirely on how much power you give them, and how much accountability you impose upon their use of it. The primary role of police in society is to simply be the wide end of the funnel for the incarceration pipeline. Trying to give them duties that conflict with those objectives is simply always going to fail. Personally I wouldn’t want my children receiving civics instruction from somebody who has to hedge against the possibility that one day they’ll be trying to put them in jail.

>>jbay80+k6
As an expat Canadian living in a suburban county in the US, my personal interactions with the police here have always been cordial engagements as peacekeepers and caretakers of the community. I have called for welfare checks on neighbors, called the sheriff when I found a garage opener on the street, that kind of thing. Of course they were present in the aftermath of a case when a highschool kid entered a house and shot another highschool kid (who lived, surprisingly), a real shock in the sleepy community I live in. They asked around if anyone had video of the suspect approaching or departing the home.

But maybe that's just me, as a Canadian, with unrealistic beliefs that the police are on my side.

>>jbay80+k6
Canadian police are no different. Living under a dangerous illusion.

>>joseph+s5
I don't know what part of Australia you're in, but literally every cop I've ever encountered here carries a firearm.

They also have a pretty decent rep for brutality themselves, particularly if you're indigenous.

So you are presenting a very misleading view.

>>joseph+s5
Just to correct you on firearms. Police officers in Australia are generally issues firearms (semi-automatic pistols).

>>jbay80+k6
I don't. Whether or not you agree with this gross oversimplification is going to depend on your worldview, your experience and whether you feel disenfranchised by the system. It has nuggets of truth - the police do step in to handle violent criminals - but this assessment is largely a subjective interpretation.

>>jbay80+k6
Yes. Generally speaking, the expected value of any encounter with police is negative. They generally won't help you (although they may call someone who can help), but they might give you a hard time. The most common "good interaction" is one where they show up, insinuate that they could make trouble, and decide not to.

It's slightly better in very small towns where everyone knows everyone and e.g. the chief's kids go to school with your kids

>>js2+(OP)
I find this silly. It acts as if people are incapable of assessing situations and then selecting the best action based on that situation.

Yes, police have the authority to use violence; that doesn't necessarily mean they have to have some sort of essence of violence that drives them to be violent all the time. Indeed, police in many situations do successfully negotiate situations without employing violence. So, clearly resolving situations peacefully is possible even while maintaining the capability of violence; just, often the police have no particular incentive to do so.

Indeed, you can look at the military; soldiers are also violence workers, and yet they seem to be much better at not being violent than the police are, staying disciplined and not firing until the rules of engagement allow them to, where the police seem to often start shooting as soon as they get a bit scared.

The problem is there's hardly any accountability; the feedback loop is horribly broken. A police offer's incentive ought be to employ violence precisely and only when it is called for. To, y'know, correctly use their judgment to discern in the moment what action is most appropriate. It is far from impossible! But since there's minimal accountability for police, well, that's not what happens.

>>Americ+25
Police count the bodies so to speak. Preventive/interventive policing doesn't fit well in a free country. Policing in free countries is pretty much a reactive system.

For example, in the recent mass protests, the police generally stay pretty chill until something triggers them -- one too many water bottles thrown after curfew, or whatever. Relatively, minor offenses by a few people in the crowd can trigger the police to shutdown the entire protest or the entire city. They can't be expected to do much else, except stand still as more bad actors (emboldened by police non-action) keep ramping up their provocations, eventually leading to the same outcome. Crowd dispersal and mass arrest is really their only tool when things start to slide out of control.

I can't imagine how a young police officer feels when their age peers are screaming epithets at them inches from their face, when last Tuesday some of the same people were crime victims and damn happy to see you. The old cops probably have zero fucks to give at this point.

Mayors and Chiefs are also stuck between doing too little or doing too much. Many careers have been ended by going too far in either direction.

It is interesting to see how different cities are handling the mass protests. I think LA and Atlanta are doing well now. They seem to calmly start arresting everyone who is still out right after curfew. I think last night, Atlanta began dispersing the crowds 30 seconds after curfew (they did use tear gas though). Similar for LA, where the cops and national guard slowly corner curfew violating groups of people and drivers. Then they systematically arrest everyone.

In contrast, Seattle, waits and waits hoping everyone will just go home, but that doesn't seem work. Eventually, it is late and inevitably the police get triggered and then it is tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber bullet time.

The Seattle process seems like it is designed to guarantee violent confrontation between protestors and police. Where the LA process seems like it designed to clear the streets safely before it gets dark, enabling LA police to focus on rioters or looters (if any)

Edit-to-Add:

Watching live as the Seattle Mayor is addressing a crowd at the City Hall, she can barely be heard over the crowd booing her. She is not going to get an outcome she is hoping for. I expect more violent police/protestors confrontation tonight.

>>glitch+q9
I'd like to know why you think so. In my experience, at least in Vancouver, police tend to use violence and force as absolutely the last resort, and generally play a lot more of "social worker" type of role, especially when it comes to handling issues associated with drug addiction in the downtown east side.

But I could be very wrong so I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints. Or maybe you're thinking of different organizations that I'm less familiar with (perhaps the RCMP?)

>>Sniffn+ia
The military aren't police.

Yes, they are pretty good at RoE, and when it's time to shoot, they shoot the hell out of their target. But their job is distinctly not to spend all day in pursuit of individual criminals and apprehending them.

Military tries to avoid contact with criminals until it's fireball time.

>>kenz0r+A9
I thought British police mostly don't carry firearms.

>>js2+(OP)
I wonder if it would work to have the police split into two separate units (kind of like how the swat team is separate). So you have a general response police unit, which is unarmed or lightly armed (taser / nightstick, etc). They would respond to most situations, and would be highly trained in de-escalation techniques. Then have the backup units be the muscle. In situations that they feel are dicey, the backup could show up at the same time, but hang back unless they are needed.

The main problem with this is that they don't know what they will be facing when they get to the scene. In most cases things go smoothly (traffic stops, domestic calls, detective work). But when things go bad they go bad quickly.

Of course if the first-responding police wore different uniforms, then there may be less chance of escalation. And people would know that as soon as the first responder has to call backup, then things will get really bad for them -- kind of like if you harass a social worker, you will have a very bad day.

>>haecce+4c
They don’t, but Australia is not part of Britain, so different rules may apply.

>>jbay80+k6
I'm an american and I do not agree with the description.

If I was ever in a bad situation and a cop suddenly showed up, I'd feel huge relief.

>>jbay80+Sa
>In my experience, at least in Vancouver, police tend to use violence and force as absolutely the last resort

Meanwhile on /r/all today... https://old.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/comments/gvu8fz/cana...

>>gowld+eb
Sure! The military shouldn't be police, and the police shouldn't be military. My point is just they suffice to demonstrate that it is possible to be a violence worker, and yet employ that violence with discretion; and to say that the police necessarily cannot is expecting too little of them.

>>js2+(OP)
Abroad in well-developed nations with healthy economies, violent police aren't so much a thing. Our police mimic our own American society, which is inherently violent and promotes criminality (through a draconian justice system that has been dolling out harsh penalties for minor crimes for decades, allows white collar crime to thrive, promotes racial injustice through segregationist state laws, removes social support for the vulnerable people who are most likely to become criminals through necessity, etc). And we're surprised that within this framework, the authorities abuse all the latitude we give them. American police aren't uniquely screwed up, they're just American.

>>jbay80+k6
To directly answer your question, I -- a brown man -- have never had a bad interaction with police. I assume Canadians are also annoyed when given tickets, but really police have been nothing but helpful, and I feel free to approach police officers and ask questions.

My dad -- also brown -- has also had the police called on him (usually because he's berating someone at a store or something), and the cops have only ever diffused the situation, never added to it.

>>js2+(OP)
Another interesting fragment:

> Q: Are the interactions that are happening right now between police and protesters something that you think is predictable? Or is this something new that we haven't seen before?

> A: It's not completely new; it's just the intensity of it compared [with], let's say, five years ago during the Eric Garner and the Mike Brown protests. What we're seeing is really an immediate escalation to very high levels of force, a high degree of confrontation.

> And I think part of it is driven by deep frustration within policing, which is that police feel under assault, and they have no answer. They trotted out all the possible solutions: police-community dialogue sessions, implicit bias training, community policing, body cameras. And it just didn't work. It didn't make any difference. And so they ran out of excuses.

> So the protests today are a much more kind of existential threat to the police. And the police are overreacting as a result.

>>js2+(OP)
> police are violence workers

That's a rather pejorative way of expressing the point. (Thanks NPR.) It would be better to say that policing is about protecting law-abiding citizens from people who are acting antisocially and often violently.

Many of those people are simply criminals. They belong in prison, and often force is required to get them there.

Others are experiencing mental-health problems to varying degrees. Some force may be required, but it's a lot to ask that policemen also serve as social workers, psychologists, etc. The place I live has a parallel organization to provide this, and they work hand-in-hand with the police. It seems to work pretty well.

The lack of such a parallel organization is not a failing of policing, though. It's a failure our elected politicians, and perhaps ultimately ourselves.

>>djrobs+x9
Yes most police in AU carry a firearm.

No they don't have a 'decent rep' for brutality, whatever that means. Comparing AU police to US police is insane. Every encounter with police like a traffic stop in the US is a nonzero chance of getting killed. That's not at all comparable to Australia where there are no tasers and the use of lethal force is in the single digits per year nationally.

The view you're presenting is significantly more divorced from reality than the GP. Just like GP said, calling the police in the states even if you need their aid, is a gamble. In Australia I would not hesitate to call or interact with the police under any circumstances. Even in the immediate vicinity the Bourke St incident, I felt safe approaching and interacting with the SRG guys decked out in their military gear and automatic rifles. They went out of their way to make sure me and people with me got a safe corridor to leave the area. In the states, that'd be about a 100% chance of getting shot.

>>bdamm+X8
As an american living in Canada, I can assure you it's not much better here -- cops are generally cordial to my white affluent self, but black and indigenous people, especially those in poverty, are not served by this justice system.

>>derekp+oc
" So you have a general response police unit, which is unarmed or lightly armed (taser / nightstick, etc). They would respond to most situations, and would be highly trained in de-escalation techniques. Then have the backup units be the muscle. In situations that they feel are dicey, the backup could show up at the same time, but hang back unless they are needed. "

That's how the Brits do it and I think the Germans too.

>>jbay80+Sa
There’s no contradiction between abusing you wrote and police being violence workers. Police cannot do their jobs without resort to the threat of violence and occasionally actual violence. The degree of restraint varies wildly between different forces but that does not. When traffic wardens, paramedics, social workers or firefighters need someone to do legal violence they don’t do it themselves, they call the police. They are one of the forces the state has delegated its monopoly on the legitimate use of force to, along with the military. They are not primarily in the business of violence, like the military, but they can’t do their jobs without the capacity to be violent either.

>>joseph+s5
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.

>>missos+6e
You are also greatly exaggerating the risk to citizens in the USA when calling the police. The risk is not to the caller, the risk is to the alleged criminal that may get manhandled (or shot) way out of proportion to the offense. But you don’t make a mental “death chance calculation” when you call the cops.

>>js2+(OP)
Just because someone has the ability to escalate to use force, does not reduce them to being a 'violence worker'. A parent has the ability to punish a child, is the parent a 'child punisher'?

>>downer+Nd
Agreed. Police are, within our borders, uniquely permitted to be "violence workers". That is their core competency. Everything else that can be accomplished by others should be.

>>seibel+1g
> You are also greatly exaggerating the risk to citizens in the USA

"Noor was convicted of third degree murder and second degree manslaughter for killing Ms Damond Ruszczyk just minutes after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her Minneapolis home in July 2017."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-08/mohamed-noor-sentence...

> The risk is not to the caller

Just yesterday there was news coverage of a store owner who called police for aid against looters and was attacked and handcuffed by those same police when they arrived on the scene.

Also, incidents like this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/26/kazeem-oyen...

Any single one of these stories would provoke a national outcry here. They're unthinkable here. But it's everyday life in the US.

> But you don’t make a mental “death chance calculation” when you call the cops.

Yeah I do. When I was visiting the states my friend was instructing me to do things like turn on my interior car light and slowly put my hands on the steering wheel and do absolutely nothing that could possibly provoke the cop. That sounded fucking insane to me, coming from Australia.

>>seibel+1g
Good luck with that.

Because domestic calls are so unpredictable in a gun-owning society, callers can expect to see a drawn gun pointing at you.

The police often do no-knock residential intrusions, while throwing a grenade into the house.

(For non-US readers: I'm not exaggerating. "Dirty Harry" movies are documentaries about living in the US.)

>>djrobs+x9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...

US 30.4 vs Australia 1.7

So yeah, there are are issues with police in Australia, but the issues are far more extreme in the US.

>>joseph+s5
Based on this comment I can infer two things: 1) You're not aboriginal 2) You've had very limited interactions with police officers

They definitely still carry firearms, and (although they're not as bad as american police) they definitely do abuse their power.

Just this week we had yet another story about this: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/02/video...

>>Ididnt+oe
In Britain the Tazer is considered a firearm (after all you can't have one), and so only trained officers can carry them. A great many officers are so trained, especially in some urban areas, but not all of them by far.

They do all have extensible batons and training in how to use that to defend themselves against somebody who is a bit handy with their fists or waving a blade about while they retreat, as well as training in how to de-escalate.

Even when there's an armed suspect retreating is very often the appropriate thing. Because you've got time and numbers on your side. Why risk getting stabbed (or shot) to make an arrest now, when in the not too distant future the suspect will be asleep and you or your colleagues can trivially disarm them?

There are scenarios when police need an immediate armed intervention, but they just aren't (and shouldn't be) common enough to justify giving every single cop a handgun and the training needed to use it effectively.

Of course the Americans seem to have largely skipped the second part of that, which doesn't help at all.

>>js2+(OP)
I am from Mexico and --at least in the environment I grew up-- we don't have a positive view of our police. I don't know anybody who thinks of them as heroes. Same with the military.

So I always found it fascinating how the police --and its public perception-- is portrayed in US media.

>>joseph+s5
> They don’t even carry firearms any more.

That's certainly not the case in Victoria. Aussie cops might be better than American ones, if you're respectable looking, but they still have the same attitude that comes with carrying a gun and being willing and able to use it.

Victoria and NSW police have a bad track record when it comes to abusing their powers and unnecessary violence. Just look at the recent case of an NSW police officer slamming an aboriginal kid to the ground because he'd had a "bad day", or the multiple cases of unlawful strip searches on minors, or the vicpol officers who pepper sprayed and verbally abused a disabled man who they were called to do a welfare check on, or the gay man who's arm they shattered when they raided the wrong house.

The way the police treat you here is highly dependent on how they perceive you. If you ever have the misfortune of getting in trouble with the police, they'll grill you on all sorts of irrelevant shit trying to get a read on you: what suburb you live in, what you do for a job, whether you have a girlfriend/boyfriend. If you're a single man living in a western suburb (in Sydney/Melbourne) with a blue collar job, they'll treat you like dirt. I ended up getting arrested a while back, and when they found out I'm a software engineer living in a more affluent suburb, their demeanour changed instantly.

>>haecce+4c
Same with police in New Zealand. It's part of the Peelian Principles and policing by consent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

>>redis_+9j
You are reading news on the internet and extrapolating to the entire USA. Yes, there is a real problem with police brutality here, no question. I am not a fan of the police in general. But we are not living in a wild-west hellscape where anything goes. The protests are necessary and so is reform, but these are the extreme cases in a country of 330mil people.

>>missos+6e
Compared to US police, Aussie cops are pleasant and agreeable. But compared to New Zealand police, they're still brutes. I've never had an encounter with police in another developed nation, so that's my only real comparison I can make, Colombian police certainly aren't polite and civil.

Don't just judge the police on your experiences as an innocent bystander, but by how they treat those they think are less innocent. Police in Australia are far more likely to use violence and intimidation than Kiwi cops, in a large part because they are armed. Carrying a firearm creates an inherent power imbalance and a willingness to use violence and force to resolve an incident than deescalation techniques. NZ cops are much more likely to attempt to defuse the situation, or avoid the situation becoming (potentially) violent in the first place, using force is seen as a last resort than a first option (although it's a different story if you're Maori or Polynesian).

>>missos+0j
Believe me - I am not a fan of the police in general - but you are cherry picking some extreme examples. There are many cases of police brutality in Australia.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-does-happen-here-calls-to...

> “The family of an Aboriginal man who died in custody says protests against police brutality in the US should be a wake-up call about the plight of Indigenous Australians in the justice system.

> Speaking in the wake of video footage of an Aboriginal teenager being kicked to the ground by a NSW policeman, Paul Francis-Silva, whose uncle died in a Sydney prison in 2015, said: "It does happen here in Australia - the brutality, and the injustice against the First Nations people.”

You could also agree Australians are full of racist, evil cops as well, yes? Or is picking a few extreme examples not allowed for your country?

>>Americ+t8
No amount of power removal and accountability will change the "nails" perception if the only job they have is hammering.

> The primary role of police in society is to simply be the wide end of the funnel for the incarceration pipeline.

Only if your idea of a perfect society is one where everybody is incarcerated. I'd rather have one where as few people as possible need to be incarcerated to keep order.

>>seibel+sm
You're comparing single-digits per decade incidents which incite national outcry, with triple-digits per year incidents which are taken as a fact of life in the US. And you're trying to set a narrative that somehow those are comparable. They are not.

>>tooman+im
Sure. Aussie cops aren't angels at all. But comparing Aussie cops to US cops in terms of use of violence, poor judgement, etc. is insane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFaPooJBDSg

Imagine this situation playing out in the states. Guy would be riddled with bullets in seconds.

>>pnw_ha+ya
Issuing a blanket city-wide curfew, when no looting, or rioting is taking place, to give the police license to arrest literally anyone is something that is done in an authoritarian police state, not in a free country.

A peaceful protest is not a justification to issue a curfew. It is explicitly protected by the first amendment. A blanket curfew is a gross violation of it. The Lt. Governor of Washington happens to agree with me on this.

https://twitter.com/cyrushabib/status/1268283353528066049

>>usrusr+fn
> No amount of power removal and accountability will change the "nails" perception if the only job they have is hammering.

Providing the police with conflicting responsibilities isn’t going to solve that problem. At best it’s a waste of resources, and at worse it makes everything worse. You can’t expect the police to earnestly participate in improving a community when at any moment their responsibilities may obligate them to decide that it’s the community members who are the problem, and that they need to go to jail.

The very nature of the justice system is adversarial, and the police are it’s enforcers. Attempting to burden them with responsibilities that directly conflict with their role in the system isn’t going to fix anything.

>>Tehdas+nj
The claim may be true, but the stats you quoted aren’t enough evidence to support it. A better comparison would account for the number and type of police encounters and might also account for the types of weapons they are likely to encounter in the course of their duties.

>>zarkov+Rf
You are presenting people exposed while doing wrong as victims of the citizens risking their safety to expose them.

If the police have an image problem then perhaps they need to promote a culture of restraint, civility, and justice by enforcing the law against their own at all times not just when the criminals behavior makes it onto television and sparks riots that threatens to burn down the nation.

> 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.

We can work on the them becoming paragons of virtue after they stop executing citizens in the street, attacking people peacefully protesting, planting drugs on people, and raping them.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/florida-deputy-arrested-pl...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pennsylvania-police-officer-ch...

After we get we stop raping, framing, and murdering people yes I do in fact expect those charged with serving law and order to deal with bad people without themselves becoming bad people. People in most of the developed world seem to be managing this so I don't agree that it is an impossible dream.

Many people expressed and believed that automotive fatalities were just an inevitable consequence of the the mode of transport while others insisted on pushing for systematic reforms that drastically reduced fatalities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/automobiles/50-years-ago-...

Similarly you argue that bad behavior by some police is inevitable. I don't agree

https://8cantwait.org/

>>vkou+oq
Like most rights, the right to peaceably assemble and protest is not absolute.

Here, but for a limited curfew the people can still protest at will.

I am sure you know why there are curfews in Seattle and other places. It is because of the violence of the past few days. It is not to suppress free speech. Cyrus knows that.

I think it sucks, but until the late night violence subsides this is probably the new normal.

An alternative, I guess would be enabling the police to use more force against active rioters/looters, but that isn't going to happen. The man power isn't available. Besides King County (where Seattle is) does not prosecute property crimes or pretty much any misdemeanor (except for domestic or sexual violence and hate crimes).

>>missos+0j
A key difference is almost surely the prevalence of guns. As you suggest at the end, cops in Australia don't approach every situation assuming there might be a gun in play.

>>pnw_ha+7x
The violence in Seattle on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday was started by police. There's numerous videos, both from the ground, and from the air, that quite clearly demonstrate this.

On Tuesday night, the violence was started by a water bottle thrown into the police line. In response, the police gassed four city blocks, including residential apartments. People in those apartments were trapped between gas pouring into their rooms from the streets, the police, and the curfew. There's a baby in intensive care, because

If you want to reduce violence, don't issue a curfew. Disarm the police, instead. They've started violence on three out of the four days. Or, alternatively, protect the protesters from it. [1]

It should be noted that Seattle's protesters have done a remarkable job of preventing instigation and vandalism, but they can't do that, when they are running from flashbangs and gas.

[1] The national guard is there, unarmed, standing behind the police line. It has behaved with dignity, restraint, and respect - but it should be deployed on the protest side of the police line. The police is completely out of control.

>>missos+Ho
Regarding single digits vs triple digits: absolute metrics are pretty useless unless the US population is the same size as AU.

>>pacala+kd
I stopped reading TFA after the characterization of police as “violence workers” to claim that all they can bring to a situation is violence, which is absurdly reductionist.

I think these quotes are not much better. The primary purpose and responsibility of our government is to protect life and property and maintain the rule of law. What we’ve seen in the last week is peaceful protests subverted by essentially militant groups into what is perhaps best described as insurrection.

If anything the initial police response was mismanaged and totally insufficient. The lack of policing gave space and air to the riotous members hiding within the protests to spread mayhem, destruction, and death. (e.g. [1])

That much at least is my own opinion from following many hours of social media, live-streams and first person accounts.

I would also take issue with the idea that body cameras have not increased accountability at least, even though the cameras do nothing to change the baseline level of danger and violence inherent in police work. I think most police are happy for the camera as it will tell their story and protect them against false accusations.

Of the 10 cases last year where an unarmed black person was shot and killed by police, in most cases the police officer(s) involved were being violently attacked by the person they shot, and video footage was often crucial in evaluating the use of force after the fact. In the two cases that did result in charges, body camera evidence was a material factor in at least one case (Atatiana Jefferson).

[1] - https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1268176768822685696?s=2...

>>vkou+My
The police did not instigate Sunday's criminal raids in Tukwila, Bellevue, and Southcenter. Nor, did they force people to throw molotov cocktails at Nordstroms or light cars on fire in downtown Seattle on Saturday.

Some act like that stuff has nothing to do with the curfew being imposed.

Now, as you may now, the local subreddit is filled with people suggesting different Hong Kong style tactics to exhaust the police or stretch their resources. Of course, exhausting the police will make it more dangerous for everyone. Because the police will be forced to take shortcuts or make mistakes which will increase the risk for everyone.

To what end? Seattle is a progressive city that could reform the police tomorrow if they wanted too.

edit-to-add:

Looks like Seattle police are getting to disperse the crowd. They are putting on gas masks and the scanner report objects being thrown from the crowd at 12th and Pine.

>>js2+(OP)
The use of the word 'violence' felt odd and inciting and disingenuous and very loaded in these contexts. I think the word the author is actually describing is 'force'. Police have the legal capacity to use force, not violence. That's why we have a legal concept of deadly force, but not one for deadly violence.

Putting someone in handcuffs is not necessarily violent, but it involves using force to impose the will of the state on an individual.

>>pnw_ha+yC
Tukwila, Bellevue, and Southcenter are not in Seattle, and are not covered by the blanket Seattle curfew. And, quite obviously, the looting there had nothing to do with the police attacks in Downtown/the East Precinct.

And on Saturday, they started off kettling protesters, and then followed it up with unprovoked gas attacks, long before the curfew, or the burning started. Again, there is plenty of video footage, and detailed timelines of all of this.

> To what end? Seattle is a progressive city that could reform the police tomorrow if they wanted too.

Seattle is a progressive city with an abusive police force that has successfully resisted reform for two decades. Its police union is one of the most sheltered from accountability in the country. It is under federal sanction for police brutality, that both the union, and the city has done its best to push back on, and ignore. The current mayor is a former federal prosecutor, that ran on a campaign of, among other things, police accountability that she immediately abandoned, as soon as she got into office. She is currently turning a completely blind eye to what is happening in her own town.

Meanwhile, the governor is telling everyone that everything is fine, and that the Office of Police Accountability will handle any police misbehaviour. The OPA consists of 9 police officers, and 1 civilian... And its decisions aren't even binding - but are carried out at the pleasure of the police chief.

If reform were so easy, we'd have done it a decade ago. Instead, we have a nightmarish quagmire, where the none of the checks and balances work, and the government is actively covering for the police. For an outside observer, if you didn't know this were about Seattle, you may assume that I described the political situation in East BuFu, Flyover Country.

>>gowld+eb
That isn't police's job either. As Stuart Schrader recently documented on "Intercepted", the average cop makes one felony arrest per year. [0] Most of the time they're doing exactly what we've somehow noticed them doing recently: menacing people who don't have resources to defend themselves.

[0] https://theintercept.com/2020/06/03/the-rebellion-in-defense...

>>jiggun+Cz
In relative metrics, the US is still worse off by an order of magnitude. :(

>>missos+6e
Cops fatally shoot about 1000 people in the US every year from what I read. The US has over 300 million people.

Not nonzero but... well, you can do the math.

>>hooray+5D
Would you consider the threat of violence to be violent? I agree that you can handcuff someone without hurting them, but I would argue that 'force' is only possible due to the implication that non-compliance will lead to violence.

>>zarkov+Rf
> 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.

>>jbay80+Sa
Perhaps you are unaware of the VPD's extensive use of attack dogs.

https://www.vancourier.com/opinion/number-of-vancouver-polic...

>>fzeror+6M
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.

>>js2+(OP)
On HN there should be an expectation that people actually read the articles before commenting.

>>zarkov+Rf
>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

I don't know about you but I don't have to "carefully" display not killing people who are on the ground unarmed. You're depicting people with 6 months of training as if they were in a fucking warzone every day.

>>Americ+fs
Thanks, you helped me a lot in understanding why the US are in so deep troubles.

>>zarkov+Rf
The actual accountability and check on power+conduct is important for any group of people. Exposing cops who did something wrong, even if they are fine people to their friends is important.

>>mythrw+JL
When I traveled to Unites States, I was told that if cops stop me, I have to keep hands on wheel otherwise they might shoot me. I got no similar advice anywhere else. In other western countries, I know cops wont shoot me if I move hands around noramly.

This sort of thing add to the perception of American police.

>>Ididnt+oe
Police in Germany definitely are armed. As far as I know they always have a Pistol and they might have less lethal options as well. Sometimes you see them with a MP5 as well which is a compact submachine gun.

I do agree with the training in de-escalation though. German Police has a much more extensive training then the US.

>>tom_+rc
I think it's funny that people are so focused in correcting him about Australia that they miss the point of his argument.

>>michae+Aw
Its a very large country. Bad stuff happens every day. For any group of people you can support any narrative by cherry picking the right events. Using that technique, you could "prove" anything you wish about any group and then proceed to demonize that group. This isn't to say we could not do better, we always can, and criminals should go to jail whether they happen to be police or not. But the idea that America is some sort brutal police state where the cops specifically hunt black people for being black I find absurd.

>>fzeror+6M
Its not about the mortality rate, its about the psychological toll which is unparalleled: cops commit suicide at higher rates than any other profession. On a daily basis they deal directly with more violence and horror then most of us are ever likely to encounter over a lifetime. They do this for low pay, on behalf of people they do not know, in a society that increasingly despises them. Most of them are fine people indeed and no one is arguing that the ones who are not should be protected.

>>Americ+m5
taking your question in good faith, it's not literally taking the same people and changing their uniforms and job duties from one day to the next. it's taking the funding for cops-with-guns and reallocating that to civics officers with knowledge and charisma.

civics officers would encourage civic knowledge, pride and engagement, and would only be enforcers at the thinnest of margins. they'd teach people about how government works and and what help is available, rather than being antagonistic.

also, investigation--solving harder, bigger crimes--should get more resources relative to enforcement, which tends to be directed at insignificant crimes of (opportunistic) desperation rather than crippling, serial crimes like corruption and embezzlement.

it's a focus on encouraging trust and cooperation rather than safety and paranoia.

>>watwut+Pb1
Ya for sure. People get strange ideas from the news, I think because the news reports, well, newsworthy things. Someone being shot by a cop is news. Someone getting a warning not to speed is not.

It is true American cops do shoot more people than their counterparts in non gun owning countries. And they can get a bit jumpy until they see what a person is about, which is somewhat understandable given the environment.

The advice to keep your hands in plain sight and don't make quick movements is good. It's very unlikely you'll get shot (as per the stats above) but to help keep everyone calm and happy. It's not really a big imposition.

This probably sounds like weird advice coming from another place. But every place has it's strange things. You have to understand, America is not far removed from it's frontier days. It's always been a fairly violent country. That doesn't mean it's not in general safe, it is for the most part, it's just there are a lot of guns and a fair amount of violence compared to Sweden or some place like that.

>>jbay80+Sa
Oh? How quickly we forget.

The 2010 G20 summit in Toronto must have been a walk in the park. One can see the police hand in hand with protesters singing kumbaya. Noted that this event had police officers from all over the country participating. Many conveniently forgot to wear badges and nametags, some conveniently had masks on:

https://www.google.com/search?q=g20+toronto+police+brutality...

And Vancouver, lovely city! Until they lose the Stanley Cup of course:

https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+stanley+cup+riots&...