zlacker

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.

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

>>Americ+S1
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+a4
> 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.

>>Americ+Z4
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.

>>usrusr+Lj
> 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.

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

>>Americ+S1
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.