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[SalmonGod]

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I've had to explain to more people this week that Columbus was one of the shittiest humans to ever live more times than I ever though I would in my life.

Isn't this shit amazing?  Every Columbus Day that shit is aaaaallllll over the place.  It's incredible to imagine ignorance on the subject still being possible at this point, yet so many somehow manage it.

And I don't think it's because they haven't been exposed to the truth.  It seems to me like most people are just conditioned to only absorb information in specific ways.  Watching everyone react to the protests has me dwelling on this a bit lately.  Like... I've been paying attention to the issue of police violence for about 20 years, and have always talked about it all the goddamn time.  If you are real life friend or family to me, you have heard me talk about police brutality multiple times - guaranteed.  Yet my parents and siblings are acting lately like they're hearing about this stuff for the first time in their lives because of these protests.  Like every ridiculous thing the police have done in the past 3 weeks is the first time they've ever heard of police ever doing such a thing.  My mom watched the recent John Oliver episode on Police, and talked about how it was so eye opening for her and she finally understood.  And internally I was screaming "I was reiterating those exact same facts to you 2 days ago", when she referenced some specific bits from the show.

It's so goddamn frustrating.  Trying all these fucking years to get people to care about things, and eyes just glaze over.

And you know what's different now?.... Trump, and the non-Fox News personal obsession with him.

Everyone's response to what's going on is "I blame Trump.  It wasn't like this until he took office.  We can't survive another 4 years of him."

And I'm like... did no one I know ever hear a single word I said before 2016?  And I'm not trying to be pretentious here and make it about me.  I know many others struggle with this same thing and get frustrated with it.

No one gives a shit about anything it feels like until either it personally effects them, or until the mainstream media shoves it in their faces and tells them who is the villain to blame.  There's nothing more depressing and disempowering to me.

[Red Diamond]

Serial Killers are probably preventable in a long-term social sense. 
As for dealing with them, you don’t exactly need the police, rather an investigation team.  FBI or if the city is big enough to have it’s own detectives and ancillary. 
Then you call in swat(or whatever new future equivalent) once you figure out where/who they are.

Gangs are also preventable.  They rise from economic issues like chronic joblessness and/or inability to cope with society abandoning their community.

A lot of the scary security things are cause of really poor social and economic issues that have been left to fester for decades. 
Neglected and/or abused children pay that shit forward.

The FBI are not police?  SWAT teams are also police, as are detectives.  Do Americans simply have a narrower definition of police, is this my problem? 

The problem here is time.  Because the present serial killers and gangsters are still there, solving the wider social issues that created them.  Those elements also cause 'social issues' which in turn presumably create more of them.  In the long-run you might be able to get away with fewer police because you have less crime because of social welfare programs, but in the immediate sense you have to deal with the concrete problems that were created by your previous negligence. 

[Frumple]

Eh... I don't think most folks really think of the FBI as police, no. Like, they're a law enforcement agency, yes, but they're more domestic intelligence service (Think MI5 or somethin') than beat cop. They tend to deal with more specialized (federal level, i.e. inter-state or what have you) issues than general enforcement. FBI folks are generally referred to as, well, FBI or FBI agents, not police.

Similarly, for all their (especially SWAT's) problems, stuff like investigators or SWAT aren't the primary face and force of the police corruption in the US. Contributory, don't get that wrong for even a second, but they don't catch as much flak or generate as much cause for AA fire. Plus there's some grounds to see their presence and mandate as legitimate. Much of what regular police do... less so, especially given how much they make situations worse.

E:fucking autocorrupt it's too early for your shit

[scriver]

I think of both fbi and detectives as police

[Frumple]

Yeah, you can. Most of what I was trying to say is that most stateside folks I've heard talking would probably use a different term when talking about them in general conversation. Such as zangi's differentiation between police (general beat cops, basically) and FBI or detectives. They're police in a general sense but folks still tend to think (or at least talk) about them as if they're somewhat separate.

[Zangi]

Eh, it is just second nature to differentiate them after absorbing so much media based on police. 

FBI has its own separate recruitment pool.  We don’t see them patrolling the streets.
SWAT have the heavier equipment and are probably front line in beating back the protests, but are not the ones patrolling the streets.
Detectives, yes are part of the police, but I reckon figuring things out is a useful function that takes time away from patrolling the streets.

I can go as far as differentiating State Police too, kinda similar to the FBI, they are separate from local/city police.  I don’t really know if they come in with similar numbers of dead/badly injured perps then the local/city equivalents.  I’m only able to pay attention to so many things.

EDIT: And yes, there is a danger of already violent areas flaring up if we just dismantle the police instantly. 
But I reckon smarter people will go for phasing out ‘as needed’, with the new thing appropriately replacing it.  If we have smarter people making the decisions anyways.

[HmH]

I think the reason tear gas is banned in warfare is probably because somebody could drop a huge concentrated amount of it, resulting in something absolutely lethal, but technically just an irritant.

From what I've read, the idea behind banning tear gas in wartime is that dropping tear gas on each other all the time could inspire the sides to sneak something more interesting into their "nonlethal" munitions.
Even the possibility of that would lead to a lot of mutual accusations that tear gas was laced, some true, some false, and render the whole treaty pointless since everyone would get accused of violating it.

[Max™]

Tear gas and other such weapons are used to terrify their victims, you use it to make people run blindly away so they're easier to shoot at, there's no "well, tear gas is different because it's not mustard gas" here, yes it's harder to kill with tear gas, it's harder to kill with rubber bullets too, it should still be a war crime to do either to civilians when you have a militarized force undergoing a police action on your soil, and let's not forget shooting medics in there!

[Bumber]

Maybe they should just skip the terror and start gunning down protesters, instead?

[Rolan7]

Let's accept the idea that streets NEED to be cleared, and talk about how that should happen under a government of the people and by the people.

If protesters have to be dispersed, it needs to be done as harmlessly as possible.  I contend that is literally the first priority, aside from it happening.  How can we do that?

Curfews maybe help with that.  Demonstration in daylight is one thing, but mass congregations late in the night are a bit different.  There's less spreading of message, more frayed nerves. 

Being very clear about your threats of violence before you use them.  Don't suddenly tackle bystanders out of the blue, ramming them into the pavement.  Announce that the road needs to be cleared, then make a very clear threat.  All laws are enforced with violence, but it's important to announce intent beforehand. In other words:

LET PEOPLE DISPERSE

Make it clear that things are about to get violent BEFORE using the prescribed violence!  Don't box protesters in.  Be clear that this is the end of the standoff, that things are about to become unimaginably painful.  Most people would disperse, their message heard - while others would take the state's spicey iron boot in the eyes to prove their point.

That's not what police are doing.  They are antagonizing peaceful protesters then violently dispersing them, while burglaries go ignored.  That's where their priorities lie, as a system.

[Max™]

To be fair, there are cases where cops have ignored curfews and ignored orders to break up peaceful protests... and in at least one instance I know of it turned into a dance party, so the opposite of riot is dancing apparently?

[Bumber]

Then we need a dance dance revolution!

[martinuzz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaTGrV58wec

[Rolan7]

https://youtu.be/kaMq1i7BZuM?t=11

[Naturegirl1999]

Then we need a dance dance revolution!

Spoiler: slight derailment, place derailment convo responses in spoilers to avoid main thread derails (click to show/hide)

I watched some videos of Undertale Dance Dance Revolution gems and thought that all of the songs would be on a black background with colored arrows, eventually we got the game for Wii and when I played it, I realized that no, not all songs are on such easy backgrounds, there are people and such, and the main background colors are difficult to distinguish from the arrows, which are often small, and depending on the song they can be on one side of the screen or the other, or centered

It’s unfortunate that profit drives everything (the definition I’m using here is profit=getting as many currency units as possible) and often companies don’t consider the environmental impacts of what they are doing, profit over long term sustainability. If we continue to do this, we will make ourselves extinct by making the environment uninhabitable to us. I know I said this before, but I am worried. We’ve already messed things up so much, that even if we somehow stopped emissions right now, the effects of what we’ve already done will continue for thousands of years, and will continue to get worse, we are still worsening the future. We need to somehow get companies/corporations/country leaders to think of, and act on maintaining, long term sustainability over short term profits