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[nenjin]

One thing I'm not sure people realize is that sending mediators out makes a lot of sense, because many calls for police are non-criminal social issues - domestic disputes, mental health crises, etc. It doesn't make sense to send police out to these.

And yet, any one of these can turn violent. You only know that once you're on the scene. You show up to a domestic dispute, it turns violent, the offender ends up having a gun and deciding to use it.

[McTraveller]

Good luck have fun with your semi-automatic toys when the government has reaper drones.

They thought about that 200 years ago! From Wikipedia's entry on the 2nd Amendment:

In Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check by state militias, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] a militia." He argued that state militias "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as "afraid to trust the people with arms," and assured that "the existence of subordinate governments ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition"

Basically - it doesn't matter if the "militia" would be conquered or not. The idea is that it "forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition."  If you have a population with zero means of resistance, there is no barrier.

I did not think that this was a difficult concept.

[kaijyuu]

Yeah gun control stuff seems extremely tangential. The US has disproportionate gun violence to the rest of the world not because of the ubiquity of them (which isn't much higher than most places), but due to culture.

We cannot solve any police related problem right now by adding new rules. They already break rules and nothing happens. We need to disempower them.

And yet, any one of these can turn violent. You only know that once you're on the scene. You show up to a domestic dispute, it turns violent, the offender ends up having a gun and deciding to use it.

You got some really messed up stuff going on here.

Obviously things can get violent. They can get violent in the supermarket. That doesn't mean everyone should carry guns to "defend themselves". That just escalates things.
High risk jobs are high risk. Giving them more power to hurt others will, at best, shift the sufferer of harm to suspects/mentally unstable people/etc, which is NOT AN IMPROVEMENT. IT'S WORSE!
Deterrents do not work, AT ALL, on people who are scared or desperate or disassociating. You won't get anywhere by threatening such people, except of course escalating the situation, making violence more likely.

[Zangi]

I am more into the de-escalation camp.  People can still be reasoned with after they pull out a gun.

Cops ‘fearing for their lives’ probably won’t be reasoned with by anyone other then another cop.

[nenjin]

In my mind, it's not about whether or not they have guns.

It's about the quality of the officer and their unwillingness to use force except as a last result. Cops need to be fit, moral, calm under pressure, not racist or biased and abhor violence except when it actually matters to preserving human life. Many of those things are currently not true in American policing. Many cops aren't fit, so they can't fight or run. Many cops aren't moral, the value of human life to them is small compared to their own perceived survival. Many cops aren't calm under pressure, they escalate or become afraid. Many cops are racist or biased and that dictates their actions. And many cops not only don't abhor violence, they fucking love it. They get off on the idea of being a para-military force with unquestionable authority.

Cops should be held to the highest standards. We say that shit all the time as a country but it's never true. We make exceptions because of budget, staffing issues, seniority, tradition, unions....basically every excuse under the sun. We SAY we want cops held to the highest standards, but in reality most DON'T. Executing an actual criminal is ok with some people, that fits their definition of "high standards" because they're not the ones being subjected to the injustice, it just fits their personal narrative of what justice means. An actual high standard would be "it doesn't matter if the perp is a dirt bag, murdering criminal pedophile scum, you don't extra-judicially execute someone."

Dylan Roof continues to get me every time I think about this. A mass murdering psychopath douche bag gets more TLC than a dude who has written a bad check and might be drunk or high.

People can still be reasoned with after they pull out a gun.

At this point you're asking for super human levels of restraint and self-sacrifice. Life is not a movie, and the difference between someone being alive or dead when guns are in hand is the blink of an eye. I have been on the receiving end of officers with guns drawn and I can tell you that you are one split second away from being dead at that point. If that's how a citizen feels when a cop has a gun drawn, it's only reasonable to accept that cops ALSO feel that way as soon as a gun is drawn.

[Zangi]

Probably, but you don’t have the other side escalating things as soon as the situation deteriorates. 

Maybe if we do get those high standards we so desperately want.

[Iduno]

Probably, but you don’t have the other side escalating things as soon as the situation deteriorates. 

Maybe if we do get those high standards we so desperately want.

Most likely we'll get "make cop a college major", and have much higher pay because they got a degree for University of Pheonix online in a week.

You want to solve it, you need to completely separate them from the justice legal system. That's why they literally get away with murder (and rape, etc.).

[SalmonGod]

The distinction between non-violent and violent crime is that in the former instance no one has attempted to stop the criminal.

Even in the UK, police have batons and body armour. Because no one in their right mind sends undefended, unarmed people to gamble their lives telling criminals what to do.

Yes, but I've seen footage of police in the UK arresting a psycho with a machete.  They kept their distance and waited patiently for backup.  Then encircled and closed in on him with shields until he couldn't move.  Then took the machete from his hands.  No one got hurt.

High risk jobs are high risk. Giving them more power to hurt others will, at best, shift the sufferer of harm to suspects/mentally unstable people/etc, which is NOT AN IMPROVEMENT. IT'S WORSE!

Yes.  What I've been saying over and over.  Again... all of these arguments amount to a value difference between the two camps here - one side obviously believes that police officer's lives are more valuable than the lives of those they interact with on the job.  Nothing will ever be agreed upon if we can't move past this. 

It is a job that involves some danger, and is applied for willingly.  This should mean they are accepting the risks associated with the job.  Their role in society is, ideally, to willingly put themselves in harm's way on behalf of everyone else, with better preparation than the average person.  But when we allow police to use any level of force in reaction to fear, the result is the opposite of this.  They aren't putting themselves in harm's way to protect everyone else.  They're inflicting harm on everyone else to protect themselves.  They are taking the risk that some people will face on rare occasion in their lives, and turning it into an omnipresent risk that everyone is forced to face every time they interact with police.

Yes, bad things would happen with no one filling their role.  But if this is how that role is going to be filled, then we're only adding bad on top of bad, and we're better off without them.  They are not protecting us.  They're protecting themselves by killing us.

[bloop_bleep]

Yes, but I've seen footage of police in the UK arresting a psycho with a machete.  They kept their distance and waited patiently for backup.  Then encircled and closed in on him with shields until he couldn't move.  Then took the machete from his hands.  No one got hurt.

This is why I think the question is about training and attitude towards the job. Also, a machete is far, far different from a gun. You can't "keep your distance" from a gun. As soon as someone pulls out a gun and starts using it, it is perfectly reasonable to shoot back at them, I think we would all agree.

Again... all of these arguments amount to a value difference between the two camps here - one side obviously believes that police officer's lives are more valuable than the lives of those they interact with on the job.

Strawman. Not saying anything more about this.

[nenjin]

I actually agree with him. I think that's a fundamental part of this equation. They used to have "Protect and Serve" on the side of their cruisers.

[Cthulhu]

Notably, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that police have  no specific legal duty to protect people from harm.

In a lot of instances (e.g. that UPS truck chase a few months ago) police intervention actively makes the situation more dangerous for civilians.

[SalmonGod]

This is why I think the question is about training and attitude towards the job. Also, a machete is far, far different from a gun. You can't "keep your distance" from a gun. As soon as someone pulls out a gun and starts using it, it is perfectly reasonable to shoot back at them, I think we would all agree.

True.  And in the course of being outspoken about police violence on this forum since before this thread existed, I've never once claimed that police shouldn't have shot back once they had been shot at.  But I have been critical of many incidents where knifes were involved.

Again... all of these arguments amount to a value difference between the two camps here - one side obviously believes that police officer's lives are more valuable than the lives of those they interact with on the job.

Strawman. Not saying anything more about this.

Not a strawman if it's my honest interpretation. 

When the claim is made that deadly force is excusable based on remote possibility of danger or momentary fear being understandable in a situation, then the implication is that for police it is ok to end the lives of others before accepting risk to their own.  And the implication of that is that an officer's life is worth more than the lives of those they interact with on the job.  If they can shoot somebody because they *might* have had a gun or *could possibly* steal the officer's weapon and use it against them and so on and so on, then in terms of the moral values behind this being acceptable, they are ending the lives of others to prevent those others from ever having the potential to pose a threat to their own - i.e. they are offloading the risk inherent to their line of work onto those they interact with on the job - i.e. the lives of those they interact with on the job are accepted as being of lesser value.

[feelotraveller]

Off topic for the racism part of this thread but thought this might be of interest in terms of the prevalence of violence in the US, including from and towards the police.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53102988

First police officer killed in the line of duty in New Zealand for 11 years.  Yes he was shot.  Police in New Zealand do not routinely carry firearms.

Comments from their (national) Police Commissioner:

"I want to reiterate that I am committed to New Zealand Police remaining a generally unarmed police service," said Mr Coster.

"How the public feels is important - we police with the consent of the public, and that is a privilege."

Seems to me that it is a cultural problem.

[Max™]

I honestly don't see things working out w/o a police force. And even though US PDs could use a change of culture... I don't see it working out disarming them given the prevalence of weapons in the US. I just cant. I think things can be reformed and many should be reformed. But such radical changs as the ones proposed here... I dont see it working out

I saw a chart which showed how US cities are actually police departments with a bunch of underfunded side projects, simply reducing police budgets to a level similar to everything else and using that extra funding on anything else would result in better outcomes.

If you think police are helpful in any way, if you think police stop crime, if you think police save lives, if you think police do anything but keep poor people in line: you've been lied to probably your whole life and fed cop propaganda the whole time, because nobody is safer with US cops around except rich white folks.

Getting rid of qualified immunity so cops can be held accountable for abuse of authority would instantly make the US better everywhere, but there would still be too much funding spent on arming cops like soldiers and not enough on addressing all the issues which cops handle with zero training or interest.

Apparently in various cities cops used to handle amublance service and hated it, especially when black neighborhoods were involved. Some people started training civilians, many of them black, to drive and operate ambulances and the service was so much better than when cops did it that the entire rest of the country adopted that model.

Taking jobs cops do from cops is always going to work out better, because the only thing they're really good at doing is harassing and murdering poor people.

There's no massive outbreak of violent crime under way or waiting to happen, the 90's was the peak there.
There's no army of deranged gunmen waiting for their chance to rape and rob and pillage and burn, cops hate competition and got rid of them already.

[ChairmanPoo]

I don't think you can run any kind of modern state without a police force, sorry, the way I see it it's wistful thinking. You need some way to enforce the law, and nature abhors a vacuum. If you don't someone will, either through private security companies, which will be like now but worse, or through mob rule, which would be far far worse.