Policing Is Hard Work

[DrewNows]

fuck the police! It's bullshit, we need a new system, the agendas are not aligned. we need trust, harmony, connection, rather than force, brutality, stigma, cuckery

Universities for policeries 

localization, polize are friends, not out to fuck fearful peasants. Less accountability, more camaraderie 

[Epikur]

@Preety_India

@Serotoninluv

One perspective to look at it would be like this: We as individuals have our negative habits regarding dealing with situations. 

Let's say you are an alcoholic. Let's say you are not functional without alcohol. Now somebody comes up and takes away your alcohol . Maybe the person commits then suicide. Then it was maybe not worth to take away his alcohol.

It can work out but maybe there are better ways like getting the person other kind of psychological help. Trying to do that in the system may be an option. I know there is the opinion it is impossible. That it was tried out. 

Don't kill the disease by killing the patient.

The police can be seen as a general reflection of the society. Like your health could be seen as the functioning level of your immunsystem.

When you have a weak immunsystem you will have all kinds of health issues. If you have a brutal society you will have a brutal police. 

Fix the source not just the symptoms.

 

[Preety_India]

@Epikur

That's exactly what @Serotoninluv, @electroBeam and I have been trying to say on this thread

Fix the system instead of punishing the people (by killing them) who are victims of the same system. 

USA can easily turn into a killing field. 

Corpses created by cops. 

 

 

[Onemanwolfpac]

56 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

Leo, 

(just one reply from me on this thread and no more, because it's just common sense so I don't need to reply over and over) 

I completely disagree with you on this. The video you have shown in your post is not a case of proper policing. I discussed this issue with my American boyfriend yesterday and he is a white guy and he doesn't come from a ghetto. He absolutely agreed that it wasn't okay to shoot the guy. In fact he was the one to show me the same video yesterday. 

You don't need to actually come from a ghetto to actually understand someone from there. You need basic empathy to understand people better. With empathy you can put yourself in their shoes and visualize how it feels to be treated like them. 

This black man was a sturdy guy who had immense strength. Those 2 white officers were completely unprepared to handle this guy on their own. You would need a minimum of 6 white police officers to handle such a guy. So the police department was under staffed to deal with such a situation. If there are more police officers they wouldn't be so stressed out. The responsibilities would be divided into lot of people. 

Now the main context. This person was running away with a taser. There is no requirement for them to shoot this person. They can arrest him the next day. If they have a person running away from them, then they just have to let them go.. 

Now see how I can dig holes in your argument. 

Look at the police in other countries. Police in my country for example. Here the police is very under staffed and the criminals always run away. What do the police do? They come back the next day and catch them. That's hard work that these American cops do not wish to do. They are impatient and full of toxic pride. The black guy ran away. Maybe that hurt the pride of the cop because they couldn't get him so maybe they shot him to get their job done. At least that's how I see this situation. 

Consider this situation a bit tilted and changed. Imagine that it's not a black man in this same situation. But a pregnant black woman. Let's say they are trying to overpower her and she somehow grabbed the taser and is now running away. Would the cops still shoot her??  The danger that they have to face from this black man holding a taser is the same danger that they will face from the pregnant black woman holding a taser. But they most likely wouldn't shoot her and let her go. Out of sympathy for her being pregnant. So why would they shoot this guy?? 

Because it's probably much easier to shoot a black man than any other race or gender. 

Would they shoot a kid who is running away with a taser? 

This is where your theory falls completely apart. 

The perceived sense of danger is only a perceived sense of danger. Remember when you sign up for being a cop, you sign up for all sorts of dangers, mainly danger to life. 

You can't sign up for the military and expect not to get killed. You can't sign up to be a cop and not expect to be killed in line of duty. 

This is their duty. Their duty is not to arrest people dead. But to arrest them alive. 

Police duty is not as hard as you make it out to be. It is hard only and only in the US. It is hard in other countries as well but guess what people don't end up dead at the hands of the police. 

You have to be glad that this is the US and this shit is allowed under your constitution and people aren't fighting enough. If this was happening in Saudi Arabia and India or any other non European country, the police would have been immediately disbanded because these countries don't tolerate such brutal violence, that's why we don't have guns and that's why we don't have a gun culture. 

I will give you a good reason why your police is so agressive in their actions. 

First reason is that United States has such a ridiculous gun culture that doesn't exist in any country in the world. This should probably be a good clue that guns are just bad. Communities have to live in basic decency and not in constant fear and mistrust of each other. Otherwise it should be called a tribal community, like yours, and such communities are not sustainable, because they will lead to a lot of chaos out of sheer fear and paranoia, just like your country is witnessing right now. 

Second reason is that your constitution just allows all of this violence from the cops. In other countries there are procedures for arrests, and by constitution they are not supposed to kill a person even if it meant letting him go. And this applies to severe criminals as well. Police strictly follow these procedures or they will be indicted for murder. Other countries are fully aware that police can abuse power if power is absolutely concentrated in their hands. That's why they don't let the police make absolute decisions. The fact that your police officers can decide between life and death during an arrest (and they aren't arresting Ted Bundy or El Chapo or Pablo Escobar in this case, just a regular arrest of a criminal)  then it goes to show how much power has been placed in the hands of the cops, given that America is touted as the greatest democracy, the land of the brave and free, this is laughable. Freedom should not come at the cost of someone's death. Total power in the hands of the cop is the opposite of Freedom and Liberty. 

Third reason is - absolutely zero respect for the rights of the citizen. Understand that with or without a constitution, by human law, a person has the basic right to life. Even a doctor cannot decide to end the life of the terminally ill and such a request to end the life is then surrendered to the family members to finally make the decision. The Right to Life is the most important of all rights and can be compromised only in the situation of self defense. In the case of a cop, self defense situations are arising every day. Doesn't mean that he can simply kill everyone who he perceives as a threat. A cop can use a gun when the criminal is armed, not with a taser, but with a gun, and when the criminal is actually using the gun.. The perception that someone might shoot you is just a perception, a paranoia. This is why police training is done. Police training means training the police to accurately gauge which situation is deadly and which situation is not. To understand the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat. Nobody needs such a training more than a cop. They have to know exactly when to pull the gun. This will substantially reduce the trigger happy behavior. 

Killing a person on the spot instead of letting him go is a clear violation of that person's Right to Life. That basically means violation of human rights. 

You cannot simply kill a person just because you perceived a threat. Understand that even a normal citizen, when they kill a person out of a perceived fear, have to face 2nd degree murder charges unless they are able to prove that self defense was absolutely necessary /justified. In case of cops, these rules will have to be fine tuned even further because they can have a greater probability of escaping criminal charges by simply claiming self defense. 

You are not focusing on the root of the problem but only on band-aid solutions. 

I agree with what @electroBeamsaid in this thread. People need to feel safer, their basic needs must be met, they shouldn't have to feel they are going to be discriminated, poverty has to be reduced, less systemic problems, people need to be treated better and not like shit, there has to be compassion and only then people will feel safer around the police and they will be less likely to resist and less likely to fear a cop. 

Also you constantly kept saying in some other threads that these are rare occurrences in the US out of thousands of arrests. Doesn't look very rare to me given that just a few weeks ago George Floyd was killed and now this incident in Atlanta. 

You have come to accept the American culture as the standard culture because you think that you know better when you don't know better which is a typical American mentality. Self righteousness is their creed. 

Do you understand that you are normalizing something that is very abnormal. Because you have been raised in the United States and you have gotten so used to it. Maybe live in some other culture, live in Europe, South America or Australia or India and see the difference for yourself? Nobody is carrying a gun here and nobody fears a cop. Nobody fears their neighbor either. 

You should thank your Gods that these people are only resisting arrest. If people completely turn against the police, they will openly shoot the police on sight, simply out of fear, this can easily become deadly, and for this nobody will be more responsible than your cops that you are defending. 

 

 The USA needs a notice or warning from the United Nations Human Rights Commission for clear violation of human rights using cops as a guise. It's not acceptable on international guidelines of policing or treatment of citizens. 

 

I would never do this job of police.

 

If I were a cop, i would want to be going home to my wife and kids. PERIOD. 

I don't care what color, race or culture. I have a split sec decision to make in a instant. If for one sec, someone comes after my family, friends or myself, they are dead. No hesitation. 

I am currently reading Path to God by Ram Dass. I have no idea how long it will take to resolve the issue but if some more resists arrest and fires off a stun gun, the cop had every right to fire. If you play with fire, you will get burned. 

There's vids from the past where someone from BLM is taken to a mock cop scenario. The outcome was 99% the dude fucked up. He was either shot or killed some wrongfully. 

The mock scenario illustrated how tough the scenario is. Floyd is a messed up situation. The leo vid is not. And surprisingly more businesses is burning.

The military is going to be called. 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Epikur said:

It reminds me of the programming of the children in asia. Hundreds of millions of poor became middle class.

That can work when there is huge demand for that industry, as there is with programming.

But even so, many of those people are probably miserable because they are not suited to be programmers, they did it forcefully.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Preety_India said:

You would need a minimum of 6 white police officers to handle such a guy. So the police department was under staffed to deal with such a situation.

Lol

That's the job! Police deal with such situations every day. You cannot have police walking around in packs of 6 just because some big guy might overpower one of them and steal their taser. In such a case, you kill the guy. Policing is not free. It costs a lot of energy and resources. Police need to use their energy efficiently. They cannot coddle every idiot they encounter on the street. If you waste the police's resources, yeah, get ready to have a gun pointed at you.

There is a trade-off between fairness & the energy required to deliver that fairness. And this equation has diminishing returns. Which means that to go from 99% fairness to 99.9% fairness might require a tripling of energy invested. Are you willing to triple your sales tax in order to get that 0.9% of extra fairness? These are the real-world decisions that politicians and police chiefs must make. It's a delicate balancing act.

[Preety_India]

@Onemanwolfpac  when policing a community you can't make split sec decisions. You are not being a child. 

Police need some maturity especially American police 

It's a matter of life and death. You cannot simply make a decision on someone's life in a split second. That's extreme self righteousness. And Blue and Red Stage mentality at its finest. 

People are people, not dogs. 

Everyone deserves respect and life is more valuable than any constitution or gun laws.. 

[Forestluv]

@Epikur I think this is a complex, nuances issues that involves wealth inequality, biases in the judicial system, access to education and upward social mobility, access to health care etc. As well, I think the police force is necessary and is a difficult job. Cops need to be tough and there are situations in which cops need to use force. 

A CHAZ-type community isn’t feasible in the long run. Perhaps someday there will be Turquoise level societies in which police aren’t necessary. Yet we aren’t there yet. 

Over the last few weeks, I’ve tried to challenge my views about policing and open my mind to new ways of looking at policing. I think you make some good points. Like in your alcoholic example. I may be a cop that enters an alcoholic-related situation and want to take control over the situation. This can escalate the situation. I may use some force and get control, yet it’s not the best way to handle the situation. Like you say, perhaps I take away the alcohol and bring the person into the station. I put him in a cell to sober up and he goes in DT withdrawal and dies. An addiction specialist says “My god, why did you handle the situation like that?”. My intentions were good, yet I’m not trained as an addiction specialist. I handled the situation in the only way I know how. Yet I shouldn’t have been put in that situation by myself.

Although a CHAZ-type community without policing will not work long term, I think they are making some good points. Some of the community members are saying that the police budget increases every year and all the community stuff gets cut, like health care and education. They want more community type centers and reallocation of funds to community wellness.

Also you mention violent societies. In America, there is an obsession with guns. There are more guns in America than people. And a lot of Americans want high powered assault weapons. Flooding society with a massive number of high powered weapons is going to be correlated with more violence. 

[Preety_India]

 

 

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Policing is not free. It costs a lot of energy and resources. Police need to use their energy efficiently.

Human life is not free of cost either. 

That's why you currently have riots in your country. 

If you recklessly kill people as a cop, also pay for the consequences by standing in court and face murder charges. This also consumes a lot of energy and resources. Do you know where all this money and resources come from? They don't come from the ass of the American government. They come from taxpayers money. Money that people give to the government to be protected and not killed. 

The first and foremost duty and obligation of the government and the police is to protect and serve people and not rule them. Not bully them. Not kill them 

If the police is under staffed, that's not the mistake of the citizen and he doesn't have to pay for the mistakes of a failing government. 

The government needs to make the police better and safer and well staffed and well trained to deal with every kind of situation. This is the job of the government and not of the people. The people have trusted the government with their money to do their job right. 

If a police officer cannot get his job done right, he may very well resign from the job because he is unfit. 

Police job is like any other job. It should be like that. If you are unfit for the job and cannot arrest a person without killing the person, you aren't fit to be a cop and must resign. 

United States as a country should not be a playground for people to play cops and use their untrained cop skills on civilians. 

It's not a cop video game. 

 

 

[Leo Gura]

14 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

If the police is under staffed, that's not the mistake of the citizen

Actually, it is, if you are calling for a 6-man squad of police per incident.

You have to think through the practicalities of your policy proposals.

If you steal a cop's taser, expect to be shot. Not so difficult. As for Floyd, that was an excessive case and some kind of reform is necessary there.

No choke holds is probably a good new policy. It seems that lots of people have breathing challenges so choke holds end up killing people unnecessarily.

The key here to find practical policies which will solve the problem without costing too much time or money.

[Onemanwolfpac]

19 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

@Onemanwolfpac  when policing a community you can't make split sec decisions. You are not being a child. 

Police need some maturity especially American police 

It's a matter of life and death. You cannot simply make a decision on someone's life in a split second. That's extreme self righteousness. And Blue and Red Stage mentality at its finest. 

People are people, not dogs. 

Everyone deserves respect and life is more valuable than any constitution or gun laws.. 

Your not a cop. You will tuck yourself in bed tonight comfortably. Myself too. A cop may not. What for? 60k? Are you kidding me? 

If you or your bf were caught in the riots, with a split sec decision, i bet he is pulling the trigger. Again, i wouldn't hesitate for a a sec to protect family, friends, loved ones or myself. 

People are people who all have consequences. You cross the line, there is going to be fallout. 

I was at a ACIM group before pandemic. They deemed everything coming down to love. Naive imho. I had a scenario where a person tried to attack my family. I had a split sec to handle the situation. The ACIM group are very sweet old ladies but if the riots came they are road kill. A lot of people will be sadly. 

The dude got launched. No hesitation. The situations happen fast. Spiritual life or practice notwithstanding. If you want peace, prepare for war. 

I pray i never have to be in the situation but again, I won't hesitate for a sec. 

[Preety_India]

@Onemanwolfpac  I understand your need to protect your family. 

I would have said that the cop has the right to use his gun. But only under one circumstance. 

When the guy he is chasing has a gun pointed at the cop. In this situation, the cop's life also matters and he has every right to defend himself by using the guy. 

But you're not getting my point. You are constantly missing my point. 

If the criminal is not a threat, then the cop does not have the right to kill him. And then claim self defense. Such a law or right is not available to the general public in the United States, let alone cops. 

 

[Epikur]

51 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That can work when there is huge demand for that industry, as there is with programming.

But even so, many of those people are probably miserable because they are not suited to be programmers, they did it forcefully.

I meant with "programming" that children became learning machines in the schools. Later they became working machines. I guess many became miserable in the process like you said. 

I don't know if this totalitarian approach is worth it as a last resort.

But on the surface they made big economic progress. 


 

[Preety_India]

59 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Are you willing to triple your sales tax in order to get that 0.9% of extra fairness?

The trade off and the choice is yours. 

The trade off really is between killing a person from a minority community and then having the entire country blow up in your face in the form of riots and more people getting killed, buildings burned, businesses destroyed and general civil unrest and even possibility of civil war, deploying military to control the public unrest as Trump tried to do which involves ultimately even more expenditure of money, resources and manpower. And all of this expenditure together with the uncertainty of the masses reactions. 

All of this mayhem over what? The death of a man at the hands of the police. Maybe the police were better off letting the dude go.. 

You're not being practical here. 

You have to make the trade off between opting for that miniscule 0.9 % extra fairness or face a situation of civil riots disruption and many deaths for the death of one person. 

I personally would be more than ready to pay 3 times more tax to the government to have a properly funded and staffed well trained police and have a sense of peace rather than having to face riots and possibilities of a war zone and tensed community relations. Because that's even a bigger threat than a bunch of hooligans let go by the police. 

 

 

Edited June 15, 2020 by Preety_India

[Epikur]

4 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

 

If the criminal is not a threat, then the cop does not have the right to kill him. And then claim self defense. Such a law or right is not available to the general public in the United States, let alone cops. 

 

I guess in the real life there are more gray zones about what is a threat. Let's say it is dark and you don't know if he has a weapon or not but he makes some extreme movements. 

Even if you are a super computer and you can figure out the threat level like robo cop you hava another problem. Let's say the threat level is some random figure like 1%, 49%, 99%. So how do you decide how the police officer should act upon the information? Should he go for kill shot? Or shold he go for the injuring shot. 

Then another problem arises. How can the officer asses his shoting level accuracy under this special situation?

This all is very tricky. 

Another thought: let's say you have a pieceful community. Then new people arrive there. Let's say they are extremely violent. The situation of the officer changes dramatically. I would probably just quit if I have that luxury.

 

[Epikur]

45 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

Hmmm, I hadn’t thought about it like that and think its a good point in many contexts.

Yet don’t you think there are also some contexts in which fairness can be increased without huge investment? For example, perhaps there are police and justice systems in parts of the U.S. that are only 80% fair. Going from 80% to 85% fair would be much less expensive than going from 94% fair to 99% fair. For example, there could be accountability and oversight measures that are inexpensive. There could be re-allocation of funds from hiring standard police officers to hiring hybrid police/social work officers. 

I think that is what societies work on it all the time. To solve problems with the most ROI. I read one scientist he talked about "social energy". Bascially the willingness and the capacity of the people to work and invest to better the society. If that is simply not there things will go down. 

Optimism has it's worth but it needs the right context. If you do surgery on the same body part over and over again it makes it dangerous for the patient. There are side effects to social experiments. Better to try the ones that are most reasonable. People have a different opinion about what is reasonable. So things are complicated. 


 

[Preety_India]

@Epikur  that's what police training is supposed to be all about and not just learning to use a weapon and police protocols. 

2 month training for a cop is the biggest joke.

2 months is not even enough for my art course, how in the world does it become enough to be a cop? 

The USA as with everything else wants to produce the Fast Cop industry just like their fast food industry. 

They let in any Tom Dick and Harry to become a cop just because they are under staffed. Let's talk about reality here from a meta perspective.

I am very well aware and I also got a confirmation from my American boyfriend who told me that most cops who enroll into the police force are not good people. These are bullies, thuggish people, who have served in the military, who drink beer and are generally aggressive and violent and not high on morals. 

Such people sign up to become cops. Then what do you expect? Do you expect they will care for human life. 

 

[Epikur]

@Preety_India

I agree 2 month sounds like a joke. 

On the other hand defunding the police sounds as even a bigger joke depending on the context. 

So police have a extremely bad training. So you don't want to give them money and training at all. Basically you want to abolish the police. (I mean not you personally btw.)

The meta level seems to be class, education, culture, race divide in the country. 

It sometimes looks like making switzerland and somalia one country. If you really want to live together you will have some big challenges. The police is just one part of it I guess.

What happens mostly is like in Latinamerica. Though some still love latinamerica more than the so called developed countries. It's complex. That is the only thing that is clear.


 

[Forestluv]

17 minutes ago, Epikur said:

I think that is what societies work on it all the time. To solve problems with the most ROI. I read one scientist he talked about "social energy". Bascially the willingness and the capacity of the people to work and invest to better the society. If that is simply not there things will go down. 

I agree and think the keywords are willingness and capacity. As well, there needs to be a threshold amount of consensus on what counts as “better” for society. That is hotly debated. And then we could add in lobbyists, corporations and billionaires that block certain measures. For example, 90%+ of Americans want universal background checks when purchasing guns. However, a small group called the NRA has been able to block this from becoming law. 

[Epikur]

22 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

I agree and think the keywords are willingness and capacity. As well, there needs to be a threshold amount of consensus on what counts as “better” for society. That is hotly debated. And then we could add in lobbyists, corporations and billionaires that block certain measures. For example, 90%+ of Americans want universal background checks when purchasing guns. However, a small group called the NRA has been able to block this from becoming law. 

Something else comes to my mind. The US idea is also to create unity in diversity. That sounds like an oxymoron. Similar to be united and to be individuals at the same time. 

Many countries in the world don't believe in that but who doesn't risk will not win. I am not shure why the US is taking this massive challenge though. Traditionally it's because one wants to create or keep an empire. The US is probably an empire. Empires come from necessities to some degree. If they don't get big other empires might challenge them, start a war and win it.

The US is an interesting experiment and it can work out. Many answers to problems have been counterintuitive. That is why science is so difficult.