11-09-2023, 07:31 PM
This is way too cynical, and implicitly suggests that we could have a society with no police.
Spoiler alert: you cannot have a modern urban society without police. What you can have is a society with police that are more accountable and whose activities promote a better society for everybody.
For example, we’re always talking about how bad drivers are. Now obviously we could have better attitudes so that drivers in general are better, but there will always be somebody who thinks it’s A-OK to get somewhere faster by driving crazily through downtown. There needs to be a group of people whose job it is to deal with those people. Whatever you call that group of people, what they are is the police.
I have watched more videos than I should have of police interactions. They vary, and in some of them I definitely have criticisms of the police response, but in others, they show tremendous patience with extremely poor behaviour from those with whom they are interacting. In the videos I am thinking of, they are clearly putting in a lot of effort to behave in an appropriate manner. To paint all of the police as enemies is inaccurate, and perhaps more importantly, unhelpful. I find myself asking: what should the police do to regain trust? The way some people talk, I can’t imagine what they could do that would even begin to make those people happy. So what incentive do they have even to try?
Spoiler alert: you cannot have a modern urban society without police. What you can have is a society with police that are more accountable and whose activities promote a better society for everybody.
For example, we’re always talking about how bad drivers are. Now obviously we could have better attitudes so that drivers in general are better, but there will always be somebody who thinks it’s A-OK to get somewhere faster by driving crazily through downtown. There needs to be a group of people whose job it is to deal with those people. Whatever you call that group of people, what they are is the police.
I have watched more videos than I should have of police interactions. They vary, and in some of them I definitely have criticisms of the police response, but in others, they show tremendous patience with extremely poor behaviour from those with whom they are interacting. In the videos I am thinking of, they are clearly putting in a lot of effort to behave in an appropriate manner. To paint all of the police as enemies is inaccurate, and perhaps more importantly, unhelpful. I find myself asking: what should the police do to regain trust? The way some people talk, I can’t imagine what they could do that would even begin to make those people happy. So what incentive do they have even to try?