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If we as a society are OK with qualified law enforcement looking the other way, then we're OK with passing the buck to the unqualified. Yes, it's a "rabbit hol
by blueboo 8y ago
If we as a society are OK with qualified law enforcement looking the other way, then we're OK with passing the buck to the unqualified.
Yes, it's a "rabbit hole [we're] not sure we're prepared to go down". We're not prepared. We're going down it
- fladrif 8y agoI don't think the correct takeaway is that we're OK with law enforcement looking the other way. Clearly that is the best route to solve this issue, and we need more oversight into why certain cases are handled in this way and why. What is the priority of law enforcement, and where is the time allocation for case follow-up.
- blueboo 8y agoI agree with your principals, but I think that since people aren't spending political capital to change it, we're giving tacit approval -- however begrudging, however wrong-in-our-heart-of-hearts-we-think-it-is
- iamdave 8y agoIf we as a society are OK with qualified law enforcement looking the other way, then we're OK with passing the buck to the unqualified. Post hoc ergo propter hoc make for valid public policy it does not. What source do you point to that we as a society are OK with qualified law enforcement looking the other way?
- alangibson 8y agoExistence proof. Law enforcement looks the other way and we do nothing about it. Not being OK with something and passively accepting it is functionally identical to being OK with something.
- ben_w 8y agoI don’t know what to do about such things. One of my exes is certain what to do, which is why she’s campaigning for the fourth largest political party in America. Me, I could work on AI to fully enforce all laws, but I suspect that would have unfortunate side effects like accidentally returning to feudalism after all but a few thousand Americans end up with multiple millennia of prison time because the laws themselves are overbroad… and if I limit it to just laws I agree with, well that’s exactly the sort of thing I would be appalled by if done by someone with whom I disagreed about which laws were just. What should we do, do you recon?
- krageon 8y agoMove to a different country. Work hard and be an asset somewhere you do agree with society's laws, then help that country improve it's lot so more people can benefit. Why should a country be different than a company?
- tripzilch 8y agoI prefer my countries better than a company.
- ben_w 8y agoI did move to a new country. That’s not helping the UK (my place of origin), because the UK leadership is utterly tone-deaf to all critics. My German comprehension isn’t likely to ever be good enough to have useful opinions about German law.
- tripzilch 8y agoI don't know, did you try having more guns?
- belorn 8y agoJust to take two examples in the news from the last few months here in Sweden. The police has announced that they will not investigate illegal workers in the construction industry next year, because if they did they would find crime and then that department would not have any time left to investigate other industries. It is also official policy to not investigate theft below of $500, unless special circumstances. Because of this many stores has refused to file police reports, which the state statisticians then complained on national news since that limits their ability to make accurate reports to the politicians on how much crime exist.
- vec 8y ago> If we as a society are OK with qualified law enforcement looking the other way, then we're OK with passing the buck to the unqualified. You're excluding the admittedly somewhat bleak but still quite plausible third alternative: we as a society are in practice OK with this class of crime going largely unprosecuted. The legitimate authorities are resource constrained, the political process isn't prepared to allocate sufficient resources to change that, and the societal costs of allowing vigilanteism and extrajudicial punishment are broadly believed to outstrip the scope of the problem they would ostensibly be solving. This leads to an equilibrium where a lot of petty theft goes unpunished and we, as a society, are in practice content to accept it that way.
- weberc2 8y agoThat is an outcome, but not a particularly desirable one depending on the degree of pettiness and the frequency of these crimes. Interestingly if you loosen restrictions on self defense and maintain penalties for self-defense gone awry (I.e., your defense system injure an innocent person) then you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place.
- thunfischbrot 8y agoWhy are the as restrained as they are right now though? A state without a functioning law enforcement that is out to effectively protect citizens and actually enforcing laws is missing the point of being a state at all. Money: Reduce spending overseas by cutting down drastically on operations outside the nation's borders. Education: Establish longer training, covering more in-depth the actual goals of law enforcement, effective strategies in community engagement, de-escalation tactics, psychology and the justice system. Respect: Integrate law enforcement back into the communities they are supposed to serve. Reduce the barriers, demilitarize law enforcement from the look, equipment and the strategies employed all the way to the mindset of the law enforcement officials. Citizens (all humans in fact) should be viewed more like customers than like potential perpetrators.
- manigandham 8y agoWe're not all OK with it, but that does not mean we should fix it by employing unqualified vigilantes instead.