6 ms·

Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people

Some (not all) of US police are uniquely unqualified to deal with this. You need to be able to show some compassion in this job and try to actually help people instead of just being a squad of gun wielding weirdos who show up to cart any suspicious people away, guns blazing. In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and locking them away. The way US police tend to operate fits well within a justice system that is focused on draconic punishment instead of rehabilitation and reintegration though. Some people need a guiding hand to find back into society. In the US you're liable to get kicked into the mud and danced upon instead.

b_tterc_p 7y ago
> In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and locking them away. This sounds false to me outside of some Western European areas but I don’t have data to support it
- rojcyk 7y ago
  The situation is similar to what the parent describes in the Czech Republic (which is considered eastern Europe).
  - gambiting 7y ago
    I'd say Poland too, which again, some consider Eastern Europe.
  - iguy 7y ago
    But IIRC these central/eastern European countries don't have very high crime. I presume what GP meant is that one should also look at other places with comparable size crime problems. I mean comparing Baltimore to (say) Prague is a bit like comparing it to Malibu, I'm not sure we learn much. But compare it to districts of Rio, for instance, and then maybe we can learn something about how different policing approaches play out.
- chmod775 7y ago
  Well here's some data to support my side of the argument. Note that this chart uses a logarithmic scale: https://i.ibb.co/gMtDhgQ/b.png https://i.ibb.co/gMtDhgQ/b.png Full PDF: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-statistics/International_Statistics_on_Crime_and_Justice.pdf https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-stat... Sadly I couldn't find the number of arrests made in any useful comparison, but US police have a policy of "taking people in" for almost any offense, so I'd expect it to roughly match that.
  - iguy 7y ago
    Can you explain what you see in this graph? I'm baffled, I don't know what "suspects" means, nor why Canada has 10x as many as Mexico. (Presumably the x-axis is police per million population, or similar.)
Ballas 7y ago
As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public. In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.
- johnmaguire2013 7y ago
  Classic chicken or egg...
  - rjf72 7y ago
    Violent crime was at extremely negligible levels in the fifties. In just 3-4 decades to the 90s it ended up increasing (per rate) by around 800%. That's a part of where the hyper-tough on crime laws came from, and it's also when you started seeing an increasing militarization of the police. Violent crime then decreased by about 50% to 2014, though that still of course leaves us at a level multiple times higher than where we started. And it's now back on the rise. Here are the raw numbers [1]. They're quite interesting to consider. Something I'm quite curious about on Hacker News, preempting the downvotes can people explain what they find offensive about data? [1] - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
    - bena 7y ago
      Eh. This might be a case of not really having good data. Looking at the "data", one would conclude that Autism is on the rise. But we didn't even know what it was not too long ago. And we sure as hell didn't check for it. There are more diagnoses of Autism because we're actually looking now. Today, domestic violence would be classified as a violent crime. In the fifties, it was called keeping your wife in line. Lynching a black man was a way to keep him away from your pristine daughter in the fifties. Now. It's a crime.
      - rjf72 7y ago
        I think this is a rather extreme mischaracterization of a society, but proving things like this statistically is not possible. Because, while it may be a mischaracterization, you are certainly correct that domestic violence was much more normalized (even if still extremely rare) and you likely would have seen a much lower reporting rate because of this. So that problem does cause an issue with getting down to the very exact number. Fortunately, there's a much simpler response. Just referencing the data from the provided link (starting in the 60s) [1], the increase in crime is for literally every single category of crime. And most saw very dramatic increases: robbery 400%, assault 500%, burgularly 300%, theft 300%, auto theft 300% increase, etc. You can cast uncertainty on some of the figures but the extremely high rate increases paired with the fact it was spread across literally every single crime leaves little 0 doubt that there was absolutely an exponentially increasing crime rate between 1960 and 1991. As one aside, that 1991 date is really quite peculiar. Nearly every single crime hit its peak in that year. You'd expect different crimes to decline at different rates or even statistical noise to have played a role. Yet at a glance the only crime that didn't hit its peak in 1991 was forcible rape, which peaked in 1992. The 'Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act' [2] formalizing the increasing militarization of police (which would really go into overdrive after the North Hollywood shootout) was passed in 1981. [1] - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cooperation_with_Civilian_Law_Enforcement_Agencies_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cooperation_with_Civi...
rossdavidh 7y ago
I would agree that most US police are not qualified to deal with the issues of trust. Part of that is that they don't have the training, part of that is that there are centuries of bad history in the way of it, and part of it is that for police to do this in a better way would require a lot more police per 1,000 citizens, which is hard to get political support for. I'm not sure that it's true that "most other countries" police work the way you're saying. There's a good book on the problems of policing world-wide, " The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence by Gary A. Haugen,Victor Boutros". https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1733234333 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1733234333
AS126 7y ago
Scandinavian countries in particular tend to do better in encouraging rehab and reintegration. Part of it is definitely related to cost, those countries tend to have stronger funding for their prison/reform systems. Draconic punishment is not ideal especially because criminals return to society with less prospects and are likely to turn to crime once again. That is if they return at all.
- dariusj18 7y ago
  I think it's a vicious cycle. Many countries with less "crime" require less police, therefore they can be more selective about the people they hire and spend more money to train them. In the US, policing and prison are huge industries, and at a certain point there are not enough qualified individuals to go around. Now imagine the TSA and Border patrol and many other government security institutions. So many cast offs.
  - ComputerGuru 7y ago
    There aren’t enough qualified candidates because they literally are not interested in hiring people that can think for themselves rather than blindly follow orders and protocol. I know how petty this statement sounds, and you’re probably thinking “ok there, someone has an axe to grind or needs to learn some nuance,” but read this news article about what (legally!) disqualifies a candidate from being hired as an officer: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...
    - SamReidHughes 7y ago
      No, they just want to save money on training by avoiding high turnover.
  - username90 7y ago
    Another point is the kind of work police has to deal with. In a low crime country police almost never has to deal with criminals with weapons or guns, so they never have to fear for their lives. This means that people who don't like violence don't mind joining the police. However in USA where police have to engage in lots of violence just to do their job the people who want to join the police are very different.
CapricornNoble 7y ago
>>>The way US police tend to operate fits well within a justice system that is focused on draconic punishment instead of rehabilitation and reintegration though. US law enforcement agencies have conducted joint training with Israeli experts for decades. So it should be no surprise that our police forces have taken on a callous "siege mentality".[1] [1]https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-training-adl-human-rights-abuses-dc-washington/ https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-train...

b_tterc_p 7y ago

> In most other countries police has an active role in settling disputes using empathy and compassion, instead of just arresting people and locking them away. This sounds false to me outside of some Western European areas but I don’t have data to support it

rojcyk 7y ago
The situation is similar to what the parent describes in the Czech Republic (which is considered eastern Europe).
- gambiting 7y ago
  I'd say Poland too, which again, some consider Eastern Europe.
- iguy 7y ago
  But IIRC these central/eastern European countries don't have very high crime. I presume what GP meant is that one should also look at other places with comparable size crime problems. I mean comparing Baltimore to (say) Prague is a bit like comparing it to Malibu, I'm not sure we learn much. But compare it to districts of Rio, for instance, and then maybe we can learn something about how different policing approaches play out.
chmod775 7y ago
Well here's some data to support my side of the argument. Note that this chart uses a logarithmic scale: https://i.ibb.co/gMtDhgQ/b.png https://i.ibb.co/gMtDhgQ/b.png Full PDF: https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-statistics/International_Statistics_on_Crime_and_Justice.pdf https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/Crime-stat... Sadly I couldn't find the number of arrests made in any useful comparison, but US police have a policy of "taking people in" for almost any offense, so I'd expect it to roughly match that.
- iguy 7y ago
  Can you explain what you see in this graph? I'm baffled, I don't know what "suspects" means, nor why Canada has 10x as many as Mexico. (Presumably the x-axis is police per million population, or similar.)

Ballas 7y ago

As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public. In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.

johnmaguire2013 7y ago
Classic chicken or egg...
- rjf72 7y ago
  Violent crime was at extremely negligible levels in the fifties. In just 3-4 decades to the 90s it ended up increasing (per rate) by around 800%. That's a part of where the hyper-tough on crime laws came from, and it's also when you started seeing an increasing militarization of the police. Violent crime then decreased by about 50% to 2014, though that still of course leaves us at a level multiple times higher than where we started. And it's now back on the rise. Here are the raw numbers [1]. They're quite interesting to consider. Something I'm quite curious about on Hacker News, preempting the downvotes can people explain what they find offensive about data? [1] - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
  - bena 7y ago
    Eh. This might be a case of not really having good data. Looking at the "data", one would conclude that Autism is on the rise. But we didn't even know what it was not too long ago. And we sure as hell didn't check for it. There are more diagnoses of Autism because we're actually looking now. Today, domestic violence would be classified as a violent crime. In the fifties, it was called keeping your wife in line. Lynching a black man was a way to keep him away from your pristine daughter in the fifties. Now. It's a crime.
    - rjf72 7y ago
      I think this is a rather extreme mischaracterization of a society, but proving things like this statistically is not possible. Because, while it may be a mischaracterization, you are certainly correct that domestic violence was much more normalized (even if still extremely rare) and you likely would have seen a much lower reporting rate because of this. So that problem does cause an issue with getting down to the very exact number. Fortunately, there's a much simpler response. Just referencing the data from the provided link (starting in the 60s) [1], the increase in crime is for literally every single category of crime. And most saw very dramatic increases: robbery 400%, assault 500%, burgularly 300%, theft 300%, auto theft 300% increase, etc. You can cast uncertainty on some of the figures but the extremely high rate increases paired with the fact it was spread across literally every single crime leaves little 0 doubt that there was absolutely an exponentially increasing crime rate between 1960 and 1991. As one aside, that 1991 date is really quite peculiar. Nearly every single crime hit its peak in that year. You'd expect different crimes to decline at different rates or even statistical noise to have played a role. Yet at a glance the only crime that didn't hit its peak in 1991 was forcible rape, which peaked in 1992. The 'Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act' [2] formalizing the increasing militarization of police (which would really go into overdrive after the North Hollywood shootout) was passed in 1981. [1] - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cooperation_with_Civilian_Law_Enforcement_Agencies_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cooperation_with_Civi...

rossdavidh 7y ago

I would agree that most US police are not qualified to deal with the issues of trust. Part of that is that they don't have the training, part of that is that there are centuries of bad history in the way of it, and part of it is that for police to do this in a better way would require a lot more police per 1,000 citizens, which is hard to get political support for. I'm not sure that it's true that "most other countries" police work the way you're saying. There's a good book on the problems of policing world-wide, " The Locust Effect: Why the End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence by Gary A. Haugen,Victor Boutros". https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1733234333 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1733234333

AS126 7y ago

Scandinavian countries in particular tend to do better in encouraging rehab and reintegration. Part of it is definitely related to cost, those countries tend to have stronger funding for their prison/reform systems. Draconic punishment is not ideal especially because criminals return to society with less prospects and are likely to turn to crime once again. That is if they return at all.

dariusj18 7y ago
I think it's a vicious cycle. Many countries with less "crime" require less police, therefore they can be more selective about the people they hire and spend more money to train them. In the US, policing and prison are huge industries, and at a certain point there are not enough qualified individuals to go around. Now imagine the TSA and Border patrol and many other government security institutions. So many cast offs.
- ComputerGuru 7y ago
  There aren’t enough qualified candidates because they literally are not interested in hiring people that can think for themselves rather than blindly follow orders and protocol. I know how petty this statement sounds, and you’re probably thinking “ok there, someone has an axe to grind or needs to learn some nuance,” but read this news article about what (legally!) disqualifies a candidate from being hired as an officer: https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...
  - SamReidHughes 7y ago
    No, they just want to save money on training by avoiding high turnover.
- username90 7y ago
  Another point is the kind of work police has to deal with. In a low crime country police almost never has to deal with criminals with weapons or guns, so they never have to fear for their lives. This means that people who don't like violence don't mind joining the police. However in USA where police have to engage in lots of violence just to do their job the people who want to join the police are very different.

CapricornNoble 7y ago

>>>The way US police tend to operate fits well within a justice system that is focused on draconic punishment instead of rehabilitation and reintegration though. US law enforcement agencies have conducted joint training with Israeli experts for decades. So it should be no surprise that our police forces have taken on a callous "siege mentality".[1] [1]https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-training-adl-human-rights-abuses-dc-washington/ https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-train...