5 ms·

Police do not care about the health or safety of people.

Jonnax 6y ago
Sure. But it's not helpful to say that. If someone says the police are especially bad towards the homeless, saying that they're bad to everyone just belittles and says that the concerns of the homeless aren't important.
- jeltz 6y ago
  Maybe, but it is a bit relevant in a pandemic. Even if you do not care about homeless people they will still infect others and use ICU resources. Compassionate treatment of homeless also happens to be what is best for everyone here, even the people who are not homeless.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
It's 3am where I am and I'm quite surprised to see this on the front page. I've already deleted one comment because I'm not in good shape to judge if it was informative or pointlessly fighty. But I will note that I mostly wasn't hassled by the police while homeless for nearly six years. In fact, they tended to look out for my welfare to whatever degree they could without creating a conflict of interest for themselves. One night, the police came up to our tent (I was homeless with my two adult sons) and shined a flashlight on it and ordered us to come out with our hands up. When I opened the tent and came out, they went "Oh, it's you." and promptly dropped into social worker mode, asking if I knew about various local services, etc. They were looking for a guy named Michael who was camped in the area. He had beat up his girlfriend and she had filed a police report. So they were pretty keyed up, expecting to deal with a violent criminal. They were quite relieved to see it was me and my sons instead. I knew the area well and I walked them over to where Michael stayed when he camped there and also talked about paths into and out of the little valley where I was camped and what I generally knew about Michael and his habits. I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I do remote work online which I began doing while homeless. I am not a criminal. Etc. I'm just desperately poor because I have too many personal challenges and too few resources. And the cops mostly didn't bother me, though I certainly had a few negative experiences with them as well. Cops are human. They aren't a monolith. Different cops behave differently from each other and the same cop can behave differently in different circumstances and with different people. Just like any other random human on planet earth.
- tuxxy 6y ago
  I'm happy that your experiences with police while homeless were mostly uneventful. However using this anecdotal story as evidence that the police are adequately equipped to play the "social worker" role is exceptionally dangerous. Nearly all the data in the US points to the fact that police are the exact opposite of your story -- abjectly incapable of handling this role. > Cops are human. They aren't a monolith. Yes and no. Cops are indeed humans, but the institution of policing demonstrates that they behave and act homogeneously. E.g. "the thin blue line" or the "Blue wall of silence".
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    It never ceases to surprise and amaze me how badly my point can and will consistently be mangled by some internet stranger. I'm not at all making the point you think I am. The article under question isn't about the police being asked to play social worker. It's about them being asked to just leave the homeless the hell alone for the time being. My real point is that there's a pandemic on and everyone is both under a great deal of stress and simultaneously being asked to do new things. I would bet money that some of this is just habit taking over. I'm not defending it. I'm not justifying it. I'm just explaining how humans work. Cops are just cogs in the machine. They play the role we assign them. We need systemic changes. Maybe the pandemic will help foster some of that. But vilifying cops in a sweepingly dismissive manner isn't going to help us find a path forward. It's easy to vent your spleen at the nearest target during stressful events. It almost never improves anything and typically makes things worse. Yes, we need to do better. Trash talking the police is probably not how we get there from here.
    - the_af 6y ago
      Doreen, I usually read your comments with great interest because they are always insightful. I think in this case you're mistaken though, your personal experience notwithstanding. Are you from the US? The police in many countries is inherently incapable of treating the defenseless well. This sometimes has to do with the local political leadership, but often times it's simply intrinsic to the force. I live in Argentina and the political leadership is desperately trying to get the cops to enforce the lockdown in a gentle manner, yet there are cases everywhere of them simply abusing people in poverty-stricken areas. The police over here prey on the weak because it makes them feel powerful (and yes, usually because there are little consequences -- and that's political). But the point here is that the police and the politicians are at odds in this case. I think the causes for police misbehavior are multiple and indeed systemic: giving guns and power to people unqualified for it and who get a kick out of having power over people; police forces with undemocratic traditions (as in Chile and Argentina, where the force was shaped by our dictatorships; this doesn't apply to the US) don't understand how to behave in a democracy; over here the police often comes from the same low-wage background as the people they harass, and harassment becomes a form of differentiation ("I'm not like them, they dress funny, and are dumb and violent"); discrimination based on perceived skin tone of course, and this is probably a lot like in the US. Not sure if in the US it's exactly the same, but from what I read, in many cases it's pretty similar.

Sure. But it's not helpful to say that. If someone says the police are especially bad towards the homeless, saying that they're bad to everyone just belittles and says that the concerns of the homeless aren't important.

jeltz 6y ago
Maybe, but it is a bit relevant in a pandemic. Even if you do not care about homeless people they will still infect others and use ICU resources. Compassionate treatment of homeless also happens to be what is best for everyone here, even the people who are not homeless.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

It's 3am where I am and I'm quite surprised to see this on the front page. I've already deleted one comment because I'm not in good shape to judge if it was informative or pointlessly fighty. But I will note that I mostly wasn't hassled by the police while homeless for nearly six years. In fact, they tended to look out for my welfare to whatever degree they could without creating a conflict of interest for themselves. One night, the police came up to our tent (I was homeless with my two adult sons) and shined a flashlight on it and ordered us to come out with our hands up. When I opened the tent and came out, they went "Oh, it's you." and promptly dropped into social worker mode, asking if I knew about various local services, etc. They were looking for a guy named Michael who was camped in the area. He had beat up his girlfriend and she had filed a police report. So they were pretty keyed up, expecting to deal with a violent criminal. They were quite relieved to see it was me and my sons instead. I knew the area well and I walked them over to where Michael stayed when he camped there and also talked about paths into and out of the little valley where I was camped and what I generally knew about Michael and his habits. I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I do remote work online which I began doing while homeless. I am not a criminal. Etc. I'm just desperately poor because I have too many personal challenges and too few resources. And the cops mostly didn't bother me, though I certainly had a few negative experiences with them as well. Cops are human. They aren't a monolith. Different cops behave differently from each other and the same cop can behave differently in different circumstances and with different people. Just like any other random human on planet earth.

tuxxy 6y ago
I'm happy that your experiences with police while homeless were mostly uneventful. However using this anecdotal story as evidence that the police are adequately equipped to play the "social worker" role is exceptionally dangerous. Nearly all the data in the US points to the fact that police are the exact opposite of your story -- abjectly incapable of handling this role. > Cops are human. They aren't a monolith. Yes and no. Cops are indeed humans, but the institution of policing demonstrates that they behave and act homogeneously. E.g. "the thin blue line" or the "Blue wall of silence".
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  It never ceases to surprise and amaze me how badly my point can and will consistently be mangled by some internet stranger. I'm not at all making the point you think I am. The article under question isn't about the police being asked to play social worker. It's about them being asked to just leave the homeless the hell alone for the time being. My real point is that there's a pandemic on and everyone is both under a great deal of stress and simultaneously being asked to do new things. I would bet money that some of this is just habit taking over. I'm not defending it. I'm not justifying it. I'm just explaining how humans work. Cops are just cogs in the machine. They play the role we assign them. We need systemic changes. Maybe the pandemic will help foster some of that. But vilifying cops in a sweepingly dismissive manner isn't going to help us find a path forward. It's easy to vent your spleen at the nearest target during stressful events. It almost never improves anything and typically makes things worse. Yes, we need to do better. Trash talking the police is probably not how we get there from here.
  - the_af 6y ago
    Doreen, I usually read your comments with great interest because they are always insightful. I think in this case you're mistaken though, your personal experience notwithstanding. Are you from the US? The police in many countries is inherently incapable of treating the defenseless well. This sometimes has to do with the local political leadership, but often times it's simply intrinsic to the force. I live in Argentina and the political leadership is desperately trying to get the cops to enforce the lockdown in a gentle manner, yet there are cases everywhere of them simply abusing people in poverty-stricken areas. The police over here prey on the weak because it makes them feel powerful (and yes, usually because there are little consequences -- and that's political). But the point here is that the police and the politicians are at odds in this case. I think the causes for police misbehavior are multiple and indeed systemic: giving guns and power to people unqualified for it and who get a kick out of having power over people; police forces with undemocratic traditions (as in Chile and Argentina, where the force was shaped by our dictatorships; this doesn't apply to the US) don't understand how to behave in a democracy; over here the police often comes from the same low-wage background as the people they harass, and harassment becomes a form of differentiation ("I'm not like them, they dress funny, and are dumb and violent"); discrimination based on perceived skin tone of course, and this is probably a lot like in the US. Not sure if in the US it's exactly the same, but from what I read, in many cases it's pretty similar.