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The obvious answer to this is firearms. I'm amazed at how little this is appreciated in terms of the extra stress for US police officers. US police officers are
by zpeti 6y ago
The obvious answer to this is firearms. I'm amazed at how little this is appreciated in terms of the extra stress for US police officers. US police officers are a completely different profession to every other country.
Every time they walk up to anyone, or a car, they could be shot and die. This is insane and I don't think many people appreciate this. It completely changes the dynamic of the relationship between citizens and police.
Not to mention, US police aren't trained to deal with this stress. Which is an extra problem.
I loved the interview Jocko Willink did with Joe Rogan shortly after the George Floyd killing. The answer isn't defunding the police. Its more funding. So they can spend 20% of their time training, like the military. So they can get accustomed to high stress situations and DEescalation. These skills need to be learned. And they're not.
- Isinlor 6y agoThere is a good argument too that police should not handle good chunk of social situations that are not violent or criminal. Steer the system so that social workers without ability to use force handle them first and escalate to police as necessary.
- banannaise 6y agoHow about we keep their budgets the same, and force them to use 20% of that budget for training? They can reduce their expenditures on tear gas and rubber bullets and harassment campaigns against activists and Black people. Maybe instead of sending 100 SWAT troops to deal with people marching in a street, then can send 20 cops to keep an eye on things and put the other 80 in a training class.