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Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic. It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police wo

by ska 5y ago

Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic. It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police work which was more my point; lots of people make excuses for the excesses of these systems based on this sort of "98%" (or whatever big number) argument; mostly those excuses are pure fertilizer.

a1369209993 5y ago
> mostly those excuses are pure fertilizer. Fertilizer is good and useful (it helps plants grow); what you're talking is raw sewage, complete with draino and hastily-disposed medication.
rayiner 5y ago
> Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic. Good people don't rob their neighbors because they're "having a bad day." They're shitty people. And no, poverty doesn't excuse it. People in Bangladesh, where I'm from, are vastly poorer. If poverty caused crime, they'd go around stealing, joining gangs, etc. But mostly they don't. In Bangladeshi villages, crime is lower than in U.S. cities. And when they do those things, nobody hesitates to call them shitty people! I'm extremely sympathetic to police reform, because I think even shitty people don't deserve to be abused by the state. But let's not mince words here. > It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police work which was more my point That may be your point, but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding. My point was in the context of this article, which is about someone who was prosecuted for brutally raping and murdering a woman.
- ska 5y ago
  The narrative that you can perform some sort of binary classification into "good people" and "shitty people", and the the latter is who shows up nearly exclusively in the justice system (and, critically that the converse might be true) falls apart under any real scrutiny. > but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding. Neither was I. I was talking about the majority of all the work they do. Everyone can identify clearly horrible behavior, and often it is police who have to deal with this as part of their job. This is difficult and unfortunate, but it is not the defining characteristic of the work. Pretending that it is in order to somehow excuse bad behavior on their part doesn't do anyone favors.

by ska 5y ago

a1369209993 5y ago

> mostly those excuses are pure fertilizer. Fertilizer is good and useful (it helps plants grow); what you're talking is raw sewage, complete with draino and hastily-disposed medication.

rayiner 5y ago

> Even if you are talking only about people prosecuted, "98% shitty people" is ridiculously hyperbolic. Good people don't rob their neighbors because they're "having a bad day." They're shitty people. And no, poverty doesn't excuse it. People in Bangladesh, where I'm from, are vastly poorer. If poverty caused crime, they'd go around stealing, joining gangs, etc. But mostly they don't. In Bangladeshi villages, crime is lower than in U.S. cities. And when they do those things, nobody hesitates to call them shitty people! I'm extremely sympathetic to police reform, because I think even shitty people don't deserve to be abused by the state. But let's not mince words here. > It also, as you note, precludes the majority of police work which was more my point That may be your point, but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding. My point was in the context of this article, which is about someone who was prosecuted for brutally raping and murdering a woman.

ska 5y ago
The narrative that you can perform some sort of binary classification into "good people" and "shitty people", and the the latter is who shows up nearly exclusively in the justice system (and, critically that the converse might be true) falls apart under any real scrutiny. > but I wasn't talking about pulling people over for speeding. Neither was I. I was talking about the majority of all the work they do. Everyone can identify clearly horrible behavior, and often it is police who have to deal with this as part of their job. This is difficult and unfortunate, but it is not the defining characteristic of the work. Pretending that it is in order to somehow excuse bad behavior on their part doesn't do anyone favors.