4 ms·
“No one likes a cop until they need one”. Cops are not inherently your foe, but that does not imply that they are in any way inherently your friend, even when
by gumby 3y ago
“No one likes a cop until they need one”. Cops are not inherently your foe, but that does not imply that they are in any way inherently your friend, even when you are part of the “in group”.
In the US the relatively recent shift to use of the term “law enforcement” both reflects and drives a self-destructive nature in the broad culture.
Your insightful point, “The police's sole purpose is to punish crime, not to prevent it” has several implications.
First is that even if you have a positive view of the cops (and if you are not in an “out group” you should) you still should follow this advice. If you’re not chatting with your next door neighbor the cop at a bbq, what you are is an unpleasant barrier to getting their job done with a minimum of hassle. Like you think of Jira or Confluence.
Another implication is to understand that their role, in cultural norm, in who it attracts to the job, and simply the cumulative impact of what they are exposed to, drives what I will euphemistically call “destructive impact”. We need cops like we need the weather, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take steps to deal with the destructive force of storms, and even to minimize storm generation.
Unfortunately the US is in a phase where they think the more brutality the better. In that the cops correctly reflect what they are asked to do.
- sneak 3y ago> Cops are not inherently your foe From a game theoretical POV this is false; no good can come from speaking to them, and only bad can.
- GolDDranks 3y agoHow is that true? I've submitted some lost property reports on a local police box, and at least once they've found it. Clearly a positive outcome.
- gumby 3y agoI won’t categorically say the opposite, but I think your statement is overwrought. If someone murdered your spouse, or tried to run you down with a car, who are you going to call? In the first case at least they are surely going to suspect you, so you should still be careful. But “no good can come of it”?
- sneak 3y agoMy attorney. They can speak to the police on my behalf, which would likely be necessary in the first scenario (though it would yield no benefit to me). In the latter case, I would not call them at all. What good would police contact do in either of those cases? In each instance they cannot help me.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoIf someone tried to run me down with a car, what good can the police do? Arrest the person before they try to kill me again, that's what. Keeping me from dying is definitely "helping me".
- sneak 3y agoUnlikely. In the case you describe without additional evidence they would have no basis for an arrest (otherwise you could have anyone arrested arbitrarily by accusing them of same). The police would likely only involve themselves if they actually succeeded in running you down. Even if there were video surveillance available they aren't going to go get a warrant and review the tapes because some guy came in accusing someone. It's simply not how that works. The police (in the USA) are reactive and respond after crimes are committed, not before (unless they are responding to social disorder requests, which is generally unrelated to crime). Even then they choose which crimes they deem worthy of responding to (the classic example being rape victims being dissuaded from proceeding with making a police report). Most people have a mistaken mental model of how police actually function. Most police officers are about as non-proactive as you can get (except near the end of the month when the traffic ticket quotas are due).
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoTrying to run me down is a crime - assault. (If they hit me, it's assault and battery.)
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoSay someone is robbing houses in the neighborhood. If I tell the cops as much as I know, maybe they find the perp before my house is robbed.
- tharne 3y ago> From a game theoretical POV this is false; Except we're not talking about game theory here, we're talking about reality.
- mavhc 3y agoReport a crime, get crime solved - are you saying this has never ever happened?
- HyperSane 3y agoEven if your spouse or child was murdered and you know the identity of the killer? This is a very silly statement.
- sneak 3y agoWhat benefit would I see from talking to the police in the scenario you describe?
- HyperSane 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoCan you please not break the site guidelines like this? Your comment would be fine without that first bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: you've been breaking the site guidelines so frequently that I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]