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> entirely certain that the police in America, with a much worse record of abuses The fundamental misunderstanding that is unfortunately quite the norm in inte

> entirely certain that the police in America, with a much worse record of abuses The fundamental misunderstanding that is unfortunately quite the norm in internet discourse is the idea that America has a police force. It does not. The US has a bewildering array of about 18000 federal, state, county, and local police forces that operate independently, have varying degrees of accountability to entirely different governments, and can't really be spoken about in aggregate without severely oversimplifying things. Of course, that doesn't stop people from trying to do so anyway, which is how you get comments like this where people generalize their own experience with a different country's police force on a different continent and then assume from media coverage alone that "America's" is obviously worse.

nxobject 2y ago
I think you’re parsing “the” too literally - plenty of Americans would say the same thing verbatim, too, without literally assuming the existence of one police force. Broad generalizations about American policing are reasonable - that’s why we can talk about “police reform”, and why the Fraternal Order of Police exists as an American organization. (I say this as a resident of a bright blue city with a police department under a federal consent decree, and with a police union founded by a card carrying white supremacist… who is perfectly capable of distinguishing that from ICE and BORTAC.)
- lolinder 2y ago
  > plenty of Americans would say the same thing verbatim, too, without literally assuming the existence of one police force They're also wrong to do so, because police forces vary widely by jurisdiction and cannot be generalized. I don't only object to people from other countries doing it, it's just particularly uninformed when they do. I say this as a resident of a small city with a police force that has never had any controversy whatsoever, but whose officers feel acutely the generalized hatred directed at everyone in blue that has become vogue in a large segment of the country. Just because your police forces are awful doesn't mean they all are.
  - fao_ 2y ago
    > Just because your police forces are awful doesn't mean they all are. And the corollary is "Just because your police force is good, doesn't mean they all are", surely?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Most definitely! I'm making no claims about the quality of any police force in particular other than the one in my city. I'm only arguing that you can't generize from one to all and that the widespread criticism of "the police" without specifying which department or agency you're talking about is both imprecise and harmful.

nxobject 2y ago

I think you’re parsing “the” too literally - plenty of Americans would say the same thing verbatim, too, without literally assuming the existence of one police force. Broad generalizations about American policing are reasonable - that’s why we can talk about “police reform”, and why the Fraternal Order of Police exists as an American organization. (I say this as a resident of a bright blue city with a police department under a federal consent decree, and with a police union founded by a card carrying white supremacist… who is perfectly capable of distinguishing that from ICE and BORTAC.)

lolinder 2y ago
> plenty of Americans would say the same thing verbatim, too, without literally assuming the existence of one police force They're also wrong to do so, because police forces vary widely by jurisdiction and cannot be generalized. I don't only object to people from other countries doing it, it's just particularly uninformed when they do. I say this as a resident of a small city with a police force that has never had any controversy whatsoever, but whose officers feel acutely the generalized hatred directed at everyone in blue that has become vogue in a large segment of the country. Just because your police forces are awful doesn't mean they all are.
- fao_ 2y ago
  > Just because your police forces are awful doesn't mean they all are. And the corollary is "Just because your police force is good, doesn't mean they all are", surely?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Most definitely! I'm making no claims about the quality of any police force in particular other than the one in my city. I'm only arguing that you can't generize from one to all and that the widespread criticism of "the police" without specifying which department or agency you're talking about is both imprecise and harmful.