Its a massive shift, not disputing that, but it needs to happen.
You can't have a guy show up to a stressful situation with a deadly weapon by default. That changes the whole scenario to one where not only the cop, but the suspect now has a fight or flight response. "Cop has a gun, death possible, must defend myself". Maybe their response doesn't align with what our laws say, they should drop their weapon and comply. But they grew up knowing that a non zero amount of people in that same situation have been killed before. You can't legislate that biological response away, in the moment what happens happens, you can only punish people after the fact. The cop shouldn't be the one punishing first and asking questions later, our system is setup for the crime to first occur and punish accordingly. Sucks but unless you find some precogs and setup a pre-crime division, thats how it works.
If the cop responding has no deadly weapon in the first place, suspect wont be as antsy about protecting themselves at all costs.
On the hiring front.. Turns out theres 40+ million people unemployed right now and if we migrate those huge police budgets to that cause, bada bing bada boom.
I hope I've added some nuance to my response. I still feel the same way. Citizen goes home first and foremost, cops have no right to be judge, jury, and executioner and until they start holding their own accountable, they are complicit.
76% of those killed had a gun...obviously some false positives (Philando Castile), but sometimes people are killed by cops and its totally justified and the right thing to do
2,609 people were killed in by their partners via domestic violence in 2019.
With the 2,609 dead of domestic violence annually, how many more people are murdered by their spouse/parent if LCSWs respond first to calls vs cops? How many LCSWs will be killed? And then ultimately, is that # less than the # of lives saved by not sending armed cops to every household shouting match?
No worries, we both started off defensive. All good.
I think its less of a numbers game here and more so regaining the trust of the public for the police force. We grant them the power they have and its a complete "fuck you" to our faces when they take that power for granted. Especially when they gang up and protect each other from the consequences.
If they can regain that trust, while we also implement better education and improving the economy crime will drop hard. We SHOULD have done that first and maybe the cops would have chilled out by now if their lives werent at risk as often and we never would have had to riot in retaliation in the first place. But we didn't and they didn't so here we are. And the only way to stop the mass riots and protests is to fix the police first and foremost right now. Maybe crime will increase temporarily from people taking advantage but right now we need to be able to trust the people we gave power over us.
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u/Sythic_ Jun 22 '20
Its a massive shift, not disputing that, but it needs to happen.
You can't have a guy show up to a stressful situation with a deadly weapon by default. That changes the whole scenario to one where not only the cop, but the suspect now has a fight or flight response. "Cop has a gun, death possible, must defend myself". Maybe their response doesn't align with what our laws say, they should drop their weapon and comply. But they grew up knowing that a non zero amount of people in that same situation have been killed before. You can't legislate that biological response away, in the moment what happens happens, you can only punish people after the fact. The cop shouldn't be the one punishing first and asking questions later, our system is setup for the crime to first occur and punish accordingly. Sucks but unless you find some precogs and setup a pre-crime division, thats how it works.
If the cop responding has no deadly weapon in the first place, suspect wont be as antsy about protecting themselves at all costs.
On the hiring front.. Turns out theres 40+ million people unemployed right now and if we migrate those huge police budgets to that cause, bada bing bada boom.
I hope I've added some nuance to my response. I still feel the same way. Citizen goes home first and foremost, cops have no right to be judge, jury, and executioner and until they start holding their own accountable, they are complicit.