alt Hacker News> society is getting increasingly SAFE
This is a great point, and one that really isn't played up because it doesn't fit the whole profit-from-attention narrative that literally every media surface seems to be following.
It almost seems as if law enforcement 'need' these additional tools to keep them busy; find new, more trivial crime that's been hiding behind no one reporting it or being hurt by it.
Maybe if law enforcement resources could be applied to more corporate crime, that'd keep em busy till the cows come home.
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> It almost seems as if law enforcement 'need' these additional tools to keep them busy
what happens when society solves its issues and theres no need to 'keep them busy' :(
Indeed, in my experience all these tools do is offset policing to "easy" crimes and the harder problems continually get ignored. It's largely been accepted in my city, for example, that traffic enforcement no longer happens.
https://ourworldindata.org/us-crime-rates its it really getting better if you adjust for the ageing population?
Law enforcement largely exists in the US to protect Corporate crime. Has done since it's beginnings as an institution, finding roots in the south in slave patrols, and roots in the north in protecting private property.
The cops are not now nor have they ever been an institution to protect the people, they are there to protect the Peace. What's the Peace? Largely seems to be whatever makes the rich people happy.
I have this conversation with neighbors almost weekly, and I’ve had a bunch of them just say that I’m wrong with no real evidence or, and this is verbatim, “it doesn’t feel safer.”
This conversation is usually about how no one lets their kids play outside unsupervised anymore, but it applies to police as well. In Georgia they had to pass a law telling police they couldn’t arrest parents who let their kids go outside by themselves. The inciting incident literally had a police officer lecturing a mother about how many sickos are out there and then putting her in cuffs because her 10-year-old was a mile away by himself. Even since then, DFCS has been caught bullying parents into signing an agreement saying they were negligent and agreeing to a restrictive safety plan because they let their kid go to a nearby playground by themself.
It is insane and depressing about how people willingly restrict their lives and their kids lives because of the mistaken belief that the world isn’t as safe as it was when they were a kid. Not only that, but if you let your kids play outside without you, then you risk your neighbors calling the police on you and having to deal with whatever bs comes from that.