This is exactly how I think about the police issue in the US. If someone has more power, as in, they are allowed to carry guns and arrest people if they need to, then those people also cannot expect it to be a "normal" job where they matter more than who they are working with (the public).

The standards of conduct need to be draconially high, because a police officer has the power to ruin a person's life.

Unfortunately, criminals aren't going to have higher standards of conduct, even if they "should". That's why we call them criminals. And the police have to deal with these people all day long--there's no easy comparison to other jobs.

Peaceful protestors are by definition not criminals. People whose rights are violated by the police? Often not criminals as well!

In fact, you cant really call someone a criminal until they've been convicted of a crime - cue the video of the cops being called by the black store owner, punching him in the face and breaking his jaw while the white thief leaves.

> you cant really call someone a criminal until they've been convicted of a crime

This is a technical nicety not available to a policeman in a real situation. If someone points a gun at them, that someone is a criminal, even if they are "technically" not.

Right but when you start throwing rocks and glass bottles, when you start blocking ambulances and firetrucks on highways, well then you aren't a peaceful protestor anymore.

How about this child shot in the face with a mace canister? Peaceful or violent protestor?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/outrage-vide...

It is extremely hard to react with anything but EXTREME vitriol to comments like yours - police are using excessive force deliberately, and then arresting people with no cause who post videos of their crimes.

Yeah, that sucks. Your description makes it sound like their face was impacted by a metal canister, but looking at the picture, they seem to have simply been maced.

Without more context, I'm guessing their parents took them to a protest and acted illegally. If so, I think that's rather poor parenting.

There doesn't seem to be a link to the full video (or any video), so take that with a grain of salt.

Again, we have data on that. Police do not have to deal with violent or dangerous criminals very much, especially during traffic stops.

The problem is that only occasionally getting killed during a traffic stop isn't enough. No sane person would take such a job.

But the comment wasn't saying the behaviour is fine, just that the job is more likely to produce this sort of content.

Even countries with less violent police corps often have episodes like this.

To keep it out of political rallies, just think of police vs hooligans in Europe.

The comment mentioned fairness, which is different than simply what we would predict.

Or police vs tekno dancers (remember CzechTek 2005?)

I was there. This is why I left the rotten country. They were using it as some free for all practice complete with tear gas grenades and a water cannon truck. They even brought a tank to show off.

All places seem to be similarly bad today. Where did you go?

You will laugh. UK. I value the respect of law that penetrates their society noticeably deeper than in Czechia.

Didn't know about this event, very interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CzechTek#CzechTek_2005

All humans, not just jobs, should have higher standards of conduct, don't you think?

Where are you going to get the humans who are able, wanting and willing to live up those higher standards is my question for you.

Last I checked, anyone can decide at any moment to be completely broke, a drug addict, a criminal, an alcoholic, a piece of shit, have an unlimited number of children and everyone else has to support them for some reason.

What kind of standard of conduct is that?

You won't ever get people to conduct themselves properly if ignore evolution and pretend you can magically educate people into not being animals. Americans don't even bother with trying to live up to the education myth, given how much they pay school teachers. They think they can just import people with higher standards of conduct when they have to and outsource the rest. It's more profitable this way you see, to ignore reality, fund bogus economics, manufacture consent and have this planet go to shit. It's more profitable this quarter you see.

If you can’t find someone to fill a position as a police officer, I would suggest increasing the compensation or leaving the position unfilled before simply accepting anyone who might want to be a cop with no standards whatsoever.

Similar logic would apply to a position for a crane operator or a pilot. If an airline had a pattern of pilot errors, and their excuse was “if we required all our pilots to have adequate pilot training and meet stringent skill requirements, it would be very difficult to hire pilots,” would you accept that?

I've thought of a shorter way to answer your question.

> If you can’t find someone to fill a position as a police officer, I would suggest increasing the compensation or leaving the position unfilled before simply accepting anyone who might want to be a cop with no standards whatsoever.

Let's say we decide to pay police officers 1 million/year and really raise their standards. Great! We did it!

Why don't we just do that across the board? The answer is - we have a limited number of highly capable people.

I see the shortage of highly capable people as a problem. My previous post was a way of highlighting that. One would have to think big picture to understand the point I was making.

Regarding leaving positions unfilled - I'm not sure you've thought this through. Imagine we have a shortage of doctors and your appendix burst. Would you rather a medical student try and save your life at say, an estimated 50% success rate, or simply die?

I generally disagree with the impression alexashka is conveying that we can’t have higher standards ‘because humans‘. There is plenty we can do.

However, it is worth pointing out that there are around 750,000 police officers in the US. It is hard to deny that finding and or training 750,000 highly capable people is a very difficult problem.

You disagree with a straw-man version of my argument while agreeing with my actual argument :)

There has to be a limit to 'higher standards' humans can live up to, I hope we can agree on that. If you agree, you can't deny that we can't have higher standards indefinitely.

We can have higher standards a little bit and we can fake achieving higher standards a lot by moving highly capable people from one set of jobs to another (from jobs X, Y, Z to police officer by paying them 1 million/year) and doing a marketing campaign that convinces the ignorant masses that real progress has been made.

My previous posts were pointing out that wanting higher standards and not having any standards for the people who create and raise new humans, are incompatible and have to be reconciled if you want to actually have higher standards, not fake higher standards via re-distribution of highly capable people.