> No, you never can with absolutely certainty, the question is how you distribute the costs of uncertainty. Leading with paramilitary enforcers in nearly all situations has consequences that people are not happy with, hence the defund/dismantle/abolish movement.

> The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.

Which they manifestly fail to do effectively, for structural reasons. A paramilitary force with minimal entry education requirements whose training disproportionately focuses on the proper use of force to secure compliance is not a good general purpose community response tool.

since when do they use paramilitary forces "in nearly all situations" ? I think you're jumping the gun a bit on that statement.

The problem is that supposedly non-violent situations can turn violent or threatening very quickly. So, all officers need to be trained in use of force.

> since when do they use paramilitary forces "in nearly all situations" ? I think you're jumping the gun a bit on that statement.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/police-aca...

"The majority of law-enforcement academies in the United States are loosely modeled on military boot camps."

https://www.charleskochinstitute.org/issue-areas/criminal-ju...

"Over 8,000 law enforcement agencies have utilized the 1033 program to access more than $6 billion worth of military equipment such as night-vision goggles, machine guns, armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, and military aircraft ...

... One study found that use of paramilitary-style teams by law enforcement increased by more than 1,400 percent since 1980."

https://cjmasters.eku.edu/sites/cjmasters.eku.edu/files/21st...

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Or, just apply your eyes and look at the photos of St. Louis police with sniper rifles trained on crowds of people during the Ferguson protests. One is here:

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and...

It's easy - when someone wants a well-check or reports mental health or substance abuse or maybe even rape, that should go to someone other than police.

Showing up with a gun to some events is guaranteed to make things worse.

A rape investigation should be done by a social worker? Are they trained criminal investigators? Is a social worker familiar with the rules of criminal evidence? The job of the police is to investigate crimes and present evidence to the DA.

For welfare checks or mental illness incidents, then of course a social worker or analogue could be a better choice. For investigating criminal acts, that’s specifically what police do.

If someone calls in a rape, what happens when the suspect is still there? Rape is a violent crime and showing up with a gun is absolutely appropriate. It’s ridiculous to suggest violent crimes should be investigated by people who aren’t trained in criminal investigation nor trained to deal with violent and dangerous suspects. Is the social worker going to carry handcuffs? Are they going to be trained in apprehending suspects? If so, then that means the social worker is now a cop.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here.

It would be perfectly possible to have people who are trained to preserve evidence who are not also traditional police. E.g. a medical examiner of some kind. You want someone to work with traumatized victims delicately, and a uniformed cop with a sidearm is not the ideal presence in that case. I don't want to get into suspect present/absent/whatever; but this type of crime isn't necessarily done by a random stranger in every case.

This hypothetical trained medical examiner won't be wearing a uniform? Seems like a uniform might be a good idea.

As to a sidearm – if I'd just been raped, someone showing up to protect me with a sidearm sounds like just the ticket.

Not sure what you are saying about a suspect not being a random stranger, that doesn't seem particularly relevant to whether or not the suspect is still there.

The baby’s already been tossed my friend.

The police actually have a terrible record when it comes to handling the crime of rape.

They downplay it, deprioritize it, etc. Read about the massive backlog of rape kits.

Literally - rape crimes that are reported to the police, and that they deprioritize or ignore.

https://www.rainn.org/articles/addressing-rape-kit-backlog

I'd love to hear from the folks who downvoted this, so I could improve this comment. Because there's a lot of empirical evidence that police departments (and our court system, to be fair - it's a social issue) historically have not handled rape cases well.

So, I'm all for reasonable discussion and receiving feedback about what was unclear or counterproductive in what I said.

But, I encourage future readers to take silence as a sign that people really didn't have any facts or logic to back up their side of the argument ; ).

Even though that might be a bit unfair, since it's not as if everyone is on here all the time.

But I think it's important for technologists - scientists, engineers, etc - to embrace their role in society at large and the power we have.

And part of that involves discussing social issues, as frustrating as some of us might find discussing these non-quantifiable fields.

Hey, it can't be worse than having to talk about the latest hot new addition to the JS ecosystem ;)

I agree for the mental health checks that there should be someone trained in mental health present, but you also need police present just in case the mentally ill person because combative, funding shouldn't be reduced, perhaps it should be increased to train police in handling the mentally ill or the police force should have professionals on the clock.

Why does a victim of sexual assault need to report to someone who has a gun? Why does a wellness check need to be performed with a gun? Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun? Why does every cop in a school need a gun? Why is the gun the constant?

> Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun?

Because this is statistically the form of policing most likely to get cops shot.

> Why does every cop in a school need a gun?

A symptom of America's school shooting problem. When your child is being gunned down you'll probably wish the police there were armed.

Perhaps, but school resource officers have a poor track record of addressing school shootings.

School shootings where children are being gunned down are vanishingly rare.

In 2019, eight people were killed and 43 were injured in 25 school shooting incidents.

2018 was much worse with 37 kids killed in school shootings.

This is roughly the same as the number of unarmed black people shot and killed by police in the line of duty (at least this number has been trending downward for several years).

Do you have a source for the this?

Reporting of school shootings is notoriously unreliable:

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-sch...

I agree, there's no standard definition. I grabbed the 8 / 43 number for 2019 here [1]. I see they have similar numebers as what I found for 2018 as well [2].

The 2018 numbers I was referencing was from this 10 year overview [3].

[1] - https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/school-shooting...

[2] - https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/school-shooting...

[3] - https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-scho...

> Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun?

Because civilians have shot and killed police during traffic stops? And not just with guns. I seem to remember a road rage case in Colorado where the raging driver shot and killed another driver with a crossbow.

It's not clear how "there is a non-zero chance a motorist has a gun" leads to the conclusion that "all traffic enforcement must have a gun".

As someone from the Netherlands I can say there's a non-zero chance that a motorist has a gun. It's smaller than the US, but it's not zero. Still our cops carry guns. In the US the chances are way, way higher. I can understand that cops are armed there.

Because the cop showing up doesn't know before hand whether or not the motorist have a gun. There's a lot of other things they don't know. The person could be a drug/human trafficker, or have a warrant out for him. In which case, they are armed.