You’re ascribing a lot of emotion to a pretty disinterested argument. The purpose of police is to enforce laws, not protect people. This isn’t a hateful statement, it’s a fact that has been affirmed in court. If there is a shooter at your local high school, police are entirely within their rights to cordon off the area but not go in and intervene (this is precisely what happened in Florida). That’s not to say that those same police officers were indifferent to the lives and plights of those students, but their goal is to enforce laws, not save all lives by any means necessary. Trying to generalize your experience of police into their policy is a mistake.

How does cordoning off the area and not going in reflect enforcing the law to the best of their ability? Mainly in contrast to cordoning off the area, and then sending at least someone in.

Because it is to the best of their ability. Sending someone in sounds good, unless of course you’re that someone, and then you get to worry about either dying or killing someone innocent. Police have no duty or responsibility to risk their lives in order to save someone else, just like an emt, firefighter, lifeguard, etc.

Police care about protecting you just as long as your interests align with the interests of the state, is what I said.

For most people, these two things align.

Most. Not all. That is my point. I live in a community that the police absolutely have no interest in protecting. We are a problem to be dealt with, not a community to protect.

Not everyone has that experience, I understand that. But police are, by virtue of who pulls the purse strings, an extension of the power of government.

I never said all police don't care about protecting you. I said they absolutely care about protecting you, as long as your wants align with the needs of the state.

I don't think it's a necessary condition that your interests are aligned with the state for the police to protect you, unless you're applying a very flexible interpretation as to what the interests of the state are, in which case the point becomes pretty weak.

Good thing that poster was talking about police as an institution and power structure and not making your strawman argument about about what is in the heart of each and every cop

Good thing that literally their first sentence says police aren't there to protect you, which I literally cited in my post, and not some strawman argument about what is in the heart of each and every cop.

> If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group.