> Most Americans have a positive experience with police and with police protecting them. This is true in minority communities too.

I'm not a minority and I grew up solidly upper middle-class. But even as a child, I knew that it was really dangerous to piss off the police.

Because the police were generally considered to just be the biggest and best armed gang. Because they acted that way.

Things have gotten much better in the ensuing 35-40 years here, but there are still serious, structural problems with police impunity -- especially if you're a minority[0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...

[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/10/13/nypd-stop-frisk-warrants...

NYPD (in decades past) is an bit of an outlier... but even then, there's a gulf between "have a good experience with" and "don't piss off".

Modern polling is what I based by contention on, and I don't think citing the most notorious counter-example (and reaching back before reforms to solve exactly the problem you allege) is much of a response.

Minority communities routinely poll in favour of INCREASED presence in their communities nowadays.

>NYPD (in decades past) is an bit of an outlier... but even then, there's a gulf between "have a good experience with" and "don't piss off".

I'm pretty much with George Carlin (at least I'm pretty sure it was him) WRT the police: "It's not that I don't like the police, I just feel better when they're not around."

Yeah, and stats showed exactly that. If we are talking about stats and facts and truths, I wouldn't need to rant like this.

Really? I find that very difficult to believe based on the sum of my interactions with police. Maybe they're lying, but most of the people I've spoken to have nothing but negative things to say about the way they've been treated by police.

How many people have you asked?

This is like the review site problem... people don't tend to walk around giving random anecdotes about good experiences with routine or common services.

But the polling is what I based my comment on. Even in minority communities, increased police presence polls significantly higher than decreased presence - and that's before proposing any reforms.

Most people have nothing to say about positive interactions with the police.

I mean I specifically ask them if they have ever had an interaction they would characterize as positive and most say "no." admittedly I've only talked to 15-20 people about this so my sample could be skewed.

Most iOS users have a positive experience not having access to compilers and multitasking, this is true of developers too.