Without definitively having some stat that proves or disproves this, the way this opinion was expressed feels a lot like survivor bias because you're reacting to the relatively small number of negative police interactions that are hyped up by the media (because they play on emotions well) and mentioning nothing of the millions and millions of police interactions that go positively or times that police presence prevented a crime.

Okay, I'll bite. I downvoted it because, even if true, it's irrelevant and promotes a toxic (and I use that term advisedly) narrative.

Yes, when you enforce laws, some people are a-holes and escalate to unlawful violence. Sometimes cops, sometimes civilians.

The appropriate reaction to make sure that isn't tolerated either, to improve police-community relations, to train police better, and to review whether we need to update laws to match consensus on expected human behavior.

The appropriate reaction is not in a hundred miles of "oh, well, gosh, do we really need to enforce laws anymore? Someone might get hurt!", and the forum is a worse place for tolerating that mentality.

Now, to be sure, there are many laws that fit the last category above and should probably be scaled back for being petty and kafkaesque. But, "don't wake up a million people around you for your own personal thrills" does not make the list.

Agreed that the solution is not to _not_ enforce laws but the article is about enforcing the law without using Police “on the ground” to do so which helps alleviate the issue of possible escalation. The parent of my comment calls out that issue in response to their parent saying “let’s just get police involved” so in that regard this is a totally reasonable point to make in response to it and on topic for HN as it’s about automation of enforcement vs alternatives.

Only 13 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac...

...Did you read the article you linked to? The bulk of the article is dedicated to discussing why that number is misleading, and how it reflects our lack of data/transparency when it comes to policing, particularly when it comes to police involvement in homicide.

Yep, and I am not persuaded by their special pleading.

What about armed Black men? Having a gun is not grounds to shoot someone. Remember, we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Well as long as only 13 innocent unarmed people were unloaded on by law enforcement everything is fine

1. unarmed does not mean they were not a threat or innocent

2. No human endeavor is perfect. I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

> I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

I mostly agree with this, but there needs to be an effort to hold people accountable when mistakes are made, and to change processes to help ensure that these mistakes don't happen again, or at least happen less often. Police departments across the US seem near-violently resistant to this.

I think that irresponsibly spreading propaganda which implies “police are more dangerous than criminals” while simultaneously demanding “accountability” is unlikely to convince the police that any “accountability process” is going to be carried out in good faith.

I also think the existing criminal courts and prosecutors hold police reasonably accountable. They could do better.

1. True, but neither one was shown here, so you can choose any assumption you want, and mine was innocence (the law requires the same assumption until proven otherwise)

2. There is no evidence that any prevention of crime was gained in exchange for the deaths of these innocent unarmed people. If anything it created an environment where the law is respected less.

1. true 2. false

In one particular country perhaps, not a phenomenon worldwide.

edit: misread the title, assumed this was about them doing this in Paris (also recently announced)

But we're talking about that country right now.

I haven’t actually seen normalized statistics with respect to police density, ‘exposure’ or time on patrol. Do you know who publishes such numbers?

Well, the current approach of decreasing exposure to police has increased crime