Re:Mom Handcuffed, Jailed for 8-Year-Old Son Walking Half a ...
by NoImmatureAdHom on Thursday November 17, 2022 @09:59AM
(#33639719)
Yep, we need to make the police more public servants and less a paramilitary force. I think it's probably going to mean we build a society that shares more values in order for that to happen. That's going to be hard. In my mind, a lot of the problem is that the U.S. is a very large country with very different sub-populations with very different values. It's a challenge. Running New Zealand or Norway is way easier.
> We should make it clear to those involved that it's not acceptable (we should try to punish them), and we should try to help aggrieved parties.
Here, we agree. But when you cite statistics in the manner you did, you're arguing against cloistering myself and my child in our home, quaking in fear of the improbable: beating on a straw-man.
If you re-read the last line of my first comment, you may notice that the "law and order" mentality that I'm railing against is fear-based governance. We have equipped and trained our police to be paramilitary forces that are nearly unaccountable for their misbehavior: a resounding success of fear-based governance. De-escalating the cycle of violence requires vacating fear-based governance -- convincing the police to over-react less, convincing citizens to call the authorities less; convincing voters to react to broken windows with investment in fixing windows rather than jail time and extrajudicial killings. And in the meantime, we need to hold people accountable for perpetrating administrative violence against innocent people like in TFA.