[fsloth]

It's hardly inescapable. Police in the nordic countries acts and behaves more or less as a service branch of the government rather as a bully. But they have several years of training whereas US has only - what, a few months? I would say it's about skimping costs in the wrong place. US system is weird that in it's local search of frugal solutions it creates inefficient systems (like the medical sector).

[mtts]

What’s the situation with Nordic police and minorities? Because in the not really Nordic but reasonably civilized Netherlands the supposedly well educated police force is also a known hotbed of racism. Members of the police force in The Hague refer to themselves as “exterminators of Moroccan vermin”. Ethnic profiling is rampant and on at least one occasion a man of color was held down by a group of cops until he died as well.

At least part of the problem is cops themselves.

[tokai]

Police in Denmark are bullies too. Breaking basic rights, assaulting citizens, covering for each other, lobbying against body cams and visible identifiers on cops like numbers, etc. Profiling is legal and used extensively.

[ficklepickle]

Until we realize that tribalism is human nature, it won't change.

Racism is universal amongst humans. We are tribal primates, after all. We need to admit the biases exist and address them head-on.

It stands to reason that having a bias against out groups once increased an individuals chance of survival. Now it is actively harming society. If we can't rise above our primitive impulses, we are doomed.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I agree with what you're saying, but I think it's important to understand that the actual politics of reform pose a serious obstacle to admitting biases exist. If a police department produced a document saying "10% of our officers are moderately to severely racist, we're aiming to get that below 3%", they'd be eviscerated.

[bsanr2]

Bigotry is universal amongst humans. Racism is a systematic application of that bigotry such that it can operate on an "undesirable" population with or without the consent of the people supporting and maintaining that system. Racism is not a natural sociological phenomenon; it is a deliberate effort to twist the nature of human behavior and cognition towards cruel, cynical, violent, and destructive ends.

We need to stop telling ourselves these lies about who we are and what we're capable of.

[collyw]

Profiling is seen as bad, but I honestly don't think many grandmas will be the ones committing violent crime (or females in general). If you have some statistics to prove otherwise please show me them.

[mtts]

Someone once explained it to me like this:

Let's say 1% of the population commits crimes.

Let's also, for the sake of argument, say all crimes are committed by black people.

Of the general population, 10% is black.

If you profile all black people, you will indeed profile the 1% of the population that commits crimes, but you will also profile 9% of the population that does not commit crimes.

And before you say "not the entirety of the 10% black population is profiled": maybe ask some black people about this. It's not 100% of the black population that gets profiled but certainly a very significant percentage.

And even if it's just half or even a quarter of the black population that you're profiling, you're still profiling a lot of innocent people.

This is the reason why profiling is bad.

(and note that in reality the figures are even worse).

[roenxi]

The conclusion doesn't really follow from the premise. If all crime were committed by one racial group it would be madness not to use that information to target crime-fighting measures.

If there are credible reports of a white man committing murders it doesn't make any sense to waste resources listing mainly female Asian suspects, for example. There are also other similar issues. For example, if a crime happens on my street I expect to be treated as more of a suspect based only on my proximity.

The issue of racism is (and needs to be) grounded in things other than rational resource allocation.

[bsanr2]

The majority of crime in America is committed by white people, in terms of absolute numbers of arrests, value of stolen goods and funds, etc. By your logic, it would be most effective to target white people. This is without even taking into account that white suspects tend to avoid arrest, prosecution, conviction, and long jail sentences at higher rates than other racial groups (that is to say, when brought to a particular level of the justice system, they are less likely than others to proceed further).

However, it's clear that the vast majority of resources are devoted to black areas and poor areas, and to responding to directly "violent" crime. A mugging is more sensational than white collar crime, but from a purely utilitarian standpoint, I'm not sure it's rational to devote more resources to catching the mugger when, for example, there is widespread wage theft depressing incomes in the mugger's city. Which causes more damage in the long run?

[mtts]

Yes it does, because this is about profiling.

If all crime is committed by South Asian women, you're right that it would be madness not to use that information to target crime-fighting measures such as, for example, only looking for suspects that are female and have a South Asian suspects.

Profiling, however, where you preventively search if not outright harass people, is something entirely different: if one in ten South Asian women engage in crime, every time you preventively search and harass one of them, you have a ninety percent chance of searching and harassing someone who is innocent.

[collyw]

So it better to target 99% of the population that don't commit crimes rather that 9%? You haven't convinced me. Interesting that you chose black people for your example, its almost like you are profiling them.

[leetcrew]

it's better not to target any fraction of the population until you have some reason to suspect that an individual has committed a crime.

[fsloth]

I don't know about minorities but the level of unprofessionalism obvious in the most egregious cases of police violence would feel improbable to me in countries like Sweden ,Finland or Norway. Yeah, they are tiny countries so the sample size is really small. But the police culture is different. Guns are not used, and if they are, their use is strictly monitored.

For example, Finland has a large number of firearms, but police don't come to a crime scene guns ablaze unless they have a very good reason to think there is a need to use them.

[eganist]

The US has underfunded education and training at every fundamental step of life.

It's the root of many of our problems.

[dm319]

Yes, underfunding education is the real root of the problem as it hampers the democratic process later on.

[da39a3ee]

I would love to see better funding for education everywhere, But, no, that's not the real root of the problem.

To see the real root of the problem, compare the USA to other western democracies such as in Europe. The structure of society is very different, the nature of poverty, the number of people living as an economic underclass, the acceptance in the USA that poor areas of cities will just be fucked and that's normal, the presence of a never-ending source of ignorant, and often racist, people from small-town America, and the presence of a never-ending source of guns. Of course a lot of the above is related to the lack of a strong belief across the voting population that government should protect and support the poorest in society.

Things won't change in America until the above changes meaningfully. That would require the majority of the population to start thinking more like the liberal half, and there is no reason to think that that will happen any time soon.

[Mediterraneo10]

"the acceptance in the USA that poor areas of cities will just be fucked and that's normal"

This is certainly not limited to the USA and you will readily find it in European democracies as well. A significant portion of French people have long since assumed that the banlieues are hopeless and there is little sense trying to improve them. In Eastern Europe you will find the same attitudes about Roma neighborhoods. Even in the Nordic countries which are held up as models of social equality, one finds the genesis of immigrant-heavy neighborhoods that, local people tell themselves, will forever have the problems that immigrant-heavy neighborhoods stereotypically have.

[vixen99]

That does not seem to be the case. The US spends more on education than any other country. $16,268 a year per student vs global average of $10,759". It's evident that money does not translate into better results.

"According to the Washington thinktank the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), the average student in Singapore is 3.5 years ahead of her US counterpart in maths, 1.5 years ahead in reading and 2.5 in science. Children in countries as diverse as Canada, China, Estonia, Germany, Finland, Netherland, New Zealand and Singapore consistently outrank their US counterparts on the basics of education."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/07/us-education...

[eganist]

What's the money actually spent on? I'd argue that massive American football stadiums for grades 9-12 are perhaps incorrectly prioritized as compared to e.g. teachers.

[sethammons]

A decade ago, I was a high school teacher in inner-city San Bernardino. At the time, the district had more administrative personnel than teachers. I’d wager that kind of spending surpasses stadiums.

[Broken_Hippo]

The problem with these sorts of averages is that it doesn't paint an accurate picture. There are schools with buildings in disrepair and schools without the same resources as other schools. And some have waaay more resources and spending per student than most schools. This is, in part, because a lot of states don't fund their schools by redistributing money across all schools. Instead, they rely on the school district's tax base - which means if you are in a poor neighborhood, you probably won't have as much funding. The same goes for being in an area that doesn't utilize the public schools as much as other areas (using private schools) - this decreases federal funding that is reliant on the number of children going to your school.

All this means that it isn't really evident that money doesn't translate into better results. It isn't strictly funding, that is true - poverty seriously affects how well students can perform, for example - but it should be quite obvious that a school that cannot afford maintenance, proper computers for students to learn on, or enough staff so that classes are a manageable size can't really teach as well as a moderately funded school.

[rayiner]

This is false. State and federal funding makes up the discrepancy between more well funded and less well funded school districts in nearly every state. There is obviously differences between states, but states have vastly different costs of living. But even then: Mississippi spends as much on education as France. Overall, the US spends more not just in dollar terms, but as a percentage of GDP than most big European countries: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/15434.jpeg

Some of the worst cities have the beat funded schools. Minneapolis spends as much per student as Switzerland. Baltimore spends more, and spends as much of more than the rich suburban schools around it. The US also has relatively low rates or private K-12 compared to the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc.

[amiga_500]

Your banks writing $10,000 on a piece of paper, followed by some saying "this basic service costs $10,000" has no relation to value transactions in real countries.

[madengr]

Agreed. I can’t reply to the child comment, but school infrastructure is usually funded with bonds (at least around here).

[eternalban]

US police have been receiving advanced training in Israel. The changes in tactics, gear, are all part of this training.

This incident in MN with United States citizens getting shot at on their own porch is a much milder form of thuggery — it was not legal application of force — that Palestinians have been living with for decades.

Karma.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joint-us-israel-police-...

[alexilliamson]

What in the world. I had no idea. How did you learn about this?

[eternalban]

This has been covered fairly extensively in alternative press over the years.