[dragonwriter]

> You know, the bad murder stats in your first paragraph do not suggest people should trust the police.

Yeah, I don't know why the biggest argument people raise against radical reform of the US law enforcement system is "the current system is doing a spectacularly bad job at controlling crime, so we shouldn't mess with it".

[alehul]

Seeing a high crime rate doesn't automatically call for radical reform — and in a way abolition — of the status quo of law enforcement.

Why is the crime rate high? Is it really because of police, or do they help? How will some radical restructuring reduce it?

There are many questions here.

Preventative policing, while effective in social democratic countries with low inequality like the Nordics, isn't on the table when we see violent crime that mirrors African and South American countries. Disincentivizing homicide in a country rife with inequality and materialism is a harder task than we imagine.

There are ~900,000 police officers in the United States, and 240 million 911 calls, and 50 million police-public interactions. That's an average of over 50 interactions per day for a police officer.

[watwut]

African and South American countries you have in mind have typically highly corrupt police force. Police themselves being often also criminals or cooperating with them is big part of problem. I dont think that is argument for why it is good idea to adopt their tactics.

The murder clearance rates are quite low when I checked, so at least part of issues is the way police prioritize their work. And you wont raise murder clearance rates by surveilling protesters nor by having guns from army nor by arresting people for loitering and what not.

You cant disincentivize homicide when you don't catch murderers. And most murders are also among people who know each other, not random events.

[jjk166]

> There are ~900,000 police officers in the United States, and 240 million 911 calls, and 50 million police-public interactions. That's an average of over 50 interactions per day for a police officer.

Those are numbers per year, not per day.