[bandushrew]

Its a social problem, largely driven by the FPP political system in the US.

The left hold up the opinions of the far right/right lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the right is"

The right hold up the opinions of the far left/left lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the left is"

The moderate left and the moderate right have far more in common with each other than they do with the extremes at either end, yet somehow each is convinced that the other is represented most accurately by the extreme edge.

[bee_rider]

I would like to believe this, but legislative outcomes on things that you'd expect to be bipartisan (like dealing with the pandemic) have been fairly poor, right? If there really was this large moderate population, you'd expect us to elect moderate elected officials, who'd find each other and pass some moderate legislation, right?

[dantheman]

The primary process is not well attended my the normal voter, only those on the extremes. So to win the primary you have to go more extreme, then to win the general you have go more moderate. So we ended up having to choose between more extreme candidates that don't reflect the majority. In fact the majority of people don't identify as republican or democrat.

[bandushrew]

The extremes always vote, many moderates only bother to vote if you can convince them the other side are totally insane/evil/stupid and life as they know it is going to be over if the other side get into/remain in power.

So politicians in particular get very good at making the other side look extremely insane, evil and stupid.

The better they are at that (lying) the better they do in elections.

So...the politicians who would be good for us tend to have integrity and strong personal beliefs about lying, and so tend to do poorly in elections.

Which leaves us with everyone else.

[vkou]

The 'moderate' right and the 'moderate' right are both pretty insane when it comes to the police, because they largely support their current status quo, and their current status quo is insane. Pants-on-head insane.

Just because you're a centrist on <an arbitrary political spectrum, that spans a single country's politics> doesn't mean that the things you believe in aren't crazy or horrifying.

[throwaway894345]

I think we get different facts about the characterization of US policing. If you look at extreme cherry-picked examples one way or the other, you tend to end up at the extremes. If you accept that reality is more nuanced and the good and evil police aren’t evenly distributed (and that the trite policies offered up by extremists do much more harm than good a la the current surge in homicides), etc then you’re probably much more likely to be a moderate on the issue.

[vkou]

The issue isn't that particular police officers are 'good' and 'evil', the issue is that systemically, the police, the justice department, and prosecutors collude to protect gang-like behaviour in police forces.

We give them absolute power over life and death, and zero accountability. The justice system is in theory, supposed to be a leash on that dog, but in practice, it's the other way around.

[throwaway894345]

Sure, there’s a certain amount of injustice in policing. 90% of Americans agree that some form of police reform is necessary. Leftists lose the rest of us when they argue for depolicing reforms rather than reforms which increase accountability while keeping policing levels.

In particular, it stands to reason that increasing spending for social services isn’t going to pay dividends for many years, but following policing reductions, crime surges immediately and significantly. So again, the rest of us are puzzled by the folks who emphasize “depolicing” rather than some more reasonable policy of “increase social spending while also maintaining a robust police element, at least for the short term”.

[monocasa]

> a la the current surge in homicides

How do police prevent homicides? Are people really out there thinking "the police department is 10% smaller than last year (but has a larger budget), I bet I could off my neighbor and get away with it"?

[throwaway894345]

My understanding is that police have reduced their preventative policing activities either by policy or soft pressure. Criminals aren’t idiots—they can tell when police pressure goes up or down.

[monocasa]

But like, what kind of preventative policing reduces homicides? Who's that person that's out murdering because they saw 10% less cop cars drive by?

A better explanation is that underlying social safety nets have been ripped out from under people for the past couple of years putting way more people in rough, quasi legal situations to get by that make them trend towards extralegal forms of dispute resolution like personal application of violence. Additionally suicides count as a homicide (it's technically a person killing a person), which has made the numbers go up over the past couple years.

[throwaway894345]

> But like, what kind of preventative policing reduces homicides?

Misdemeanor arrests, searches, and foot patrols, etc. See my various other comments for more details and links.

> A better explanation is that underlying social safety nets have been ripped out from under people for the past couple of years

These effects predate the pandemic and correlate with the BLM protests in time and space (crime surges immediately after and in the vicinity of BLM protests). That said, I don’t doubt the pandemic contributed since 2020.

[vkou]

> How do police prevent homicides?

They don't, they clean up after the fact, and convict someone for ~50% of them. Unless it's one of their own that's responsible, then the entire country needs to riot for a week, before anyone even thinks of pressing charges.