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by DiscourseFan 870 days ago
Those are issues (though nobody will allow federally funded police departments in the US). Still, ideologically, if the US police were more uniformly well trained, they would still be dealing with a predominately confrontational and violent population, and they would be not only ideologically but legally obliged to stay out of things that aren't police business, like the so-called "truth" of any story. In any case, the veracity of any given narrative is for the courts, and potentially juries to decide, not a unitary, federally funded police force.

Its clear that many of the legal and police systems in European countries were built directly out of the legacy of the monarchies and/or fascism, where absolute and centralized power directly administrates the affairs of the law and the state. So even if they are more well funded, well trained, and more effective than their american counterparts, the threat of total control, and terror through domination, still looms large.
1 comments
thaumasiotes 870 days ago
> Those are issues (though nobody will allow federally funded police departments in the US).

What? Not only are those allowed, we already have them. That's what the FBI is.

Also, if funding is your concern, it's routine for state police to be federally funded.

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DiscourseFan 870 days ago
As Scythe pointed out, because in the US the vast majority of policing is not federally funded, its not at all uniform, so the effects of the FBI and CIA and other federal agencies in toto is negligible. And state-police, while having a larger effect than the federal agencies, also have significantly less power over local jurisdictions than local police departments. The US--and honestly this is to its credit--has remarkably strong local police departments that are funded predominantly by the residents they police. This is even parodied, or criticized, in media when they show "small town america" cops who are either totally incompetent because there is almost never crime in the town, or are in league with nefarious forces and have to be investigated by outside agencies (see Killers of the Flower Moon, which is specifically about the formation of the FBI for that purpose, even if it has expanded its purview since the early 20th century.)

Even if state police are federally funded, why does that matter? The use of that funding is still under the power of the state (or else it would be unconstitutional, for the federal government to direct how state institutions are operated).

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thaumasiotes 870 days ago
> Even if state police are federally funded, why does that matter?

It matters quite a bit to the question of whether federally funded police would ever be allowed. You stated outright that they weren't.

> The use of that funding is still under the power of the state (or else it would be unconstitutional, for the federal government to direct how state institutions are operated).

The normal way in which federal funding operates is that they direct its usage. You're not compelled to do what they want, but if you don't, they don't give you the money.

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DiscourseFan 870 days ago
When I said "allowed," I meant at a mass scale, at every level, uniformly in a centralized system, not some funds for specific purposes here and there. Now, certainly, there have been times when that sort of federal funding has been specifically intended to more centralize policing in the US, but in general the structure of the state is such to prevent that, unless there is a serious change to US law.
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