[rkomorn]

> maybe Americans just need a little more show of police force to behave

I say this as someone who's split his life between the US (on both coasts) and Europe: the US's police forces are far more visible, and employ far more force, than in Europe.

"More" isn't going to change anything.

[runsWphotons]

Is it really? It is not hard to go the hague and see gendarmerie. I see police all over Europe when I go. If they apply less force, it may be because the population is less criminal, or perhaps they get better people into their forces. I think Europeans have way more regulations that are enforced.

The claim that "more" won't change anything is empirical. Let's come back in a few months and see if DC is safer or not--I will admit if I was wrong.

Again, I think this is an interesting solution because it is actually less invasive than all the tech solutions to just have guys on the street who watch and maybe come up and talk to you and then forget about it. If you are just going about your day peacefully, are you going to lose anything here?

We seem to have gotten a surveillance state with cameras and sensors (and censors) everywhere that somehow doesn't police easily solvable/preventable crime. If I thought there was some big civil liberties tradeoff I might think differently, but it seems like we lost those while still having to buy our deodorant from behind locked cabinets and occasionally getting shot by some guy with ten priors.

The complaints and protests that this goes against civil liberties has just started to ring hollow because there are few visible serious efforts to protest the real abuses of civil liberties which mostly come from tech and the surveillance economy. Somehow the energy is directed against guys in uniform standing around making sure the street doesn't get turned into a drag race.