[Zigurd]

Same reason that nearly every police response in the US is an armed response. Same reason police kill more Americans than terrorists do. US police culture is toxic and deadly. Several cities tightly restrict high-speed chases. That should be the norm.

[adriand]

My home town of Hamilton, Ontario (population 560k) recently made the news because a guy stole a bus, with passengers onboard, and started driving it through the city. It was newsworthy because he also dropped people off at their stops, and even rejected someone who tried to board with an expired bus pass. But what stood out for me in addition to all that was the police response. They quietly followed the bus, intentionally not using sirens to avoid “spooking” the guy. They waited for the right moment, boarded the bus and arrested him peacefully and without incident.

I recognize my little city is not like LA (which I’ve visited twice) - the types of crimes, the types of criminals and the prevalence of weapons are far different, although we also have our share of gun violence and murder. But we have also not militarized our police, and there’s very much a police culture of service to the community. Here, when a cop uses their weapon, it’s seen as a failure. This was a situation handled properly, and it made me proud.

[captainkrtek]

I'm Canadian and American, and have lived in both places and seen the stark differences myself. In the US, the police culture is certainly militarized and proud of it. Even in small towns you have days where the police roll out the biggest armored vehicles they have to show off, and that's their idea of a "community event", kids think its cool obviously, but it's really just "lets show off all of our high power toys".

[vee-kay]

Those high-powered toys by the cops are merely for showing off and to victimize the weak. Those toys typically never come into play to protect the citizens.

Case in point: during the Uvalde school shooting incident in 2022, when a shooter (Salvador Ramos) went on a killing spree inside the school, then hundreds of cops gathered outside with brand new body armor (gifted to them just months ago) and armed with automatic guns, but they never dared to go inside to tackle the shooter. Not only that, those cowardly cops actively prevented parents and state patrol officers from going in to rescue their kids. The cowardly cops were led by a cowardly police chief, who later gave excuses for the delayed response to the deadly situation and his mishandling of the police force, by claiming to have forgotten his walkie talkie!

Ultimately one of the border patrol officers and some US deputy marshalls (who had travelled 70 miles to reach the scene after getting an alert) managed to sneak in to the back, break the locked door, and used a tactical shield to corner and finally kill the shooter, thus ending his bloodbath (19 children and 2 teachers were tragically killed).

And if you think arming cowardly showoff cops with guns and armor is useless and potentially dangerous, you should know the Uvalde school shooter was a minor but he managed to buy the guns legally from a gun shop on credit!

That's how lax and evil the gun laws and resulting shootouts in USA are.

USA has more mass shootings and more school shootings than any other place in the world.

No wonder they facilitate and glorify high-speed car chases. It is all a thrillride for these adrenaline junkies high on power.

[FireBeyond]

You forgot the most insane part of this (or at least of the aftermath) - the police chief was re-elected shortly after!

[T3OU-736]

```you should know the Uvalde school shooter was a minor but he managed to buy the guns legally from a gun shop on credit!```

That does not appear to be true. The investagiom reporting shows that the shooter bought the guns after he turned 18 - the legal age to purchase them (long guns, aka rifles - different from pistols) in the state of Texas.

Buying things on credit seems like a reasonable way to do business in general - are you suggesting that all deadly weapons should be sold for cash to increase the difficulty of legally acquiring them and so lowering the frequency of mass shootings?

[vee-kay]

In my country, no firearm can be issued to any civilian (certainly not a minor), without verification and license from police.

In Texas, there is no minimum age for purchasing ammunition beyond federal limits, no requirement for an ammunition seller to keep a record of the purchaser, and no specific license to buy or sell ammunition, according to the Giffords Law Center.

https://www.kxan.com/investigations/uvalde-shooter-had-1600-...

Salvador Ramos, the Uvalde school shooter, legally purchased two AR platform rifles Ramos got his guns legally through Oasis Outback, a Uvalde sporting goods store and federal firearms licensee, according to published reports. He also purchased hundreds of rounds of ammunition, on his 18th birthday.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/25/us/uvalde-texas-school-sh...

I know the USA has a bad habit of buying things on credit, but firearms & ammo should never be allowed to be purchased on credit. Let it be purchased only after a verification and license from police, and only via debit card or bank transaction with proper legal paper trail, not credit or cash. And any firearm and ammo purchase should be ratified with local police, so they know if someone is making a suspicious purchase.

[KarlKode]

Reminds me of the story where two guys went for a joyride in a Tram in Braunschweig (DE). They boarded a tram during the night, drove for a few stops (including letting passengers board & leave) and left the tram there.

The funniest part of the story is that they didn't commit any crime and were let go.

Story here (in German): https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/braunschweig-junge-ma...

[nenxk]

Restricted high speed chases lead to a lot more crime though there’s some car thief’s I’ve watched on insta and they avoid LA and stick to Oakland because of the chase laws you also have people in New York like squeeze benz, license, doolie, and a lot more who have made entire social media careers driving around recklessly and getting into crashes on freeways because they won’t get chased more than a mile there’s been a huge rise in “cutting up” in nyc because why not if you won’t get chased you can just remove your plate and do whatever.

[jeltz]

Not sure why car chases are necessary to solve this problem. Just arrest these people in their homes. Those videos are enough evidence for arrest and conviction.

[nenxk]

The problem with the YouTubers posting these vids are they hide their faces and most of the cars are either stolen or borrowed and even when they aren’t they don’t have any plates so let’s say the police see a video there’s not a whole lot they can do they can get a warrant for the channels owners info but they still have to prove that the person uploading the videos was actually driving the car and not just editing the videos their other option is to figure out the cars owner but they still have to prove that the owner was the one driving which is hard and in many cases of atleast the popular channels they don’t even own the cars it’s not impossible to pin it on someone but it’s not worth their time to build a case like that for reckless driving they have many more important cases. If it was a few one off instances then I could see it but it’s became increasingly popular if you go on Instagram you can find thousands of accs uploading these videos and only a few ever get arrested and most of the time like in squeeze Benz’s case it’s for unrelated crimes. With these videos becoming popular and more people catching on that they can just drive recklessly without being pulled over there’s thousands more teens driving like this without ever posting about it nypd doesn’t have the time to track down 100s of cars each day just because they drove fast and didn’t pull over hell look at how long it took them to track down Luigi who was NYs most wanted there for a bit.

[WUMBOWUMBO]

add on to the fact that a city like NYC has a vast network of surveillance cameras

[ACCount37]

Who do you arrest? An abandoned car?

[vel0city]

Start with the registered owner of the car and investigate from there. Follow it through the network of cameras that are already deployed around the city. If it was stolen from them, investigate the theft. In a large number of these chases the person is operating their own car.

[victorbjorklund]

I’m 90% of the cases the police knows who the driver is.

[unethical_ban]

If someone is tiktok famous for filming the evidence of their felonies, that's an enforcement problem.

[Philip-J-Fry]

Exactly, unless someone is in imminent danger there's basically no reason to do a high speed chase. Get the plate, track it on the thousands of ANPR cameras that exist, look up the owner and just knock on their door later on.

Like 99% of high speed chases only end when the culprit crashes their car, and often that's into someone else's car risking harm to innocent civilians.

[tarr11]

The cars are usually stolen

[boringg]

That may be - it should be noted that criminals in the US are also much more violent and brazen then most of the rest of the planet. If your criminal population is packing heat the response tends to be much more aggressive. Its a bit cat and mouse.

[slg]

This is a perfect summary of that "toxic and deadly" culture. Why are police treated as a dumb tool that will always respond to violence with more violence? Why is the onus on the criminals to deescalate the situation? Why doesn't the duty of enforcing the law come with a bigger burden to keeping the peace? And why do the police not have any culpability in violence they helped escalate?

[AngryData]

You don't think that is a response to their knowledge that cops will often shoot and kill them on sight along with the incredibly harsh criminal punishment?

In the EU if you get caught doing a crime, yeah you will get charged and punished, maybe take a billy club to the leg during an arrest, but nothing too extreme and you go to jail for a bit, maybe pay some fines, but you live and learn. In the US there is a good chance you get shot right away, if you aren't shot the cops will likely beat you and abuse you doing the arrest, the prosecutor and court will try and dump a decade+ long sentence on you even if there was no violence involved and the material value is only a few days worth of work, and the prison is a horrible environment by designed that often fucks people up mentally.

Harsh punishment for crimes is rarely a very good deterrent against crime, it just makes people who were desperate enough to resort to crime more desperate and determined to escape capture. If I had a decent bank account I could probably get most charges lowered to something acceptable in the US, but most people committing low level crimes usually don't have lawyer money and will have their life ruined with a ridiculous sentence.

[Zigurd]

Crime is down. Not because we have aggressive cops that shoot people a lot. https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in-u-s-cities-mid-year-...

[notreallytho]

That's what happens when cities stop reporting crime statistics

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-d...

[Zigurd]

Murder is down in line with the rest of crime. What that tells you is that even crime that's hard to fail to report follows the general trend.

[cavisne]

Down from a massive peak in 2020/2021 when cities tried the "lets not enforce crime" approach. Still elevated from pre 2020 levels.

[throw-the-towel]

Not trying to dispute your conclusions, but I'd be wary of using the peak Covid years as a reference.

[closeparen]

Okay, and? As long as crime is below its peak level, there’s no need to apprehend criminals?

[lukeschlather]

Shooting people and high speed chases are bad tools for apprehending criminals. They are more likely to harm innocent people than criminals. Facing off with "violent and brazen" criminals doesn't change this, but also the fact that crime is down suggests US criminals are in fact, neither more violent nor more brazen than those in areas where police use less destructive methods.

[alksdjf89243]

> also the fact that crime is down...

This is not a fact. What is a fact is that many police departments stopped reporting crimes, so there are fewer crimes being reported, not that there are fewer crimes being committed.

https://www.aol.com/thousands-police-depts-stop-reporting-00...

There are myriad reasons why, but stemming the upward trend of reported violence makes politicians look better and we all know how honest politicians are.