Why is almost everybody against more police ?

[Hrothbern]

Why is almost everybody against more police ?
Are we afraid that we get a police state ?
Do leftish people do not want to concede to rightwing political agendas ?

Above points are my real questions.

I have personally no issues when our police force would double in my country when that deals with the issues we have with crime.
Not more police officers to get more guns on the streets, but to stop the "parasites" that fuel uncertainty and get away with it.
To prevent young people getting tempted by crime to become a criminal, with a high risk that they get disconnected from society, and become a life-long unemployed (or end up in jobs that under-utilise their potential for themselves and the economy).
And no... I am not for higher punishments in prison at all. Our current policy in NL is fully focussed at re-integration of criminals at a very high cost compared to most western countries. And I believe that is the right way to handle criminals.
Re-integrate and get them jobs and a future in our society. The very few that are mentally sick another issue, too complicated and only distracting to discuss here.
(those "high" re-integration cost perhaps not that high if you make the full cost calculation where an ex-criminal ending up as a non-criminal life-long unemployed, will cost our NL government around 38,000 Euro per year from social security cost + missed taxes)



Some general background:

There is violent crime and economical crime. Violent crime imo the first priority.
But violent crime gets almost all the attention of newsmedia and politics and discussions on "more" police are mostly driven by those discussions. Dealing with root causes of a social nature part of that discussion. The value of such "soft" arguments very much depending on country culture and tactics in politics (the votes).
Economical damage getting little attention, and yet the cost of that damage is in my country far higher than the cost of all the unemployed people in my country from social security (at good level).

I saw an article that cyber crime on companies is currently about 1% of GDP. This mostly affected small companies of 1-50 employees (incl self-employed).

I digged in and saw that in my country damage & cost from crime over 2005-2015 are estimated on average at a minimum of 3% of GDP. That was mainly before cyber crime got more strongly. Of that 3% of GDP, roughly 25% was in companies and 75% in households. That 3% does not include the big money crime like moneylaundering, briberies, abusive lobbying.


We spend in my country roughly 1% of GDP for the total police force. Most developed countries have 300-400 police officers per 100,000 people. The typical average total cost per police officer (incl material cost etc) about twice the average salary of that country.
ALL our many political parties put every year on their manifestos, that they want more police (mostly a minimal increase), but it never happens really. Population growth goes faster.
The left-wing parties want more admin like police (to free up fully trained police officers from the many admin tasks, to get more police dealing with E-crime, cyber crime, abuse by legal companies, sexual harrassment, etc).
Rightwing parties want more uniforms dealing with violence, but struggle with "too many civil servants", "too big government".
Nothing really happens, except restructurings to get higher productivity per police officer.

EDIT
Preventing, dis-encouraging crime as factor to avoid life long unemployment or worse jobs for tempted people.
In social wellfare states the total cost of unemployed people are high for the governments.
Here a graph done for six European countries and the report.
(my country is not in that report but is at 38,000 Euro per year, which helps explaning why we spend so much on re-integration of criminals, even though it has per prison term only the moderate chance of 50% to succeed)
http://www.efsi-europe.eu/fileadmin..._on_the_cost_of_unemployment_January_2013.pdf

 

[AmazonQueen]

Atm in the UK we have a problem with knife crime. Police numbers have been drastically cut over the years of austerity.
More police are probably part of the answer especially community support officers in schools.
But money for more police isn't the only priority. We've also had drastic cuts to our local authorities meaning that youth services have also been drastically cut.
What I don't want but fear we will get as the cheap answer is more police powers and tougher sentences (which ironically will end up costing more in the long run).

 

[Hrothbern]

Atm in the UK we have a problem with knife crime. Police numbers have been drastically cut over the years of austerity.
More police are probably part of the answer especially community support officers in schools.
But money for more police isn't the only priority. We've also had drastic cuts to our local authorities meaning that youth services have also been drastically cut.
What I don't want but fear we will get as the cheap answer is more police powers and tougher sentences (which ironically will end up costing more in the long run).

I fear that as well.
Precisely that right-wing approach I mentioned in OP.
I detest it. From principle and from common sense.

Youth services are very important in preventing young people going the path of crime !
During my community volunteer time, I was very much involved in that by helping smaller groups organised per school or youth centres, mostly parents, to get faciliating for them, and by connecting them with the civil society associations. Founded also one volunteer youth centre together with parents and care organisations. I did also a lot of efforts to strenghten the initiative to have police officers separated from the organic police force pyramid and have them as almost independent neighborhood-police officers. Outside the police culture and inside the community culture with a mixed superior officer system.
Which was funny to do because I dragged those police officers in all kinds of community meetings on youth with also community volunteers who got regularly beaten up by the special police squads in our big squatting wars we had in Amsterdam with the police (up to tanks being used and threats of sharp ammo, not completely innocent).
Adding this to illustrate that left-wing politics is or can be imo a bit scarred and allergic for the use of police.

A police officer in an uniform cannot do what a youth centre employee can do. It is complemtary, it has synergy potential, if you get them well connected.
You need to optimise and balance the allocation of your public money towards all activities and bodies needed.

 

[Cutlass]

Before we get more police, fix the police we have. There's too much low quality policing.

 

[Hrothbern]

Before we get more police, fix the police we have. There's too much low quality policing.

What is the low quality you mean ?
I can see that the rate of new police officers leaving within 2 and 5 years is very high, 10-15% every year..
That looks like a misfit between the actual work and the expectations of new officers (also a failing recruiting filter for admission).
What is causing that ? A lot of stress ?
People under high existential stress that still function at high enough quality are rare.

Would the job be better to deal with if guns were stricter regulated ?

 

[Broken_Erika]

What's wrong with The Police?

 

[Kaitzilla]

When there are too many cops, it makes life worse.


For instance, what if I rigged up every car in the country to self-monitor speed and compare GPS location to known traffic speed limits?

Then every time someone sped, the car would mail them a speeding ticket.
Like red light cameras, only way cooler!

Think about how happy my fellow citizens would be with me for 100% enforcement of traffic laws.

 

[innonimatu]

Before we get more police, fix the police we have. There's too much low quality policing.

Given the threads about police shootings and outright legalized theft by police in the US, I think I understand what you mean. In Europe generally the police cannot get away with that kind of think, nor has such a culture developed. The quality trouble with police here is that they are called in to deal with problems they cannot possibly deal with well. Social problems that are repressed rather that treated.

Here everyone I know in the police has often to get out of their way to handle issues that should he handled by social services, that should not even exist at all if certain political priorities were changed. I'm talking policemen buying food for homeless people, policemen having to care for mentally unstable/insane people repeatedly (common especially with elderly people, but not only), calming down domestic disputes that markedly rise in times of economic crisis, etc. They actually feel everything that is going wrong in a given society: they are the first to fell when there is trouble with immigration (there is, especial in major urban areas and some agricultural areas of Europe, and many people are in deep denial of that); they feel the effects of lack of affordable housing in domestic like and in the rise of homelessness, they feel the effects of budget cuts to health care...

The police is under-appreciated in what they actually can do, and very often do, because no one else is there to do it and it needs doing.

So, to the original questions...

Why is almost everybody against more police ?
Are we afraid that we get a police state ?
Do leftish people do not want to concede to rightwing political agendas ?

In some countries there is still a living memory of political repression through police, that fear of a police state is justified. Here in Portugal the powers of the police were very much curtailed after the 1974 revolution, and we found that even so he had no problem with organized crime (unless one were to take certain forms of politics at the top as organized crime, but that is not a police issue nor technically criminal). It turned out that dismantling intelligence services, making it absolutely illegal to spy on citizens for whatever reason, and making one's home inviolable during the night were perfectly compatible with law enforcement working. These things have all been rolled back in recent years, without any good justifications. Those in power always want to get more power, feel safe by having more tools of repression available "just in case"...

This does not mean being against more police in the numeric sense. More police in fact may expose the lie about the alleged need for more technical tools of surveillance and repression. I do not think it is an accident that governments have favored reducing the numbers of police people, and spending budgets on tools. Tools seem easier to direct from the top, do not rebel or refuse to follow orders. A smaller number of people managing those is easier to and-pick, bribe or control. Currently here I am for increasing number of police and doing away with a number of those technical tools.

 

[Synobun]

I would like more police, but more police officers committing the same crimes as the police force that already exists doesn't feel like a useful change to me.

Criminals will almost never want more police presence. Regular citizens will almost never want more police presence if that police presence is identical to a criminal presence. Being shot by a gang member or being shot by a cop doesn't seem like a real selection of choices. When you're afraid that someone with legal authority may very well kill you, detain you, or otherwise ruin your day/week/life, I can see why you would not want more of that.

For many, perhaps most—at least in North America—calling the police or interacting with the police falls between pointless and dangerous. You don't want more of either.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm against more police because for the most part the police we already have do more harm than good.

 

[JollyRoger]

We don't need any more public union thugs siphoning off tax dollars of us hard working private sector heroes.

 

[Cutlass]

What is the low quality you mean ?
I can see that the rate of new police officers leaving within 2 and 5 years is very high, 10-15% every year..
That looks like a misfit between the actual work and the expectations of new officers (also a failing recruiting filter for admission).
What is causing that ? A lot of stress ?
People under high existential stress that still function at high enough quality are rare.

Would the job be better to deal with if guns were stricter regulated ?

This is like the Catholic Church's problem. The point being that the problems others are talking about with the cops may be only a few percent bad actors. But those few percent bad actors are allowed to keep going because the majority of them protect the bad ones rather than force them out. As a whole the the system itself is corrupted and undermined more by the silence and protection of the few bad to the point where the whole of them might as well be bad.

 

[Berzerker]

we need fewer laws

 

[Takhisis]

Before we get more police, fix the police we have. There's too much low quality policing.

This is like the Catholic Church's problem. The point being that the problems others are talking about with the cops may be only a few percent bad actors. But those few percent bad actors are allowed to keep going because the majority of them protect the bad ones rather than force them out. As a whole the the system itself is corrupted and undermined more by the silence and protection of the few bad to the point where the whole of them might as well be bad.

It's basically this, at least here. The police in this banana republic are a mafia.

Also, repressive measures have been shown not to work. The allegedly progressive Kirchnerism decided that criminals on motorcycles was a problem so all motorcycle riders in the district over next door from mine have to wear helmets with their vehicles' registration numbers painted on it. Which hasn't resulted in less crime that I know of.

What you have to do is reduce the causes for crime.
Do not glorify or dignify crime. Do not justify it and reframe it as criminals being the mere victims of society. Do not have criminals in government. Give people a way out.

By all means do work on rehabilitating existing criminals, but simply using brute force won't work.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It's basically this, at least here. The police in this banana republic are a mafia.

Same here, and I live in California.

 

[Bootstoots]

Because many of us are American, and American police are terrifying. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world despite some decent civil rights. For all of the authoritarian horror of China, we imprison far more - not just per capita but even in absolute terms. Not to mention, obviously, that they're a lot more shoot-to-kill than e.g. Dutch or German police.

Where the police are extremely trustworthy, like the Netherlands or Germany, you might want to have more of them. Where they aren't, they can be much more dangerous than the actual criminals.

 

[Takhisis]

Ah, that's another thing I've just been reminded of: 'stoots posted about having a stock of something-or-other-ium at home and Agent wossisname actually dropped by his RL place.

How is law enforcement not excessive?

 

[FriendlyFire]

we need fewer laws

Make America 1929 Again

 

[Arwon]

Because many of us are American, and American police are terrifying.

This is... not a small factor at all.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

When there are too many cops, it makes life worse.


For instance, what if I rigged up every car in the country to self-monitor speed and compare GPS location to known traffic speed limits?

Then every time someone sped, the car would mail them a speeding ticket.
Like red light cameras, only way cooler!

Think about how happy my fellow citizens would be with me for 100% enforcement of traffic laws.

Interestingly, that there's no serious push for this kind of thing is why you know that politicians pushing policy for "children's safety" or "gun control" or "common sense law" to safe lives are blathering liars reacting to an emotionally charged situation. The most common way to die to a gun isn't regulated at all in just about any country that allows people to own them, and vehicular accidents/deaths are massive.

Asinine as such a rule would seem, it would probably decrease loss of human life by a more significant margin than typical reactive policies. If you could flip a switch that forces tail-gaters to pull off to the side of the road and wait 60 seconds as penalty every time they do it that would be even better.