Scenes from a militarized America
As I said yesterday[1], I think we've reached the point where better enforcement of laws harms more than it helps. A big reason for this is that "crime" is a very broad subject, covering everything from vagrancy to murder. Measures that might make sense against violent crime end up being used for minor violations.<p>Similar to how firefighters, EMTs, and police are separate agencies with different uniforms and vehicles, I wish police were split into violent and non-violent crime departments. It would solve quite a few problems. First, we could have something more nuanced than the typical "cops are bad"/"cops are good" debate. Second, we might see decreases in some types of crime, since minor criminals wouldn't fear informing the Department of Homicide. (Similar to how nobody fears calling the fire department if there's a fire.) Lastly, it would make it obvious where budgets were being spent. Most taxpayers are fine with throwing money at law enforcement, because they think it's preventing violent crime. If they saw how much was going to the Department of Vice, they might have other ideas.<p>Sadly, I doubt this will ever happen. These agencies are too big to change in any reasonable time frame.<p>1. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7172857" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7172857</a>