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Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

Having had US police (unjustifiably IMO) aim guns at me[1] and having lived in a third world country, I'll take the US hands down any day.

Police violence is an issue but way overblown for most people -- violence from other citizens far outweighs the police risk.

Compare to third world countries where you can easily be murdered in broad daylight surrounded by people, over a few hundred bucks, and the murderers face very little chance of being caught, let alone convicted.

Of course the best solution is to move to a country with great demographics equalling no crime or police violence, but those are becoming hard to find.

1: Turns out if you report (online with no followup) one of your licence plates as having fallen off your $300 car, cops might do a "felony takedown" on you, your 100 lbs wife, and 1 year old daughter. This apparently includes aiming handguns at your head while giving instructions like "lift your shirt up from the top".

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Of course the best solution is to move to a country with great demographics equalling no crime or police violence, but those are becoming hard to find.

Canada, The UK, Australia, New Zealand - those are the english speaking ones that meet your criteria. After that, most countries in the EU, Nordic countries, most countries in Asia would also be considered to have less crime and police violence than the US, while having comparable or superior social services and demographics (most but not all, countries in Asia - Duterte isn't making any friends recently).

Can either of you define "great demographics" in a way that is not overtly racist? I mean really, move to Sweden to get away from the criminals?

Careful. As mentioned before in previous discussions (or really whenever someone implies nordic countries are monoculture) Sweden is not a monoculture. New Zealand, as an example (and my country), has a lot less crime (or at least, less violent crime) and it is approximately as diverse as the states. For my part, superior demographics means a similar melting pot society.

> 1: Turns out if you report,...

Wait, what? That's the kind of statement that just begs for a followup. Did they say what they thought was going on to justify that response?

I have no idea what happened to the OP, but I have had my plate stolen and I did report this to the police. When I reported it stolen, they warned me that anyone caught driving around with it was going to get pulled over at gunpoint, so I'd better report it if I somehow found that it had fallen off or whatever.

I got new plates soon after that, I never found out what happened to mine.

Ah. Perhaps it was standard practice to replace plates on a stolen car with stolen plates from a non-stolen car prior to major crimes such as bank robbery at some point.

But if so you would think the criminals would learn to swap plates instead, as who looks at their plates that closely?

In my case, I reported it via an online form. I figured I'd get some sort of confirmation or response to take to the DMV. Found out what the standard operating procedure was the hard way.

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