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Comment by meri_dian | Hacker News Reader

It's funny how normally reasonable people forget that what manages to reach our awareness are very rare and shocking events that are not at all representative of the vast majority of day to day activity, whether police related or otherwise.

You are allowing yourself to be misguided if you focus on what gets put on the front page of CNN.

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I don't know about others, I want my police force judged by their worst interactions rather than the majority of their interactions. I want the standards set high enough that all those bad things practically never happen rather than some small regular percentage of ongoing interactions.

You want to know what the problem is?

No sane person would want to risk their life on a daily basis, wrestle people into their cars against their will on a daily basis, and be subject to the scrutiny you describe in your post, the hatred that is described in other posts, all for a policeman's salary. Literally no sane person would take that deal. Are you about to sign up to be a cop? Hell fucking no.

I think the OP was arguing the police should spend less time wrestling people into their cars against their will.

That's their job.

That's their job when the situation warrants it. It's not their job to practice on every Tom Dick and Harry just for the fun of it.

Except that their job is not nearly as dangerous as you make it out to be. The exaggeration of danger and overblown fear are part of problem.

So you propose that we pay people to wrestle other people into cars against their will without subjecting them to scrutiny?

I'm proposing that people like you don't think deeply enough about this problem to solve it.

No need to get angry just because you don't have anything coherent to say.

I think you're projecting.

You're welcome to think that, but you still haven't articulated a coherent argument.

Aren't cops usually highly paid?

You could say the same thing about a firefighter- and yet they exist. Sorry, if you mistake courage with insanity. Some people have a urge to help that lets them run into the wrong direction.

Without that- you would have died in that car-accident you sometimes get flashbacks to. There is a dentist effect here at work- everybody forgets the negative moments in live, everyone forgets about theire dentist until it hurts again. Police and Emergency services are socially isolated due to that effect.

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