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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

Given the shortage of cops, I am not sure there is the appetite for this. Politically, cops shaking down businesses people associate with trouble seems more palatable than exacerbating the police shortage.

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What shortage of cops? Come to NYC, you'll see a seemingly infinite number of them parked on sidewalks/in bus lanes/bike lanes, hanging out in the subway on their phones, directing traffic where perfectly good traffic lights exist, harassing street vendors, etc. All while funding is being cut for actual public goods.

There's no shortage of cops. There's a severe problem of misallocated resources. Their overtime budget alone could take every homeless new yorker off the streets, harden the city to climate change and create humane conditions for the influx of migrants from increasingly destabilized parts of the globe.

New York is a very well paid police department as New York is a rich city. Other cities are not as wealthy and thus do not pay as well.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-experiencing-police-...

The effectiveness of police in clearing cases is so poor it is very difficult to tell what effect there is from a "shortage."

I always think of The Big Lebowski (I know, I know, I'm hardly original), when LAPD tells him to come pick up his stolen car from the police impound and he asks if they have any leads on who might have stolen it:

"Leads, yeah, sure. I'll just check with the boys down at the crime lab, they've got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts! Leads! [laughing] Leads!"

A shortage means not enough to achieve the desired outcome. In the example of New York, the very wealthy and heavily policed city, even a very cursory google search will show you the NYPD's own clearance statistics reporting, and the many articles written about the same, that show while police spending has increased, violent crime clearance rates have decreased.

Police do not function to keep us safe (nor are they legally obligated to protect us), their sole purpose is protecting capital.

Perhaps if we asked police to do less, paid them less, and eliminated their impunity to function as an occupying gang, they would be less violent and people would hate them less, and they'd be able to hire more easily.

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/crime-without-punishmen...

I'm not sure what is the role of police here. If their role is to extort citizens I see no reason to keep them around. Or you think corrupt cops also protect some neighborhoods? Maybe for a nice price? I can rent my own thugs instead and I bet they'd be cheaper.

The benefit of having cops vs your own thugs is that the cops don't get you in trouble when they kill somebody on your behalf

I cannot imagine any real-life situation where police or thugs would need to kill "on my behalf". Armed terrorists shooting at people can be shot down already without much complications, and all the rest can and should be arrested.

Here one solution that could fix shortage and quality in police departments. I see a lot of college educated people that can't find jobs. Raise the requirement for being a cop to need 2 to 4 years of college and hire all the college people looking for work. That will also fix most of the corruption problems. I bet a lot of college graduates would kill for a pension right about now.

What makes you think this would solve the corruption problem? Cops aren't corrupt because they're dumb, they're corrupt because the institutions they are part of allow and reward corruption. Without some mechanism to change that culture, simply adding more members to it will only bolster it. College degrees don't have anything to do with it.

> I bet a lot of college graduates would kill for a pension right about now.

Literally! They might but that doesn't make it a good idea. We don't need more police we need to change the role of police in our society.

Do you know any cops? I know quite a few. Most of them are dumb as bricks and very easily succumb to their base instincts. They also have very over inflated egos. Thinking they know more than their citizens they're supposed to be protecting. Do you know who runs these departments? The ones with the most over inflated egos who literally think that they are in a war with their own citizens. They are also the ones that easily fall for conspiracy theories. I know we want to think its elitiest to require a college degree to do a job. But I don't think it is. Its a filter to get less of these type of people.

Surprisingly I actually do know a lot of cops. They do use the language you're talking about, they view non-cops as too weak and cowardly to do what is "necessary," the violence that they do. They also tend to be fairly unsophisticated sure but they understand what they're part of. And plenty of them are smart, and those tend to be officers in my experience.

But I simply reject the premise that any of this is caused by lack of education and can be corrected by shifting the selection criteria. You need a certain amount of moral flexibility and malice to stay a cop for long, and that will be just as true of college graduates. Policing attracts all kinds of people as it is, but it only retains the ones it can mold into a particular nasty usefulness.

It's not lack of educational degree.

It's lack of ethics and morale.

Impunity is the source of corruption

I honestly think this is a great idea, I'd go even further to require a minimum 2-year criminal justice degree.

Are you if the opinion that college graduates are less likely to become corrupt than, oh, the people who normally become cops?

I worked at a university. The corruption was constant and funny because of the trivial numbers in financial gain terms.

I dont understand your solution. College educated people dont want to become cops now - despite the pay and pension.

How would adding a college degree requirement make more people want to do it?

Solving the corruption problem will solve the shortage problem.

Unfortunately, it isn’t just happening to “troublesome businesses.”

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