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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

> This premise is anything that makes a police officers job easier means they can do more policing, which equates to making the lives of some people worse?

If policing has a net negative impact on some people's lives, more policing will be more negative. I can get behind that.

Also, what's with "Black and brown"? Why is only one capitalized?

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It was handed down to us from on high(The AP, I think) a few years ago that Black had unique cultural and social aspects in America that necessitated the capitalization, whereas white or brown did not.

Of course, the reasoning was just thrown out almost immediately and all previously black people are now Black, regardless of those social or cultural reasons. For example, the AP will label any black person in America as Black, even if they have no shared cultural or social experience in America with people who are descended from slaves(ie a black Nigerian arriving in NYC yesterday is now Black)

> If policing has a net negative impact on some people's lives

I think the problem is that this premise itself is a big pill to swallow. Do people really believe this to be the case? I'm a minority who holds a severe dislike for cops in general, but I don't think this is something I'd ever agree with.

I don't live in the US, but I can say that interactions with the police are unlikely to be positive for me. I'm sure that, as a general body, they have a positive societal impact, but any one interaction is unlikely to have a positive effect to the people they interact with.

Eg if my house gets burgled, they'll never find anything, but they have hassled me for laughing at something unrelated because they thought I was laughing at them.

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