• Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I don’t know in what country you live. I live in The Netherlands, one of the richest countries, with police which is very mild compared to other countries. They are ‘trained’ to de-escalate, to use the least amount of violence, to try to talk first. A force they ‘try’ to be inclusive, with a reasonably high percentage of women and different ethnicities, promoting to be open to LGBTQ+.

      I can tell you with certainty, they are biased and racist as fuck, corrupt, abusive, above the law.

      I assume you view the world through (male) white glasses from a rich country within the EU? The cops are there to protect your rich white privilege, you don’t have a clue what it is like for poor people and people of color. Police is not what it is supposed to be in an ideal world. They should be abiding the law, enforcing the law, protect ALL citizens, be unbiased, treat everyone the same whether they are rich, poor, whatever their religion or ethnicity, whatever gender, political view, etc. They fail on all these points. Even in progressive countries like The Netherlands or Germany.

      Next to that, the far right is on the rise. They love to enable and use the police to enforce their will.

      Look at all the protests. The protests by the left are struck down with brute force and loads of arrests. Protests of the right are mostly left alone, with maybe one or two arrests if any. Here in the Netherlands farmers were left alone to lock down the entire infrastructure of the country, for many days, with loads of destruction (including driving a tractor into a municipality building) with barely any arrests or consequences. The cop who opened fire on a tractor which drove at him fast and refused to stop got into trouble, not the guy driving the tractor.

      A hand full of climate activists blocking a single road were beaten and arrested with brute force, after which they got hefty fines.

      So fuck the police.

      • Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        I was at a peaceful rally a week ago, police showed up and acted as intimidating as possible. We stood around and listened to some very powerful speeches from Palestinians, the police left momentarily so that they could come and assualt the crowd from the side.

        They pepper sprayed children. Fuck every cop who ever did their job.

          • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            What’s the age limit when a child is allowed to learn from an adult’s example about peaceful activism

              • StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                “If it was peaceful, why did the police show up?”

                “If you were innocent, then why were you arrested?”

                Bad arguments are bad.

              • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Police violence is something different then peaceful protesting. It turns into non-peaceful as soon as the police starts to use force without a proper cause. It’s called “abuse of power”. Cops love to get violent, especially when the protesters do not (so they won’t hit back).

              • Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                5 months ago

                Yes, it was completely peaceful as it has been for the past 30 something weeks that these rallies have been held.

                If you’ve ever been to a demonstration you’d understand that all the police do is show up and cause violence. No one needed protecting from us, we walked down a goddamn street. Last time I checked that wasn’t exactly a violent act. But people sure needed protecting from the police…

          • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            It was a peaceful protest. The only danger was from the -checks notes- boys in blue sworn to protect them? That CANT be right.

          • Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 months ago

            Children came to support a peaceful rally, they weren’t in danger until the police showed up.

            There are many young people who care about things and want to help, many are refugees themselves and have just as much of a right to be there as anyone else. People are there to share stories, raise money for relief funds and to show our goddamn solidarity for people being murdered in their homes.

            These rallies have been running for months now and no one at them has caused any issues, but the cops sure fucking have.

          • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            It’s irresponsible for the police to abuse their power and use pepper spray on children at a peaceful protest.

            Going outside has a risk of getting hit by a car. So now it’s irresponsible to take your kids outside? It’s not normal to get hit by a car, but it’s also not normal for police to use violence on non-violent protes… Oh wait, yes that indeed IS normal now, depending on the religion, ethnicity, political statement of the protesters.

            Imo it’s irresponsible to have kids in the first place by the way, it’s not irresponsible though to bring your kids to a peaceful protest as no one expect police to pepper spray your kids without cause. Or at least, that is how it should be. When you claim it’s irresponsible to bring your kids because you can expect police to use violence without cause, to abuse their power even though you are there because of your constitutional right, you acknowledge the police violence without condemning it.

            You are victim blaming.

        • neonred@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Sounds to me like the “powerful speeches” contained something which is forbidden in your country, forcing the police to act. Maybe Hamas propaganda? Israel should be removed from the map?

          • Saurok@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            You have no idea and are choosing to assume the protesters did something bad. It’s also possible (and likely) that the cops just abused their power and attempted to break up the protest illegally since they do stuff like that all the time.

              • Gigagoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                5 months ago

                yeah, thoughts & prayers to the cops for turning another peaceful protest violent.

                maybe approach the subject again once you’re done slobbering on pig pp.

              • Saurok@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                Demanding an intifada is neither wrong nor illegal (at least not in the US). Palestinians have the right to resist their oppressors.

              • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                You think, so it must be. Who cares about facts and statistics. You know best, oh very wise one. By the way, what makes you come to this conclusion? Do you go to protests a lot, are you with the police, do you read a lot on Facebook on shady right wing pages, did Qanon tell you this,… I’d love to hear your support to your claim.

                By the way, intervening a peaceful protest which includes children has a very very low probability of risk for police. They would think twice when the protesters are violent, but when they are peaceful they won’t hit back that hard so it’s rather safe to escalate. The cops in the task forces for breaking up protests are generally people who love to fight, filled with adrenaline and testosterone. Cops who are less eager to fight usually have desk jobs or are regular street officers.

                I don’t know in what country you live, but in countries with freedom of speech you’re free to demand whatever you like, as long as you do not turn violent (except when you’re police of course).

                Please stop spreading unsupported bullshit arguments based on “I think” and “looks like” when you clearly have zero knowledge of how police operate (which I do) and clearly have no clue about this protest (as you make very wrong assumptions)

          • Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            5 months ago

            Wow, what an awful thing to assume. No, we listened to people talk about losing their families and the villages they grew up in.

            No one was violent, no one called for violence and there was nothing for the police to stop. We walked through a street and then stood still peacefully.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Society has objectively gotten less violent. Morality and ethics are subjective, so I’m not going to touch on those. Every violent crime metric is, year over year, decreasing, and it’s not because of the boot on our collective necks.

      We’d all be better off without armed thugs whose only job is to protect the property of the ruling class. State-sanctioned violence just waiting to be dispensed by the waiting batons of the blue mafia.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          I got a down vote button. I’m not sure why I’d be afraid to have it used on me though? Oh no, someone online thinks I’m WRONG?

          Anyway, enjoy the downvote. Or don’t I guess.

        • Gigagoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          5 months ago

          Finn here. this is & always has been straight up misinformation. all cops are, in fact, bastards, so our cops too are committing heinous acts, albeit on a smaller scale than in the US. the system isn’t magically not rotten elsewhere.

          also, lol.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          This looks like survey results? Lines like “Worries being mugged or robbed” indicate to me these data points are for what people FEEL, not what actually exists. If I’m mistaken my bad.

          If not - frankly I don’t care what people FEEL. I care about actual incidents of violent crime occurring. Not gonna lie, it’s 3am, I’ve got a stomach bug, and I work in 3 hours - I’m not gonna find you a source, but if you find another one showing a marked uptick in ACTUAL INCIDENTS OF VIOLENT CRIME, please feel free to share.

            • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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              5 months ago

              Below the results, on the page:

              These data are based on perceptions of visitors of this website in the past 5 years.

              If the value is 0, it means it is perceived as very low, and if the value is 100, it means it is perceived as very high.

              Our data for each country are based on all entries from all cities in that country.

              I do not see anything indicating that those are only for the *safety" category - it seems like " safety" is intended as an aggregate of the above opinions.

              Either way, without any information on how these numbers are collected and how exactly the bars are to be interpreted, I HAVE to assume it’s a collection of opinions.

              Edit: assumptions cleared up. Clicking the information button on the page confirms it’s a survey result, and not based on reported incidents.

                • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 months ago

                  No problem on the digging.

                  Define what exactly you mean.

                  Are you saying that it’s subjectively correct in that it’s reporting a subjective belief, and thus tautologically correct? Or are you saying that if people feel crime must be higher, crime must be higher? One of these I’m okay with, the other not hah.

                • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 months ago

                  So, I don’t want to be accused of moving goal posts. That’s not my intention here in the slightest.

                  This article and organization specifically look at organized crime - things like terrorist cells, cartels, mafia, etc. - no doubt a big concern, but also not the bulk of the crime that happens. That number going up isn’t a good thing, but it’s also entirely possible for that number to be going up for one reason, while the general crime levels are going down, faster, for other reasons.

                  https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/us-crime-rates-and-trends-analysis-fbi-crime-statistics

                  Looking at this article (first thing I found searching ‘violent crimes trend over years’) we can see a much different picture thatln we’d expect looking just at organized crime. The trend is MARKEDLY down from 1990 to today. The only period there even shows an increase, really, was during that little global pandemic we had.

                  THIS is the number that matters when someone says that the world is objectively safer today than it was in any other period of history. That, per 100k people, the number of them having violent things done to them is going down, steadily, and regularly.

    • Darorad@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Many European countries have better police, but the systemic critiques still hold. You just have functioning systems to mitigate their worst behavior. The us has something called qualified immunity, which effectively makes them immune from civil penalties.

      To explain why many Americans don’t like cops, here’s some fun stories from the last few years:

      Misissippi police buried 215 people in an unmarked mass grave, at least some of which were killed by cops. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/families-in-disbelief-after-hundreds-of-bodies-found-buried-behind-mississippi-jail

      Crime dropped when the NYPD went on strike https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/opinion/half-the-police-force-quit-crime-dropped.html

      Multiple studies have found police have a domestic violence rate significantly higher than average averagehttps://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/

      The Los Angeles sheriff’s department is run by violent gangs. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/the-la-county-sheriffs-deputy-gang-crisis

      • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-policing-minneapolis/

        This is a really good and even-handed breakdown of what happened in Minneapolis after the George Floyd killing. Leftists can be as high minded as they like on the internet but when the police officers cut back on their patrols/traffic stops the overall reaction from the high crime communities that no longer had a strong police presence was not very positive. I think it is naive to think that you can gut police forces and crime won’t go up.

        To be clear I am all for police REFORM and increased accountability but I don’t think less police is inherently better.