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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16378 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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That there should be no negative consequences for the ICE officers who killed him?

Correct. Also, everyone involved in that riot should be charged as accessories to murder for creating the chaotic conditions where such law enforcement accidents happen. When criminals commit a robbery, and police accidentally shoot and kill civilians, the robbers get charged with those murders too for creating the conditions in which they happened.

When criminals commit a robbery, and police accidentally shoot and kill civilians, the robbers get charged with those murders too for creating the conditions in which they happened.

Yeah, that always struck me as stupid tough-on-crime porn that creates wrong incentives too. It's not like the people who do messy robberies have the executive function or maybe even just the value function (would you not just think caught = it's over in the US?) to be influenced by this additional threat, but for the police it would just strip away incentives to pursue even low-hanging fruit as far as proportionality or care for bystanders is concerned. US police already looks spectacularly unprofessional compared to other first-world countries; I'm familiar enough with all the structural arguments about their job being uniquely hard, but it seems to me that forcing them to shape up has never really been tried.

US police already looks spectacularly unprofessional compared to other first-world countries;

Lol what.

Here's the Mannheim police stabbing. This particular video does the shitty editing thing where they long pause during the gory bits and then zoom forward, but you can dig up the unedited footage if you like.

Notice how the police mostly stand back and shout instead of getting involved. Except for the biggest male police officer. Who then gets stabbed in the head. Because his colleagues aren't swarming the attacker. It was nice, and professional, though, of the police woman to put her hand on his shoulder at the end - "You alright, hon? Yeah, looks like you got stabbed in the head there."

Most other "first world" police are basically crossing guards. This is because most other "first world" countries are a) surveillance states that can prevent crime by violating civil liberties in ways that are cut-and-dry-illegal in the USA and b) either ethnically homogenous (Japan) or ethnically / socially caste like societies where the lowerclasses are allowed to murder each other so long as all that riff-raff stays out of the Nice Parts of Town.

American police actually, you know, police the worst areas of society instead of flatly ignorning them. Which means their job is fundamentally very difficult.

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