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Two different topics I am not qualified to talk about but am interested in hearing your opinions on:
NB This was a few days ago and the cops have since dropped the charges after public backlash. This time.
I'm not from the south, but I and most of the rest of non-southern righties decided a long time ago we would just appropriate it. Confederate flags in rural Michigan, etc. To me it has a kind of universality to it. Don't miss the line 'if you're 5 foot 3 and 300 pounds, tax dollars shouldn't pay for your bags of fudge rounds." Interested to hear your thoughts
So, when the US has bad cops caught doing bad things, we get tons of counterexamples of good cops doing their jobs correctly and professionally. When the British police get caught doing bad things, are their any popular counterexamples of the British police doing their jobs correctly and professionally?
Could easily be a bias thing based around my getting most of my good-cop-bad-cop news from themotte. Since American police code as red, and British police code as blue, that kinda makes sense, though even these days, we seem to have enough lefties around to point out when confirmation bias is painting a misleading picture. But I can't recall any instance of someone being positive toward the British police. Where are their defenders?
The Metropolitan Police has one of the highest homicide solve rates of any major western urban police force. In 2019, it solved 98% of London's 143 homicides, for example. San Francisco's homicide solve rate seems to fluctuate between around 65% and 75%, and that is one of the very highest of major US cities. London's homicide rate is vastly below US cities with similar (or indeed better, in SF's case) demographics from an HBD purist's perspective.
Generally I find the police here to be moderately competent. They remove schizo homeless people quickly. When annoying street buskers play near my home, they come in 15 minutes to move them along. I've asked them for directions and they've always been polite. The police don't set hate crime laws, politicians do. Police are usually authoritarian personality types, there are always issues with them enjoying the power they wield over civilians. But they enforce laws that are, ultimately, passed by others.
I'm deeply suspicious. Some combination of wrongly classifying many murder victims as deaths by accident or suicide and also pinning lots of murders on people who maybe didn't really commit them?
The usual solve rate is more like 80-90%, by the way, 2019 was an exceptional year. But it makes sense, regular homicides in the age of DNA and mass surveillance (which London has more of than any other Western city) are usually easy for police with enough resources to solve. Gang-related homicides are more complex because they often involve groups of people fighting each other, but there surveillance can help, drill rap means they often admit it themselves, and they have extensive gang databases to tie people together.
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