Thread by @martyrmade

Talking to a lot of people who’ve never been in a physical confrontation who are full of opinions on the right way to police ghettos or de-escalate an agitated mob. Seen too many movies where some philosopher-cop pulls out the perfect line that makes all involved see the light.

There’s a reason cops are cops and you’re the one who calls the cops when someone scares you in a dog park. Putting hands on violent criminals who don’t want to be touched isn’t for everyone. It probably isn’t for you.

We’re hiring people to do a job that gets 85 of them murdered every year. There are some 800k cops in the US. For reference that’s more than all Army & Marine Corps ground forces combined. If there was a lever that could fix this problem, it would’ve been pulled long ago.

That’s not to say there aren’t better ways, but there’s is no perfect way to police violent ghettos where black markets dominate the economy, and if there was, no way to get 800k cops in 18k departments to do it every day. This isn’t fixable the way you’re hoping.

The problem is that there are ghettos, that they’re racially defined, that they’re full of people raised on pop culture that glorifies anti-cop violence, that experience has taught people not to trust authority, and historical grievances that no reform or reparation can rectify.

Protesters and leaders speak in vague platitudes about “seeking justice”, “ending racism”, and “reckoning with the past” because none of them - and none of us - have the first clue how to improve the situation within a time frame that’s acceptable to anybody.

The prison population is at a 20-year low. The black prison population is down 25% since 2006. That’s progress or nothing is. But meaningful improvement will take decades, and in the meantime Officer Chauvons will still run into George Floyds.

These riots have set in stone another few decades of ghetto immiseration. Corporations will recoup their losses, small businesses will be destroyed, residents with the option to leave will do so, city tax revenue will plummet. I can guarantee it because it’s happened before.