Originally Posted by
MumblesBadly
Its a 2 headed coin. Police in this country are definitely heavy handed. That being said, similar police heavy handedness (and in many cases much worse) has been the standard in pretty much every human society that has ever existed. This is because it is an effective strategy on the whole, although obviously some people are going to be unfairly victimized by it.
It is not clear that a kindler, gentler police force will be able to effectively do their job. Some people point to how policing functions in Northern and Western European democracies as a standard for the policing we should aspire to. I am not sure those are good models, because those societies generally have much less violence and crime. Most of the countries that have similar crime and violence statistics as the US correspondingly have a more criminal, violent police force.
I have made this argument before, but IMO policing is a product of the system it operates in, and you can't really change policing in a vacuum. You have to operate at the systemic level. If our crime and violence levels plummeted to those seen in Sweden or Japan, I have no doubt our policing would change accordingly. I just dont think you can have the latter without the former.
I am just guessing so I may be completely wrong, but as far as crime and violence levels, I am guessing the US is much more similar to Russia than to Sweden. And I am guessing Russian police heavy handedness is correspondingly more similar to that seen in the US. Maybe Mr. Tickle, who lives in Russia, could comment whether this conjecture is accurate or not.