Is this some American joke I’m too Norwegian to get? Yes, because our police don’t escalate, they don’t serve as some political tool to harass people for political gains, but they are highly qualified since you only make it to police school if you have high marks in most subjects…

In the US, you could be ruled out of a position as sheriff if you score too high on a damn IQ test.

See a pattern here, yanks? The more intelligent, the higher their chances are of being stable and capable of having empathy.

But then again, you do live in a country where the police used an attack helicopter to bomb a housing complex…

So maybe try community policing for a while?

“How about no police”

Yes, yes, and no laws, right? And no military… surely all these things are great ideas.

“Abolish the police” is essentially shorthand for ending the current institution. Community policing IS the ideal goal.

This movement does need a better slogan. “Defund the police” doesn’t convey the idea properly.

This cartoon says “Disarm the police”, which is also terrible messaging and a straight up stupid idea. I wouldn’t work as a cop in this country without a gun.

Police of some kind will always be necessary. Violence and physical power trump everything else, which is why we need people who are allowed to use force on our behalf so that we can run our societies based on rules and not who is the best at violence. Our system allows the people to get together and collectively hire and fire the people that hire and fire the cops we interact with on the streets. I don’t know exactly how that got corrupted or how to fix it.

We need specific police reforms and the folks leading the groups pushing for these reforms need to work on their messaging so they don’t have people yelling and tweeting things out that make them look like idiots and turning people off. You’ll never win over the boot-lickers, but better messaging could be a game change overall.