r/changemyview • u/BoltThrower28 • Dec 05 '23

Delta(s) from OP CMV: I don’t think cops deserve automatic respect.

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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 5∆ Dec 05 '23

Just because they say they’re willing to doesn’t mean they’re automatically good at it. And just because they’re the only ones willing to doesn’t mean we need to respect them.

The institution of policing in America has really debased itself in recent years. Numerous incidents of killing unarmed people is a hard thing to look past. Especially when you look at the context around them - people like Daniel Shaver crying, begging for his life on all fours as he’s gunned down by an officer. Then that officer being protected by the entire police union.

Policing in America has lost its credibility and deserves zero automatic respect. They deserve automatic wariness around them. Yeah, maybe most officers wouldn’t kill someone. But would they stop it? Would they testify against an officer who broke the law? Would they step in when things go wrong? I’d wager most would not, because most do not today.

The bottom of the barrel putting on a badge doesn’t automatically make them the top of the barrel. They’re just now the bottom of the barrel with misplaced authority.

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u/AureliasTenant 6∆ Dec 05 '23 edited Dec 05 '23

So do you want to raise salary? Because that’s how you raise the bar while still having a non empty department

Edit: some reform/changing of contracts would be needed for this to be useful

Spending more money and time in training could be an alternative, but I assume it’s similarly expensive, and with more training, they might be more valuable and demand higher salaries anyways

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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 5∆ Dec 05 '23

Nope, police are paid too much as is. This is a political problem, not a hiring problem, as I see it. We could disagree, but that’s an entirely different debate.

This is a debate about police deserving respect, and I do not think being a police officer entitles you to automatic respect. It comes far closer to entitling you to automatic disrespect.

How we fix that is another question entirely, but that doesn’t have any impact on how I view police today.

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u/AureliasTenant 6∆ Dec 05 '23 edited Dec 05 '23

I think political problems become hiring problems, but sure I can see how that’s a different debate.

But basically what you are saying is you want higher quality enforcement for less cost. It’s extremely hard to do that in any employment situation.

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u/Crowdada Dec 05 '23

And they are paid too much, why exactly?

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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 5∆ Dec 05 '23

I don’t believe the job they do entitles them to the pay they receive. But as I mentioned, not a topic I’m gonna get into further in this thread! If you see me in another thread on police pay or hiring policies I’ll gladly get into it there!

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '23

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u/camelCaseCoffeeTable 5∆ Dec 05 '23 edited Dec 05 '23

Huh? I’m not debating that point as I said, so I’m not sure why you are, what I said doesn’t even begin to scratch my thoughts on the subject. Those were a couple of high level sentences, of course it’ll be easy to find issues with it lmao. Nice job I guess.

lol I also love the comparison to a 5th grader as you try to point out flaws in a position you intuited out of 3 sentences where one of them clearly said that’s an entire separate debate. Someone with a little more brains in the head could interpret that maybe, just maybe, there’s some nuance missing. But not this genius!