Will (@will675003)

Alec, I read your entire critique and I feel like one thing that could have been highlighted much more is how the US is already massively over-policed for all the wrong reasons. Instead of playing their false narrative of comparing numbers of cops here or there, we should focus on two major problems with cops in America that mean don't need or want more. First, cops in the US are simply not focused on the "major crimes" that the professors cite as an issue. Stats that I've seen and you have referenced in the past show that a tiny fraction of our police are actually focused on crimes like rape and murder while the rest are patrolling the roads and pulling over 10's of millions of people on pretextual fishing expeditions for ridiculously minor traffic infractions, harassing people as they walk down the street or stopping and frisking random people. This phenomenon was touched on in Malcolm Gladwell's "Talking to Strangers" with references to the Kansas City experiment that led to so much over policing. What are these 500K cops going to do that's different from today? Pull over and harass 10's of millions MORE people than they are today? Second, cops in the US are terrible at solving "major crimes" with rape and murder and other major crimes having dismal rates of resolution or conviction (of the person who ACTUALLY did it). One might think this is an argument for the professors and more cops, but it's not. Despite what the cop shows portray, the vast number of police in the US are simply there for the little stuff. Things like minor traffic violations or accidents, vagrancy, evictions, code violations, loitering and on and on. Major crimes simply aren't a real priority for police or they would be better at solving them. But major crimes are messy and often extremely difficult to solve while instead piling up 10's of millions of arrests and citations for 1000's of little infractions is easy and it makes it look like the cops are "busy" and "protecting our society" when in fact most of them are doing the opposite. More cops just means more policing of the little things, more harassment and more incarceration for minor non-violent reasons.