Discussions on the Police

[Peregrine]

I mean, that's another oddity to me in itself. You can buy a long rifle at 18 but have to wait another 3 years to buy a beer. If the UK police arrested students for drinking, they wouldn't have time to do anything else! Hell, I was drunk several times a week for my entire time at university and I was comparatively one of the sober ones.

Yep, Jesus hates alcohol but he didn't say anything about guns.

[Haighus]

Did Jesus say anything bad about alcohol? I thought communion was a core part of huge swathes of Christianity...

[mdgv2]

No no no.

He turned Water into Assault Rifles. Everyone knows that. He also managed to share a single magazine among the 5,000.

ThIs Is ScRiPtUrE pEoPlE

[Peregrine]

Mar 13, 2024 5:07:30 GMT -5 Haighus said:

Did Jesus say anything bad about alcohol? I thought communion was a core part of huge swathes of Christianity...

Those are Catholics and therefore not real Christians. Real Christians understand that the core message of Jesus is to hate your neighbor if he isn't a straight white Christian with a MAGA hat and alcohol, like all things that are fun, is a sin (unless it's whatever they replaced bud light with after cancelling it).

The above is only 50% satire. In the state where I grew up it was literally illegal to sell alcohol on sunday mornings because you were supposed to be in church then.

[Haighus]

Mar 12, 2024 19:02:56 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Mar 12, 2024 17:50:24 GMT -5 Haighus said:

Firstly, what the hell is "university police"? Why do universities have their own police force? Honestly, police forces grow like mould in the US, don't pay attention for 5 minutes and your institution probably grows one.

To be fair that one is actually somewhat reasonable if you start from the premise that cops should exist at all. A lot of US universities are more like small towns in scale (mine had over 30,000 students) and university cops often have less power than real cops. It's just not practical to expand the town police force and get them building access to cover every minor case of alcohol in the dorms, petty theft, etc.

Still weird. Why not just have security?

My uni was >20000 and campus based. It was still part of a city and used the county police if needed (very rare). There was on-site security but a pretty low presence (mostly they wandered round telling people to not smoke by the doors and maybe be a little subtle about smoking weed).

Plus, most of the drinking "crimes" are wasted effort. Students are gonna drink.

Having a tiny police force for every town and campus remains bizarre to me. But then I was also surprised by the tiny hospitals in every town too with like 6 bed emergency departments and 3 intensive beds. I'd hate to be admitted to one of those (aside from the bill if I survived).

[Haighus]

Mar 13, 2024 5:47:17 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Mar 13, 2024 5:07:30 GMT -5 Haighus said:

Did Jesus say anything bad about alcohol? I thought communion was a core part of huge swathes of Christianity...

Those are Catholics and therefore not real Christians. Real Christians understand that the core message of Jesus is to hate your neighbor if he isn't a straight white Christian with a MAGA hat and alcohol, like all things that are fun, is a sin (unless it's whatever they replaced bud light with after cancelling it).

The above is only 50% satire. In the state where I grew up it was literally illegal to sell alcohol on sunday mornings because you were supposed to be in church then.

Communion is common to most protestant denominations too. I've only just found out some of them swap the wine for grape juice though... I doubt Jesus did that in the last supper. Anyway, enough about folk twisting themselves into theocratic knots to justify their personal beliefs...

I think people should drink less alcohol. However I don't think it should first become legal to do so at 21, and that probably encourages many people to drink more alcohol than they would if introduced gradually and with less of a "forbidden fruit" effect.

[herzlos]

Cultures with a more common sense approach to alcohol than prohibition tend to have less alcohol related issues (including teen pregnancy). Like France, where you can drink wine with a meal from fairly young. I think in the UK you can technically have a wine/beer with dinner from 14 but it's a pretty rare occurrence to the point that no-one thinks it's an option.


I definitely find the sheer number of levels of police force and associated redundancy incredible. Why does every town need it's own police force when they could just have a regional force? Why does a school or university need it's own police force when you could either just have the local police force handle requests or hire security. As far as I understand it, that's how every other university in the world does it. There's a couple of security on-site to deal with building related stuff, parking, contractor access, etc. and the actual police are called in to deal with any crimes that happen.

Schools here almost never have any security/police presence. There's a janitor/caretaker who opens the building, security doors etc in place and the local police called in if needed (almost never). Most school interaction with the police is community outreach stuff about cycling safety, how drugs are bad, stranger danger and so on.

[Peregrine]

Mar 13, 2024 7:20:33 GMT -5 Haighus said:

Still weird. Why not just have security?

That's pretty much what they are. They have limited jurisdiction and often limited powers.

Having a tiny police force for every town and campus remains bizarre to me. But then I was also surprised by the tiny hospitals in every town too with like 6 bed emergency departments and 3 intensive beds. I'd hate to be admitted to one of those (aside from the bill if I survived).

This comes down to the differences in population density between the US and UK. In the US it's common for a small town to be an hour away from the nearest town of more than 50 people (which you wouldn't even notice is a town if there wasn't a sign) and several hours from the nearest city. They need their own hospital because if you have a serious emergency you need immediate treatment to at least stabilize the situation and prepare for transport to a more capable hospital, if you have to wait 3-4 hours to get to a hospital you're probably dead.

Same thing with cops. If you accept the premise that cops should exist then these isolated towns need their own cops, if it takes two hours under ideal circumstances for the cops to arrive at an emergency they aren't even theoretically accomplishing anything. And when the town is a 20-30,000 student university attached to a 5,000 person town where 75% of the town is student housing, restaurants on the street bordering campus, etc, it makes sense for the university to have its own services. The university effectively IS the town.

[Haighus]

Mar 13, 2024 16:49:27 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Mar 13, 2024 7:20:33 GMT -5 Haighus said:

Still weird. Why not just have security?

That's pretty much what they are. They have limited jurisdiction and often limited powers.

Having a tiny police force for every town and campus remains bizarre to me. But then I was also surprised by the tiny hospitals in every town too with like 6 bed emergency departments and 3 intensive beds. I'd hate to be admitted to one of those (aside from the bill if I survived).

This comes down to the differences in population density between the US and UK. In the US it's common for a small town to be an hour away from the nearest town of more than 50 people (which you wouldn't even notice is a town if there wasn't a sign) and several hours from the nearest city. They need their own hospital because if you have a serious emergency you need immediate treatment to at least stabilize the situation and prepare for transport to a more capable hospital, if you have to wait 3-4 hours to get to a hospital you're probably dead.

Same thing with cops. If you accept the premise that cops should exist then these isolated towns need their own cops, if it takes two hours under ideal circumstances for the cops to arrive at an emergency they aren't even theoretically accomplishing anything. And when the town is a 20-30,000 student university attached to a 5,000 person town where 75% of the town is student housing, restaurants on the street bordering campus, etc, it makes sense for the university to have its own services. The university effectively IS the town.

Getting a bit off topic here, but the hospital thing bugs me. I understand the impact of population density, but it definitely happens in denser areas too. I first encountered this for a small hospital in a satellite town of Houston, not out in the Midwest. The hospital in question had a tiny emergency department with resus beds and a tiny ITU, and had a tiny endoscopy department. This was easily within an hour of several much larger hospitals. Such small departments don't have enough caseload to get adequately experienced and shouldn't exist if big centres are nearby. Within an hour is nearby for the vast majority of emergencies, and you will be more likely to survive and have a better outcome going a bit further to a big centre than closer to a less experienced, less capable small team for the majority of cases. This applies to common time-critical emergencies like sepsis, heart attacks (myocardial infarctions), and strokes (cerebrovascular accidents). Such services are being concentrated into regional centres in most places.

Oh, and paramedics do most the initial stabilisation like IV fluids.

Community hospitals have a place, but that place should only include specialist emergency care in extremis (or in places with very low population density, like Wyoming).

Re. Police forces- it is the fragmentary nature that is surprising. A town of 30000 doesn't have a unique police force in the UK, it has a branch of the county force. Only big cities have their own municipal forces. Being so broken up could really mess with coordination between emergency services across various locales.

[herzlos]

But if a town only has 50 people, how many cops does it need?

Why couldn't a college town just have a police officer or station from a bigger area?

The no-name town I'm in, population about 10,000 and fairly rural, has it's own police station as part of the county. I believe it's got a small force since there's usually 2-3 cars outside but they belong to the county and not the town. That way they can share resources, management etc between areas as the next biggish town in each direction (both about 15 minutes drive) have stations and police officers too but specialist stuff like dogs come from another station 20 minutes away, SWAT from the city 30 minutes away and so on. They'll also respond to calls outside their town if required but aren't supposed to cross into another county unless approved by HQ or in a pursuit.

If something here is big enough to need it's own security services, then they hire security guards.

What happens in the US if there are 2 small-ish towns with 2 separate police forces and something happens near a boundary. Who deals with it? Can a cop from town A respond to a call in town B or do their powers stop at the boundary line? Can a cop from town A summon help from cops from different towns?

[easye]

If a town if 50 people, it is probably covered by the county sheriff, and not their own force. If they do have their own force, it is likely 1-5 cops.


In my very rural area, helicopter ambulances are common usage to take people from the scene, to the city hospital an hour and a half away.

[Haighus]

Mar 14, 2024 9:54:31 GMT -5 easye said:

If a town if 50 people, it is probably covered by the county sheriff, and not their own force. If they do have their own force, it is likely 1-5 cops.


In my very rural area, helicopter ambulances are common usage to take people from the scene, to the city hospital an hour and a half away.

Hour and a half by car or helicopter?

[easye]

Car. Hence, the need for Helicopters.

An acquaintance of mine is a EMT at the chopper company.  It is amazing how many days they don't operate due to wind, cloud cover, weather, etc. 

[Haighus]

90 mins by car is actually ok for most emergencies- it would be less by blue light. The call operator can triage out the ones that need choppers.

That said, it depends a bit on ambulance distribution. You need ambulances stationed out into the peripheries from hospitals to reach emergencies quickly.

Plus, I don't think the US widely uses rapid-response paramedics to initiate care before the ambulance arrives with a stretcher? That really buys more time to get the patient to a hospital by allowing critical early care to be delivered quicker in the pre-hospital setting (IV fluids, antibiotics, aspirin etc. depending on the emergency).

[nfe]

Mar 13, 2024 16:49:27 GMT -5 Peregrine said:

Mar 13, 2024 7:20:33 GMT -5 Haighus said:

Still weird. Why not just have security?

That's pretty much what they are. They have limited jurisdiction and often limited powers.

Having a tiny police force for every town and campus remains bizarre to me. But then I was also surprised by the tiny hospitals in every town too with like 6 bed emergency departments and 3 intensive beds. I'd hate to be admitted to one of those (aside from the bill if I survived).

This comes down to the differences in population density between the US and UK. In the US it's common for a small town to be an hour away from the nearest town of more than 50 people (which you wouldn't even notice is a town if there wasn't a sign) and several hours from the nearest city. They need their own hospital because if you have a serious emergency you need immediate treatment to at least stabilize the situation and prepare for transport to a more capable hospital, if you have to wait 3-4 hours to get to a hospital you're probably dead.

Same thing with cops. If you accept the premise that cops should exist then these isolated towns need their own cops, if it takes two hours under ideal circumstances for the cops to arrive at an emergency they aren't even theoretically accomplishing anything. And when the town is a 20-30,000 student university attached to a 5,000 person town where 75% of the town is student housing, restaurants on the street bordering campus, etc, it makes sense for the university to have its own services. The university effectively IS the town.

If you have a 30,000 student university attached to a 5,000 person town... you have a 35,000 person town. You need the correct number of cops for that number of people and its circumstances. Why do the town cops and campus cops need to be different organisations?

Cambridge, Massachusetts is pretty much the same size as Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, and Harvard and Cambridge have pretty much the same size student bodies. Why does one need its own cops? There are also really ridiculous examples. I first discovered campus police existed on my way to a reception at the University of Chicago - in the middle of Chicago.