i would hope no adult is naïve enough to believe police magically appear only where crime is and only addresses clear and existing crime, rather than being embedded in a complicated sociopolitical system overwhelmed by legal pitfalls. those are stories we tell children to comfort them for sleep.
> HN seems to think police spend their shift waiting for crimes to happen in front of them.
No, but when they aren't responding to calls, they spend the rest of their shift going on fishing expeditions.
What do you think traffic cops, for instance, are doing most of their day? What about the cruiser slowly driving through a neighbourhood? They aren't there to respond to a call, they are just running license plates/looking for poorly maintained cars to pull over (Obviously, if someone egregiously breaks traffic rules in front of them, they don't need to look very far - but when nobody's breaking the rules, they can always find someone who looks suspicious.)
The thing is, when you only go on fishing expeditions in poorer neighbourhoods/targeting poorer vehicles, you're going to find that will skew crime statistics - and statistical model based on that will direct even more policing towards those areas.
It's why in the United States, the higher you are on the income ladder, the more illegal drugs you consume - yet the lower you are on the income ladder, the more likely you will end up in prison for drug use.
that's a misdirection. most crimes are not emergencies, and policing encompasses much more than emergency response.
if policing were just, we'd see many more white-collar crimes like corruption, bribery, embezzlement, fraud, extortion, etc. being busted, because those crimes have much larger impact and wider fallout on communities and wider societies.
White collar crime isn't a task for police any more than tax evasion is - those just plain aren't tasks they are meant for as opposed to public safety tasks. Which also explains why they are less funded, even without any conflicts of interest they aren't "sexy" crimes that grab attention, they all also lack urgency and thus are easily "procrastinated". Digging through records can uncover many of them and there are a lot of them.
The police in their current role only show up at the behest of warrants in those situations to search or arrest.
