The police in Australia here don’t really spend there time watching people and forcing them to do the right thing.
A lot of their resources are invested in regulating traffic. Issuing fines for speeding, playing with phones, not wearing a seatbelt. If you don’t punish people for being dickheads on the road it will be a shit show. If there’s an accident they show up in a moment, manage traffic, get the wrecks off the road, et cetera.
Another important function is domestic violence and other related domestic disputes. If someone is getting beaten by their spouse, a neighbor might call the police. They will show up and take the appropriate actions to resolve. Whether that’s just informal counseling or charging one or other combatant.
They also deal with mental health and substance abuse issues. I remember 20 years ago I woke up one morning and there was some teenager in my back yard. He was ranting about the robots attacking or something. I called the police and they showed up and took him to the emergency ward at the hospital.
They also manage petty or minor theft. I remember someone stole a (very nice) pair of shoes from my front door. I had some pretty good footage of them, and it’s a complicated story but they’d actually left a beer bottle with their prints on it earlier in the day. The police showed up and used the video to get the authorisation to search a couple of houses and found a bunch of stolen stuff.
If you didn’t have “police”, you’d need some other organisation to do these things.
The police in Australia here don’t really spend there time watching people and forcing them to do the right thing.
A lot of their resources are invested in regulating traffic. Issuing fines for speeding, playing with phones, not wearing a seatbelt. If you don’t punish people for being dickheads on the road it will be a shit show. If there’s an accident they show up in a moment, manage traffic, get the wrecks off the road, et cetera.
Another important function is domestic violence and other related domestic disputes. If someone is getting beaten by their spouse, a neighbor might call the police. They will show up and take the appropriate actions to resolve. Whether that’s just informal counseling or charging one or other combatant.
They also deal with mental health and substance abuse issues. I remember 20 years ago I woke up one morning and there was some teenager in my back yard. He was ranting about the robots attacking or something. I called the police and they showed up and took him to the emergency ward at the hospital.
They also manage petty or minor theft. I remember someone stole a (very nice) pair of shoes from my front door. I had some pretty good footage of them, and it’s a complicated story but they’d actually left a beer bottle with their prints on it earlier in the day. The police showed up and used the video to get the authorisation to search a couple of houses and found a bunch of stolen stuff.
If you didn’t have “police”, you’d need some other organisation to do these things.