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From the article:
I don't want to ruin internet privacy, but who has ideas on how to handle this better? I feel like if someone's posting "I wanna do a mass shooting" something should happen. I don't want the state or private enterprise to be able to abuse that, though.
People have been asking this same question since Columbine. It can be done, but no matter where you are, the point of interception between the perpetrator of a crime and their victims is the state. "See something, say something," sure. But to whom?
In the US, it's the police, and that's exactly why it doesn't work here: more often than not, the police are NOT here to serve the community. With some exceptions, generally speaking, police and police departments exist to serve the state and the wealthy, to provide security theater, to cosplay with weaponry, to feed the criminal justice system and the prison labor enterprise with a constant supply of offenders, to make a career out of hunting and/or hurting people who can't fight back if that's what makes them feel alive, and to make serious coin for themselves and the industries that have built up around them.
If you were to call the police in the US and say you'd seen something concerning on someone else's social media, the first person investigated would not necessarily be that person, nor their posts, but you. You are the lowest hanging fruit. Hypothetically, you could notify some mandated reporter and they could report it, but they would not necessarily be heard either.
If a crime is not reported, it never happened and no one has to deal with it, so the bar to even submit a police report anymore is pretty high. But let's say you get that far. Now someone who actually gives a shit has to follow up on it, and with enough human sensitivity and intelligence to make the right determinations in a highly volatile situation. It could be serious, it could be a hoax, they have no idea and they have to tread carefully.
Sounds doable, but think again: if you're an employee in a system that literally exists to place blame, maybe you already know you want nothing to do with it if it goes bad and would rather not be the fall guy for whoever dies, and now somehow that well-meaning citizen's report gets lost. So now the shooter shoots, people die, but the cop got home safe and nobody's blaming him for it today, and all he had to do was misfile a report, which he knows the guys at the top will cover up for the sake of their own positions even if they figure it out, and they probably don't even want to know. Win/win for that cop all around.
So if the police -- the ones with the actual state-sponsored and paid responsibility to intercept the shooter and the authority and equipment to do so -- cannot or will not listen to the citizens who actually see this not-yet-committed crime in progress before it happens, who will?
It could work in the UK, for example, and in other parts of the world where talking to the police is not usually the first of a very bad string of events, but not here in the US. The part of the social contract where we pay taxes and in return we have reliable police who exist to serve their community and not just skim it for fun and profit is LONG gone.
TL;DR: If you want to fix suspected mass shooter reporting, you first have to fix the cops, IMO.
NB: I wrote this, but I do not condone ANY of these behaviors. There was a time when cops were good people and lived in the neighborhoods they genuinely did serve, but I'm old and that world doesn't exist anymore.
I have long thought that the police as an institution in the US is, shall we say, not good.
One time I was walking home from the grocery and I saw a couple having a screaming fight on the street. The guy had taken the woman's phone from her and was holding it up out of her reach. I thought to myself, "Someone should probably do something.. but who? And what?"
If I had called the police, it's incredibly unlikely it would have gone well. The people fighting weren't white, for one thing. The cops would probably roll up, throw their authority around, and get violent. Possibly murder the guy. Not what you want. Even if they didn't do violence immediately, subjecting that guy to the criminal justice system is not what you want, either.
In my imagination there should be a department of deescalation specialists. No guns. No arrest powers. Maybe some snacks.
But yeah, policing in the US is a tragedy at pretty much every level.
Back on topic, responsibility could maybe fall onto the platform. There are suicide prevention services. Maybe there could be mass shooting prevention services.
As a teacher, I had to do home visits for every student in my homeroom. Two families threatened to kill me. One by siccing their dogs on me, the other by just shooting me. The entire purpose of my visit was just to meet them and let them know I care about their kids
What do you do when these de-escalation specialists go to talk to a person who is crazy-posting, and have their lives threatened?
I don't ask this facetiously. I think this is a good idea. But these workers will run into situations like this, and more to the point, opponents of these programs will definitely bring this sort of thing up when trying to sway public opinion.
I legit don't have an answer.
Some of the earliest modern police forces in the US were slave patrols in the south. In the north, Boston was the first city to have a modern professional force. It grew out of a system where private companies were hiring their own security to protect their cargo in the Boston port, and offloaded that cost onto the public.
Professional, publicly funded policing in the US has long been there to protect the interests of the powerful.
I mean in the US, threatening to murder someone is a crime. I'm sure it is there too.
If this was sort of generalized, we sell bumper stickers like that. There's a post on active with one.
probably, this is a price for freedom
You can't have absolute freedom in a civilized society. That idea is also self-contradictory when your freedom causes others to lose theirs.
"Foree-dumb"