Jared Niewenhuis, council member for the City of Bellevue, is wrong in his commentary recently published at www.chronline.com when he tries to convince your readers that more police equals more safety.
Here’s why:
You know who has a nearly identical police population per capita as Jared tells you Washington suffers? The country of Finland. They have about three quarters the population of Washington. They have 1.36 police officers per 1,000 people.
I was going to cite a few statistics that demonstrate my point that police do not correlate to safety, but the comparisons between Washington and Finland all demonstrate that point. Look it up for yourselves. Compare crime rates between them. Pick a measure of social safety and compare. I’m not even going to characterize it here. Go see.
It isn’t the police who make Finland as safe as it is. It’s the people. They have almost the same numbers of police as you, and they have a fraction of your crime rate. Are Finns better humans than residents of Washington? They certainly behave better than you do.
Jared Niewenhuis is wrong. Washington doesn’t have a policing problem. It has a people problem.
What you face is the hard problems of explaining and solving the differences in how you behave toward each other compared to how the Finns behave toward each other.
Do not trust anyone who tells you that police keep you safe. They have no such role. We keep each other safe. Or, we don’t. Either way, police can’t, don’t and won’t do anything about it until the crime has already happened.
If you want a better state, you have to be better citizens.
Jesse Ohlsson
Formerly of Centralia
