How do we view the role and effectiveness of police in society?

​A community member recently shared with me that he is embarking on a career with the police in England, but doesn’t always share that with people because of certain perceptions of the police they might have.

​We talked recently about the innate human desire to be authentic, but also how that sometimes conflicts with a need to feel safe. Our community member is keen to explore this boundary with our group, but also discuss what impact we think police forces have in the world and how they can help get us to our collective human goals of safety, health and happiness.

​There’s also an interesting parallel between “policing” and “moderation” on technology platforms for me. So a lot of what we discuss may also be relevant to how we think about creating better human behaviour not just through the actions of a physical police force, but through our own actions on a social platform like Sphere.

​As always, everyone is welcome to join us for a safe, productive and hopefully stimulating discussion (it’s typically a small group of around 10 people). Our goal is to learn more about each other’s experiences around this issue and understand how we can all help to solve the problems we uncover.

​In order to respect our community member's privacy, we will ensure that his personal identity is not mentioned in any publicly accessible spaces (eg social media or our Discourse forum).