Thought vis-a-vis why the police can't be reformed, a thread.

You ever wonder why roads are a certain width?

Like, there has to be a reason. Things never just happen, but sometimes something is so ubiquitous you never really ask the question why it is the way it is.

For europeans and euro-descended cultures, the width of a road could be said to go back to Rome - That One Civilization That Built Roads Then Ate A Ton Of Lead.

Rome had a very strict definition and technical specification of how wide a road had to be.

But why that specific width? Well, that was about the width of a cart that could be pulled by a horse, or a pair of smaller equines.

Makes sense, doesn't it? You build a road to purpose.

But really, the horse drawn carts predated the roads quite a bit.

The roads weren't built for the carts, they were built in the pattern of the carts by sheer necessity. Traffic had carved a path that was easier to follow. Centuries had made a road before paving was ever introduced as a concept.

So, a single lane of a road is the width one gets when horse drawn carts repeatedly follow a certain pathway.

There wasn't really any intentionality to it - horse drawn carts are basically going to follow the same design because horses follow the same design

Even when you put two horses close side-by-side, you don't really widen your axel by an appreciable amount, you just make sure you have a team likely to work well together in close quarters.

The widest roads, then, were about two horses wide to a lane.

The romans paved two horses wide, and when automobiles became the trendy thing they used extant axel sizes - sized for about two horses.

Millenia later, and the roads we drive and ride on are shaped by a decision made by people long dead.

Thus it is with the police.

They were created as slave-catchers, anti-native patrols, and strongmen for the rich.

Years separate us from those decisions but the concept remains in the very bones of policing.