It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
I was trying to hit several conversations there, so not really intended to call anybody out that doesn't want be, if that makes sense.
And yeah, I absolutely believe that systemic change is always exchanging a current problem for a new problem. But the fact is our current problem is a plague on society that has actively resisted all attempts to 'solve' it. It's time to change our approach.
And I find that anybody who is unwilling to chuck the constant and endless abuse of the police system out of the fear of the problems that may arise from affecting change are really just showing that they have yet to be truly victimized by the system and are afraid of facing the amount of suffering that some already face every day in this country. And yes, that's a loaded and polarizing statement. But perhaps try to think of it more as provoking. Because I get it. I don't want to have chaos in the streets. I don't want to deal with deranged psychos with a chip on their shoulders, be they former cops or just emboldened criminals. That sounds scary as fuck.
But the fact is - they're already out there. The cops, without facing any consequences, can beat you, harass you, jail you or kill you already. If they haven't done so yet it is likely nothing more than a quirk of socio-economic fate. And there are people who have had this happen, who haven't been so lucky as us, and we fucking owe it to them to throw our lot in with theirs to destroy this barbaric system because we are all humans and if we do not fight for ourselves then we are no better than the monsters wearing badges.
I was trying to hit several conversations there, so not really intended to call anybody out that doesn't want be, if that makes sense.
And yeah, I absolutely believe that systemic change is always exchanging a current problem for a new problem. But the fact is our current problem is a plague on society that has actively resisted all attempts to 'solve' it. It's time to change our approach.
And I find that anybody who is unwilling to chuck the constant and endless abuse of the police system out of the fear of the problems that may arise from affecting change are really just showing that they have yet to be truly victimized by the system and are afraid of facing the amount of suffering that some already face every day in this country. And yes, that's a loaded and polarizing statement. But perhaps try to think of it more as provoking. Because I get it. I don't want to have chaos in the streets. I don't want to deal with deranged psychos with a chip on their shoulders, be they former cops or just emboldened criminals. That sounds scary as fuck.
But the fact is - they're already out there. The cops, without facing any consequences, can beat you, harass you, jail you or kill you already. If they haven't done so yet it is likely nothing more than a quirk of socio-economic fate. And there are people who have had this happen, who haven't been so lucky as us, and we fucking owe it to them to throw our lot in with theirs to destroy this barbaric system because we are all humans and if we do not fight for ourselves then we are no better than the monsters wearing badges.
Yes. They can do that. It's why even as a white male my heart races during interactions with the cops. I've had two cops lie to my face. The first only didn't result in charges because thank god a more senior officer showed up and she proceeded to tell him in no uncertain terms how fucked he would be if he lied. The second I did the math and determined just paying the fine was cheaper than fighting it.
But maybe, just maybe, you need to read some stories of places where the cops either intentionally delay showing up or just don't show up at all. Because it's not hard for those places to become places where "Yeah, my neighbor got murdered last week, and?" becomes mind shatteringly common. It turns out when law enforcement becomes non-existent shit goes south real bad because of, well, frankly a lot of god damn factors. Not the least of which is the ridiculous ease of obtaining firearms in this country.
White privilege (and this is an aside that I don't mean to attribute to you because I don't know your background) is a great many things that result in a lot of unintentionally harmful thinking but one of them is not understanding what minority communities have been facing for decades when it comes to police response times which in and of itself is only a tiny sliver of why said communities are loathe to call the cops. It's fucked up from bottom to top and any realistic answer is going to be fantastically complicated. But "the police just don't respond" is a kind of big issue that needs to be addressed. Because there is no excuse for the people we pay to be responsible for responding to and investigating shootings just deciding "Naw, fuck that."
"Just get rid of the police!" is pretty much as appealing of an idea as it is an asinine idea.
Which is why defunding (as in fire all of the police and then rehire the non-shit officers) is not only more palatable but frankly much more practical.
This is dogmatic bs on so many levels I am having difficulty replying.
Maybe you’re not understanding what I was saying. I was not suggesting violence by the police was good. Or that the police should do violence on people.
I was suggesting that if the states aim is to minimize violence then the state can be the only authority with the power to use force/do violence. Enforcing that authority will require violence in some situations. Its not a function of dogma it’s a function of reality. States also need armies. A state without an army tends to be quickly not a state*. The Civil War was not ended by waiting out the South.
We will need police in this nation. We have far too many guns and far too many grievances for there to never be violence. We won’t need to use violence to end all conflicts but we will need it to end some of the conflicts.
This does not mean that the level of policing in this nation is optimal. Its far far too high and far far too violent. It does not currently meet the criteria to solve its necessary and important function. But without police we would invent them and they would have even less oversight than we have now. Indeed our current system is more or less the tumor formed from that original cancer.
I thought -tel’s question was honest. So i gave an honest answer. You need police because sometimes people will have guns and will refuse to surrender until a gun is pointed at them. You need a police force because executing a warrant against someone who resists will fail without force.
Knowing this is the first step to figuring out what police look like once we defund them.
*yes, there are exceptions, no they do not matter since those states tend to have allies that have armies.
One of the functions of police is to collect information on crime. Without this information, you cannot make any intervention to reduce crime that is verified to work.
If you do not replace this function before removing the police force, you're objectively going to something worse.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
One of the functions of police is to collect information on crime. Without this information, you cannot make any intervention to reduce crime that is verified to work.
If you do not replace this function before removing the police force, you're objectively going to something worse.
Is anybody suggesting we don't replace the essential functions of police?
One of the functions of police is to collect information on crime. Without this information, you cannot make any intervention to reduce crime that is verified to work.
If you do not replace this function before removing the police force, you're objectively going to something worse.
And our current police force is shit at doing this
Yes guys, I understand that an Emergency Services Department is going to do 99% of the things cops are supposed to do now, but you cannot make any headway on this by continuing to think of them as 'police'. Cops should not be rehired to be cops. Cops could be hired to be investigators, or booking clerks, or anything else you find in a modern police precinct, but they should very explicitly not be cops
It sucks that we have to spend so much time arguing how exactly the fix this compared to the solidarity of the 'cops keep being a violent white supremacist street gang' opposition...but I guess that's usually a problem with fixing an entrenched status quo, and most of the goals are pretty much the same but the language varies, which can be really confusing?
Hell, until this page I misunderstood and thought Ringo was arguing for the absence of any kind of organized law enforcement solution.
But you could describe, say, defunding cops and moving funds to specialists (leaving cops to be detectives and rarely necessary state violence), reforming police into specialists (with a lot of them defanged in the process), or abolishing the police and replacing them with specialists (including specialist detectives and a very small contingent that does the necessary state violence part) and still be 95% talking about the same thing but just with different tone and emphasis.
One of the functions of police is to collect information on crime. Without this information, you cannot make any intervention to reduce crime that is verified to work.
If you do not replace this function before removing the police force, you're objectively going to something worse.
Is anybody suggesting we don't replace the essential functions of police?
No, but mentioning it shows you have a plan in mind and are thinking about the problem realistically. What are the bare minimum criteria to be ready to dismantle the police?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'm not sure I'd argue one of the essential functions of cops is to collect crime stats. It's something that they do take part in, but it's like a combo of performance indicators and advertisement, not a public service in and of itself.
Having a Census but of bad shit happening to people would be useful, but we don't have that.
Thinking someone saying "defund the police" means they just want that money to go away and have no sort of replacements created, to not use that funding to create all sorts of positions and agencies to do so many thing the police should be doing but do a shit job of (because the only thing they're actually good at is enacting violence upon "undesirable elements" as deemed by the status quo)...
Well, it's not much different from hearing someone say "Black Lives Matter" and thinking that means they are saying that ONLY Black lives matter, rather than the idea that people and society are not operating as though Black lives DO matter.
Thinking someone saying "defund the police" means they just want that money to go away and have no sort of replacements created, to not use that funding to create all sorts of positions and agencies to do so many thing the police should be doing but do a shit job of (because the only thing they're actually good at is enacting violence upon "undesirable elements" as deemed by the status quo)...
Well, it's not much different from hearing someone say "Black Lives Matter" and thinking that means they are saying that ONLY Black lives matter, rather than the idea that people and society are not operating as though Black lives DO matter.
I mean, that's how conservatives see government. You cut it away and don't fund it so that your taxes go down, and if the government isn't providing services, that's not a problem for rich older white men, so who cares?
Thinking someone saying "defund the police" means they just want that money to go away and have no sort of replacements created, to not use that funding to create all sorts of positions and agencies to do so many thing the police should be doing but do a shit job of (because the only thing they're actually good at is enacting violence upon "undesirable elements" as deemed by the status quo)...
Well, it's not much different from hearing someone say "Black Lives Matter" and thinking that means they are saying that ONLY Black lives matter, rather than the idea that people and society are not operating as though Black lives DO matter.
I mean...it's not like there aren't (a subcategory of?) anarchist posters who believe we have zero need for state violence or incarceration because the community will handle egregious violations itself.
edit: I'm worried it might look like I'm defending the practice of willfully misunderstanding opponents on an issue as representing the most extreme and unpopular version of their position, which is always scummy bullshit in all circumstances. Acknowledging the full breadth of positions that informed people consider in earnest isn't that, though.
Kamar on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Considering 4% of the calls police respond to are violent situations, no, we don't need large super armed police forces. People who push for the defunding of the police understand we need emergency response to violent situations - the point is to scale police down to what that need actually is (which isn't much).
A police is needed.
The current US police need to go.
What the replacement should look like depends a lot on who answers that question.
This is true. Honestly I'd like to see them scaled back on things like welfare checks (scaled back to 0 there, honestly), and even traffic enforcement. You don't need some dude with a gun, convinced that this is the most dangerous moment in his life, to write someone a citation for failure to signal.
Another lawsuit in Seattle. This time alleging that the excessive use of crowd control munitions has made protesting prohibitively expensive due to the costs of PPE.
Thinking someone saying "defund the police" means they just want that money to go away and have no sort of replacements created, to not use that funding to create all sorts of positions and agencies to do so many thing the police should be doing but do a shit job of (because the only thing they're actually good at is enacting violence upon "undesirable elements" as deemed by the status quo)...
Well, it's not much different from hearing someone say "Black Lives Matter" and thinking that means they are saying that ONLY Black lives matter, rather than the idea that people and society are not operating as though Black lives DO matter.
I mean...it's not like there aren't (a subcategory of?) anarchist posters who believe we have zero need for state violence or incarceration because the community will handle egregious violations itself.
edit: I'm worried it might look like I'm defending the practice of willfully misunderstanding opponents on an issue as representing the most extreme and unpopular version of their position, which is always scummy bullshit in all circumstances. Acknowledging the full breadth of positions that informed people consider in earnest isn't that, though.
While the thing police primarily do is commit state-sanctioned violence, that is extremely near the bottom of the list of "things police are supposed to do that we have other people do instead of them."
Incarceration is also, not really a thing community police handle much of! Correctional officers and facilities are a parallel institution that also need so much reform that it would be easier to dismantle them and start from scratch, and while they are intrinsically linked as parts of the larger so-called judicial system that operates together as a larger limb of systemic oppression, prison reform/abolition is a separate bullet point from "defund the police."
Another lawsuit in Seattle. This time alleging that the excessive use of crowd control munitions has made protesting prohibitively expensive due to the costs of PPE.
Ha! They're arguing that constitutional right to assembly is being violated because only people who can afford gas mask, helmet and safety glasses can safely assemble?
It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
I'd argue that property destruction isn't violence and conflating the two says something deeply unpleasant about our society.
It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
I'd argue that property destruction isn't violence and conflating the two says something deeply unpleasant about our society.
Arson can be dangerous because fire gets out of control very fast. Aside from that, they are very different things.
I have noticed that most fires set in NYC tend to be in trash cans - presumably because they look dramatic but are highly unlikely to spread or endanger anyone.
It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
I wish we could refer to destruction of property with a different word than "violence," because violence committed against living bodies is so much different than breaking or damaging an object.
It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
I wish we could refer to destruction of property with a different word than "violence," because violence committed against living bodies is so much different than breaking or damaging an object.
Vandalism?
Noun. Action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property.
It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
I wish we could refer to destruction of property with a different word than "violence," because violence committed against living bodies is so much different than breaking or damaging an object.
It seems, to me, that the police are the ones doing most of the bad violence
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
I wish we could refer to destruction of property with a different word than "violence," because violence committed against living bodies is so much different than breaking or damaging an object.
Vandalism?
Noun. Action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property.
Ah yes, of course there's a specific word, one that we even knew already! But of course, the officials don't want to call it "vandalism" because we've been taught by decades of after-school specials that "vandalism" is something that truant youths do, and it isn't really a serious crime. And of course, if it isn't a serious crime, it cannot warrant the response from law enforcement. Which begins to tighten a logical noose around our necks. The media cannot insist on being regarded as impartial observers if they continue to utilize the vocabulary of the oppressor.
The Aurora, Colorado police are really, really awful. They were the ones who murdered Elijah McClain with ketamine. You've got this incident. But managed to bring in James Holmes without incident.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I'm not sure I'd argue one of the essential functions of cops is to collect crime stats. It's something that they do take part in, but it's like a combo of performance indicators and advertisement, not a public service in and of itself.
Having a Census but of bad shit happening to people would be useful, but we don't have that.
Performance indicators are part of what is needed to build a better system. If the current police system does not cooperate in transitioning that information during a period of complete overhaul, then this must be one of the things that actively needs a plan.
I expect crime reporting to go up during and after the interim period, both because of instability in crime deterrence and because people may be more comfortable reporting crime. If it doesn't, this may be a red flag indicating that we have lost crime monitoring capabilities with this approach.
I would love a public implementation of this information for community study, but absent that, an internal transitional crime data collection plan would be nice to establish a solid foundation of a better system. Any proposal that isn't data driven makes me wary of a hasty half-baked venture, which is certainly a possibility in local governance.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
When it comes to policing and the need for it, in the US anyway, it generally comes back to the seemingly paradoxical issue that americans, and specifically poor and minority communities, are simultaneously overpoliced and underpoliced. There is too much police harassing people for dumb or petty shit or just being authoritarian and/or racist. And at the same time not enough police actually stopping crimes.
And it's not police are incapable of stopping crime. US police I believe are actually worse at this then in many other countries. And there's a body of evidence that more police lowers crime rates, although that is again dependent on what they are doing. The evidence for more cops suggests that basically just having them stand around not harassing people is a deterrent to actual crimes. But the shit they generally get up to while on the beat unfortunately (ie - harassing people for petty crimes or the like) is either irrelevant or, in the case of people's civil liberties, actively harmful.
As a side point here, if you've ever wondered about the origins of the famous 90s crime bill, that's basically it. A lot of people demanding the government get the police in here to do something about all the fucking crime. Which was quite a bit higher back then.
People generally want the police to stop crime. And there's definitely evidence they can. But they spend their time on shit that doesn't do that a lot of the time. They are really bad at their fucking jobs.
Oh yeah, also forgot another big issue: data gathering when it comes to policing is manifestly ubiquitously awful in the US. It's like insanely bad. It is hard to figure out a lot of wtf is going on because there is often no good data. Even the FBI's data is kind of a fucking joke.
That's a big thing that should be fixed at some point. I'm not sure what level of government you'd do that at though. State and Federal maybe?
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Oh yeah, also forgot another big issue: data gathering when it comes to policing is manifestly ubiquitously awful in the US. It's like insanely bad. It is hard to figure out a lot of wtf is going on because there is often no good data. Even the FBI's data is kind of a fucking joke.
That's a big thing that should be fixed at some point. I'm not sure what level of government you'd do that at though. State and Federal maybe?
Separate the data collation from the police as a function and hand it off to the external oversight group that needs to be installed for the reform process. Said group would already be keeping track of crooked cops at the Federal level and barring them from hopping precincts after being fired or imprisoned, so they would already have a structure in place for tracking interstate data. Cops are then on a Federal standard for paperwork and it's universal across the nation, so any submitted reports go to a group with a dedicated arm to handle that data, analyze it, and feed important information back to relevant precincts.
Further, it allows for an easily-accessible centralized organization where ANY member of the public is allowed to request everything from the raw case data (with original names removed) to the finalized results of the number-crunching handed back to police departments. No more of this shit where certain types of crime (i.e., information about guns) aren't allowed to be monitored in order to protect NRA interests, and no chance of allowing police departments to fuck with their numbers because they never get to analyze them in the first place.
Just a small reminder that many developed countries are fine with having a violence monopoly. The fact that America is unable to assemble a policeforce not consisting of mainly right-wing ultraviolent conservative racists says more about your general population than the conceptual merits of a policeforce.
Just a small reminder that many developed countries are fine with having a violence monopoly. The fact that America is inable to assemble a policeforce not consisting of mainly right-wing ultraviolent conservative racists says more about your general population than the conceptual merits of a policeforce.
The conceptual merits of a police force in the United States have always been motivated by racism.
what is the necessary and important function of police, anyway
Take reports, investigate crimes, create the chain of evidence needed for a trial. Occasionally respond to violent events that cannot be de-escalated.
We'll always need some people doing these jobs which is why I don’t particularly like ‘abolish police’ as a slogan; what we don’t need are patrol cops whose remit is basically ‘canvas poor neighborhoods looking for excuses to cause trouble’
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
This is dogmatic bs on so many levels I am having difficulty replying.
Maybe you’re not understanding what I was saying. I was not suggesting violence by the police was good. Or that the police should do violence on people.
I was suggesting that if the states aim is to minimize violence then the state can be the only authority with the power to use force/do violence. Enforcing that authority will require violence in some situations. Its not a function of dogma it’s a function of reality. States also need armies. A state without an army tends to be quickly not a state*. The Civil War was not ended by waiting out the South.
We will need police in this nation. We have far too many guns and far too many grievances for there to never be violence. We won’t need to use violence to end all conflicts but we will need it to end some of the conflicts.
This does not mean that the level of policing in this nation is optimal. Its far far too high and far far too violent. It does not currently meet the criteria to solve its necessary and important function. But without police we would invent them and they would have even less oversight than we have now. Indeed our current system is more or less the tumor formed from that original cancer.
I thought -tel’s question was honest. So i gave an honest answer. You need police because sometimes people will have guns and will refuse to surrender until a gun is pointed at them. You need a police force because executing a warrant against someone who resists will fail without force.
Knowing this is the first step to figuring out what police look like once we defund them.
*yes, there are exceptions, no they do not matter since those states tend to have allies that have armies.
The second step, once realizing the reduced scope of armed policing responsibilities sounds a lot more like a SWAT team, is to fire the SWAT team, because there is probably no chance that it's internal culture isn't already suffering from stage 4 cancer.
The Aurora, Colorado police are really, really awful. They were the ones who murdered Elijah McClain with ketamine. You've got this incident. But managed to bring in James Holmes without incident.
what is the necessary and important function of police, anyway
Take reports, investigate crimes, create the chain of evidence needed for a trial. Occasionally respond to violent events that cannot be de-escalated.
We'll always need some people doing these jobs which is why I don’t particularly like ‘abolish police’ as a slogan; what we don’t need are patrol cops whose remit is basically ‘canvas poor neighborhoods looking for excuses to cause trouble’
Our police shouldn't be doing a lot of the things you listed despite them being important and necessary tasks, because they are fucking awful at them! Which is where "abolish police" comes in, because we can take the funding away from them and give them to organizations that will be trained to do a good job at them!
what is the necessary and important function of police, anyway
Take reports, investigate crimes, create the chain of evidence needed for a trial. Occasionally respond to violent events that cannot be de-escalated.
We'll always need some people doing these jobs which is why I don’t particularly like ‘abolish police’ as a slogan; what we don’t need are patrol cops whose remit is basically ‘canvas poor neighborhoods looking for excuses to cause trouble’
Our police shouldn't be doing a lot of the things you listed despite them being important and necessary tasks, because they are fucking awful at them! Which is where "abolish police" comes in, because we can take the funding away from them and give them to organizations that will be trained to do a good job at them!
I just think the semantic game of trying to come up with something to call them that’s Not Police is a little silly. I agree that they’re currently shit at most aspects of the job.
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
what is the necessary and important function of police, anyway
Take reports, investigate crimes, create the chain of evidence needed for a trial. Occasionally respond to violent events that cannot be de-escalated.
We'll always need some people doing these jobs which is why I don’t particularly like ‘abolish police’ as a slogan; what we don’t need are patrol cops whose remit is basically ‘canvas poor neighborhoods looking for excuses to cause trouble’
Our police shouldn't be doing a lot of the things you listed despite them being important and necessary tasks, because they are fucking awful at them! Which is where "abolish police" comes in, because we can take the funding away from them and give them to organizations that will be trained to do a good job at them!
I just think the semantic game of trying to come up with something to call them that’s Not Police is a little silly. I agree that they’re currently shit at most aspects of the job.
The police shouldn't be doing everything that the police are currently supposed to be doing. By necessity, dividing up the responsibilities will require the creation of new titles.
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And yeah, I absolutely believe that systemic change is always exchanging a current problem for a new problem. But the fact is our current problem is a plague on society that has actively resisted all attempts to 'solve' it. It's time to change our approach.
And I find that anybody who is unwilling to chuck the constant and endless abuse of the police system out of the fear of the problems that may arise from affecting change are really just showing that they have yet to be truly victimized by the system and are afraid of facing the amount of suffering that some already face every day in this country. And yes, that's a loaded and polarizing statement. But perhaps try to think of it more as provoking. Because I get it. I don't want to have chaos in the streets. I don't want to deal with deranged psychos with a chip on their shoulders, be they former cops or just emboldened criminals. That sounds scary as fuck.
But the fact is - they're already out there. The cops, without facing any consequences, can beat you, harass you, jail you or kill you already. If they haven't done so yet it is likely nothing more than a quirk of socio-economic fate. And there are people who have had this happen, who haven't been so lucky as us, and we fucking owe it to them to throw our lot in with theirs to destroy this barbaric system because we are all humans and if we do not fight for ourselves then we are no better than the monsters wearing badges.
Yes. They can do that. It's why even as a white male my heart races during interactions with the cops. I've had two cops lie to my face. The first only didn't result in charges because thank god a more senior officer showed up and she proceeded to tell him in no uncertain terms how fucked he would be if he lied. The second I did the math and determined just paying the fine was cheaper than fighting it.
But maybe, just maybe, you need to read some stories of places where the cops either intentionally delay showing up or just don't show up at all. Because it's not hard for those places to become places where "Yeah, my neighbor got murdered last week, and?" becomes mind shatteringly common. It turns out when law enforcement becomes non-existent shit goes south real bad because of, well, frankly a lot of god damn factors. Not the least of which is the ridiculous ease of obtaining firearms in this country.
White privilege (and this is an aside that I don't mean to attribute to you because I don't know your background) is a great many things that result in a lot of unintentionally harmful thinking but one of them is not understanding what minority communities have been facing for decades when it comes to police response times which in and of itself is only a tiny sliver of why said communities are loathe to call the cops. It's fucked up from bottom to top and any realistic answer is going to be fantastically complicated. But "the police just don't respond" is a kind of big issue that needs to be addressed. Because there is no excuse for the people we pay to be responsible for responding to and investigating shootings just deciding "Naw, fuck that."
"Just get rid of the police!" is pretty much as appealing of an idea as it is an asinine idea.
Which is why defunding (as in fire all of the police and then rehire the non-shit officers) is not only more palatable but frankly much more practical.
Maybe you’re not understanding what I was saying. I was not suggesting violence by the police was good. Or that the police should do violence on people.
I was suggesting that if the states aim is to minimize violence then the state can be the only authority with the power to use force/do violence. Enforcing that authority will require violence in some situations. Its not a function of dogma it’s a function of reality. States also need armies. A state without an army tends to be quickly not a state*. The Civil War was not ended by waiting out the South.
We will need police in this nation. We have far too many guns and far too many grievances for there to never be violence. We won’t need to use violence to end all conflicts but we will need it to end some of the conflicts.
This does not mean that the level of policing in this nation is optimal. Its far far too high and far far too violent. It does not currently meet the criteria to solve its necessary and important function. But without police we would invent them and they would have even less oversight than we have now. Indeed our current system is more or less the tumor formed from that original cancer.
I thought -tel’s question was honest. So i gave an honest answer. You need police because sometimes people will have guns and will refuse to surrender until a gun is pointed at them. You need a police force because executing a warrant against someone who resists will fail without force.
Knowing this is the first step to figuring out what police look like once we defund them.
*yes, there are exceptions, no they do not matter since those states tend to have allies that have armies.
If you do not replace this function before removing the police force, you're objectively going to something worse.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Is anybody suggesting we don't replace the essential functions of police?
And our current police force is shit at doing this
Yes guys, I understand that an Emergency Services Department is going to do 99% of the things cops are supposed to do now, but you cannot make any headway on this by continuing to think of them as 'police'. Cops should not be rehired to be cops. Cops could be hired to be investigators, or booking clerks, or anything else you find in a modern police precinct, but they should very explicitly not be cops
Hell, until this page I misunderstood and thought Ringo was arguing for the absence of any kind of organized law enforcement solution.
But you could describe, say, defunding cops and moving funds to specialists (leaving cops to be detectives and rarely necessary state violence), reforming police into specialists (with a lot of them defanged in the process), or abolishing the police and replacing them with specialists (including specialist detectives and a very small contingent that does the necessary state violence part) and still be 95% talking about the same thing but just with different tone and emphasis.
Or not! Which is frequently confusing.
No, but mentioning it shows you have a plan in mind and are thinking about the problem realistically. What are the bare minimum criteria to be ready to dismantle the police?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Having a Census but of bad shit happening to people would be useful, but we don't have that.
Well, it's not much different from hearing someone say "Black Lives Matter" and thinking that means they are saying that ONLY Black lives matter, rather than the idea that people and society are not operating as though Black lives DO matter.
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I mean, that's how conservatives see government. You cut it away and don't fund it so that your taxes go down, and if the government isn't providing services, that's not a problem for rich older white men, so who cares?
I mean...it's not like there aren't (a subcategory of?) anarchist posters who believe we have zero need for state violence or incarceration because the community will handle egregious violations itself.
edit: I'm worried it might look like I'm defending the practice of willfully misunderstanding opponents on an issue as representing the most extreme and unpopular version of their position, which is always scummy bullshit in all circumstances. Acknowledging the full breadth of positions that informed people consider in earnest isn't that, though.
The current US police need to go.
What the replacement should look like depends a lot on who answers that question.
This is true. Honestly I'd like to see them scaled back on things like welfare checks (scaled back to 0 there, honestly), and even traffic enforcement. You don't need some dude with a gun, convinced that this is the most dangerous moment in his life, to write someone a citation for failure to signal.
Another lawsuit in Seattle. This time alleging that the excessive use of crowd control munitions has made protesting prohibitively expensive due to the costs of PPE.
While the thing police primarily do is commit state-sanctioned violence, that is extremely near the bottom of the list of "things police are supposed to do that we have other people do instead of them."
Incarceration is also, not really a thing community police handle much of! Correctional officers and facilities are a parallel institution that also need so much reform that it would be easier to dismantle them and start from scratch, and while they are intrinsically linked as parts of the larger so-called judicial system that operates together as a larger limb of systemic oppression, prison reform/abolition is a separate bullet point from "defund the police."
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Ha! They're arguing that constitutional right to assembly is being violated because only people who can afford gas mask, helmet and safety glasses can safely assemble?
That's pretty clever actually.
When the protesters are violent, they are violent towards property. Graffiti, smashing things, and occasionally arson. When the police are violent, they are violent towards human beings, with beatings, tear gas, and rubber bullets aimed at the head.
I'd argue that property destruction isn't violence and conflating the two says something deeply unpleasant about our society.
Arson can be dangerous because fire gets out of control very fast. Aside from that, they are very different things.
I have noticed that most fires set in NYC tend to be in trash cans - presumably because they look dramatic but are highly unlikely to spread or endanger anyone.
I wish we could refer to destruction of property with a different word than "violence," because violence committed against living bodies is so much different than breaking or damaging an object.
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Vandalism?
Yeah, it's often worse.
Ah yes, of course there's a specific word, one that we even knew already! But of course, the officials don't want to call it "vandalism" because we've been taught by decades of after-school specials that "vandalism" is something that truant youths do, and it isn't really a serious crime. And of course, if it isn't a serious crime, it cannot warrant the response from law enforcement. Which begins to tighten a logical noose around our necks. The media cannot insist on being regarded as impartial observers if they continue to utilize the vocabulary of the oppressor.
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Civil rights lawyer.
The Aurora, Colorado police are really, really awful. They were the ones who murdered Elijah McClain with ketamine. You've got this incident. But managed to bring in James Holmes without incident.
Performance indicators are part of what is needed to build a better system. If the current police system does not cooperate in transitioning that information during a period of complete overhaul, then this must be one of the things that actively needs a plan.
I expect crime reporting to go up during and after the interim period, both because of instability in crime deterrence and because people may be more comfortable reporting crime. If it doesn't, this may be a red flag indicating that we have lost crime monitoring capabilities with this approach.
I would love a public implementation of this information for community study, but absent that, an internal transitional crime data collection plan would be nice to establish a solid foundation of a better system. Any proposal that isn't data driven makes me wary of a hasty half-baked venture, which is certainly a possibility in local governance.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
And it's not police are incapable of stopping crime. US police I believe are actually worse at this then in many other countries. And there's a body of evidence that more police lowers crime rates, although that is again dependent on what they are doing. The evidence for more cops suggests that basically just having them stand around not harassing people is a deterrent to actual crimes. But the shit they generally get up to while on the beat unfortunately (ie - harassing people for petty crimes or the like) is either irrelevant or, in the case of people's civil liberties, actively harmful.
As a side point here, if you've ever wondered about the origins of the famous 90s crime bill, that's basically it. A lot of people demanding the government get the police in here to do something about all the fucking crime. Which was quite a bit higher back then.
People generally want the police to stop crime. And there's definitely evidence they can. But they spend their time on shit that doesn't do that a lot of the time. They are really bad at their fucking jobs.
That's a big thing that should be fixed at some point. I'm not sure what level of government you'd do that at though. State and Federal maybe?
Separate the data collation from the police as a function and hand it off to the external oversight group that needs to be installed for the reform process. Said group would already be keeping track of crooked cops at the Federal level and barring them from hopping precincts after being fired or imprisoned, so they would already have a structure in place for tracking interstate data. Cops are then on a Federal standard for paperwork and it's universal across the nation, so any submitted reports go to a group with a dedicated arm to handle that data, analyze it, and feed important information back to relevant precincts.
Further, it allows for an easily-accessible centralized organization where ANY member of the public is allowed to request everything from the raw case data (with original names removed) to the finalized results of the number-crunching handed back to police departments. No more of this shit where certain types of crime (i.e., information about guns) aren't allowed to be monitored in order to protect NRA interests, and no chance of allowing police departments to fuck with their numbers because they never get to analyze them in the first place.
The conceptual merits of a police force in the United States have always been motivated by racism.
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Take reports, investigate crimes, create the chain of evidence needed for a trial. Occasionally respond to violent events that cannot be de-escalated.
We'll always need some people doing these jobs which is why I don’t particularly like ‘abolish police’ as a slogan; what we don’t need are patrol cops whose remit is basically ‘canvas poor neighborhoods looking for excuses to cause trouble’
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Well, that's poorly regulated monopolies for you.
The second step, once realizing the reduced scope of armed policing responsibilities sounds a lot more like a SWAT team, is to fire the SWAT team, because there is probably no chance that it's internal culture isn't already suffering from stage 4 cancer.
Just what the fuck. 6 year old. I can't even.
WHY?
Our police shouldn't be doing a lot of the things you listed despite them being important and necessary tasks, because they are fucking awful at them! Which is where "abolish police" comes in, because we can take the funding away from them and give them to organizations that will be trained to do a good job at them!
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I just think the semantic game of trying to come up with something to call them that’s Not Police is a little silly. I agree that they’re currently shit at most aspects of the job.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The police shouldn't be doing everything that the police are currently supposed to be doing. By necessity, dividing up the responsibilities will require the creation of new titles.
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