How much do we need the police?

> Political protests are a threat to the order of this system

The quality of journalism for NPR has gone downhill so much.

A real "protest" is inherently violent. Your are encouraging the state to use it's monopoly of force against you. Your goal is to ensure that others see the state using force needlessly against you. When others see others using violence against you they begin to reconsider the conditions that put you into this situation to begin with.

So using the police as a tool against protesters only proves them right. A protest should never be met with violence, unless you want to encourage more action from protestors.

In other words the police are the wrong tool for the job. The police absolutely should not be involved in protests. This is a great job for social workers.

Riots on the other hand should be met with police action. However, if you have a riot then that means you didn't hear the demands of the people to begin with. If you make it to a full blown riot you have MESSED UP.

The whole philosophy behind protests is really easy to understand. Spend a bit of time reading Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, a little Ghandi and then you start with a lot of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to understand the philosophies behind American protests.

Police violence doesn’t happen only in the US. There a few mild places where the police are normally hands off, unless they have to get rough. But those are an exception.

Unless people become tame and “just get along” police have to confront violence, like it or not.

Of course, we can improve policing. They can get trained better, they can learn to deescalate first. But they also need coöperation from the people they police... and that can take time.

If you defund the police but keep them around (after all, they are necessary), won't that just force them to self-fund by seeking funding from corrupt sources such as civil asset forfeiture and drug busts?

Isn't this already a solved problem in other parts of the world, such as Britain, Ireland, Norway, Iceland and New Zealand, where most officers are unarmed when they are on patrol? Why can't we learn from other countries?

I think it’s insane to expect police to handle those issues. The only thing they can do is “clean up” after the problems that society has otherwise failed to deal with. The very nature of their role is adversarial with the citizenry. They’re also under no obligation to protect anybody from anything. They carry guns to protect themselves, not you and me. If somebody intents to harm you, the best you could reasonably expect from the police is that the perpetrator will be prosecuted once they’re done with you.

One of my current frustrations with American politics is how radical everything has become. The debate is now, either we don't have any police and defund them, or, we allow them to continue being completely unaccountable. Neither of those situations sound ideal.

It feels like Europe and other places have a much more reasonable and nuanced view. Police get funded, and well funded, but the job requirements are strict, and the emphasis is more about public good and safety. If there's a crime the police do exist and do show up but they also don't shoot people dead in their house at 3am.