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How much do we need the police?

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Re: How much do we need the police?

#31

Post by chongli »

bluedays wrote: post #21

> 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…

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.

Not necessarily. Riots can begin when bad actors take advantage of the cover of numbers provided by a peaceful protest. If there are enough bad actors, usually masquerading as peaceful protesters, to reach critical mass, then a riot can start.

All it takes is for one person to break a window to signal to the other bad actors that the riot is about to begin. This piece by Tanner Greer [1] examines the phenomenon in way more detail than I do here.

[1] https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disor...

Re: How much do we need the police?

#32

Post by josephg »

js2 wrote: post #3

I know folks don't always click through, so I'll highlight what I found most insightful: > Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. ... They have the legal capacity to use…

I think that’s made much more true because that’s the image police forces in America have of themselves. “We’re here to beat up the bad guys”. Police here in Australia are far from perfect, but they are much more seen as part of the community. They don’t even carry firearms any more.

In Australia I wouldn’t hesitate to contact the police or talk to them on the street if something happened. (Just like I wouldn’t hesitate to call an ambulance if someone gets hurt). When I lived in the Bay Area that attitude seemed naive and stupid / dangerous.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#33

Post by pnw_hazor »

It is reasonable to consider taking away some responsibilities from sworn peace officers (armed police). Many US cities have unarmed units for traffic tickets and some other things.

But a problem arises when community outreach or community contacts by non-police have a risk of violence associated with them.

Especially contacts with people with a history of mental health related violence. Or, domestic violence intervention. These two examples is probably where a lot of unwanted or unexpected police violence occurs. I don't know if sending in social workers would work well in such contexts.

Sending out social workers with police escorts probably doesn't change outcomes very much. But is could help depending if the armed police do not have to lead the encounter.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#34

Post by groby_b »

oh_sigh wrote: post #22
tehwebguy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think police stop rapes from happening? Rapes happen in peoples' homes where there are no police. Then, if the victim chooses to report it, they are often blown off by the police entirely unless the circumstances make it impossible to ignore.

Police try to find and arrest rapists, who would probably go on to rape other people if they weren't in prison.

That is a lovely idea, but alas not matched by reality.

https://www.startribune.com/ignoring-rape-complaints-when-po...

https://www.focusforhealth.org/women-across-the-us-suing-pol...

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/11/investigates/police-...

https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-99-issue-3/how-to-lie...

And that's really just the tip of the iceberg.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#35

Post by jbay808 »

js2 wrote: post #3

I know folks don't always click through, so I'll highlight what I found most insightful: > Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. ... They have the legal capacity to use…

This framing of the police seems very strange to my Canadian sensibilities. I'm curious about whether Americans largely agree with this description.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#36

Post by macintux »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #25

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 cou…

You’re reversing the sequence Mr. Vitale seems to be suggesting.

He’s saying let’s analyze the work they do, find alternatives for those roles, and _then_ reduce the scope of the police force.

Defunding seems much less important and farther down the road than making their jobs achievable, and the rest of us safer.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#37

Post by Avicebron »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

The American police force seems to be a catch-all for the vast amount of social problems caused by unequal access to healthcare, limited social security and a host of puritan laws that ignore peoples needs. Making drug users criminals despite the massive numbers of them drives up prices and decreases access causing large amounts of crime out of social problems caused by missing social systems. The drug war has also c…

I find it surprising that these relatively well known issues aren't even considered topics for public discussion. I understand that the solutions are hard, but plenty of hard problems have been solved by determined societies. The police are symptoms of a problem in how wealth and services are distributed within our society. Fix this and we won't need para military police suppressing the proletariat.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#38

Post by BurningFrog »

Montreal once had a 16 hour police strike, creating a natural experiment in what happens without police.

Steven Pinker describes how that went:

> "As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist)."[16]

Re: How much do we need the police?

#39

Post by bluedays »

chongli wrote: post #31
bluedays wrote: post #21

> 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…

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. Not necessarily. Riots can begin when bad actors take advantage of the cover of numbers provided by a peaceful protest. If there are enough bad actors, usually masquerading as peaceful protesters, to reach…

I can see your point. However, I don't think that the full force of violence for the entire crowd is necessary.

What if we saw a bad actor at a rally for a politician, and then bring the full force of the state upon the entire crowd because of that bad actor. It would be absurd to use that opportunity to mace and teargas and shoot rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. It is equally absurd to do the same here in political protests.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#40

Post by LeonB »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #33

It is reasonable to consider taking away some responsibilities from sworn peace officers (armed police). Many US cities have unarmed units for traffic tickets and some other things. But a problem arises when community outreach or community contacts by non-police have a risk of violence associated with them. Especially contacts with people with a history of mental health related violence. Or, domestic violence interve…

Social workers are very often sent to help people experiencing mental health crises, including those with a history of violence. Particularly in countries other than the US it’s very much the norm.

It’s not a theoretical situation. It sounds like you’re speculating but you could read about it or talk to people about it.

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