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How much do we need the police?

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Re: How much do we need the police?

#71

Post by Avicebron »

krapp wrote: post #63
Avicebron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>I find it surprising that these relatively well known issues aren't even considered topics for public discussion. Because they're all considered "leftist" if not "socialist" politics now, and the Overton window of acceptable discussion in the US has moved very far to the right over the last four years.

I would be interested in learning if it has been only over the last four years. My instinct is that the "left" has been hollowing out since the late 20th century, and it's not as much that discussion is hard to the right as that substantive issues are being ignored because it's not convenient for those in power.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#72

Post by remember_george »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #41

It's true that police are asked to be solutions for social problems for which they are unsuited. However, the reason this interview is topical has to do with someone paying for cigarettes with a possibly counterfeit bill and refusing to give them back. That seems to me to be an entirely reasonable reason to call the police.

Seeing how George Floyd moved to Minneapolis to do ministry work I bet he didn’t even know the bill was counterfeited.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#73

Post by jbay808 »

glitchc wrote: post #60
jbay808 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Canadian police are no different. Living under a dangerous illusion.

I'd like to know why you think so. In my experience, at least in Vancouver, police tend to use violence and force as absolutely the last resort, and generally play a lot more of "social worker" type of role, especially when it comes to handling issues associated with drug addiction in the downtown east side.

But I could be very wrong so I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints. Or maybe you're thinking of different organizations that I'm less familiar with (perhaps the RCMP?)

Re: How much do we need the police?

#74

Post by softwaredoug »

mc32 wrote: post #23
softwaredoug wrote: post #9

Unfortunately police fill in for a lot of our broken social safety net in the US. They're put in situations they should never be put in. Instead of an addict finding help, or a poorer community member getting assistance, or a troubled kid accessing mental health services - they inevitably instead end up interacting with the police. It's both shortsighted priorities and not the thing police are supposed to deal with.

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…

Yes I only mean to comment on what I know from US cops I personally know.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#76

Post by katbyte »

chrisco255 wrote: post #59
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…

Agreed drug war is a total failure, policy-wise. Where is the middle ground between criminalizing everything and legalizing everything? Real lives are destroyed by drug abuse and particularly with regards to meth, fentanyl, etc it kills people. I can't imagine a world where we sell these things over the counter. Would that help or hurt communities?

so the reason meth and fent are a thing is because speed and heroin are harder to smuggler and/or make.

MDMA is far safer and fun then MDA MDE PMA PMMA but you get the latter sold as it because no one wants anything but MDMA. Same with all sorts of synthetic RCs and drugs.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#77

Post by nmca »

jorblumesea wrote: post #29

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,…

It's a guns issue, surely? Not got the exact stats but for 2019 I think police killings in the UK ~3 and US ~1000, with only a 5x difference in population. I'm a well spoken law abiding white guy and American cops frighten me.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...

Re: How much do we need the police?

#78

Post by coliveira »

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…

Contrary to popular belief, pacific demonstrations have very little power. That's why riots are an essencial tool for demonstrations like the ones we're seeing these days.

People like to give examples such as the civil rights' movement as the effectiveness of pacific demonstration, but that was just a good tactical decision made by Dr. King and other organizers, since they knew that police was ready to kill them at any excuse. In the case of black leaders of the time, any demonstration, even a pacific one, was able to make them subversive to the system.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#79

Post by gowld »

Sniffnoy wrote: post #68
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 find this silly. It acts as if people are incapable of assessing situations and then selecting the best action based on that situation. Yes, police have the authority to use violence; that doesn't necessarily mean they have to have some sort of essence of violence that drives them to be violent all the time. Indeed, police in many situations do successfully negotiate situations without employing violence. So, clear…

The military aren't police.

Yes, they are pretty good at RoE, and when it's time to shoot, they shoot the hell out of their target. But their job is distinctly not to spend all day in pursuit of individual criminals and apprehending them.

Military tries to avoid contact with criminals until it's fireball time.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#80

Post by wolfgang42 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #38

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…

I’m not convinced that eliminating police altogether is a good idea, but after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot (which cites your Stephen Pinker quote), I don’t think that a situation which also involved “taxi drivers... armed with Molotov cocktails” is representative of what might happen if police departments were disbanded under other circumstances.

(Edit: I regret putting snark over substance in this reply. See my response below, and others’ in this subthread, for a more detailed rebuttal.)

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