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How much do we need the police?

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Re: How much do we need the police?

#191

Post by philwelch »

vncecartersknee wrote: post #138
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…

How is this a natural experiment? Anarchism isn't just "when there are no police" Obviously looting should be read as exposing underlying ills and unmet needs within society. Like are you suggesting the natural state of people is just to loot and behave completely selfishly? look how many people in just the US riots alone cooperated to form medical stations, to work against police tactics, to make sure protestors had…

> Like are you suggesting the natural state of people is just to loot and behave completely selfishly?

All of them? No. Enough of them? Yes.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#192

Post by shultays »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #150
kyleee wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 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" Why not?

From the sounds of it, tensions were already running high in the city (and the police felt that they weren’t getting paid enough to deal with it); on top of that the police had incentive to time their strike to happen at the worst possible moment. They were also joined in their protest by other groups inclined towards violence, and had reason to encourage those groups (in order to show that they were needed). The rea…

Competition is always high in between businesses. And taxi drivers are particularly nasty

Re: How much do we need the police?

#193

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

electricviolet wrote: post #173
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I'm kind of besides myself about how "abolishing police" is treated as a serious proposal, when the most deaths and violence occur in profoundly vulnerable communities where disbanding police would almost certainly result in innocent people having no protection against criminals. It's pretty clear that police unions allow for a lot of this institutional rot and inability to address abuse. I fear that the left doe…

Most of the left leaders I follow and trust are specifically opposed to police unions due to the fact that they protect violent officers. Let's not lump other public sector unions in with police unions; the teacher's union has nothing to do with police brutality.

I don't follow socialist stuff too much but I thought there'd be some interesting work from Jacobin to see how they perceive it. Turns out there is:

> However, in most cities and states, police unions are treated as members in good standing of local labor councils and federations. They often work closely with other municipal unions, from firefighters to teachers, to protect labor rights and municipal budgets. Given their size and power, most other city unions are wary of alienating them.

> This is an enormous political problem. If the police are to be defunded and reined in, their unions need to be split off and isolated from the rest of organized labor. If police unions are able to maintain a common front with other city unions, they will almost certainly be able to resist any meaningful efforts to restrain them.

So basically, yea other unions are complicit and unable to reign in the abuse of police unions. It's not the way I'd try to solve it but that's how Jacobin seems to be posing the issue - other unions in the locality should be reforming neighboring unions.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/police-labor-union-organi...

Re: How much do we need the police?

#194

Post by testbot123 »

joombaga wrote: post #142
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely zero people are out protesting excessive use of force against organized gangs running child prostitution rings.

I think the point was that removing war weapons from police damages their ability to forcefully oppose organized gangs running child prostitution rings.

You mean, like... Jefferey Epstein?

We spend so much time defending the rights of police to use military-grade weaponry on individual citizens that we forget that the people who are actually looting this country and committing its most grievous crimes are largely ignored.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#195

Post by jariel »

Pfhreak wrote: post #11

I'm heartened by city council members Tammy Morales in Seattle, Nury Martinez in LA, and Steve Fletcher in Minneapolis who are all seriously discussing significantly defunding or disbanding their police departments. While we've had protests like this in the past, I don't think I've ever seen so many places seriously asking how much we need our police, and how equipped they should be. Clearly, the answer is that polic…

" who are all seriously discussing significantly defunding or disbanding their police departments."

It's ridiculous for the mayor to be doing this. Where there is crime, policing is needed. Cities that have tried to cut back in the past (the impetus usually being budget) usually end up with problems, and it usually doesn't work out.

The number of 911 calls is rising rapidly.

Surely, there's an opportunity to 'not buy big surplus toys from the Army' but I suggest that this is not a hugely meaningful budget line item.

The problem in America is absolutely not 'over-policing', it's that police are asked to play more roles many of which they might not be suited to, and of course, some police are far too aggressive, which is also driven by the great prevalence of guns in the population.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#196

Post by michaelmrose »

zarkov99 wrote: post #113
josephg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hesit…

Police in the small US college town I live in is pretty much part of the community. I personally know many of the officers - and they are fine people. Even so, they are still a target for antifa agit-prop tactics. The playbook is always the same, catch the one cop that said or did, or appeared to say or do, the wrong thing, once, and you can tarnish the entire department, the entire profession, forever. And it works.…

You are presenting people exposed while doing wrong as victims of the citizens risking their safety to expose them.

If the police have an image problem then perhaps they need to promote a culture of restraint, civility, and justice by enforcing the law against their own at all times not just when the criminals behavior makes it onto television and sparks riots that threatens to burn down the nation.

> Somehow we lost all perspective and have come to expect that our officers, whose jobs regularly confront them with mortal danger and the darkest parts of human nature, will always display the same perfect virtues we carefully signal everyday on Facebook.

We can work on the them becoming paragons of virtue after they stop executing citizens in the street, attacking people peacefully protesting, planting drugs on people, and raping them.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/florida-deputy-arrested-pl...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pennsylvania-police-officer-ch...

After we get we stop raping, framing, and murdering people yes I do in fact expect those charged with serving law and order to deal with bad people without themselves becoming bad people. People in most of the developed world seem to be managing this so I don't agree that it is an impossible dream.

Many people expressed and believed that automotive fatalities were just an inevitable consequence of the the mode of transport while others insisted on pushing for systematic reforms that drastically reduced fatalities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/automobiles/50-years-ago-...

Similarly you argue that bad behavior by some police is inevitable. I don't agree

https://8cantwait.org/

Re: How much do we need the police?

#197

Post by Gibbon1 »

electricviolet wrote: post #173
gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I'm kind of besides myself about how "abolishing police" is treated as a serious proposal, when the most deaths and violence occur in profoundly vulnerable communities where disbanding police would almost certainly result in innocent people having no protection against criminals. It's pretty clear that police unions allow for a lot of this institutional rot and inability to address abuse. I fear that the left doe…

Most of the left leaders I follow and trust are specifically opposed to police unions due to the fact that they protect violent officers. Let's not lump other public sector unions in with police unions; the teacher's union has nothing to do with police brutality.

Or more that police Unions in the US provide zero cross support for other unions. And their members routinely vote against interests of other unions.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#198

Post by ikeyany »

birdyrooster wrote: post #187
_8j50 wrote: post #175

"Police" (Edit:"modern police") is a 19th century invention, well after cities were a thing. If we get past semantics, a service that provides order and security to a community is needed. I imagine it more like social workers that also do criminal investigations for prosecutors instead of a military force for a city. Perhaps an unrelated armed "police" can help when deadly force is needed (gangs, armed criminals,etc.…

By civilizing the police we also mean affirmative action to bring the demographics of the officers in line with the people they serve. Removing guns wouldn’t have saved Eric Garner or George Floyd.

Other ways of turning policing away from "tacticool" policing and towards community policing: offering cops more $$$; requiring a degree or two; placing residency requirements (x cops in a precinct must live within y miles of the community they are to serve) to help weed out the bully types.

That can be done in a reasonable amount of time.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#199

Post by pnw_hazor »

vkou wrote: post #161
pnw_hazor wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police count the bodies so to speak. Preventive/interventive policing doesn't fit well in a free country. Policing in free countries is pretty much a reactive system. For example, in the recent mass protests, the police generally stay pretty chill until something triggers them -- one too many water bottles thrown after curfew, or whatever. Relatively, minor offenses by a few people in the crowd can trigger the police…

Issuing a blanket city-wide curfew, when no looting, or rioting is taking place, to give the police license to arrest literally anyone is something that is done in an authoritarian police state, not in a free country. A peaceful protest is not a justification to issue a curfew. It is explicitly protected by the first amendment. A blanket curfew is a gross violation of it. The Lt. Governor of Washington happens to agr…

Like most rights, the right to peaceably assemble and protest is not absolute.

Here, but for a limited curfew the people can still protest at will.

I am sure you know why there are curfews in Seattle and other places. It is because of the violence of the past few days. It is not to suppress free speech. Cyrus knows that.

I think it sucks, but until the late night violence subsides this is probably the new normal.

An alternative, I guess would be enabling the police to use more force against active rioters/looters, but that isn't going to happen. The man power isn't available. Besides King County (where Seattle is) does not prosecute property crimes or pretty much any misdemeanor (except for domestic or sexual violence and hate crimes).

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