How much do we need the police? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much do we need the police?

#201

Post by prawn » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:48 AM UTC

missosoup wrote: post #121

seibelj wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are also greatly exaggerating the risk to citizens in the USA when calling the police. The risk is not to the caller, the risk is to the alleged criminal that may get manhandled (or shot) way out of proportion to the offense. But you don’t make a mental “death chance calculation” when you call the cops.

> You are also greatly exaggerating the risk to citizens in the USA "Noor was convicted of third degree murder and second degree manslaughter for killing Ms Damond Ruszczyk just minutes after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her Minneapolis home in July 2017." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-08/mohamed-noor-sentence... > The risk is not to the caller Just yesterday there was…

A key difference is almost surely the prevalence of guns. As you suggest at the end, cops in Australia don't approach every situation assuming there might be a gun in play.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#202

Post by michaelmrose » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #81

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.

Canadians do not have violent warlords on their streets. You don't understand what it's like to live in our (mainly South Western) cities, and live with threats of drive-by shootings, vandalism, and getting caught in gunfire. My dad worked driving around downtown LA and surrounds for 20 some odd years and there was more than a few times he was caught in gang-based gunfire. This was in the 80s and 90s mostly, and thin…

>if we legalize drugs, they'll just find something else to do, like child prostitution, unless you wanna legalize that too)

If you legalize gambling, adult prostitution, and drugs it is disingenuous to suppose that criminal enterprise will somehow replace all that revenue off underage prostitution.

It would absolutely pull the rug out from under them. If you give most underprivileged American youth a way to have a better life you would further decimate their recruiting.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#203

Post by drummer » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

I bring the below quotes to your attention:

"It would be easy to think that the police officer is a figure who has existed since the beginning of civilization. […] however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered […] on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704." - How the U.S. Got Its Police Force http://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/

"Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property." - A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-a...

While most people today believe that they are “free” and “independent” the facts are that they’re still living in enslavement. The only difference is that they’ve been indoctrinated from early childhood to accept their slavery. And in the case of the police, they’ve been conditioned to accept the enforcers of their enslavement as something good and beneficial to themselves, when in fact, the police exist to enforce whatever the masters dictate and to protect the masters and their economic interests from the slaves. This fact is proven on a daily basis worldwide; whenever and wherever the slaves rise up against the current system of enslavement, the police rush in to suppress them. And yet, very few of the slaves take note of the obvious and ask themselves the question: who do the police really serve?

Re: How much do we need the police?

#204

Post by JPKab » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:02 AM UTC

markc wrote: post #176

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…

It was a natural experiment in what happens without police when the city is in the midst of an extreme wave of crime and violent protest, and one of the protests turns into a riot while the police were on strike. The idea that this incident demonstrates that any city will go up in flames immediately if the police take the day off is a misreading this specific moment in history. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murr…

It only takes a tiny number of people to turn a city block into a war zone.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#205

Post by JPKab » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:04 AM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #186

chipperyman573 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Day 2 may have been a lot better as store owners started to take matters into their own hands. We only saw the first day, which many people were unprepared for. A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun. Not that this is really any better, I'm just trying to say that we can't really reach any conclusions from one day of this experiment

> A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun. Criminals are likely to organize in order to increase their chances of success and survival. Individuals will be quickly overwhelmed if they don't form their own organized defense forces. There's always a lot of extremely violent people protecting the "normal" ones.

Yes people could organize their own protective forces. The shopkeepers could even pool their money and require that you pay in to be protected. We could call this a police force.....

Re: How much do we need the police?

#206

Post by vkou » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #199

vkou wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The violence in Seattle on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday was started by police. There's numerous videos, both from the ground, and from the air, that quite clearly demonstrate this.

On Tuesday night, the violence was started by a water bottle thrown into the police line. In response, the police gassed four city blocks, including residential apartments. People in those apartments were trapped between gas pouring into their rooms from the streets, the police, and the curfew. There's a baby in intensive care, because

If you want to reduce violence, don't issue a curfew. Disarm the police, instead. They've started violence on three out of the four days. Or, alternatively, protect the protesters from it. [1]

It should be noted that Seattle's protesters have done a remarkable job of preventing instigation and vandalism, but they can't do that, when they are running from flashbangs and gas.

[1] The national guard is there, unarmed, standing behind the police line. It has behaved with dignity, restraint, and respect - but it should be deployed on the protest side of the police line. The police is completely out of control.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#207

Post by thephyber » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

awb wrote: post #174

chipperyman573 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Day 2 may have been a lot better as store owners started to take matters into their own hands. We only saw the first day, which many people were unprepared for. A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun. Not that this is really any better, I'm just trying to say that we can't really reach any conclusions from one day of this experiment

Pretty sure gangs would take over. Power abhors a vacuum.

Yeah, but police units and private security firms are a form of "gang", just with different pay masters and accountability.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#208

Post by closeparen » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

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…

Society has a role in meeting needs. If society burns whenever there are unmet needs, it will never get its act together to meet them.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#209

Post by JPKab » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #162

BurningFrog wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like are you suggesting the natural state of people is just to loot and behave completely selfishly? Don't know about that, but there is ABSOLUTELY enough selfish/predatory/angry people in any population that will commit violent acts for profit and pleasure if the risks of being brought to justice disappears. I would not have guessed it would erupt as fast as it did in Montreal, but empirically, it did. I expect da…

Researchers studying sociopathy often put the number somewhere between 2-8%, with variance seemingly driven by cultural and other environmental factors. Whether or not you believe that sociopathy is a distinctive thing , it's hard to dispute that a not insignificant subset of human populations are primarily restrained by deterrence alone --specifically the threat of punishment. That doesn't mean such people are evil…

Extremely well said point. I think a lot of people in our profession have come from more privileged backgrounds. This causes them to not really encounter the kinds of people that you are talking about at least not in a way that they know the people are psychopathic. I realize now that I was probably quite damaged by having a childhood like I did. I suspect that I have a warped view of the world in many ways but one thing I do know is the capacity for evil in some people that will come out as soon as they get the opportunity and a little bit of power.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#210

Post by lowdose » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:07 AM UTC

awb wrote: post #174

chipperyman573 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Day 2 may have been a lot better as store owners started to take matters into their own hands. We only saw the first day, which many people were unprepared for. A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun. Not that this is really any better, I'm just trying to say that we can't really reach any conclusions from one day of this experiment

Pretty sure gangs would take over. Power abhors a vacuum.

Oh the greeks! Great application of the quote.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)