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How much do we need the police?

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Re: How much do we need the police?

#401

Post by wffurr »

remarkEon wrote: post #359
frostburg wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug addiction is best treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one. You're just observing the effects of a lack of rug sweeping.

At what point does "treating it like a public health issue" start to impede on public safety?

It's more that not treating it (drug addiction) as a public health issue impedes on public safety.

Supervised injection sites, housing first integrated support, access to effective medicine (methadone), etc. are all stymied by various flavors of political problems.

What you're seeing is the result of a patchwork approach in disarray.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#402

Post by arijun »

This guy makes good points, and then muddles them by taking them too far. In the two examples given is basically "don't have these problems in the first place." Which would be great, if it was that easy. Since no one can snap their fingers and make all burglaries go away (even by decriminalizing drugs as he suggests), there will always be a need for some form of policing/intervention. Now, if you could reduce the amount of need for police while morphing them to look e.g. more like London's police like someone suggested in this thread, you could affect real change. But the way he's implying it will go "just give homeless people housing and you won't need any police for that anymore" indicates to me that he doesn't know just how difficult these problems are.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#403

Post by bambax »

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…

This doesn't have anything to do with the article.

The article doesn't advocate for "no police". It says that we tend to ignore more and more societal problems and simply ask police to deal with the consequences. It underlines that police aren't --and will never be-- social workers; their mode of operation is to use legitimate violence to prevent or punish undesirable behavior. When a problem is dealt with by the police, the result is more violence. This is hardly police's fault: it's why they're there.

The article suggests society should actually address its problems (poverty, homelessness, drug use, etc.) instead of ignoring them, and that police should be a solution of last resort, not the standard response to anything that's "wrong".

We can agree or disagree, but quoting Pinker saying "that no police results in chaos" is not helping the discussion.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#405

Post by zarkov99 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #196
zarkov99 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Its a very large country. Bad stuff happens every day. For any group of people you can support any narrative by cherry picking the right events. Using that technique, you could "prove" anything you wish about any group and then proceed to demonize that group. This isn't to say we could not do better, we always can, and criminals should go to jail whether they happen to be police or not. But the idea that America is some sort brutal police state where the cops specifically hunt black people for being black I find absurd.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#407

Post by zarkov99 »

fzeroracer wrote: post #291
zarkov99 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> whose jobs regularly confront them with mortal danger and the darkest parts of human nature Police officers in the US face 12.9 fatalities per 100,000 workers. In comparison, construction workers see 14.3, agricultural workers see 17.7, farmers and ranchers around 24 and truck drivers 26.9. As for the rest of your argument, if the 'fine' police officers don't do anything to stand up to the bad police officers or ad…

Its not about the mortality rate, its about the psychological toll which is unparalleled: cops commit suicide at higher rates than any other profession. On a daily basis they deal directly with more violence and horror then most of us are ever likely to encounter over a lifetime. They do this for low pay, on behalf of people they do not know, in a society that increasingly despises them. Most of them are fine people indeed and no one is arguing that the ones who are not should be protected.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#408

Post by TomMarius »

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 downvoted because I don't think this anecdote relates to peaceful times at all.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#409

Post by dang »

teddyh wrote: post #395
dang wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderation is guesswork, and if I guessed wrong I'll be happy to apologize and correct the error, but I think the username "remember_george" is sarcastic and the comment was intended to be demeaning. "Seeing how", "I bet", and "didn't even" is language one would more likely use to sarcastically mock something than to make a straightforward point. And...what is the straightforward point supposed to be, anyway? And why…

OK, with additional information, I can now see it. But the comment itself is so indirect in its sarcasm that it can just as easily be interpreted straight, and your ban does not give the additional information to make it clear; if somebody does not know anything about George Floyd, your comment about “trolling” makes no sense to the casual reader. You could easily have given some rationale in your post, but you didn’…

That's sort of a lazy-loading thing. It doesn't make sense to expend the energy to provide a detailed explanation up front, if there isn't a clear indication that anyone actually needs it.

If I guessed right about the troll, the troll understands very well. If I guessed wrong, the commenter would likely protest and explain—in which case I could correct things. In either case, a detailed up-front explanation isn't a good use of energy. It would make sense if it were free, but it's not free—it's expensive. These comments are hard to write! I'm happy to pay the cost, but only if it's clear that there's one or more users who value the explanation. Does that make sense?

Re: How much do we need the police?

#410

Post by slavik81 »

glangdale wrote: post #143
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…

The thumb seems on the scale a bit with referring to "proudly peaceable Canada" - like everything in 1969 in Montreal was the picture and peace, and then out of nowhere a police strike caused mayhem. The Wikipedia page for a sibling comment points out that Montreal already had problems: bank robberies, riots and terrorist bombings. So if it's a 'natural experiment' it's one against a background of high levels of diso…

A year later, the FLQ kidnapped the Deputy Premiere of Quebec and a British diplomat. At the request of the mayor of Montreal, the government invoked the War Measures Act, declaring martial law and deploying the Canadian Armed Forces under the direction of the Quebec provincial police.

You could hardly pick a more dangerous time or place in Canadian history.

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