Would it be possible to unbundle the police? Why are the highway patrol and the narcotics divison even remotely part of the same organization? Having "fight crime" as your mandate is much too broad.
How much do we need the police?
411–420 of 505 posts
Re: How much do we need the police?
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's be more accurate. The protests are caused by the police. But the riots, violence and looting is caused by opportunists and criminals, in many cases instigated and enflamed by white revolutionary anarchists and/or white supremacist cells more than willing to sacrifice minorities and their neighbourhoods to their insane political projects, i.e. blood soaked revolution or race war.
There are multiple reports of agent provocateurs being police agents.
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Re: How much do we need the police?
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
And that’s just the short term. Look at places like Somalia or Afghanistan to see what happens when law and order breaks down in a systematic way. The issue isn’t even just “crime” in the sense of robbery, etc. When there is no police, organized crime can take over. When we lived in Bangladesh in the 1980s, a minibus full of criminals showed up at the gate of our house. (This being Dhaka in the 1980s, we had a brick…
> Look at places like Somalia or Afghanistan to see what happens when law and order breaks down in a systematic way. Also see Brazil with Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho which are violent organizations that have/had lofty goals similar to the growing movement (i.e. anti-police brutality, vengeance)[1]. Those groups now partake in degenerate drug and sex fueled parties and slaughter their enemies usin…
Brazil is actually an interesting example, considering that the police inside thee favelas has been accused of extrajudicial killings and killing with impunity and form militias to extort locals(even their logo looks like a gang insignia) [1,2,3].
This actually highlights the different experiences between middle class white (or Brazilian) and a black person (or someone living in the favelas). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_police_militias [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalh%C3%A3o_de_Opera%C3%A7%C... [3] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xweavd/police-are-killing...
Re: How much do we need the police?
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And community watches that are run by actual community members are likely to have a very different set of priorities from a professional police force. Imagine an armed and dangerous HOA, functioning as its own "community policy force." What fresh hell is this?
Sure, but imagine a situation where this is a huge step up in fairness and justice from what you currently experience everyday! Many people currently live under tyranny and terror worse than an HOA police force.
HOA Karens are not my idea of a better police force. The response to insufficient oversight shouldn't be tossing out the baby with the bathwater, but better policies. We might start for example, with the top of the funnel.
Police in the US are professionally credentialed faster than a master plumber. After less training, less testing, and less oversight, they're handed lethal discretion and informal qualified immunity latitude, in less time than it takes for someone to hang a shingle out as a one-man plumbing business.
Re: How much do we need the police?
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You haven't armed the populace, you haven't set up civilian watches, you haven't done any of the things that would happen in a society actually set up to be sustainably police-free It's amazing how a population that suffers heavily from wide firearm availability (the only civilized country where you semi-regularly have school massacres) thinks that the solution to anything can be "more guns for everyone". People ar…
>>>It's amazing how a population that suffers heavily from wide firearm availability (the only civilized country where you semi-regularly have school massacres) thinks that the solution to anything can be "more guns for everyone". We've had by far the greatest firearms proliferation in the Western world for centuries. In the 1920's you could buy fully automatic Thompson sub-machineguns from a mail-in catalog. ( http:…
There's also the fact that school proliferation itself is a relatively recent (~80-100 years) phenomenon; and after that there was a world war, and after said war maybe not everybody could afford to/ had a priority to buy guns ("greatest proliferation in the Western world" does not necessarily equal "proliferation at the same levels as today"). Last by not least, maybe the other factors you mentioned would still result in less shootings if there weren't guns widely available everywhere?
Re: How much do we need the police?
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 g…
> Does that make sense?
Sure. But with sarcasm, which by definition can be misinterpreted, it might help if you actually called it “sarcasm” in addition to “trolling”. This might have helped me understand what was going on.
Re: How much do we need the police?
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
But here is this complete disconnect in how Americans think about this. As a European you point out that cops are trigger happy and shoot people 100x more frequently than say in London. Then Americans respond "well we have way more guns so cops are on the edge and shoot more easily." Well how about introducing some gun control then and reduce the number of guns in society? But no, Americans don't want that. So many A…
Criminals will still get weapons without restriction if you ramp up gun control. They don’t follow the law, why would they follow gun controls? All gun controls do is make it harder for lawful citizens to protect themselves.
Re: How much do we need the police?
#418[flagged]
In countries where people are nicer to each other, there is less police brutality. It would take much more time, but I think more Fred Rogers and less GI Joe (or whatever their current equivalents may be) is likelier to provide a more lasting fix than any of these short-term policy proposals. WWJD?
So how do you make people be nicer to each other?
Re: How much do we need the police?
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
But here we are in the middle of ongoing riots discussing the role of the police. Maybe the comparison is not so inappropriate after all.
Then maybe the fact that the riots have been caused by the police in the first place should be considered too.
The triggering cause was the act of one policeman and his three colleagues who stood by (which might indicate the constriction was perhaps a kind of standard procedure that went wrong - or not. Personally I am waiting for an official verdict). That's not "the police". If you say that's "the police", you can also say "that's black people" if a black person murders somebody.
In any case, there is no excuse for riots.
Re: How much do we need the police?
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's be more accurate. The protests are caused by the police. But the riots, violence and looting is caused by opportunists and criminals, in many cases instigated and enflamed by white revolutionary anarchists and/or white supremacist cells more than willing to sacrifice minorities and their neighbourhoods to their insane political projects, i.e. blood soaked revolution or race war.
There are multiple reports of agent provocateurs being police agents.
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