I don’t get it. Are we now advocating that police is overall more of a force of evil than good? Legitimate question.
This is not a new attitude. The black community in the US has largely felt this way for decades.
Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
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Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#112Are we saying that: (a) police are a net good, but slack is aiding/encouraging particular bad behaviors; or (b) police are a net bad and we should just deny them anything that enables them to do their jobs; or (c) police are a net good, but it's bad PR to associate with them
I do wish these broader debates were clearer and more nuanced. I get the strong impression that certain participants are not only deliberately trying to prevent this sort of nuance altogether. I'm not sure why anyone with a genuine interest in solving these problems would behave this way.
A lot of people are just really, really angry at this moment in time due to the long history of injustices and numerous examples in the past few days.
Nuance is real hard to do under these circumstances.
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#113Former Slack employee here... This blog post/case study was published a few years ago by Slack's marketing team and led to a firestorm of controversy within the company. Many employees of all backgrounds spoke up about how upset they were that Slack would use a police department as marketing. Eventually the decision was made to keep it up which certainly frustrated a lot of people. I guess now the leaders have decide…
Why though? Is there not a legitimate role for policing in a civil society? And if there is, don't they need to coordinate and collaborate just like any other organization?
Just because there's a legitimate role doesn't mean that it's currently being practiced ethically. If it's not being practiced ethically the argument is that you can't ethically profit from it. That's the entire issue.
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why though? Is there not a legitimate role for policing in a civil society? And if there is, don't they need to coordinate and collaborate just like any other organization?
Because there is a great deal of sentiment that the approaches used in the United States are excessively militarized, racially unjust and insufficiently transparent. Using a problematic customer like that as a marketing highlight is just not a great idea.
What's the alternative though? Pretending that if you needed protection due to crime coming your way/your family's way... you wouldn't call 911?
I feel like this entire movement is really taking away credit from the "ok" and "good" cops. How many cops are there in America? Ok, some of them aren't perfect. They are racist/dicks/thirsty for power. Why does this mean as a citizen I should feel less safe because we want to defund police and have less cops protecting us? Because "cops aren't protecting us?" They are. Even if there were 1,000 police brutality related deaths a year (there aren't), police would still be a huge net win for society, no? Am I missing something?
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest foreigner question: are all US police that "stinky" that any association with them is now bad, or is it an overreaction? Surely there are good police departments, ones that work with the community and not against them? But maybe I'm not seeing it from the perspective of those black employees...
I would say most American citizens are fearful(or at least shy of) of the police, avoid interacting with them if possible and generally have a disdain for how they operate. Not to say they are not recognized as necessary, most just don't like their tactics and their "code" of protecting one another. Basically you never know if you are going to get a good cop or a bad one, so you just avoid them all. Likewise anyone s…
What the police are supposed to be is determined by local culture.
Here's a police recruitment ad from Georgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgt8pmh7CU
Here's one from California: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rKA6ROAVk
(The original blog post that highlighted the difference between these is down, but here's an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140209085808/http://www.theagi... . I pulled the youtube URLs because the archived page doesn't appear to work.)
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty disingenuous to suggest that there's only a binary choice about how to deal with this problem. If you look at the policies of a site like Campaign Zero [1] you'll see that there's a lot of options that can help. 1 - https://www.joincampaignzero.org/
I'm just trying to figure out why it's bad that police use slack. If we don't want police to be able to communicate, why not just disband them? Note that I'm not suggesting we disband them. I am just trying to follow the logic.
Sure. We disband the existing police and make a new force based on Peelian principles. After all, maintaining societal peace is valuable.
This is pretty common in lots of things so it's pretty easy to understand. You have an aim you want to achieve (peace), you have a tool that does not achieve that (current police), so you discard the tool and get a new tool.
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#117Are we saying that: (a) police are a net good, but slack is aiding/encouraging particular bad behaviors; or (b) police are a net bad and we should just deny them anything that enables them to do their jobs; or (c) police are a net good, but it's bad PR to associate with them
It's a witch-hunt, plain and simple. Of course the police needs reform, demilitarization, higher standards, more accountability, and better educational requirements. How you get any of those things by demonizing the police and making it a left-vs-right political issue is beyond me.
It's not a witch hunt if there's an actual problem.
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#118I don’t get it. Are we now advocating that police is overall more of a force of evil than good? Legitimate question.
A BLM co-founder is on NPR advocating to "defund the police." "It’s not possible for the entity of law enforcement to be a compassionate, caring governmental agency in black communities. That’s not the training, that’s not the institution."[0] There's a continuum of what "defund" means, but the idealists are pushing for actual, no-hyperbole defunding and disbanding. Police cannot be made good. They believe would be e…
It worked for the country of Georgia. They disbanded their entire national police force, and violent crime immediately went down.
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why though? Is there not a legitimate role for policing in a civil society? And if there is, don't they need to coordinate and collaborate just like any other organization?
> Is there not a legitimate role for policing in a civil society? Look around. Most Americans would say no to this question. I don’t think they’ve thought through the consequences of that, but I guarantee a random poll would show most Americans want to abolish or >70% defund the police (which is effectively the same).
Where are you getting that from? Do you have polls you can point to that support the assertion that "Most Americans would say no to this question"?
Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How you get any of those things by demonizing the police and making it a left-vs-right political issue is beyond me. If not this way the, how do you get it? It's been hundreds of years. The U.S. is not immune to revolutions and revolutions have changed corrupt states for a very long time.
Study other countries which have less police violence? Incorporate more community involvement? Etc. The idea that society doesn't need some sort of police force is so hilariously naive, I am in disbelief that serious people are suggesting it. Clearly they are from an extremely privileged background and never had to deal with living in poor areas. The police absolutely need reform, but to pretend that they're more of…
I'm sure it seems very alarming that people are 'demonizing the police' if you're new to this issue -- in which case this week has woken you up to something that's been a problem for people for a very very long time. But it is not a new issue, and people's fear and pain at it is genuine.
To some segments of society (who are not criminals), the police absolutely are more of a threat than criminals. When there are people who are terrified of getting pulled over by a cop in traffic because they know it might end up with them shot, even though they are in every way a model citizen, there is a deep problem.
Also, police as we know them are only a couple hundred years old. No one is saying there doesn't need to be people who fill most of the roles police do in modern society, they are saying the structure the police embody is rotten and can be replaced with better things.
And in my experience, it's the least privileged who take the hardest line on police abolition. Most 'privileged' people have, like yours, a lukewarm "some reform would be good" perspective.