As others have said, I think "burn it to the ground and start over" is highly underrated.
My concern is that policing could be taken over by private entities, which I suspect would be decidedly worse.
Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
131–140 of 398 posts
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#132This has sufficient public momentum to prove that a plurality believes the current system does the public more harm than good. Of course, removing cops will reduce harm done by cops to the public. But it will also reduce harm done by cops to law breakers. Intuitively, I would expect the law breakers to benefit disproportionately, since the cops stated mission was to prevent law breaking and all.
Statistics I've read suggest that US cities have been getting progressively safer over the past generation. It's interesting to wonder if our generation of safety has allowed us to forget that "order" and "justice" are not intrinsic qualities of humanity (nor any other animal group). Looking forward to seeing how Minneapolis will go about delivering consistent justice with no bad actors enforcing it. Will also be interesting to see which types of law breakers emerge as the winner from decimation of their traditional adversary.
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's directly comparable. It didn't work so well in Ukraine either, which has an educated, Western society. They disbanded and "rebuilt" their police force to step away from Russian influences. Corruption came back, but in the meantime, a lot of operation efficiency was lost. Swapping out a police department is much like swapping out a dev team - you are losing a LOT of tribal knowledge, and you have few guarantees t…
In neither case did they do anything that police abolitionists are asking for.
Right, what they are asking for is oversight on budget and practices, except that doesn't sound nearly as exciting as "abolish the police departments!". If they are actually asking to abolish the police departments, that's painfully naive.
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#134What could go wrong? Lunatics are running the asylum it seems. Authority is always here. Disband the police and you will get another arbitrary authority (being gangs, some kind of political repression, and so). There already are no-go zones in Europa where the police don't go anymore, believe me, you wouldn't want to live there. If you don't want the official police anymore, why not starting with your place, your hom…
> What could go wrong? Lunatics are running the asylum it seems. Authority is always here. Disband the police and you will get another arbitrary authority (being gangs, some kind of political repression, and so). There already are no-go zones in Europa where the police don't go anymore, believe me, you wouldn't want to live there.
> If you don't want the official police anymore, why not starting with your place, your home and your family?
Europa? I hope that’s a typo and not a dog whistle. I’ll assume good faith but your comments in this thread have a lot in common with views promoted by Identity Evropa and other white supremacist groups. Just in case you weren’t aware of the ambiguity in a typo like Europa.
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#135It will be interesting to see what crime does in response? Or more significantly, how other societal functions affected by police ( like traffic, MVA management,etc) change.
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#136Is this equivalent to a software rewrite? Let's just throw the whole thing out and start over. Throwing out a system and starting afresh would likey introduce new bugs/systemic failures that aren't currently present. Is addressing and correcting each specific feature/SOP not an option?
My guess is there's a contract with the current MPD and police union that currently hampers all attempts at reform. This would no longer present a problem if they started over from scratch.
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#137Happened in Baltimore after Freddie Gary and the result is over 100 more murders of black men per year than before, just not by police.
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#138"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used solution in American life, even in the private sector. Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...
We dissolve things a lot. Building them is another matter entirely. It’s possible the PD will be rebuilt in a nicer form, but that’s not guaranteed. It’s just as likely the PD will be absorbed into the County Sheriff. Is the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office better?
> Is the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office better?
Probably, at least in the case of the specific precinct that killed George Floyd.
https://www.startribune.com/third-precinct-served-as-playgro...
> One officer kicked a handcuffed suspect in the face, leaving his jaw in pieces. Officers beat and pistol-whipped a suspect in a parking lot on suspicion of low-level drug charges. Others harassed residents of a south Minneapolis housing project as they headed to work, and allowed prostitution suspects to touch their genitals for several minutes before arresting them in vice stings.
> These and more substantiated incidents, detailed in court records and police reports, help explain a saying often used by fellow cops to describe the style of policing practiced in the Third: There’s the way that the Minneapolis Police Department does things, and then there’s the way they do it “in Threes.”
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#139What could go wrong? Lunatics are running the asylum it seems. Authority is always here. Disband the police and you will get another arbitrary authority (being gangs, some kind of political repression, and so). There already are no-go zones in Europa where the police don't go anymore, believe me, you wouldn't want to live there. If you don't want the official police anymore, why not starting with your place, your hom…
How is that any different than the lawless gangs that have the force of government behind them?
Do you (or others) actually believe this statement, or are you being contrarian to make another point?
If you do, what sort of experience / data leads one to believe that policing in western societies are top-line equivalent to the strong-armed lawlessness that exists in many failed states around the globe. Genuinely curious.
Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department
#140The problem is American gun culture and the probability that any call might turn into a violent one. Other countries don't have that problem so they can send unarmed social workers with higher confidence, over a life time of calls, they're going to see retirement. In America that isn't the case and responders need a gun because everyone has guns and you need to have sustainable system for keeping order that ensures,…
Would it help if murdering unarmed peace keepers or whatever had extreme punishment attached? Even criminals can be trained. Kill an unarmed peace keeper, your life is effectively over.