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How much do we need the police?

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Re: How much do we need the police?

#161

Post by vkou »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #70
AmericanChopper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s insane to expect police to handle those issues. The only thing they can do is “clean up” after the problems that society has otherwise failed to deal with. The very nature of their role is adversarial with the citizenry. They’re also under no obligation to protect anybody from anything. They carry guns to protect themselves, not you and me. If somebody intents to harm you, the best you could reasonably e…

Police count the bodies so to speak. Preventive/interventive policing doesn't fit well in a free country. Policing in free countries is pretty much a reactive system. For example, in the recent mass protests, the police generally stay pretty chill until something triggers them -- one too many water bottles thrown after curfew, or whatever. Relatively, minor offenses by a few people in the crowd can trigger the police…

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 agree with me on this.

https://twitter.com/cyrushabib/status/1268283353528066049

Re: How much do we need the police?

#162

Post by wahern »

BurningFrog wrote: post #148
vncecartersknee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 or intrinsically violent, they're just opportunistic to the point of almost being mechanically opportunistic.

I'm a glass is half full kind of person so I see factors like empathy as a defining characteristic of humanity, but even I can't deny that such internalized inhibitions, biological and cultural, which mute anti-social behaviors aren't universal.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#163

Post by evan_ »

hedora wrote: post #135
evan_ wrote: post #24

In Eugene, OR, where I live, there is a program called CAHOOTS ("Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets") which is more or less the mental health equivalent of an ambulance. They're dispatched by non-emergency operators to situations such as mental health crises, public intoxication, and welfare checks- things where police officers would be asked to serve as a social worker, as the article puts it. My understan…

California used to have programs like this in the 80’s. They were outlawed as part of Regan’s war on mental illness (or whatever he called it). A friend of mine went through this, so I went through all the options with the a few emergency psychiatric wards. These days, even if the person has medical insurance or someone wants to pay out of pocket, the mental health professionals aren’t allowed to do anything without…

I probably shouldn’t have compared it to an ambulance service because I think they do most of their intervention in place- literally helping out on the streets. They do have vans so maybe they transport people if necessary but I don’t think that’s the standard case.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#164

Post by chipperyman573 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #148
vncecartersknee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

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

Re: How much do we need the police?

#166

Post by colejohnson66 »

virmundi wrote: post #127
chrisco255 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed drug war is a total failure, policy-wise. Where is the middle ground between criminalizing everything and legalizing everything? Real lives are destroyed by drug abuse and particularly with regards to meth, fentanyl, etc it kills people. I can't imagine a world where we sell these things over the counter. Would that help or hurt communities?

Why make the act of consumption illegal? If I am a functioning alcoholic, and I stay at home and work, no reason to arrest me. Same is true with weed and all the other drugs. If I become a danger while intoxicated, arrest me for that. I don’t need a charge multiplier.

Technically, (in most places I’ve read about (in the US)) it’s not illegal to have it in your system. It’s illegal to be in possession of it. Presumably so people who OD actually go to the hospital.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#167

Post by thatcat »

tathougies wrote: post #94
sgillen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrt to the drugs, even if the gangs switch to something else for their income, surely it won’t be nearly as profitable as the drug trade? Still seems like you could deal a serious blow, especially against the cartels.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/first-drugs-then-oil-now... It doesn't seem that way at all. They will just mutate. There's lots of illegal stuff to sell, that cannot reasonably be legalized.

It definitely seems that way to me.

$150B estimated market FTA is much smaller than the $400B estimated for drugs. Humans are much more difficult to traffic than drugs so there would be much higher operating costs and risks due to the fact that it is not a victimless crime.

https://www.worldometers.info/drugs/

Re: How much do we need the police?

#168

Post by vncecartersknee »

BurningFrog wrote: post #148
vncecartersknee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

> Well, some people never find their needs met...

enormous numbers of people in the US are living literally a paycheck or a medical emergency away from bankruptcy and homelessness

Re: How much do we need the police?

#169

Post by anaccaccount »

creaghpatr wrote: post #67
chrisco255 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed drug war is a total failure, policy-wise. Where is the middle ground between criminalizing everything and legalizing everything? Real lives are destroyed by drug abuse and particularly with regards to meth, fentanyl, etc it kills people. I can't imagine a world where we sell these things over the counter. Would that help or hurt communities?

Maybe there’s a legal path to meth but you can literally die from touching a small dose of fentanyl if you haven’t built a tolerance. Very dangerous for that to exist in a legal setting.

You may not be aware but methamphetamine is schedule 2 and is prescribed for a number of purposes the brand name is desoxyn. Meth is not inherently dangerous to use when it's production is regulated. Also, you can NOT die from touching fentanyl that is a myth there are many videos online of people handling fentanyl with their bare hands.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#170

Post by wolfgang42 »

flyingfences wrote: post #146
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…

All that sort of damage has also happened in plenty of situations when the police were not on strike, though... I don't think that one unusual event (an anecdote) is any indication of any larger pattern. More to the point, though, the article doesn't suggest a complete abolition of all police; it suggests returning them to a more limited, core role.

Not only that, but there were police officers on duty in the city; per Wikipedia ‘The provincial government posted 400 officers from the Sûreté du Québec to Montreal in the morning.’

If anything, this is an experiment in what happens if you unexpectedly swap the police in a city for a different set in the middle of a crisis.

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