How much do we need the police? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much do we need the police?

#241

Post by vkou » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

pnw_hazor wrote: post #228

vkou wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The violence in Seattle on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday was started by police. There's numerous videos, both from the ground, and from the air, that quite clearly demonstrate this. On Tuesday night, the violence was started by a water bottle thrown into the police line. In response, the police gassed four city blocks, including residential apartments. People in those apartments were trapped between gas pouring into t…

The police did not instigate Sunday's criminal raids in Tukwila, Bellevue, and Southcenter. Nor, did they force people to throw molotov cocktails at Nordstroms or light cars on fire in downtown Seattle on Saturday. Some act like that stuff has nothing to do with the curfew being imposed. Now, as you may now, the local subreddit is filled with people suggesting different Hong Kong style tactics to exhaust the police o…

Tukwila, Bellevue, and Southcenter are not in Seattle, and are not covered by the blanket Seattle curfew. And, quite obviously, the looting there had nothing to do with the police attacks in Downtown/the East Precinct.

And on Saturday, they started off kettling protesters, and then followed it up with unprovoked gas attacks, long before the curfew, or the burning started. Again, there is plenty of video footage, and detailed timelines of all of this.

> To what end? Seattle is a progressive city that could reform the police tomorrow if they wanted too.

Seattle is a progressive city with an abusive police force that has successfully resisted reform for two decades. Its police union is one of the most sheltered from accountability in the country. It is under federal sanction for police brutality, that both the union, and the city has done its best to push back on, and ignore. The current mayor is a former federal prosecutor, that ran on a campaign of, among other things, police accountability that she immediately abandoned, as soon as she got into office. She is currently turning a completely blind eye to what is happening in her own town.

Meanwhile, the governor is telling everyone that everything is fine, and that the Office of Police Accountability will handle any police misbehaviour. The OPA consists of 9 police officers, and 1 civilian... And its decisions aren't even binding - but are carried out at the pleasure of the police chief.

If reform were so easy, we'd have done it a decade ago. Instead, we have a nightmarish quagmire, where the none of the checks and balances work, and the government is actively covering for the police. For an outside observer, if you didn't know this were about Seattle, you may assume that I described the political situation in East BuFu, Flyover Country.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#242

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

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…

A more recent experiment:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/if-the-nypd-is-on-strike-mayb...

Re: How much do we need the police?

#243

Post by geomark » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #180

vncecartersknee wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I was implying that some people always want more, regardless of how much they already have. But sure, I agree that those desperate people can also be dangerous.

Not sure whom to attribute this quote to, but "Most of the world's problems are caused by two types of people: those who don't have enough, and those who never have enough."

Re: How much do we need the police?

#244

Post by throwawaymin » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:59 AM UTC

remember_george wrote: post #72

Uhhrrr wrote: post #41

It's true that police are asked to be solutions for social problems for which they are unsuited. However, the reason this interview is topical has to do with someone paying for cigarettes with a possibly counterfeit bill and refusing to give them back. That seems to me to be an entirely reasonable reason to call the police.

Seeing how George Floyd moved to Minneapolis to do ministry work I bet he didn’t even know the bill was counterfeited.

[flagged]

Re: How much do we need the police?

#245

Post by tcell2020 » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 4:03 AM UTC

IggleSniggle wrote: post #129

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #10

We certainly need a police force to maintain a level of civilization in a large enough society. But of course, the problem is different: what KIND of policing we need, and how do we provide accountability. Quis custodiet custodes? [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%... edit: note that the "ipsos" part of the sentence in the wikipedia link is correct, but can be largely omitted. I stu…

I'm a little bit confused by your statement that the ipsos is both a correct quotation but can also be omitted. Is there some translation issue wherein the "ipsos" might or might not be part of the original poem?

"Quis custodiet custodes" means "Who will watch (the) watchers?" With the "ipsos" - "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes", it means "Who will watch the watchers themselves?" - i.e. it puts emphasis on "the watchers". Basic meaning for both is the same, but I think the original version used "ipsos"

Re: How much do we need the police?

#246

Post by Izkata » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 4:04 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #236

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…

But that's a terrible experiment! For one, you're in a situation where the only people with serious weapons are criminals and police (because non-criminals could generally trust the police to handle violence for them). 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. You took a society…

> If a society wants to get rid of the police, it needs to designate some other group to handle this use case. It can't simply get rid of the police.

> A "natural experiment" of a world without police is quite unnatural: it's a world built up around the police with a sudden police-shaped gap in the middle.

The hole can also get filled in unexpected ways. This past weekend during the riots and looting, when the police in Chicago were stretched too thin, some people were happy the local gangs were protecting them from the looters.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#247

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 4:05 AM UTC

redis_mlc wrote: post #122

seibelj wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are also greatly exaggerating the risk to citizens in the USA when calling the police. The risk is not to the caller, the risk is to the alleged criminal that may get manhandled (or shot) way out of proportion to the offense. But you don’t make a mental “death chance calculation” when you call the cops.

Good luck with that. Because domestic calls are so unpredictable in a gun-owning society, callers can expect to see a drawn gun pointing at you. The police often do no-knock residential intrusions, while throwing a grenade into the house. (For non-US readers: I'm not exaggerating. "Dirty Harry" movies are documentaries about living in the US.)

[deleted]

Re: How much do we need the police?

#248

Post by ragona » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 4:08 AM UTC

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…

Did you read the article?

> “Well, I'm certainly not talking about any kind of scenario where tomorrow someone just flips a switch and there are no police. What I'm talking about is the systematic questioning of the specific roles that police currently undertake, and attempting to develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on them.”

Vitale offers a nuanced perspective, and your response is a barely-related strawman.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#249

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 4:10 AM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #220

michaelmrose wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if we legalize drugs, they'll just find something else to do, like child prostitution, unless you wanna legalize that too) If you legalize gambling, adult prostitution, and drugs it is disingenuous to suppose that criminal enterprise will somehow replace all that revenue off underage prostitution. It would absolutely pull the rug out from under them. If you give most underprivileged American youth a way to have a be…

Well we were doing that. Before covid induced economic damage we were experiencing record low unemployment among black and minority youth. Record low poverty levels, etc. In the meantime you still need crime enforcement lest you let all that earned wealth be stolen and looted by gangs. And it is not disingenuous to suggest that criminal enterprises will switch to new enterprises when old ones are no longer profitable…

Presumably this "oil smuggling" (couldn't it simply have been buying and selling?) took place before the current steep drop in the price of oil...

Re: How much do we need the police?

#250

Post by testbot123 » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #217

testbot123 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, like... Jefferey Epstein? We spend so much time defending the rights of police to use military-grade weaponry on individual citizens that we forget that the people who are actually looting this country and committing its most grievous crimes are largely ignored.

Um okay... That's a demand for more police and police like units not less

It's a demand for accountants, lawyers, and law enforcement that focuses on egregious offenders and systemic injustice, eliminating the root causes of crime. Not tear gas and tanks.

You were speaking about crime in the 70s and 80s. That probably has a lot to do with the War on Drugs [0] (have we won yet?), brought to you by the same administration who gave us Iran-Contra [1], which largely introduced the US (LA specifically) to crack cocaine [2]. I believe every single person involved with that scandal was pardoned. Oliver North even had his own show on Fox News and became president of the NRA!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration_scandals

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs#CIA_and_Contra_co...