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

Re: How much do we need the police?

#431

Post by lexpar » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #326

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…

That is so weird. I can remember several police strikes here in Belgium, and none of that sort of thing happened. The latest police strike announcement was for April (12th to 19th) this year, and was over the lack of PPE for field work. The strike was cancelled as PPE was made available before the strike date.

It's important to understand that this was already a very violent time in Montreal. Separatist terrorists were running rampant, and had a non-zero degree of public support.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#432

Post by loeg » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

holler wrote: post #303

ncallaway wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some protestors have been completely peaceful. Some entire protests have been completely peaceful. And some of those completely peaceful protests have still met tear gas, and/or pepper spray. For example, see the protest in DC that was peaceful and broken up before curfew. Is your assertion that nationwide, over 9 days, there hasn't been any peaceful protests?

If we’re focused on Seattle still, and basing this off the news from the past few days, it certainly was hard to notice any peaceful protesting occurring. Of course many people were peaceful, but amidst scenes of people busting through every retailer’s window downtown, looting stores until they were bare, while dozens of cars burned in the street...

You're painting a completely false, disingenuous picture of the protesting that has happened in Seattle over the last week. SPD has repeatedly used aerosolized chemical weapons on completely peaceful protesters.

The media focuses on violence and crime, because that's what media does — "if it bleeds, it ledes" — but that violence/property damage/theft has not been connected to the large Cap Hill/downtown protests for most of the week.

Your claim of "dozens of cars burning in the street" is, as far as I know, completely unfounded. As is "busting through every retailer's window and looting stores until they were bare." There isn't all that much retail downtown — do you mean Westlake?

There was some looting and some police cars burned on the first weekend, but it is important to understand (1) that these actions do not reflect the majority of protesters and (2) the history of violence perpetrated by SPD against citizens and especially citizens of color.

It is also important to understand that the SPD has responded to peaceful protest with violence every evening, through at least June 2. (I have not yet caught up with last night's protests.)

Re: How much do we need the police?

#433

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:42 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #422

Consultant32452 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a farmer has a tractor stolen from him it is not acceptable to track the criminal down and use force to take it back, that is the job of the police. That's just hiring someone else to use force to take it back. So we at least agree that taking it back by force is the right thing to do. I'll even go so far as agreeing with you that it's morally justified to hire someone else to do it for you. I suspect our area of…

You don’t “hire” the police, and that’s critical. If you did, they would be accountable to you and not the rest of society. Police are agents of the government which is accountable (to some degree) to the people. This is a tremendous distinction.

Police and government have something very important in common with you. They are all just people. Regular people without superior morals, intellectual capability, resolve, etc. In this case a government is just a group of people getting together and saying, "Okay Bob, a few of us in the community have pooled our money together to hire some mercenaries and we'd like you to do the hiring." And then Bob just does it.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#434

Post by loeg » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:44 PM UTC

taborj wrote: post #424

selimthegrim wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...

I'm sorry, this is like pulling a single line out of a book and using it to bolster a specific argument. In other words, there's loads of context that's missing. Your video has less than 10 seconds of context. What happened just before the video starts? What happened 15 minutes before?

It's just a boring sit-in for hours before the clip starts. There is literally no context. The next night there isn't even an umbrella pretext, they just start spraying around 11:40pm after peaceful sit-in from 5pm.

Here's video of the incident from 13 minutes prior (June 1): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36571421876...

And earlier recording of the hours beforehand (June 1, earlier): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36570100309...

You're not missing any violent context; just the bigger picture.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#435

Post by ChristianBundy » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #234

ChristianBundy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: how can something be called "consent" if it can't be withdrawn by individuals? That's democracy, not consent.

What do you mean?

This advertises itself as "policing by consent", but I'm not sure where the "by consent" comes from. I'm surely missing something, but if you can just add "by consent" to violent actions and then say "individuals cannot withdraw consent", then that doesn't seem like consent to me.

Example: The US military spreading democracy by consent. Sure, lots of recipients of 'democracy' have expressed that they want us to leave, but individuals cannot withdraw their consent from our democracy.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#436

Post by nikofeyn » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

cheesecracker wrote: post #419

Netcob wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you are intentionally diminishing the issues at hand. the police, yes "the police", have increasingly been militarized, abuse their power, and seen a general lack of repercussions when they do something wrong, even heinous crimes. this is systemic. whether you think that this was "just" a bad egg with three other bad eggs standing around or not, which in itself requires jumping through hoops, these issues are well discussed and documented and are systemic.

now, couple that with systemic issues of rascim throughout all of american society, of which the police are part of, you have a terrible mix of rascism, power, lack of worry of consequences, and a general bad attitude of their role in society in "the police". that leaves the general public at risk and people of color at a substantially greater risk.

the point is that this isn't just a one off case. it happens time and time again. i have seen video after video of it, and that's just the ones captured on film! (still don't face any consequences.) i have seen a video of a black emt who had a patient inside pulled over and choked by a police officer because the police officer felt he hadn't yielded properly to his lights even though the call he was on was obviously less important than choking an emt with a patient. there's just countless other videos and documented cases.

so please, take your false rhetoric elsewhere. these are actual problems. if you think it's just a couple bad eggs, then think about what happens when there's bad eggs spread throughout the country. that's what systemic issues are.

riots and particularly looting are not great. but consider what they generally represent. they represent pent up anger of those at the bottom who feel they don't have any other recourse. some do indeed want to incite violence, but that doesn't invalidate the huge line of events that got us here. i would also ask that you view the police as an active participant in the rioting. i have seen video of police actively destroying property without a protester in site. the media is also a participant because we cannot trust what they report as truth.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#437

Post by carapace » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

ChristianBundy wrote: post #435

carapace wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean?

This advertises itself as "policing by consent", but I'm not sure where the "by consent" comes from. I'm surely missing something, but if you can just add "by consent" to violent actions and then say "individuals cannot withdraw consent", then that doesn't seem like consent to me. Example: The US military spreading democracy by consent. Sure, lots of recipients of 'democracy' have expressed that they want us to leave…

In re: the Peelian principles I feel that that's addressed in #2:

> To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

It's a tactical truism that you can't police a city without consent of the populace. You can destroy it, but not rule it. Look at what happened in Mogadishu or Baghdad, it takes thousands of troops and the willingness to kill civilians to hold a hostile city, even for the US military. Recognizing that is pretty much realpolitik.

- - - -

In re: consent and democracy in general, I dunno. It's not like the social contract is an actual document that you have to sign (or not), eh? I tried to build a flying saucer and leave the planet. YMMV.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#438

Post by virgilp » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:23 PM UTC

taborj wrote: post #427

virgilp wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resu…

But time and again we've seen violent crimes rise after enacting gun control, most recently in New Zealand[0] (this particular report focuses on gun crimes, which are on the rise after gun control has been enacted, but it's by no means a problem isolated to gun crime). It all indicates the problem isn't the gun, it's the person. And taking their gun away doesn't take away their problems. I find it odd that the curren…

> It all indicates the problem isn't the gun, it's the person.

Really? How did the persons become worse because of the gun control laws? Because that's what your message implies, that said rise in violent crimes is related to enacting gun control.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#439

Post by js2 » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:31 PM 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…

> what happens without police

This is a straw-man. The article isn't calling for abolishing police: "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."

Re: How much do we need the police?

#440

Post by dependenttypes » Thu, Jun 04, 2020, 3:38 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #438

taborj wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But time and again we've seen violent crimes rise after enacting gun control, most recently in New Zealand[0] (this particular report focuses on gun crimes, which are on the rise after gun control has been enacted, but it's by no means a problem isolated to gun crime). It all indicates the problem isn't the gun, it's the person. And taking their gun away doesn't take away their problems. I find it odd that the curren…

> It all indicates the problem isn't the gun, it's the person. Really? How did the persons become worse because of the gun control laws? Because that's what your message implies, that said rise in violent crimes is related to enacting gun control.

> How did the persons become worse because of the gun control laws? Because that's what your message implies

No, it doesn't.

> that said rise in violent crimes is related to enacting gun control

The person did not become worse but rather found the chance to attack someone who could not defend themselves because they did not have a gun.