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OwlFancier posted:You misunderstand, I said that if you remove one of the planks that hold that system up, it becomes a vehicle for the rest of the reforms. I'll even go as far to just request that evicting someone takes any sort of difficulty. It's far to easy to do so, and in my County you can have your eviction filed without any evidence or backup - that filing along is damning enough to force some people into homelessness, landlords are very rare that deal with folks with evictions on their records. I agree with this very much as well.
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Jun 11, 2020 20:02
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flashman posted:Yeah ok I got you, I agree with you that without police acting as agents of the state evictions would be difficult. On counterpoint, if the law enforcement is non-existant, then landlords and other rich probably can afford armed thugs to enforce their will and collect their debts.
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Jun 11, 2020 20:04
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As a counter counter point it's presumably then possible for people to just shoot bailiffs in the street. But I doubt it would come to that. Rich people like easy money, if landlording becomes difficult money I think they will be more likely to find somewhere else to put it. And I also think people would object quite heavily to armed security gangs for the same reason they object to the cops. Because they're just cops with less legitimacy and we just got rid of cops.
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Jun 11, 2020 20:08
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adhuin posted:On counterpoint, if the law enforcement is non-existant, then landlords and other rich probably can afford armed thugs to enforce their will and collect their debts. Those armed thugs are currently called "cops." Jokes aside, there is a very large difference between a private security force and state sponsored violence.
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Jun 11, 2020 20:22
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adhuin posted:On counterpoint, if the law enforcement is non-existant, then landlords and other rich probably can afford armed thugs to enforce their will and collect their debts. Yeah, and those security guards who work for the rich would have very little accountability to the public. This expands to other things as well. I feel like having zero ability to enforce laws greatly limits the effectiveness of government. Outside of the topic of this thread, popular political opinion on this forum is that a good way to improve the welfare of the general public is to expand government functions and scope. But that is undermined if you provide the government zero ability to enforce its laws. Literal 'abolish the police' seems to be at odds with other progressive policies, IMO. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 20:22
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The police are a significant part of the reason why expanding the positive role of the government in people's lives doesn't happen. Because you don't need to help people when you can just send the cops to beat them up, kill them, or throw them in jail instead. The police are the one size fits all solution to all social problems, in that they remove the parts of social problems that stick out the most without solving them. Thus you achieve a sufficiently orderly, if horrible, society and coincidentally a thriving prison population, which helpfully can also be exploited for profit. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 20:25
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I feel like a lot of the anti-cop arguments in this thread and elsewhere are basically: 'there is rampant corruption in the police force--they are not acting in the public interest, and they cannot be trusted'. Which I agree with, maybe not to the same degree as some, who right now are pretty much attributing 100% of the problems in society to corruption in the police force. But I do think it is very true. But then a surprisingly popular response is to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to propose that we totally eliminate the role of government-employed law enforcer, because the corruption is intrinsic to the position. It is inevitable. Well yeah, power corrupts. But can't you expand this kind of argument to entire concept of governance in general? The progressive response to other kinds of government corruption is to propose that we reform that area of government, not to eliminate it or to privatize it. Why is it so different for law enforcement? edit: I guess you could claim that law enforcement isn't a needed government function. But I think that is a paradoxical belief, and undermines the idea of expanding the government to improve people's lives. If we lived in a world where we didn't need laws, then we really wouldn't need a government either. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 20:56
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silence_kit posted:I feel like a lot of the anti-cop arguments in this thread and elsewhere are basically: 'there is rampant corruption in the police force--they are not acting in the public interest, and they cannot be trusted'. Which I agree with, maybe not to the same degree as some, who right now are pretty much attributing 100% of the problems in society to corruption in the police force. But I do think it is very true. Purpose. The reason for having police is explicit and i'd argue that there isn't any "corruption", it's working exactly the way it's intended as an agent of the state. The rest of government doesn't have that same issue because (mostly) it's centralized design isn't oppression and terrorism against black people. Mostly.
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Jun 11, 2020 21:04
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Well, yes, you can extend that argument to the concept of top down governance in general, and anarchists do, for a good reason as far as I'm concerned. But you don't have to go that far to suggest that the problem isn't the police are working badly, the problem is that they are working well. They are doing the job they are best suited to, which is using force on behalf of the government and capital, on people who have very little say in how they are governed and very little money. And that's as designed. Again as I said, the cops are the strong arm of landlords looking to evict or immiserate those who cannot afford property, of cities trying to "solve" their homeless problem by getting rid of the homeless, of prisons looking to keep their populations up, of politicians looking to be "tough on crime", of themselves looking for ways to get their arrest rates up by instigating hostilities and then arresting people for it. And none of this is "corruption", this is all entirely within the legal and social function of the police, much of it has "democratic" backing because the people who vote, or who are able to vote given the legal and practical disenfranchisement of the subjects of police violence, are not interested in building a fairer society because they can just vote for the cops to keep brutalizing people other than them, and their political imaginations are limited to thinking that is the only form of society that is possible. The police, as the strong arm of the state, are inherently suited to employing brutal force on people, their role, their structure, the structure of the society in which they operate, their very nature lends them to this. To classify policing problems as people just "doing policing wrong" I think is an error, police problems largely stem from the police being very good police. They maintain and exercise the capacity to employ force exactly where society wants it to be employed, against the poor and minorities, and they do it very effectively. What you are now seeing is the people on the receiving end of that fighting back against it. And they rightly perceive that there will be no change without kicking out the pillars that hold that system up. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 21:04
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Yuzenn posted:Purpose. OwlFancier posted:But you don't have to go that far to suggest that the problem isn't the police are working badly, the problem is that they are working well. They are doing the job they are best suited to, which is using force on behalf of the government and capital, on people who have very little say in how they are governed and very little money. And that's as designed. If what police departments are doing now is not government corruption, but is instead government working as intended, doesn't that undermine the entire idea of using the government to improve the lives of people? If the only use of law enforcement that you could ever imagine is to brutalize the weak, and not to enforce justice, then why would you ever want to expand the power of government? Why aren't you both hardcore libertarians? (Maybe you are, and I'm just projecting normal progressive beliefs onto you?) silence_kit fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 21:26
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silence_kit posted:If what police departments are going now is not government corruption, but is instead government working as intended, doesn't that undermine the entire idea of using the government to improve the lives of people? If the only use of law enforcement that you could ever imagine is to brutalize the weak, and not to enforce justice, then why would you ever want to expand the power of government? Why aren't you both hardcore libertarians? Ultimately you are looking at demands to reduce if not eliminate the police power of the state and they believe that police power is not needed to improve the lives of people.
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Jun 11, 2020 21:31
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karthun posted:Ultimately you are looking at demands to reduce if not eliminate the police power of the state and they believe that police power is not needed to improve the lives of people. Maybe I'm making a hair-splitting argument. I agree that reducing power of police departments is a good idea. Reducing it to 0% (literal 'abolish the police') undermines the functioning of the rest of the government though. Also the entire idea that 'law enforcement could only ever be used to brutalize the weak' really doesn't seem too different of an idea from 'laws are only passed to benefit the strong at the expense of the weak' or 'government power could only ever be used to brutalize the weak'. It reveals a deep distrust of government. Government reform is impossible. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 21:35
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Well, like I do trend more anarcho communist than most other stuff, right-libertarians are dumbasses because they think the problem is just the government and not, like, the whole concept of entrenched hierarchies and massive power imbalances between people in society as a result of money and ownership and poo poo. But I can also think that while the complete abolition of both capitalism and the state is my ideal end goal, it is possible to look at our present society and make changes to it based on the same principles. So, as I said, the police are literally a force projecting organization. They exist to coerce people at the behest of the people in charge. They are literally the goon squad of capital and the state. And because capital and the state have a goon squad they are more inclined to use it rather than find alternative solutions. The axiom is "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" and that applies institutionally too. As I said, the fact that you can control society and keep it orderly (but not good or fair or just) by just killing and beating and locking people up, and the fact that we have a group of people who are very good at killing and beating and locking people up, that creates an inertia. Why look into other ways of doing things, other ways that we could organize our society, other ways society and the government could interact with the poor and minorities? The one we have doesn't murder or beat or lock up the middle and upper classes, so why would they change it? We are reliant on the goodness of their conscience and the charity in their hearts to maybe see fit to committing to some minor reforms, at some point, in the future, if they can go one election cycle without being reminded that there are hordes of poors and minorities waiting just outside the gates to take their nice comfy houses without the strong arm of our beautiful boys in blue to keep them safe. You see where I'm going with that I'm sure. Now I would argue that an unjust society does hurt everyone, that it diminishes the humanity of everyone who participates in it, that it makes them cold and unfeeling and encourages people to come up with philosophical justifications for why, actually, the poor deserve to be poor and the rich deserve to be rich, because accepting that perhaps society is wrong might make you examine where and how you are complicit in it being wrong, or might lead you to feel less than thrilled about your role in it. But it really hurts those at the bottom, which is why the current push for is being spearheded by people who are directly on the receiving end of it. They are intimately acquainted with how bad it is to be there, they are the first to fight back. I do not, fundamentally, think justice is primarily achieved by force, I think generally that once you get to the point where force is employed, especially on the level that the police use it, you are way, way past the point where justice can be achieved and you are at best getting vengeance. Which is cathartic, but you can't run a society on constant vengeance. It is necessary to instead focus on avoiding injustice to begin with. I don't think people commit crimes for no reason, and I don't think that everything that is a crime should be, drugs, sex work etc, but these things are crimes because the police state benefits from them being crimes, because they give the police something to do, the politicians something to campaign on, and the prisons a pretext to hold and enslave people. The existence of a force encourages the use of force. Remove the option and it makes preventing the need for force more appealing. Same logic as disarmament, if everyone's packing heat then you're more likely to see people getting into shootouts, because it's trivial to do so. If you have this big, well funded police force, you're gonna find reasons to use it. And it is gonna try to expand itself as well. It is possible to have elements of a state that do not work that way. Universal healthcare is a good one. It is far harder to use universal healthcare to brutalize people because its nature is pretty different. And if you had fewer people broke from medical debt, maybe you'd need fewer cops to evict people or round up the homeless. But that works the other way too, as long as you can control the human cost of society's failings, why do you need to change society? A system built on brutality and horror is suprisingly sustainable. By removing one of the things that hold it up, namely the people who do the brutalizing, we can attack the rest of the wrongs as well, we expose them and necessitate better solutions. If you want to promote the adoption of positive, helpful interactions between people and the state, then getting rid of the harmful ones is a good idea. Because nobody is going to have any faith in the state when all it does is murder them and then bill them for it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 21:45
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Pustulio posted:gently caress's sake, okay let's look at this stupid loving scenario more closely. I would completely support this. This is great (and thank you for the suggestion) - but I want to focus on your last paragraph there. What you're talking about there is the use of state-based force. Which I think is where some people in this thread are getting hung up on. For some, abolish the police means absolutely no use of state force ever. For others, abolish the police means what you've described here (and what I've described/support). I guess my question is, for those who completely agree with abolishing the police as we know them, what percentage falls on either side of that divide? CelestialScribe fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jun 11, 2020 |
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Jun 11, 2020 22:57
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I don't think it really matters given that 99% of the people who want complete abolition are gonna support massively scaling back the power of the police as well.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:07
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OwlFancier posted:I don't think it really matters given that 99% of the people who want complete abolition are gonna support massively scaling back the power of the police as well. I actually think it matters quite a bit, because it informs the design of whatever system takes place.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:24
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Any sufficient withdrawal of police force is going to necessitate the same kind of introduction of alternate structures to resolve the problems that the police currently paper over, and as that happens you will have a better picture of what problems remain and what solutions can resolve them too. That might result in the creation of a small scale force utilization organization or it might result in more social programs. But both begin with getting rid of the cops as much as possible. Again, the idea of a completely planned out transition to a different structure of society is ahistorical, it doesn't happen. Forestalling change until you have that is not going to do anything other than make a difficult, piecemeal transition take longer.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:29
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OwlFancier posted:Any sufficient withdrawal of police force is going to necessitate the same kind of introduction of alternate structures to resolve the problems that the police currently paper over, and as that happens you will have a better picture of what problems remain and what solutions can resolve them too. That might result in the creation of a small scale force utilization organization or it might result in more social programs. But both begin with getting rid of the cops as much as possible. Right, but aren't the principles by which the new system is created important too? There's a big philosophical gap between "we should never use force, ever" and "the state can use some type of force". I guess I'm interested in what the majority of us want, because that will dictate what happens next.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:34
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On an individual level I guess but in terms of practicality I don't think so. I would certainly suggest that radical anarchists are not a majority or even plurality of the population so the best case scenario is probably still gonna have something like a cop that exists somewhere, just heavily scaled back. But it will depend on what else collapses once you get rid of the cops. And how it collapses, which is gonna be hard to predict. But I am pretty confident it would mostly collapse towards the assholes in society.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:36
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silence_kit posted:If what police departments are doing now is not government corruption, but is instead government working as intended, doesn't that undermine the entire idea of using the government to improve the lives of people? If the only use of law enforcement that you could ever imagine is to brutalize the weak, and not to enforce justice, then why would you ever want to expand the power of government? Why aren't you both hardcore libertarians? (Maybe you are, and I'm just projecting normal progressive beliefs onto you?) A government based on white supremacy is only interested in improving the lives of certain people and the police are the enforcement mechanism to suppress or eliminate the rest. So it doesn't undermine the idea of government, only that specific variant. Unfortunately that's the regime we currently live under, so the transition to something better is going to be a bit unpleasant.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:45
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I think part of my friction in wanting to understand practicalities more is that some posters here have much more faith in adults to resolve disputes peacefully. My biased personal experience doesn't give me as much faith.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:53
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CelestialScribe posted:I think part of my friction in wanting to understand practicalities more is that some posters here have much more faith in adults to resolve disputes peacefully. My biased personal experience doesn't give me as much faith. I think this requires a justification as to why an outside, violent authority is more capable of resolving disputes than the community involved. Especially when that violent authority is incredibly biased against non-white people.
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Jun 11, 2020 23:55
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CelestialScribe posted:I think part of my friction in wanting to understand practicalities more is that some posters here have much more faith in adults to resolve disputes peacefully. My biased personal experience doesn't give me as much faith. Cpt_Obvious posted:I think this requires a justification as to why an outside, violent authority is more capable of resolving disputes than the community involved. Especially when that violent authority is incredibly biased against non-white people. This, the police are adults incapable of resolving disputes peacefully, they select for adults who are incapable of resolving disputes peacefully. But in addition to that, you resolve disputes peacefully all the time, if you couldn't then society wouldn't work. The question to ask is why can't we do that more often? And I and others would posit that it is because we live in a society that encourages us to be in heated conflict with each other all the time. And I don't think there is any way you can tone down the intensity of that conflict without resolving the reasons why it exists. And the police are part of that, they encourage people to solve problems by calling in the armed goons, and their existence as an institution obstructs the development of any other possible solution. And they uphold the social structures that lead people to be in conflict in the first place. If you remove them, you create a space for improvement.
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Jun 12, 2020 00:01
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Mat Cauthon posted:A government based on white supremacy is only interested in improving the lives of certain people and the police are the enforcement mechanism to suppress or eliminate the rest. So it doesn't undermine the idea of government, only that specific variant. Exactly, and while anyone could make the case that the US's entire existence and success is based on the enslavement and subservience of black people, I just don't think that it HAS to be that way any longer. This Country does not have to exploit anyone to achieve success, it just chooses to do so as the most simple and easiest means to an end. Government can be reformed, but the arm of the government specifically tasked with brutalizing black people isn't something I see being reformed in any sort of real way. Again, this does not mean that nothing remains and we don't essentially create a new "enforcement" agency within government, this can be done with the appropriate levers and checks built within. Ultimately these Police report to someone, and there are a variety of ways to force government into sweeping changes (usually because of the threat of black revolt). Yuzenn fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 00:01
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silence_kit posted:I feel like a lot of the anti-cop arguments in this thread and elsewhere are basically: 'there is rampant corruption in the police force--they are not acting in the public interest, and they cannot be trusted'. Which I agree with, maybe not to the same degree as some, who right now are pretty much attributing 100% of the problems in society to corruption in the police force. But I do think it is very true. The police aren't corrupt (I mean some of them are), the police are doing exactly the job currently laid out for them. Which is to brutalize poor mostly black and brown people and constantly threaten public peace if they don't get budget increases and pay raises every year. The counter argument is that we don't want that.
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Jun 12, 2020 00:09
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The Oldest Man posted:The police aren't corrupt (I mean some of them are), the police are doing exactly the job currently laid out for them. Which is to brutalize poor mostly black and brown people and constantly threaten public peace if they don't get budget increases and pay raises every year. This is exactly what a lot of people don't understand
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Jun 12, 2020 00:18
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OwlFancier posted:But in addition to that, you resolve disputes peacefully all the time, if you couldn't then society wouldn't work. The question to ask is why can't we do that more often? And I and others would posit that it is because we live in a society that encourages us to be in heated conflict with each other all the time. And I don't think there is any way you can tone down the intensity of that conflict without resolving the reasons why it exists. I think that's true for some things, but not all.
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Jun 12, 2020 00:56
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If a conflict of interest exists it exists for a reason, and until you address that reason it's going to constantly trend towards escalating. That's exactly what you see with the current protests, the police want to kill people of colour and people of colour don't want to be killed hence there is conflict. It's not going to go away if you just, like, get the police to agree to a maximum quota of people they can murder racistly. Until you address the fundamental reasons why it happens it's not gonna go away, it's gonna keep ratcheting up and any measures you take to try and calm things down are gonna be overrun by the need of people to live in a worthwhile society. There can be no peace without justice, that's the point.
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Jun 12, 2020 01:04
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Do you think there is any violence in society between people that sits outside of the context of a police system?
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Jun 12, 2020 02:54
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Sort of, there is violence between people where both of the people are not the police, but that, too, interacts with the police system. The police system is symptomatic and reinforcing of the concept of punitive justice, whereby violence is answered with greater violence. So say someone loses their temper and throws a punch, or even kills someone, is it a good idea to put them in prison for decades? Is the way the prison operates likely to help them even if you have a shorter sentence? Is this a crime that could be "deterred" by higher sentencing? I would suggest no for all of those. Some crimes are just not preventable by heavier policing or other manifestations of carceral justice. But you could try to examine why people lose their temper, is it drinking? Are they drinking because drug laws prohibit less dangerous drugs? Is it because of problems at work? Could those problems be resolved by better working conditions or better pay? Is it because of problems at home? Are those rooted in financial problems? Is it a case of domestic violence? Could the victim have been helped by having more economic freedom and services to let them be independent of the person who assaulted or killed them? What about crimes that the police are absolutely terrible at resolving? Sexual assault, robbery etc. Could they be prevented again by better social programs? All of these questions are inhibited by the existence of the police and the "solution" of ever more harsh punishments for crimes. Because that is the answer the state, the media, and politicians reach for. Because they are all perfectly fine with the problems going unresolved, because they aren't their problems. And consent can be manufactured via those organizations for more and more punitive sentencing, proactive (and racist) police measures like stop and search despite them having zero impact on actual crime rates. And the reason they reach for those solutions is because the cops exist and are equipped to enforce them. It is the easiest, and wrong, solution. No part of it is disconnected, you take the police out of the equation and suddenly you've changed the entire landscape of how we maintain societal cohesion, because if it can't be done by violent suppression, suddenly we need new ways to do it, ways which might even be able to help people. Which might even prevent violence entirely in many cases. As long as the answer to societal violence is greater societal violence by the mandated authorities, then no, there isn't really any violence that sits entirely outside that system. Every instance of it only feeds the call for a greater monopoly of force by the state, but ultimately I do not think you can resolve problems that way, because the entire concept of meeting force with greater retaliation is wrong. Not just ethically but practically too, it doesn't work, it doesn't achieve the effect it's advertised as achieving. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jun 12, 2020 |
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Jun 12, 2020 03:15
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The Oldest Man posted:The police aren't corrupt (I mean some of them are), the police are doing exactly the job currently laid out for them. Which is to brutalize poor mostly black and brown people and constantly threaten public peace if they don't get budget increases and pay raises every year. What happened to the days of Dukes of Hazzard and Smokey and the Bandit? How did cops become the good guys?
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Jun 12, 2020 03:35
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I think a lot of the people who thought that was cool got older and bought houses and now are merely human shaped shells powered entirely by anxiety about property values.
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Jun 12, 2020 03:40
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OwlFancier posted:Sort of, there is violence between people where both of the people are not the police, but that, too, interacts with the police system. The police system is symptomatic and reinforcing of the concept of punitive justice, whereby violence is answered with greater violence. So say someone loses their temper and throws a punch, or even kills someone, is it a good idea to put them in prison for decades? Is the way the prison operates likely to help them even if you have a shorter sentence? Is this a crime that could be "deterred" by higher sentencing? I would suggest no for all of those. Some crimes are just not preventable by heavier policing or other manifestations of carceral justice. But you could try to examine why people lose their temper, is it drinking? Are they drinking because drug laws prohibit less dangerous drugs? Is it because of problems at work? Could those problems be resolved by better working conditions or better pay? Is it because of problems at home? Are those rooted in financial problems? Is it a case of domestic violence? Could the victim have been helped by having more economic freedom and services to let them be independent of the person who assaulted or killed them? This is art of what I was trying to get at, folks, I am not a public servant, I've never worked in government nor have I been a landlord or a full time teacher, but I have worked in call centers, have been a pizza delivery driver, small business owner, and part time teacher in all neighborhoods of my city(Portland, OR). I've worked with people of all ages and from all backgrounds, , my brother is hospitalized with a delusional disorder rather like schizophrenia so I've spent a fair amount of time in mental hospitals and halfway houses. I've been in a number of conflicts and arguments in various situations, I'm 36 years old. I have literally never had a conflict with someone that required me to threaten them with the police, I've been punched and punched back, but only a couple times, I've argued, had to kick people out of businesses, take verbal abuse, and so on. I've called the cops exactly once, using the non emergency line to do a wellness check on a homeless guy who had been lying still across the street from my shop for a few hours. Turns out he was fine, and looking back on it now I realize that I could have killed that man. I should have risked a shoplifter and checked on him my drat self rather than send a guy with a gun to look at him. But I was more ignorant then. I've been in a few hairy situations, none of which would have been improved by a man with a gun and the power to ruin a life added to it. I've resolved many disputes without needing to suggest that violence should be necessary, both me and the people I am arguing with both were not willing to escalate to that level. Part of that is out of fear sure, but most of that is due to the fact that most people, even some who are literally insane and think they are vampires and hearing the voice of satan telling them to kill, don't want to kill someone and will do almost anything to avoid that. We avoid that by using our vast resources to tackle the real problems, the rear end in a top hat who won't turn down their music is probably either unaware or has another reason for it, maybe not, but we find that out first, the drug dealers are unlikely to be dealing because they dreamed of doing so ever since they were kids. The homeless guy yelling at god on the corner is homeless for a reason, fix those issues and we don't need law enforcement. The idea that all conflict resolution needs to be backed by the threat of force is ridiculous, in general we want to be part of our communities and for other people to like us. That doesn't change just because there isn't a man with a gun telling us we have to. Right now we live in a world where violence is literally a phone call away, I can, using my power of having a cell phone, dramatically increase the odds of any situation turning into a blood bath, that should be terrifying to everyone. The fact is, most people aren't hateful monsters barely held in check by the thin blue line. We resolve disputes because we generally, at our core, don't want to fight. We want our basic needs to be met and to feel like we have a chance to improve our lots in life. The police and carceral state are directly antithetical to that. Without them as an option we can focus on resolving the real reasons for conflicts. I realize that there will always be exceptions to that general rule, and we should be prepared for them, but how many of those exceptions need a man with a gun right this second? Look at a bank robbery, banks are insured anyway and have a bunch of ways of tracking money, there are cameras everywhere, do we need to put a bunch of guys with guns around the building and turn it into a siege? Or could the perhaps be resolved with negotiation or simply by following the culprits and catching them later? Or perhaps a rape or other assault in progress, in the unlikely event that the police arrive while it is still ongoing, how much more likely is a gun to resolve it safely as opposed to using hands to pull the assailant away? Almost any crime doesn't really need such urgency or danger involved. There will be times, rare though they are, that we'll need someone with a gun to help. Those bank robbers I mentioned will have to be brought in at some point after all, and we also have the odd spree killer here in the states anyway. For that we will need a tactical team or something like it. But there should almost be no other time when that is even on the table. Those are exceptions and should be treated as such, not the standard of preparedness. I think that the possibility of a person choosing to escalate a minor disagreement into a fatal one instantly is rare enough that it shouldn't be the basic consideration for when force is available.
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Jun 12, 2020 06:34
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I think the protests are a pretty good example honestly. You've got massive numbers of people who are angry and explicitly refusing police control, and yet they aren't killing each other, they aren't beating each other up, they're helping each other, looking out for each other, their ire is directed pretty clearly towards the instigators of violence in their lives, and it isn't each other. If people were fundamentally violent and not interested in forming bonds with each other you would not see, constantly, all over the world, people organizing together en masse to reject the authority of the cops and their governments. And that's with the state often deliberately trying to spread strife among them. The original civil rights movement is an incredible example of what can be achieved by people on their own even in the face of fearsome aggression by the authorities. I saw the mayor of... I think it was minneapolis? Stand in the middle of a crowd of protests and say he wouldn't defund the cops, and they booed him, and then they cleared a path and told him to leave. Like a thousand angry people around a guy who basically just said "gently caress you" to their entire cause, the guy who is in no small part responsible for their suffering, and they just told him to go away and let him. I do not think people are inherently antisocial.
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Jun 12, 2020 06:58
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Pustulio posted:The idea that all conflict resolution needs to be backed by the threat of force is ridiculous, in general we want to be part of our communities and for other people to like us. That doesn't change just because there isn't a man with a gun telling us we have to. Right now we live in a world where violence is literally a phone call away, I can, using my power of having a cell phone, dramatically increase the odds of any situation turning into a blood bath, that should be terrifying to everyone. I don't have time to give all your post justice, but I just wanted to point that if police are removed, there is still the threat of force in conflict resolution, it's just that it will be personal force and not the state's. The subtext of interactions will still be, at the end of the day, "please get along with the rest of the community or someone is going to beat the poo poo out of you." Or remove you from the community, or whatever.
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Jun 12, 2020 08:11
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Let me just somewhat boost my old country: "Use of force training doesn't begin in Finland until four months into the curriculum, when a Minneapolis police rookie would already be awarded their badge and gun. Before that, students learn about "legislation, criminal law, human rights, and other backgrounds," said Rikander." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-training-weeks-united-states/ In Finland, policing is a three year degree that includes mental health studies, social work, and other similar topics.
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Jun 12, 2020 08:27
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CelestialScribe posted:I don't have time to give all your post justice, but I just wanted to point that if police are removed, there is still the threat of force in conflict resolution, it's just that it will be personal force and not the state's. The subtext of interactions will still be, at the end of the day, "please get along with the rest of the community or someone is going to beat the poo poo out of you." Or remove you from the community, or whatever. You are correct and I admitted that, but since our particular problem right now is the fact that the states use of force in conflict resolution is currently the major problem, I am comfortable dealing with the other thing as it arises, and I don't think it will arise as often as people fear.
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Jun 12, 2020 13:13
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Vahakyla posted:Let me just somewhat boost my old country: Crossposting from finnthread. Use of firearms by the finnish police: From left to right Year, How many times guns were used, Guns used as a threat, How many shots were fired, How many shots were warning shots, How many killed & how many wounded. 
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Jun 12, 2020 14:28
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adhuin posted:Crossposting from finnthread. Very informative thanks for posting. For everyone's reference the closest analogous US State is most likely Colorado in population and population density - still impressive.
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Jun 12, 2020 16:51
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silence_kit posted:If what police departments are doing now is not government corruption, but is instead government working as intended, doesn't that undermine the entire idea of using the government to improve the lives of people? If the only use of law enforcement that you could ever imagine is to brutalize the weak, and not to enforce justice, then why would you ever want to expand the power of government? Why aren't you both hardcore libertarians? (Maybe you are, and I'm just projecting normal progressive beliefs onto you?) This is just 0 difference between good and bad things
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Jun 12, 2020 17:40
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