a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by b_b
b_b  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

I right with you. I'm for active reparations and an official government apology for slavery and Jim Crow and red lining, etc. I don't have high hopes for the prospect of any of these things. But in the interim I need to be convinced a bit more about cutting the police entirely.





katakowsj  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·  
This comment has been deleted.
ilex  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The thing is, the police as you are imagining them here do not exist. If they did, we wouldn't have all these protests and police violence. You're not wrong for wanting something like you imagine, but given how bad things are and how resistant policing has been to any reforms, I don't think you're going to get it until you abolish the police.

katakowsj  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Agreed on the reparations and acknowledgement of all the garbage that folks of color deal and have dealt with. There are some challenging conversations to be had here. Our police forces have to work from the model that physical force is the absolute last option and are held to the standard that they must demonstrate so in every interaction with the public.

I'm definitely not for defunding or removing the police, just for exploring an entire remodel of the police force that we're used to. Why carry deadly force on your hip daily? Is is truly necessary to carry that power with you? Can we have highly educated and skilled officers that act as social workers to a great degree? Officers that can identify members of the public that need to be connected with a social service that can help them navigate a particularly tough time in their life? Can we rid ourselves of our for-profit prison system?

I think it's possible. We've got a long way to go and a boatload of challenging discussions to get there. I think the quote attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” fits well in this situation.

ilex  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why not just have social workers? Do they need to be cops at all? Why not take money from police departments who are poorly doing too many things and spend that on infrastructure and social programs that actually do a good job of taking care of people?

b_b  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There are a lot of things hat can be done through policy changes that have nothing to do with the police per se (at least in terms of regulating their person-to-person interactions), but that would affect greatly how the police behave. For example, let's make it illegal to do asset forfeiture and to impose onerous court fees on civil infractions, as well as to bar any money generated by court fees and asset forfeiture to be used as operating revenue (it is the disgusting truth that some courts have to "self-fund"; the legal system is ostensibly for public protection, so it needs to be funded by the public at large, full stop). And let's make it illegal for employers to be able to see civil infractions and misdemeanors on a background check, and do something about aggressive credit monitoring by employers as well. All these things can be abused by the legal system and they lead to keeping poor people (black and otherwise) poor. I guess some of my frustration has been that so many of the root causes about why the police can act with impunity come down to money, plain and simple. We need to solve those money problems in parallel with police reform or it will amount to lip service and nothing more. That's my worry when we just say, "fuck the police" and we're done.

ilex  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I certainly agree that these are all problems that need to get addressed regardless of what we do with the cops!

    so many of the root causes about why the police can act with impunity come down to money, plain and simple.

This is begging for a socialist analysis of policing, but I'm not sure Hubski is ready for that and either way I'm certainly not the girl to do it. :)

Any police abolitionist who has put thought into it knows it's more complicated than just closing police departments. Abolition only works if you do it in tandem with building social services and abolishing mass incarceration, reforming laws that unjustly punish folks, developing non-punitive forms of justice, and so on. But that's a bit less catchy than "fuck the police", so it's not what you see on signs or Twitter :)

If you are interested in reading more, Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? and The End of Policing are both available as free e-books right now!

katakowsj  ·  1386 days ago  ·  link  ·  

These are all questions worth asking. I have yet to hear tangible arguments against them.

The high suicide rate among police also tells us that the profession needs redefining.