My guess is that the overwhelming majority of people like their local police department and prefer it to the county or state police. The fact is police brutality is the tip of a very long spear, and if every police department were abolished today almost nothing about racial inequality would change, since its roots are tied way more heavily into systematic exclusion of black people from participating in the economy. The police do an important job, and I sure as shit want to have the option of calling them if I need to, and the more local the better. I think what Minneapolis is doing is union busting, not police abolishing. There's a good case for the former, not so much the latter.
I dotted thy circle but I disagree. I called up my local skull-cracking cops up here in WA because my mother-in-law is beside herself with the smells coming from the next door neighbor. It definitely smelled chemical to me; I called the non-emergency number and had a squad car show up to discuss whether or not there was a meth lab next door. They respectfully informed me that there's no longer any money in meth, they haven't busted any meth labs in a couple years, and whatever smell was coming out of the house (which they smelled, and found disagreeable) wasn't probable cause. They suggested that my mother-in-law's best move was to talk to their landlord and see if she could get them thrown out for an illegal grow operation. My grandfather then contacted the landlord, discovered it was the landlord's grow operation, and went over to improve and close their hydroponic system such that it was no longer leaking. That's white people bein' white in a white community where all the players are white. Five years previously in LA, I was awoken by a rude banging on my door at 3am. I opened it to find two officers with guns drawn. They blanched at my whiteness, apologized for the disturbance, and mentioned politely that they had heard complaints of a domestic disturbance. When I frowned, they asked me my address and looked bashful (they had clearly screwed up). They then asked if I could please invite the lady of the house to come forth so that they could confirm that she wasn't in any distress. Bleary-eyed and confused, my then-fiancee popped her head out and the cops apologized and left. For the next fifteen minutes we heard them banging on doors and shouting at people. Two of my neighbors were hispanic. Three were black. I was once pulled over in Los Angeles by a young, new-on-the-job patrolman who, upon coming to my window, said "I'm sorry sir I didn't realize you were white" who then, stammering, asked to see my license and registration. When I asked him what I had been pulled over for he said "I confused you with somebody else." In the grand scheme of things, my encounters with cops have been largely congenial - even when I was a punk-ass kid singled out by name by the police chief. On the other hand, my friend with the long hair, baja jacket and goatee was forced to stand in a stress position for 45 minutes because he looked Native American (he's more Jewish than I am). The same guys who helped me out with my mother-in-law's non-methlab? Used a battering ram on the door of a daycare by mistake. I think the majority of white people never encounter Cops Behaving Badly because the cops default to best-behavior against white people. On the other hand, people of color get to see the cops doing whatever the fuck they want. Fundamentally, everyone needs "public safety officers" but the officers charged with that task have a demonstrated predilection to define "public" in ways that are disadvantageous to all but the privileged.
I successfully used the police to get my dad to turn down his fucking Jimmy Buffet he was blasting out of his outdoor speakers Other than that I've had no positive experience outside of getting off with a warning, but one of those times it was after being detained and having them search my car because they were bored. I also had another warning that would have ended with me being dumped across the county line if they saw me again.
No where did I call the state of policing good for everyone. I said it's the "tip of a very long spear", by which I meant that the underlying root cause of racial inequality goes back a very long way, and until we address those causes no amount of police reform is going to make our racial problems disappear. I'm not sure what can, but I think that a prerequisite is access to the courts, which poor people in general and black people in particular just don't have. I can sue if a cop roughs me up, because (A) I have money, and (B) I'd more than likely be looked at as a credible witness. Without both of those the court system will get you nowhere. And if you don't have access to the courts, the cops will continue to act however they want. There are too much data out there about how shitty people act when there aren't any consequences to think otherwise. (As a digression, when I was 16 I was a witness in a case in which the cops had broken into a buddy's house and then charged him with a bunch of drug stuff. After my testimony, which I'm sure was horribly weak since I was 16 going against a career prosecutor, the judge (it was a bench trial) openly said, "Ok I'm not considering your testimony." It was pretty surreal. But in the court's eye a good witness looks a certain way and bad witness looks another way. You can be a good or a bad witness of either color, but it's orders of magnitude easier if you're white.) I'm 100% in favor of police reforms, hence my comment about union busting, which I wouldn't make about any other government union. I just think that you can't willy-nilly abolish departments, or even make everything seem like the cops' fault. It will get you no where. What black people need more than anything is intergenerational wealth, which the New Deal made possible for many white families, while "legally" excluding blacks (and when black families tried to sue after the passage of the Fair Housing Act the Supreme Court was like, "That was legal then so you didn't actually suffer any reparable harm."). Again, definitely on the side of reforms, but they will be hollow without much deeper economic justice. That's a way bigger problem to solve, so I guess I consider myself pretty pessimistic here.
I don't think this assumption should be unchallenged. Cops mostly associate with cops. The reinforcement for their behavior comes from other cops. They are on an adversarial footing against everyone but other cops, but when interacting with people who aren't cops, they show deference to those who aren't minorities, poor, or riding skateboards. The problem is, if you have a bull that acts aggressively towards red and passively towards blue, and you collect statistics of all the altercations involving the bull, you will have amassed an impressive dataset indicating the combative nature of red. Certainly: there are underlying causes for the bull hating red but if you're the bull, every time you see red you need to kick ass. So yeah - I agree with you. There are problems much deeper than the cops. But the cops are still a problem even in splendid isolation. I mean - 60% of police departments have SWAT teams. So now you have militarized combat troops sitting around waiting for a reason to go out and throw flashbangs. I watch this on the coptercams as they fly around looking for news - they'll see a SWAT partyvan with twenty guys huddled behind it and they'll hang around to watch. Then they'll go back over the scanner logs to see what they're about to watch and invariably, it's some low-level drug warrant. The problem is: if you don't have a SWAT team do you execute a low-level drug warrant? Fucking of course you do. But if you do have a SWAT team, are you going to execute a low-level drug warrant without a SWAT team? Fucking of course you aren't. You're going to minimize any chance for harm to your officers while also justifying the very large tank-shaped hole in your budget. So now look - you need a SWAT team because you've been using it daily. And I mean - we can pass legislation that says "No use of SWAT in anything but an active shooter situation" and now we're against law and order and we've got all this SWAT shit sitting around doing nothing. We could probably even pass legislation that creates a "public safety division" who don't carry guns and only roll out to domestic disturbances or lost dog calls but the minute you put in any disclaimer about "unless there might be a gun in the house" there will always be a gun in the house and now there's a gun in the house so fuckin' hell let's roll SWAT. I agree: there are a lot of problems of inequality and prejudice that aren't rooted in the police departments. But there are a lot of problems that are.I said it's the "tip of a very long spear", by which I meant that the underlying root cause of racial inequality goes back a very long way, and until we address those causes no amount of police reform is going to make our racial problems disappear.
I don't think we're disagreeing. I think all I'm saying is that police violence happens because it's allowed to happen, because laws are only as good as their enforcement. Let's pass every law we can to hold people accountable. But in the end laws don't hold people accountable, people hold people accountable with laws as a backstop. And people hold people accountable by being litigious as fuck. There's no chance the police are going to police themselves, so unless there's civil recourse for victims to hold individual bad actors to account, then we're going to get nowhere. I don't see anyone behaving themselves without deeper structural reforms. I don't see structural reforms without, say, reparations. I don't know what form reparations take. Obviously affirmative action was a flop, especially since it gave way to "diversity". I don't know what else you can do short of forcing landlords to sell their properties to the government, who can then guarantee forgivable loans or something to the renters. I don't know. We need the police. We need the police to behave better. We can't accomplish both of these things without some deep changes that go beyond putting a couple cops in jail for murdering people. I'm talking through this to try to understand myself better, too, FYI.
Yeah we're largely on the same page. I think where we differ is that I see the short-term utility of pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL on police departments simply because it allows you to go "we're doing something else now" while also letting it be known that "starting over" is a viable management strategy.
“911, whats your emergency.” When someone needs help, they call the police. If it’s a fire or a medical issue, you bet your ass a cruiser will get there before the ambulance or the firetruck. Domestic violence, personal injuries, any and all crime, unsavory characters watching your kids at the park, swaths of other things you never bothered to know how to solve because you never thought it would happen to you, drunk drivers, 9/11, the rabid raccoon in your smalltown NJ basement, school shooters and the crack den down the street. Do not confuse people whose lives and troubles aren’t salient to you with the lack of necessity for those people to exist. The necessity of law enforcement lends itself to possibilities outside of the status quo, sure. But the necessity itself is something you’re all too fond to debate until you call 911 and no one picks up.
Actually at least where I live the police will arrive last to file the paperwork - maybe - if they show up at all. Fire will come in and defuse the fight medical will come in and treat everyone and police well they might show up to arrest. I’m not saying we don’t need a police force, we definitely do just not one that’s unaccountable to anyone and that has a legal obligation to actually protect.
No arguments there. It's a shame you can't rely on your guys and I hope things get shaken up real quick for that precinct; I wonder how far your vote goes in your district re: the police chief or commissioner, your mayor, and so on. Again, The necessity itself is something you’re all too fond to debate until you call 911 and no one picks up.
This is a salient point. My county's sheriff of 23 years lost election last year because he had enacted a policy of keeping low-level drug offenders out of jail for the crime of being high. he had fired two officers whose policy was cracking skulls. In the election, the 'law and order' candidate stoked fears that if he didn't win, the current sheriff would launch a pogrom against all cops who wanted to "carry out the law". So the skull cracker won by 56% and rehired his skull-cracking friends. Lotta white people up here.I wonder how far your vote goes in your district re: the police chief or commissioner, your mayor, and so on.
Whities be whitin', indubitably. The follow-on question to how far your vote goes, is what the criteria ought to be for placing backstops and speedbumps in a pure democracy for the greater social good. When and how do we say, "despite your fair and equal election, we're gonna do it this way." Is there a way to do that, without civil unrest and lives endangered and lost, when a majority of people in a locality clearly support the status quo.
I enjoy beating up Milton Friedman and his acolytes for his belief that if people truly cared about the environment, they'd pass better laws protecting it. The fundamental issue is that "tyranny of the majority" is something explicitly warned against and protected against in the constitution, yet whenever a 50.009% majority votes for something, it's just the way it is and that's the law, suck it. Because fundamentally, we don't have a 'pure' democracy. We have a representational democracy and the allocation of districts and representation is undemocratic. If anything, I would say the past 150 years of politics have been an exploration in achieving undemocratic ends within an ostensibly democratic system. If a county is 51% catholic and 49% protestant and a vote is held as to whether protestants deserve to own property, there's a very real chance that the catholics are about to strike it rich. That's a "democratic" result but obviously not a humanitarian one. Things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exist because tools beyond pure democracy are necessary in order to provide a fair and humane quality of life for the minority but without teeth they're just aspirational. The issues we're seeing here are that (1) the public can agree that cracking skulls is bad (2) The police can pass legislation that cracking skulls is bad (3) the mayor can issue specific decrees that cracking skulls is bad but (4) the cops can still crack skulls and go "what are you going to fucking do about it?" And the lack-of-answer is driving a lot of the protests right now.
I think you nailed it, well said.
Let's get you back to that other thread where you couldn't think of a single reason we'd need law enforcement.
I'm only commenting because I don't have the discipline to give you the last word two threads in a row, when your words are so poorly chosen. For the record, I'm the fool for letting you get to me. I wish I believed in muting. Here is the mission statement of your own state's police department. Here I've googled "Why do we need police." Here is a website that teaches you how to vote if you have a specific problem within the borders in which you are a constituent. I would advise you not to indulge in voting for the sake of all that is good in this country, but it would be uncivil of me to do so. That said, I truly hope that if you ever do vote, that it ignite your seemingly disparate awareness about the people who serve you. Edit: lest you continue to go in circles, I'll do it for you this time and re-write what I wrote:The necessity of law enforcement lends itself to possibilities outside of the status quo, sure. But the necessity itself is something you’re all too fond to debate until you call 911 and no one picks up.
You’re right that voting is not the only democratic mechanic. Without mass, its not a quickly-satisfying one either for any disgruntled citizen. That was a bit of a cop-out on my part for the sake of the rule of threes. I know you know that the Stonewall riots are not what gave you the rights you enjoy, so I’m going to let that slide because I get what you’re trying to say. I think the way you’re speaking about public safety and the men and women who ensure them, in general terms, is horrific and sparks an emotional response that I’m embarrassed to stoop to your level to engage in, but here we are. That said, I understand that the reason you’re writing this way is because you’re outraged, but I expect that you understand that words matter regardless of how much steam is blowing out of your ears; your inability to speak responsibly doesnt forfeit your right to “complain on the internet” but it certainly forfeits the expectation of respect, and reduces it to pity. I promise you we’re on the same side. But this is no way to go about solving a problem. I hope you don’t delete your comments and can reckon with yourself in some time from now, when you’re emotionally deescalated and maybe even in need of help from public service, in whatever capacity or similarity to the status quo it shapes itself to be after all this.
The riots did not give us protection under law, or constitution. They gave America an un-ignorable reminder that the LGBT community has been oppressed (including legally) and abused (including legally) in NYC and across the country. It’s not an accident that the protests today accomplish the same regarding the oppression of people of color. Rioting is an expensive but effective tool for awareness. But I’m not so sure it helps cops beat civilians less, or defend gay nightclubs from predatory mob bosses and denial of healthcare. My point is that action within the municipal and higher govt systems, and the force of unified constituents, pushed the system into a safer place despite itself after the fact, and there is no guarantee that rioting is causal to change, or beneficial in any way. If a group of people feel entitled to catharsis, so be it, but they ought to be accountable and admit their intention outright. I haven’t fleshed this reasoning out yet to be frank, but I hope you see my point. Regardless this is really beside the point here and I don’t want to fight you on semantics either because I prefer not enter “youre not wrong, youre just an asshole” territory. For the record, I’m not in the military because I believe “violence solves problems.” Violence causes pain, and death, as intended. Nothing more. To attribute progress to violence is to forfeit any semblance of reason to coexist as humans in any meaningful way; there’s a reason governments depend on a monopoly of violence to legitimize their sovereignty. Not that it matters, but I joined because I’d rather be the one accountable and held responsible for the management of violence than anyone else. This is my way of bearing the full burden of our social contract in a manner that leaves no room for false justification or pageantry. My oath includes the responsibility to disobey an order that is unlawful, unethical, or otherwise patently ill intended.
Well if you can’t be grateful for law enforcement, then at least count yourself lucky. The fact that you only see them at the local Dunkin’ on the quiet side of town means you don’t go where they might be called that day, hoping they get to make it to dinner back home.
Police work is less dangerous than you think it is relative to other jobs, and encouraging cops' action movie fantasies to the contrary might have something to do with their itchy trigger fingers. Besides which, the article itself says they're not going without law enforcement, just that they're replacing the police department with a ' “community-led” public safety program'. Most likely they're overstating a reform that's going to move their policing more in line with saner countries in the hopes that protesters will think they've gotten a bigger concession than they have and be satisfied.
Yep, you’re right. My spicy discussion with this guy was about the core function of public safety in a state-sponsored capacity, as in whether it should even exist. I implicitly included community-led alternatives in my first comment, I guess I should state that overtly. The Hollywood point is really important. The reason I used those examples and the follow-on language (the dinner, etc.) was to emphasize just how dramatic the role of law enforcement has been/could be historically and presently, in a salient way that he could understand and relate to, so calling movies to mind helps get the message across. I’m aware that more people lose a leg on an oil rig than in Blues, but that’s not really the point here just to be clear.
I see this is an emotional topic for you. I wonder if you'd read your comment out loud to a cop (lets say, chosen at random) at his dinner table, when he's out of his uniform, in front of his family. If you would, then I'm truly sorry you feel this way, and I hope you see the light of day sometime soon.