Do we even need police?

[Cereskia]

...

[San Lumen]

What’s wrong with anything I proposed?

I'm not gonna go in circles with you again, look back at pages 1 and 2 for the answers.

It’s not going in circles when you refuse to address an inquiry. Abolition isn’t the answer and never will be.

Therefore I ask again what’s wrong with anything I proposed?

[Nilokeras]

The best argument in favour of abolishing the police beyond their rotten institutional cultures is that modern western police services have absorbed multiple roles, like mental health crisis responders, paramilitary security and bylaw enforcement for local governments. Abolishing police forces doesn't mean replacing them with nothing, but rather spinning off those roles into smaller agencies and preventing the sort of mission creep that comes with having a gigantic portfolio of responsibilities and a long history of complicity in race and labour crime.

[Unstoppable Empire of Doom]

However, in practice this has rarely been the case in countries around the world. Instead, cases abound where police have failed to complete their duties, and instead not only bring harm to their communities through brutalising and terrorising their residents through beatings and sexual assault, continuously place business interests above the common people's, and preserving property instead of lives among others.

You should really go talk to some police. Maybe even go on a ridealong. You might see a cop beat an innocent man.... or more likely break up a domestic dispute. Probably explain mandatory arrest laws. Do a bunch of paperwork. Pull over a few people speeding. Then end her night waiting for a detective to show up at a robery.

Suffice to say police in wealthy nations tend to be very beneficial. Smaller nations especially. Police in poor nations are often corrupt.

[Resilient Acceleration]

Suffice to say police in wealthy nations tend to be very beneficial. Smaller nations especially. Police in poor nations are often corrupt.

My own country's police force is hopelessly corrupt, with strong clout to the business and political community. The previous police chief (who is now the incumbent interior minister) abused his position to smuggle crude oil on the southern sea. However, the alternative is a public security ran by organized thugs and Islamist mass organizations, completely unaccountable to both the public and the government. I'll keep the police, thanks.

[Mercatus]

Yes we do because I want motherfucking Live PD back. TV is boring as shit without it.

[The Imzadi Islands]

Prove it. Reform is better than abolition. How about more transparency by banning encryption of radios, established civilian review boards, encouraging community policing instead of turning people off with extremist rhetoric?

..because a lot of these ideas have been tried and failed, the issue is that the focus is always that the solution is to reform the police in some way without addressing fundamental underlying issues that the police are simply not equipped to deal with.

Take homelessness for example, what exactly can the police do other than move them somewhere else or arrest them, and if any resistance there's violence. None of your solutions address this. The police should not be in the business of managing homeless people. Or take drugs for example, which is generally the major cause of burglaries.. what is the benefit of making it a police problem in terms of arresting drug dealers, which thus leads to mass incarceration. Even domestic abuse, that pre-empts a major amount of murders.. the police can't do much unless the victim presses charges, which they're generally unlikely to do for fear of the consequences.. why are police managing this??

Violence and incarceration are the tools police have, throw police at a problem and you'll get greater violence and incarceration. Instead funding should be diverted to better housing, better drug treatment facilities and programs, better social services.

Fundamentally a lot more money should be diverted into modern, free and universal education and healthcare. That would solve 90% of issues societally. No one expects to eliminate crime so the question is what's the best means of reducing it?

Did you see the items listed in the latest US budget, the fucking waste.. no one can really say this isn't all very affordable given a degree of focus and not just throwing police at societal problems.

Well Bombadil, your doe eyed optimism about what a whole lot of free stuff from the government can do across-the-board for all the innumerable combinations of human frailties and attitudes could best be described as"sweet"/ Perhaps all men are created equal, but they start diverging about 10 seconds after that/ Perhaps you shouldn't take the concept so literally/ After millions of years of evolution and just 7000 years of civilization, the best we can say is that we've got better toys/ Human beings themselves haven't really changed at all since Sumer/ If you think that free healthcare, education, houses, or whatever, will be able to eliminate the unfortunate darkness that haunts the human soul; well, the women around here would say "Bless his heart!" Good luck to you!

[San Lumen]

Yes we do because I want motherfucking Live PD back. TV is boring as shit without it.

I want that show back because it provided transparency for police departments. Canceling it was a absolute travesty.

[Muralos]

..because a lot of these ideas have been tried and failed, the issue is that the focus is always that the solution is to reform the police in some way without addressing fundamental underlying issues that the police are simply not equipped to deal with.

Take homelessness for example, what exactly can the police do other than move them somewhere else or arrest them, and if any resistance there's violence. None of your solutions address this. The police should not be in the business of managing homeless people. Or take drugs for example, which is generally the major cause of burglaries.. what is the benefit of making it a police problem in terms of arresting drug dealers, which thus leads to mass incarceration. Even domestic abuse, that pre-empts a major amount of murders.. the police can't do much unless the victim presses charges, which they're generally unlikely to do for fear of the consequences.. why are police managing this??

Violence and incarceration are the tools police have, throw police at a problem and you'll get greater violence and incarceration. Instead funding should be diverted to better housing, better drug treatment facilities and programs, better social services.

Fundamentally a lot more money should be diverted into modern, free and universal education and healthcare. That would solve 90% of issues societally. No one expects to eliminate crime so the question is what's the best means of reducing it?

Did you see the items listed in the latest US budget, the fucking waste.. no one can really say this isn't all very affordable given a degree of focus and not just throwing police at societal problems.

Well Bombadil, your doe eyed optimism about what a whole lot of free stuff from the government can do across-the-board for all the innumerable combinations of human frailties and attitudes could best be described as "sweet." Perhaps all men are created equal, but they start diverging about 10 seconds after that. Perhaps you shouldn't take the concept so literally/ After millions of years of evolution and just 7000 years of civilization, the best we can say is that we've got better toys. Human beings themselves haven't really changed at all since Sumer. If you think that free healthcare, education, houses, or whatever, will be able to eliminate the unfortunate darkness that haunts the human soul. well, the women around here would say "Bless his heart!" Good luck to you!

Oof. One may argue, though, that 1) it's within the means of the United States' government and 2) it's worth a try. :')

[Bombadil]

..because a lot of these ideas have been tried and failed, the issue is that the focus is always that the solution is to reform the police in some way without addressing fundamental underlying issues that the police are simply not equipped to deal with.

Take homelessness for example, what exactly can the police do other than move them somewhere else or arrest them, and if any resistance there's violence. None of your solutions address this. The police should not be in the business of managing homeless people. Or take drugs for example, which is generally the major cause of burglaries.. what is the benefit of making it a police problem in terms of arresting drug dealers, which thus leads to mass incarceration. Even domestic abuse, that pre-empts a major amount of murders.. the police can't do much unless the victim presses charges, which they're generally unlikely to do for fear of the consequences.. why are police managing this??

Violence and incarceration are the tools police have, throw police at a problem and you'll get greater violence and incarceration. Instead funding should be diverted to better housing, better drug treatment facilities and programs, better social services.

Fundamentally a lot more money should be diverted into modern, free and universal education and healthcare. That would solve 90% of issues societally. No one expects to eliminate crime so the question is what's the best means of reducing it?

Did you see the items listed in the latest US budget, the fucking waste.. no one can really say this isn't all very affordable given a degree of focus and not just throwing police at societal problems.

Well Bombadil, your doe eyed optimism about what a whole lot of free stuff from the government can do across-the-board for all the innumerable combinations of human frailties and attitudes could best be described as"sweet"/ Perhaps all men are created equal, but they start diverging about 10 seconds after that/ Perhaps you shouldn't take the concept so literally/ After millions of years of evolution and just 7000 years of civilization, the best we can say is that we've got better toys/ Human beings themselves haven't really changed at all since Sumer/ If you think that free healthcare, education, houses, or whatever, will be able to eliminate the unfortunate darkness that haunts the human soul; well, the women around here would say "Bless his heart!" Good luck to you!

Well Imzadi.. my reading comprehension challenged compadre, once again I did not say 'eliminate' as opposed to 'identified, addressed and managed'. There are societies with extremely low crime rates due to civil minded societies. As I said, this is not purely for the government to solve as a government can solve little without it's counterpart in terms of those governed.

In addition it's not that we just have better tools, we less leave the world to the whims of imagined gods and have greater understanding of deductive and evidenced based reasoning. At least we are far better equipped and much to do with the massive increase in people who can read, reason and rationalise due to massive increase in education.

So yes, I do believe in the power of proper, invested and modern education to greatly improve issues in society. And I do believe proper, invested and modern healthcare, not just medical but also support services, can provide far better solutions to things such as violence or addiction than the police.

It's not a dewy eyed optimistic view of humanity but an essentially rational understanding of the issues and potential solutions to basic problems.

It's not an overnight issue and it's not one I would want proscribed upon a population. I prefer equal democracy to arrive at this point of understanding, but then equal democracy needs to be founded on an equally well-educated and healthy population. That is why I place those as a fundamental starting point.

Inasmuch as people can be far too optimistic about human nature there are also those so pessimistic that they throw up their hands and say 'this is just the way it is', and not exploring the potential for human's to be better, which we have generally consistently been doing for quite a while. We don't like slavery, we don't wed off women underage, we generally accept colonialism of people we consider lesser to be a bad thing, we tend to send less of our young male population off to some dumbass war..

..so don't tell me humanity cannot devise better solutions than throwing an armed force at social problems.

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

There will always be a need for some form of law enforcement as long as there are shitty human beings out there who rape, murder, burn, destroy and otherwise cause malicious harm to others.

[Bahia Roja]

There will always be a need for some form of law enforcement as long as there are shitty human beings out there who rape, murder, burn, destroy, and otherwise cause malicious harm to others.

Sure. But, why do we need to put murderers and rapists in the same category as drug users and homeless people? Why do we give a single institution control over both mentally unstable people and arsonists?

[The Reformed American Republic]

There will always be a need for some form of law enforcement as long as there are shitty human beings out there who rape, murder, burn, destroy, and otherwise cause malicious harm to others.

Sure. But, why do we need to put murderers and rapists in the same category as drug users and homeless people? Why do we give a single institution control over both mentally unstable people and arsonists?

They should get out of mental health calls, but they shouldn't be abolished.

[Muralos]

Right, police everywhere serve to protect the state and its interests, not us.

This still gives me pause. What would it mean to protect the state and its interests? To enforce racial and social hierarchies? To criminalize poverty and a host of other things that shouldn't be criminalized? Which results in the state's interests being served (i.e. the majority-white bourgeoisie being on top), if those are, in fact, their interests? (I doubt that, too, as my faith in humanity will not allow me to whole-heartedly accept that claim...)

I see how the police often ends up doing such things, but... I don't know if that is the police's official modus operandi. Nor do I think individuals become police officers with that in mind (though their actions can still yield the effects I listed above).

Also, I need to answer the question: in my view, we do need police in the United States, but not an extremely militarized one, not one that wrongly prioritizes arresting/detaining a human being over the preservation of their life (as I believe the officers who shot Jacob Blake did), not one that prescribes violence and incarceration for actions that aren't rectified by violence and incarceration. I think I agree with Reformed American Public's post above.

In the United States, police need to be held accountable through the end of qualified immunity (in turn, measures that ensure the courts are transparent and unbiased...) and penalties on officers who turn off their body cameras or tamper with camera footage. [note: not my own ideas, lol, but proposals I found promising.] The police have been capable of corruption and wrongdoing, and they need to be held to account for that. Public servants in the United States really shouldn't turn a blind eye.

Perhaps I need to read further to understand why abolitionists don't think the system can't be checked by such measures... or one of you can enlighten me here (I would be extremely grateful!!!)... but I believe these are important things that could make a large difference. I will be reading Alex S. Vitale's The End of Policing, too.

[The Lone Alliance]

Here's the thing.

Doctors kill an untold number of people each year because of careless mistakes, incompetence, and in rare cases outright maliciousness.

Sometimes even in rare cases it's possible that racism and sexism could even be a factor in deciding how well a doctor does their job in their life.

Most of the time they simply pay off the victim's families and in rare cases they get judged and removed from power.

So in the light that Doctors sometimes kill people because of incompetence should we abolish doctors and go back to faith healing?

No because we realized that while there are problems with the health industry there really isn't anything that much better to replace it with.

[Bahia Roja]

Here's the thing.

Doctors kill an untold number of people each year because of careless mistakes, incompetence, and in rare cases outright maliciousness.

Sometimes even in rare cases it's possible that racism and sexism could even be a factor in deciding how well a doctor does their job in their life.

Most of the time they simply pay off the victim's families and in rare cases they get judged and removed from power.

So in the light that Doctors sometimes kill people because of incompetence should we abolish doctors and go back to faith healing?

Doctors are held accountable for the mistakes they make. Especially if those mistakes endangered or ended a human life. This is not true however when we are talking about law enforcement. Not a valid comparison.

[Ard al Islam]

Police are often seen as something necessary to protect lives, prevent crime, and preserve order. However, in practice this has rarely been the case in countries around the world.

x doubt

[Picairn]

Police is still a must. Can a mental health department be equipped and trained to deal with gangs and violent criminals? In my country, gangs occasionally take to the streets with knives and machetes, sometimes even guns, to solve disputes. Unarmed civilians can do nothing but hide to save their own lives, and that's where the police step in to ensure public order and safety.

[Muralos]

Here's the thing.

Doctors kill an untold number of people each year because of careless mistakes, incompetence, and in rare cases outright maliciousness.

Sometimes even in rare cases it's possible that racism and sexism could even be a factor in deciding how well a doctor does their job in their life.

Most of the time they simply pay off the victim's families and in rare cases they get judged and removed from power.

So in the light that Doctors sometimes kill people because of incompetence should we abolish doctors and go back to faith healing?

No because we realized that while there are problems with the health industry there really isn't anything that much better to replace it with.

So, perhaps police officers don't need to vanish as a profession, but they need similar amounts of accountability and stricter standards in the United States- as doctors in the nation have AFAIK. Curious about Bombadil and Sanghyeok's thoughts.

[Bahia Roja]

Police is still a must. Can a mental health department be equipped and trained to deal with gangs and violent criminals? In my country, gangs occasionally take to the streets with knives and machetes, sometimes even guns, to solve disputes. Unarmed civilians can't do nothing but hide to save their own lives, and that's where the police step in to ensure public order and safety.

I think the principal focus of this whole ordeal shouldn't be stopping current gangs and violent criminals, although it is clearly important for capable and competent people to do so. The main focus here should be the circumstances that led to gangs to become as powerful as they are and correct them so it doesn't happen again and for that, we definitely do not need a militarized agency stepping in to ensure "public order".

[The Greater Ohio Valley]

There will always be a need for some form of law enforcement as long as there are shitty human beings out there who rape, murder, burn, destroy, and otherwise cause malicious harm to others.

Sure. But, why do we need to put murderers and rapists in the same category as drug users and homeless people? Why do we give a single institution control over both mentally unstable people and arsonists?

Did I lump drug users in with murders, rapists or arsonists? No I did not, since I’m very pro-legalization and decriminalization of drugs

[Bombadil]

Here's the thing.

Doctors kill an untold number of people each year because of careless mistakes, incompetence, and in rare cases outright maliciousness.

Sometimes even in rare cases it's possible that racism and sexism could even be a factor in deciding how well a doctor does their job in their life.

Most of the time they simply pay off the victim's families and in rare cases they get judged and removed from power.

So in the light that Doctors sometimes kill people because of incompetence should we abolish doctors and go back to faith healing?

Doctors are held accountable for the mistakes they make. Especially if those mistakes endangered or ended a human life. This is not true however when we are talking about law enforcement. Not a valid comparison.

Not quite that, I'm sure it's perfectly possible for medical communities to hide issues and protect their own much as the police do. The difference lies in the purpose and tools. The purpose of doctors is to heal through skills and medicine. They do not choose who they heal as opposed to healing those who come to them.. well most places at least, in the US it may depend on your credit rating.. but still..

The purpose of the police is to incarcerate law breakers, and the tools they ultimately have is the threat of violence if any resistance. The choice of who they do this to is at the whim of whatever government they serve. If Duterte, for example, says 'kill anyone you think is a drug dealer' then so be it, if China says 'arrest anyone who criticises or protests the government', then so be it. Governments rarely say 'only treat people with salaries over 20K/year'.

In addition, if I have broken my leg it's not like I have to get a plumber to come around to fix it, I get the person best equipped to solve the situation.

Anyway..

[Bombadil]

Police is still a must. Can a mental health department be equipped and trained to deal with gangs and violent criminals? In my country, gangs occasionally take to the streets with knives and machetes, sometimes even guns, to solve disputes. Unarmed civilians can't do nothing but hide to save their own lives, and that's where the police step in to ensure public order and safety.

What would resolve the issue better:

1. Moar police!
2. Ending government corruption and elite rule, having strong government institutions in place that enforce equality before the law, lowering mass inequality through quality education and healthcare.. etc., etc.,

I suspect the latter myself.

[Stellar Colonies]

Whatever they are called and however varied their responsibilities, we'll still need some organization to enforce laws and public safety.

...although the current policing system in some parts of the US are responsible for things which are honestly beyond their purview and are riddled with issues. Similar problems in many other countries, no doubt.

[The Lone Alliance]

Here's the thing.

Doctors kill an untold number of people each year because of careless mistakes, incompetence, and in rare cases outright maliciousness.

Sometimes even in rare cases it's possible that racism and sexism could even be a factor in deciding how well a doctor does their job in their life.

Most of the time they simply pay off the victim's families and in rare cases they get judged and removed from power.

So in the light that Doctors sometimes kill people because of incompetence should we abolish doctors and go back to faith healing?

Doctors are held accountable for the mistakes they make. Especially if those mistakes endangered or ended a human life. This is not true however when we are talking about law enforcement. Not a valid comparison.

Not always and to claim that all law enforcement is never held accountable is an invalid comparison, Law enforcement is always forced to be accountable for any life they end, the problem is the level of accountablity.

Some people think cops shouldn't even have to write paper work for shooting people, others think that cops should get a capital murder charge for killing anyone, even if that person they killed was actively running around killing innocents.

Where as everyone agrees that if a Doctor leaves a sponge in someone that causes sepsis that's a major mistake.