Do we even need police?

[San Lumen]

Wanting to get rid of the police because some of them kill and brutalize innocents is like cutting your brake lines because they didn't stop your car fast enough. Reform them, don't disband them.

Wanting to abolish the police because of major systemic issues is more comparable to replaing your brake lines because someone thought hot gluing a garden hose down there would do the job.

And what do you want to replace it with? Mogadishu is a prefect example of what happens when you have no police.

Your extremist ideas are not going to come to fruition and it’s rhetoric like this that turns people of to supporting candidates you like.

[Sanghyeok]

Yes, we do. I've had my life saved by a cop, a community advocate couldn't have done the same for me I reckon.

That said, I'm a standard looking white guy. Many working-class people, black people, other people of color etc, they feel the full brunt of systemic classism and racism within Departments, and ordinary people regardless of color or creed can fall victim to an unjust police officer or an unjust Department. We need to work for police reform, abolish qualified immunity, and ultimately make sure that police officers need a college degree and a helluva lot more training.

In addition, the behemoths known as police unions need to be structurally reformed and weeded out of their frat-like mindset of unyielding allegiance to one another, especially when an individual commits some serious wrongdoings.

Our PDs in the US are often institutionally crooked, but the knee-jerk response would be to abolish them, but that simply isn't the logical or thought-provoking response. We can ultimately do a lot more with a lot less empty rhetoric. For those who say, too, "we can replace the police with (X)," you're ostensibly replacing them with, well, the police. Hence why PD and Court reforms make a lot more sense.

To be honest, I think its almost all classism over racism, as people like OJ Simpson are treated very well in jail and prison and by our criminal justice system. Class seems to be the thing that gets people out of trouble, not race. I'm not saying you won't find racism, but I think class plays a much bigger role. The wealthy can pay to get away but poor people pay the price.

My main motivation when writing this OP was classism in police systems around the world. Though certain elements of brutality are more prevalent in some places than others, in all nations police serves to protect interests of wealthy people, capital, and property.

[Sanghyeok]

Wanting to abolish the police because of major systemic issues is more comparable to replaing your brake lines because someone thought hot gluing a garden hose down there would do the job.

And what do you want to replace it with? Mogadishu is a prefect example of what happens when you have no police.

Your extremely ideas are not going to come to fruition and it’s rhetoric like this that turns people of to supporting candidates you like.

"All is interdependent in a civilized society; it is impossible to reform any one thing without altering the whole. Therefore, on the day we strike at private property, under any one of its forms, territorial or industrial, we shall be obliged to attack them all. The very success of the Revolution will demand it." (Kropotkin, 1892)

[Cordel One]

Wanting to abolish the police because of major systemic issues is more comparable to replaing your brake lines because someone thought hot gluing a garden hose down there would do the job.

And what do you want to replace it with? Mogadishu is a prefect example of what happens when you have no police.

Your extremely ideas are not going to come to fruition and it’s rhetoric like this that turns people of to supporting candidates you like.

We had this conversation before.

And whose going to enforce law and order? How about instead we reform the police and increase transparency such as banning encryption and encouraging community policy so their is a relationship with the community.

Your solution is not the answer.

Slowly abolish the police and most laws, replace it with a fully transparent volunteer force.

[San Lumen]

And what do you want to replace it with? Mogadishu is a prefect example of what happens when you have no police.

Your extremely ideas are not going to come to fruition and it’s rhetoric like this that turns people of to supporting candidates you like.

We had this conversation before.

Slowly abolish the police and most laws, replace it with a fully transparent volunteer force.

What laws would you keep? No one is going to do police work for free. Volunteer fire departments have a hard time recruiting and keeping people.

[Sanghyeok]

We had this conversation before.

What laws would you keep? No one is going to do police work for free. Volunteer fire departments have a hard time recruiting and keeping people.

Start by decriminalising laws around drugs, for instance.

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

I know I'm late to the party, but to answer the original question, emphatic yes. Of course there are issues in the police system, and there are rotten apples in there, but a few bad apples does not a corrupt system make. There can be local cops who are corrupt, and I'm sure some are paid off by slimy elites and politicians, but we shouldn't abolish the police system.

[Cordel One]

We had this conversation before.

What laws would you keep? No one is going to do police work for free. Volunteer fire departments have a hard time recruiting and keeping people.

And even still

in the status quo over 70% of firefighters are volunteers.

I think all the necessary laws should be rethought and rewritten with more focus on rehabilitation over punishment, and we should remove drug laws and most corporate protection.

[Sanghyeok]

I know I'm late to the party, but to answer the original question, emphatic yes. Of course there are issues in the police system, and there are rotten apples in there, but a few bad apples does not a corrupt system make. There can be local cops who are corrupt, and I'm sure some are paid off by slimy elites and politicians, but we shouldn't abolish the police system.

Except the problem is not localised, the system itself is corrupt. To quote Kowani:

First, to answer the question of "do we need police", we have to ask a different question: What do police do?
And the answer to that seems simple: "They enforce the law" "they catch criminals" "they uphold the state"
All of these are valid answers. So let us synthesize them: They uphold the state by enforcing the law by catching criminals. A bit wordy, perhaps, but it'll do.
The reservation most people have, when the question "should we have police" is that the police prevent crime, catch criminals, and generally work to prevent anarchy (the not fun kind). Often, some musing about "human nature" (a topic we shall return to later) accompanies it, the idea that without the police, we would fall into something very similar to Hobbes' state of nature, where the strong prey on the weak.
But what if I told you that was already our situation-and the police were partly responsible?

Take a guess, your best, at what percentage of crime the police solve. 40? 50? 60?
Would you accept a 60% failure rate? No? Good.
Because the police do even worse. The true clearance rate (crimes where a formal charge is laid) has been 10%. For the past 30 years. And the arrest rate, exactly the same. 10%. And it gets worse. When you take convictions into account, 41% of murderers got away scot-free, as did 88% of rapists, 96% of robbers, 93% of assailants, and 97% of burglars. Larceny was particularly bad, with the conviction rate not even reaching a full percent.
It's not for lack of effort, either. After all, the police only spend 4% of their time on violent crime. Most of their time is spent on either non-criminal calls or traffic work.
And despite these objectively terrible numbers, the amount of money America spends on policing continues to balloon, expanding year after year without stopping.

We spend this money on ever more militarized police forces, mostly to focus on average crimes. SWAT, for example, does not spend most of its time dealing with active violent situations, like hostage crises or snipers. Instead,62% of SWAT deployments are for drug searches, and 79% of all SWAT deployments are on the basis of a search warrant.
Imagine, if you will, being woken up at 6:00 a.m by a raid on your neighbor's home. Black-clad troopers, in military vehicles, deploying a distraction device, breaking the door down with a battering ram, all to find a small amount of marijuana.
Would you trust them to adequately respond to your concerns?
No?
You're not alone. Militarizing the police doesn't make them any better at their jobs-but it does make people trust them less. And-in a theme we'll return to, it disproportionately hurts minorities, even when you account for crime rates.
Truly, pillars of society.

And they make this worse.
Most of us, I assume, have heard of "civil asset forfeiture", where the police seize possessions without a trial, on the mere suspicion that you used it to commit a crime. Over the past 20 years, that gave the federal government a nice little boost of 40 Billion-and the state and local levels are even larger. In some years, they actually took more than burglars. And why wouldn't they? It's a powerful incentive, practically untouchable.
But does it make us safer? No. Not at all. In fact, just the opposite. The more the police focused on seizing property and collecting fines, the worse they got at actually solving crime.
Oh, and don't expect to get your stuff back, even if you're innocent, by the way. You don't just have to prove your innocence-you have to prove the officers' belief that it was being used in a crime to have been unreasonable.
Good luck with that.

Am I being too harsh on the police?
I don't think so. They protect themselves pretty well. After all, according to the police themselves, 62% of them don't always report serious criminal abuses by other cops, and 52% of them thought it was normal for police to outright ignore misconduct by their colleagues.
How can we expect them to police the streets when they can't even police themselves?
And even the rare case of an officer getting fired for abuses or criminal behaviour doesn't stop them-they'll just get a job at another department.

Much has been made of the idea that the police are racist, systemically so.
There are many examples we could use, such as the fact that blacks and latinos were more likely stopped and frisked, despite the fact that whites were more likely to have contraband, that minorities are less likely to receive a discount on their speeding ticket, or that the disparity in traffic stops entirely disappears at night (which, for the inevitable apologists, destroys both class and criminality arguments), etc.

But what if it went both ways? What if being a minority actually made it less likely your murder would be solved, or that the police would treat you with less respect when they interacted with you?
Wouldn't you find this whole system unfair, and deeply rotten?
I do.


I don't pretend to have a solution to the question of "so what do we replace the police with?"
At least, not yet.
My only goal here is to demonstrate that as it exists, the institution of policing is deeply nonfunctional, and needs to be replaced with something else.

[San Lumen]

What laws would you keep? No one is going to do police work for free. Volunteer fire departments have a hard time recruiting and keeping people.

And even still

in the status quo over 70% of firefighters are volunteers.

And they are often understaffed. No one is going to do police work for free.

[SD_Film Artists]

What laws would you keep? No one is going to do police work for free. Volunteer fire departments have a hard time recruiting and keeping people.

Start by decriminalising laws around drugs, for instance.

Keep the laws around drugs, but legalise the drugs themselves and make it easier for legitimate drug suppliers to be commercially competitive. Perhaps that's what you meant anyway, but I mean it'll be better to create a legal market rather than just constantly fogiving the violant illegal market.

[Sanghyeok]

And even still

And they are often understaffed. No one is going to do police work for free.

Once again you underestimate how altruistic humans can be.

[SD_Film Artists]

And even still

And they are often understaffed. No one is going to do police work for free.

I'm surprised volunteer firefighters are even a thing. It all sounds very 1800's.

[The Lone Alliance]

And they are often understaffed. No one is going to do police work for free.

Once again you underestimate how altruistic humans can be.

Power Corrupts always.

Your volunteers will inevitably become corrupt, always.

Then the problem repeats.

[Cordel One]

And even still

And they are often understaffed. No one is going to do police work for free.

They will, but because of the time it takes I also support some compensation for volunteer time. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

I know I'm late to the party, but to answer the original question, emphatic yes. Of course there are issues in the police system, and there are rotten apples in there, but a few bad apples does not a corrupt system make. There can be local cops who are corrupt, and I'm sure some are paid off by slimy elites and politicians, but we shouldn't abolish the police system.

Except the problem is not localised, the system itself is corrupt. To quote Kowani:

First, to answer the question of "do we need police", we have to ask a different question: What do police do?
And the answer to that seems simple: "They enforce the law" "they catch criminals" "they uphold the state"
All of these are valid answers. So let us synthesize them: They uphold the state by enforcing the law by catching criminals. A bit wordy, perhaps, but it'll do.
The reservation most people have, when the question "should we have police" is that the police prevent crime, catch criminals, and generally work to prevent anarchy (the not fun kind). Often, some musing about "human nature" (a topic we shall return to later) accompanies it, the idea that without the police, we would fall into something very similar to Hobbes' state of nature, where the strong prey on the weak.
But what if I told you that was already our situation-and the police were partly responsible?

Take a guess, your best, at what percentage of crime the police solve. 40? 50? 60?
Would you accept a 60% failure rate? No? Good.
Because the police do even worse. The true clearance rate (crimes where a formal charge is laid) has been 10%. For the past 30 years. And the arrest rate, exactly the same. 10%. And it gets worse. When you take convictions into account, 41% of murderers got away scot-free, as did 88% of rapists, 96% of robbers, 93% of assailants, and 97% of burglars. Larceny was particularly bad, with the conviction rate not even reaching a full percent.
It's not for lack of effort, either. After all, the police only spend 4% of their time on violent crime. Most of their time is spent on either non-criminal calls or traffic work.
And despite these objectively terrible numbers, the amount of money America spends on policing continues to balloon, expanding year after year without stopping.

We spend this money on ever more militarized police forces, mostly to focus on average crimes. SWAT, for example, does not spend most of its time dealing with active violent situations, like hostage crises or snipers. Instead,62% of SWAT deployments are for drug searches, and 79% of all SWAT deployments are on the basis of a search warrant.
Imagine, if you will, being woken up at 6:00 a.m by a raid on your neighbor's home. Black-clad troopers, in military vehicles, deploying a distraction device, breaking the door down with a battering ram, all to find a small amount of marijuana.
Would you trust them to adequately respond to your concerns?
No?
You're not alone. Militarizing the police doesn't make them any better at their jobs-but it does make people trust them less. And-in a theme we'll return to, it disproportionately hurts minorities, even when you account for crime rates.
Truly, pillars of society.

And they make this worse.
Most of us, I assume, have heard of "civil asset forfeiture", where the police seize possessions without a trial, on the mere suspicion that you used it to commit a crime. Over the past 20 years, that gave the federal government a nice little boost of 40 Billion-and the state and local levels are even larger. In some years, they actually took more than burglars. And why wouldn't they? It's a powerful incentive, practically untouchable.
But does it make us safer? No. Not at all. In fact, just the opposite. The more the police focused on seizing property and collecting fines, the worse they got at actually solving crime.
Oh, and don't expect to get your stuff back, even if you're innocent, by the way. You don't just have to prove your innocence-you have to prove the officers' belief that it was being used in a crime to have been unreasonable.
Good luck with that.

Am I being too harsh on the police?
I don't think so. They protect themselves pretty well. After all, according to the police themselves, 62% of them don't always report serious criminal abuses by other cops, and 52% of them thought it was normal for police to outright ignore misconduct by their colleagues.
How can we expect them to police the streets when they can't even police themselves?
And even the rare case of an officer getting fired for abuses or criminal behaviour doesn't stop them-they'll just get a job at another department.

Much has been made of the idea that the police are racist, systemically so.
There are many examples we could use, such as the fact that blacks and latinos were more likely stopped and frisked, despite the fact that whites were more likely to have contraband, that minorities are less likely to receive a discount on their speeding ticket, or that the disparity in traffic stops entirely disappears at night (which, for the inevitable apologists, destroys both class and criminality arguments), etc.

But what if it went both ways? What if being a minority actually made it less likely your murder would be solved, or that the police would treat you with less respect when they interacted with you?
Wouldn't you find this whole system unfair, and deeply rotten?
I do.


I don't pretend to have a solution to the question of "so what do we replace the police with?"
At least, not yet.
My only goal here is to demonstrate that as it exists, the institution of policing is deeply nonfunctional, and needs to be replaced with something else.

Are we talking of police systems in general or just in the US?

[Muralos]

My main motivation when writing this OP was classism in police systems around the world. Though certain elements of brutality are more prevalent in some places than others, in all nations police serves to protect interests of wealthy people, capital, and property.

A question: what have you read or seen that led you to this conclusion? I am curious (as I don’t see this personally, yet have heard it a couple times on the forums).

[Sanghyeok]

Except the problem is not localised, the system itself is corrupt. To quote Kowani:

Are we talking of police systems in general or just in the US?

Here Kowani is discussing policing in the US, but I am opposed to all forms of policing in general. Some of my reasoning is similar to Kowani, and in other areas it's different.

[Sanghyeok]

My main motivation when writing this OP was classism in police systems around the world. Though certain elements of brutality are more prevalent in some places than others, in all nations police serves to protect interests of wealthy people, capital, and property.

A question: what have you read or seen that led you to this conclusion? I am curious (as I don’t see this personally, yet have heard it a couple times on the forums).

Do you mean the former part (where I discuss elements of brutality) or the latter (police serving to protect interests) ?

[SD_Film Artists]

Except the problem is not localised, the system itself is corrupt. To quote Kowani:

Are we talking of police systems in general or just in the US?

In general, but that doesn't stop some posters here from acting as if a policeman in Oxford UK is the same as one in Los Angles US.

[Sanghyeok]

Are we talking of police systems in general or just in the US?

In general, but that doesn't stop some posters here from acting as if a policeman in Oxford UK is the same as one in Los Angles US.

Unfortunately NSG tends to be quite American-focused, so I've come to expect that. I oppose policing in general due to certain reasons found throughout police systems, but I also understand each area has unique circumstances and flaws.

[Muralos]

A question: what have you read or seen that led you to this conclusion? I am curious (as I don’t see this personally, yet have heard it a couple times on the forums).

Do you mean the former part (where I discuss elements of brutality) or the latter (police serving to protect interests) ?

The latter!

[The Lone Alliance]

I realized another factor, the psychological effects of being a cop and the negative aspect of dealing with criminals and what it might do to their psyche.

I mean the stress caused from dealing with the criminal element of society has to lead to a building resentment and hate.

If you live among dogs you pick up fleas.

If you go among the criminal element filled with hate, bitterness, and the most vile thoughts of humanity, to act like that police might partly become like that because that's what they are exposed too is failing to understand humanity.

They see the brutality of humanity all around, they see the criminals get away with it, they see the trash talk, the insults, the lack of remorse, and the utter senselessness of the system and something in them breaks, they gaze too long into the abyss and the abyss gazes back into them.

People in abusive environments become abusive.

[SD_Film Artists]

In general, but that doesn't stop some posters here from acting as if a policeman in Oxford UK is the same as one in Los Angles US.

Unfortunately NSG tends to be quite American-focused, so I've come to expect that. I oppose policing in general due to certain reasons found throughout police systems, but I also understand each area has unique circumstances and flaws.

It's good that you understand that. As for opposing 'policing in general' what will you replace it with? Volunteers have been mentioned but volunteer policemen are still policemen.

[Sanghyeok]

Do you mean the former part (where I discuss elements of brutality) or the latter (police serving to protect interests) ?

The latter!

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I recommend you read this excellent article.