Do we even need police?

[San Lumen]

why do you what to abolish most laws? Who's going to maintain order? No one is going to do such a job for free.

That's simply not true. Have you heard of volunteer firefighters?

Yes but we aren't talking about firefighters and in most medium to large cities they are not volunteer.

[Xmara]

why do you what to abolish most laws? Who's going to maintain order? No one is going to do such a job for free.

That's simply not true. Have you heard of volunteer firefighters?

Yeah but we also have professional firefighters because the public cannot rely solely on volunteers to prevent and stop fires

[Cordel One]

That's simply not true. Have you heard of volunteer firefighters?

Yes but we aren't talking about firefighters and in most medium to large cities they are not volunteer.

They could be, especially if we ended capitalism. and rstructured the economy.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Yes, in the real world we need police. Volunteers won't be sufficient; we need a professional law enforcement force that can investigate and deal with criminals. Should we reform our current system, yes, but abolishing the police is a dumb position.

[San Lumen]

Yes but we aren't talking about firefighters and in most medium to large cities they are not volunteer.

They could be, especially if we ended capitalism. and rstructured the economy.

Never going to work. No one is going to be a volunteer firefighter in a major city. Nor are going to have a major restructuring of the economy to your communist ideal.

This isn’t the topic though.

[Bombadil]

what we would need to not need them is for everyone to be considerate of everything.
this is actually possibale. inconsiderateness is not a biologicalo imparative.
but it is a choice that is up to all of us. until we do, yes we continue to need them.

Well quite, ask any 5 year old what they want to do for a living and I'd wager not one would say 'I want to be a criminal'. People are pushed into criminal behaviour by circumstance and those who are biologically more likely to be violent and anti-social can most often be identified and intervened.

Even something simple such as implementing a system of teaching parents in incentive and structure based good behaviour methods over oppositional control would go a long way to solving issues.

It's just easier for government's to react to 'crises' and thus implement a swathe of new laws to be policed than long term thinking about solving fundamental daily issues.

[Cordel One]

They could be, especially if we ended capitalism. and rstructured the economy.

Never going to work. No one is going to be a volunteer firefighter in a major city. Nor are going to have a major restructuring of the economy to your communist ideal.

This isn’t the topic though.

It could absolutely work, no matter how much you deny it. Even in the status quo over 70% of firefighters are volunteers.

[San Lumen]

Never going to work. No one is going to be a volunteer firefighter in a major city. Nor are going to have a major restructuring of the economy to your communist ideal.

This isn’t the topic though.

It could absolutely work, no matter how much you deny it.

No it couldn’t but you’ll deny anything that contradicts your myopic viewpoints.

[Romextly]

I said tight gun laws. To restrict access to guns such as the Ar-15 and by Semi autos. And On taking away the police I was responding to the OP. And actually there are people on the left who want to abolish the police. There is aalso people on the right

Who the fuck would need an AR-15 to defend themself?

for hunting

[Cordel One]

It could absolutely work, no matter how much you deny it.

No it couldn’t but you’ll deny anything that contradicts your myopic viewpoints.

It could, but you're incapable of seeing anything beyond the status quo but somehow think I'm myopic.

[Bombadil]

It could absolutely work, no matter how much you deny it.

No it couldn’t but you’ll deny anything that contradicts your myopic viewpoints.

Actually you're being the myopic one here in just saying 'no'. Saying 'no' over exploring the question is almost the definition of myopic.

[Jabberwocky]

Ask me again after you've been mugged; when your liquor store is robbed; when you've been the victim of domestic abuse.

[Ethics Committee of the SCPF]

The abolishment of the police is such a unreasonable thing. I do want reform but no Law and Order is necessary, without the police who’s going to solve murders and being criminals to justice? Some might say a volunteer force where the people keep the peace but that won’t just work. The majority of people don’t have the skills or will to become the person who deals with criminals.

[Galloism]

I said tight gun laws. To restrict access to guns such as the Ar-15 and by Semi autos. And On taking away the police I was responding to the OP. And actually there are people on the left who want to abolish the police. There is aalso people on the right

Who the fuck would need an AR-15 to defend themself?

Zach Peters.

[Bombadil]

Ask me again after you've been mugged; when your liquor store is robbed; when you've been the victim of domestic abuse.

However the police didn't stop you being mugged, or your liquor store being robbed or the domestic abuser. So it seems more rational to pour resources into means of lessening the likelihood of these happening than introducing a host of new laws to react to anything that occurs due to addressable reasons.

And that would reduce the need for the police.

[Cordel One]

Ask me again after you've been mugged; when your liquor store is robbed; when you've been the victim of domestic abuse.

40% of cops are domestic abusers.

[Infected Mushroom]

We need the police. I support the police. I support justice and law and order.

Without the police, there would be no stopping criminals.

[Christian Confederation]

Police as is needs reform. Police are armed to defend themselves and others from danger (Mass Shooters, Terrorists, ETC) But they do need better training to prevent unnecessary shootings. Shooting suspects in the leg is not a option because it's simply harder to aim for a leg in the heat of the moment which is why law enforcement is trained to aim Center mass. This doesn't work all the time, for example PCP can make people survive several rounds to the chest before going down (PCP Shooting https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LadfEOEJ9fs )
What we need to do is have more Local police, NYPD should be broken up into at least 5 departments possibly more. If the police force needs military like higherarchy it's oversized.

[The Reformed American Republic]

Ask me again after you've been mugged; when your liquor store is robbed; when you've been the victim of domestic abuse.

40% of cops are domestic abusers.

Then keep the 60% who are not.

[Sanghyeok]

Ask me again after you've been mugged; when your liquor store is robbed; when you've been the victim of domestic abuse.

40% of cops are domestic abusers.

Slight correction for you: 40% of cops are confirmed domestic abusers.

[Christian Confederation]

Well Murders are a thing. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4i86SUNFFzs

[Sanghyeok]

We need the police. I support the police. I support justice and law and order.

Without the police, there would be no stopping criminals.

Whose "law and order"? Our so-called justice system that punishes poor people shoplifting for food more than rich sexual assault offenders or domestic abusers? Our so-called justice system that would rather spent time prosecuting strikers and labour activists than corporations which mistreat their workers? Our so-called justice system that cares more about the minimum wage person taking some money than billions in wage theft committed by multinationals each year?

If that's your idea of "law and order", I cannot support it at all.

[Bombadil]

We need the police. I support the police. I support justice and law and order.

Without the police, there would be no stopping criminals.

Whose "law and order"? Our so-called justice system that punishes poor people shoplifting for food more than rich sexual assault offenders or domestic abusers? Our so-called justice system that would rather spent time prosecuting strikers and labour activists than corporations which mistreat their workers? Our so-called justice system that cares more about the minimum wage person taking some money than billions in wage theft committed by multinationals each year?

If that's your idea of "law and order", I cannot support it at all.

Here's a relatively decent Q&A on the subject from which..

There are obviously a lot of people who agree broadly with the notion that the way that policing happens in this country is a problem and that there needs to be some sort of change. But they're pretty invested in the idea that police are needed to maintain public safety. People ask the question, without police, what do you do when someone gets murdered? What do you do when someone's house gets robbed? What do you say to those people who have those concerns?

Well, I'm certainly not talking about any kind of scenario where tomorrow someone just flips a switch and there are no police. What I'm talking about is the systematic questioning of the specific roles that police currently undertake, and attempting to develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on them. And my feeling is that this encompasses actually the vast majority of what police do. We have better alternatives for them.

Even if you take something like burglary — a huge amount of burglary activity is driven by drug use. And we need to completely rethink our approach to drugs so that property crime isn't the primary way that people access drugs. We don't have any part of this country that has high-quality medical drug treatment on demand. But we have policing on demand everywhere. And it's not working.

Obviously, a big part of what is on people's minds right now is the role that police have in dealing with protesters, dealing with different types of political unrest. In your book, you talk a lot about the history of how police have been used to quell social unrest. Can you talk about that history a little bit?

Well, I think that one of the myths we have about policing is that it is politically neutral, and that it is always here to sort of create order in a way that benefits everyone. But the reality is that America's social order has never been entirely equitable. We have a long history of exploitation of the Indigenous population, of African Americans through slavery, Jim Crow and today.

And while we're not using police to manage slavery or colonialism today, we are using police to manage the problems that our very unequal system has produced. We're invested in this kind of austerity politics that says the government can't afford to really do anything to lift people up. We have to put all our resources into subsidizing the already most successful parts of the economy. But those parts of the economy are producing this huge group of people who are homeless, unemployed, have untreated mental health and substance abuse problems. And then we ask the police to put a lid on those problems — to manage them so they don't interfere with the "order" that we're supposedly all benefiting from.

But if you're one of those poor people, one of those folks with a mental health problem, someone who's involved in black market activities to survive, then you experience this as constant criminalization.

[Minokawan]

I think the police should be needed, but we need to make sure that justice is given to the right people. for example, a sexual assault offender should serve way more time than a drug user or a shoplifter
also, I think we need to make sure that the police are forbidden from committing acts of racism and police violence so that we don't have another George Floyd case ever again.

[The Two Jerseys]

Next we're going to ban airplanes because the Boeing 737 MAX has faulty computer programming...