Abolish the Police

Maybe existing police unions should be dismantled because they support a horrific status quo, who knows. Police abolition seems like a meaningless phrase to me because there are rapes and murders in america and we need to have someone address these issues.

the tru pro labor version is that cops are class traitors who suppress other workers.

^ yes

it would probably violate various laws to eliminate police unions but they could be expelled by their affiliates and lose resources. i can't see how that would harm teachers or other public sector unions in any way.

do other unions actually kill people? i mean, not through negligence. like in their day-to-day

yeah and it's not just the fact of killing people it's that the union is used to defend this behavior through paying for lawyers for criminal and trial board cases, bargaining for agreements that help police avoid any other accountability, resisting any positive change in department rules, and making contributions to anti-worker candidates for office. all of the benefits of being labor with none of the solidarity.

benefits to the individual cops, i mean, of being organized

thank u harbl, I quoted you but now the dude is moving goalposts and hairsplitting, good times

I don't know a single person who has ever had a positive experience with the police

― anvil, Friday, June 5, 2020 7:34 PM (yesterday)

same. it is really remarkable how completely shitty and useless and terrible they are in every way.

i'm used to being the boring person in the room who argues for the value of gradualism, blah blah blah, but after the last two weeks, there's no reason to see anything positive in the police as an institution. there's no redeeming what they are. i can't look at them as anything but an instrument of anti-democratic state repression (and i recognize that, for many people, that is all they have ever been). we should get rid of them and assign their essential duties to new institutions, and hold those institutions accountable.

Police abolition seems like a meaningless phrase to me because there are rapes and murders in america and we need to have someone address these issues.

― treeship., Friday, June 5, 2020 7:36 PM (two hours ago)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWQ7nir9p5I

Not sure where to put this, but this thread is as good as any - Interview with Portland beat cop on rapid response team

Police abolition seems like a meaningless phrase to me because there are rapes and murders in america and we need to have someone address these issues.

― treeship., Friday, June 5, 2020 9:36 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

treezy i know you can do your own googling on this

1) what percentage of murders are solved/prosecuted?
2) what percentage of rapes?
3) does research show that policing reduces the incidence of crime?
4) does research suggest that anything else does?

jfc treeship, like these assholes give a shit about solving rapes

https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-police-discover-1-700-untested-rape-kits-spanning-30-years/564989082/

you even posted that stupid shit AFTER my other link

lol xpost with j.

I’m not super keen on the inevitable rise in vigilante justice we might see in a cop-less world. Neighbourhood Facebook groups and the like would uh... evolve, I think. Is there some way around that problem that I’m not considering?

I think if you're voicing speculative worries about private security forces and vigilantes, you need to first explain how those things would be worse than the current situation--for everyone, not just white people. Yes, those scenarios sound bad (otoh, they are fictional), but worse than +1000 Americans killed by police every year? Worse than the fact that black teens are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white teens? I don't foresee money being spent on private security to patrol poor and/or predominantly black neighborhoods. I don't really see vigilantes doing the same, and the existence of the police didn't stop Trayvon Martin's and Ahmaud Arbery's killers.

In case these haven't been posted yet. Here's a study that analyzed data before, during, and after the NYPD's 2015 work slowdown to show that reduced policing results in reduced crime (meaner fewer reports of crimes from civilians): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

I've only just started this myself, but Verso is giving away the e-book of Alex Vitale's "The End of Policing" if you'd like to read a more detailed argument: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817-the-end-of-policing

"do other unions actually kill people? i mean, not through negligence. like in their day-to-day"

well less lately, but maybe check out that last Scorsese film, or On the Waterfront

treeship why are you like this

“Why dont they just report it to the police?” pic.twitter.com/vrXfgqrBlV

— Sid (@sidsidtoosid) June 6, 2020

dude treeship some ilxers have been posting some really good links in the past few days, it would be really good if you could stop doing whatever you’re doing or just go to Reddit or something

I mean links on police abolition. whatever, go nuts, it’s your world.

Found treeship’s twitter

what is a complete abolition of the police force ? i’m a visual learner btw

— m (@okaishawty) June 6, 2020

Can we not with the pile-ons for once.

^^

people arguing "what could be worse?" than the current state of policing in the U.S. are being a bit disingenuous. ... there are plenty of names on the BLM list that were not killed by cops, but by racist civilians. If you look at the history of the KKK as well ... there is a long, gross history of black people being murdered by cops and by non-cops alike. I am not saying this to defend cops, but just to point out that by abolishing the police you are going to remove racist violence.

*not* going to remove etc., yes?

* you are not going to remove racist violence ... whoever brought up "nextdoor" upthread is otm -- we still have the problem of racism and other bigotry that exists in this country. The one "positive" aspect of professional policing is that there are rules and best practices about how to deal with certain situations that the average freaked out citizen might not know or follow. But, that doesn't have to be done by cops --- but there should be a means to keep people from doing bad things.

there are rules and best practices about how to deal with certain situations

...that aren't followed by the cops either

i guess what i am saying is that we need some equitable form of law enforcement -- but that doesn't have to be cops, but it should be better than just "groups of concerned citizens" because that could be even worse.

there are rules and best practices about how to deal with certain situations

...that aren't followed by the cops either

― sleeve, Saturday, June 6, 2020 12:55 PM (five seconds ago)

yeah, that's the joke ...

oops sorry

don't apologize! i was hoping someone would point that out!

like one of the most cogent arguments in favor of a professional police force is they are specially trained, that they have rules governing their behavior, and there is accountability if they don't follow those rules -- but, as you and others have pointed out -- in practice, this argument is ridiculous because it is far from the truth.

In case these haven't been posted yet. Here's a study that analyzed data before, during, and after the NYPD's 2015 work slowdown to show that reduced policing results in reduced crime (meaner fewer reports of crimes from civilians): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

Couldn't that be because the lack of police presence made people less likely to report a crime, rather than made it less likely to happen?

imo the problem with ‘abolish all cops’ as a rhetorical tool is that a bunch of the interim steps you’d likely want to take (cutting police budgets, investing in harm reduction, better mental health resources, decriminalisation of drugs, ADR, a focus on mediation and restitution over incarceration, etc) stand alone as excellent policies without asking anyone to buy into the extremely contentious end goal of removing the whole judicial system. Sticking them under an absolutist banner the majority of people, at present, don’t take seriously, obscures them. You can build a framework that makes ‘abolishing the police’ more tangible without it.

Abolishing the police isn’t necessarily the same as abolishing the judicial system.

You don’t need a standing army in every city to arrest the occasional violent criminal.

Anyway, nuanced policy programs are easier to water down, sell out, and lose support for than three word slogans that capture the imagination. Black lives matter. Abolish the police.

Seems like the best available plan would include disarming most police and reserving the potential use of lethal force to a much smaller force, increasing monitoring and oversight of police activities, imposing strict accountability, forging better policies and giving better training, and increasing social services to increase social stability and provide alternatives to policing.

Couldn't that be because the lack of police presence made people less likely to report a crime, rather than made it less likely to happen?

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, June 6, 2020 8:06 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No. The cops stop people for things that aren't crimes, or under false/lying pretenses, and then arrest and criminalize them. They literally CREATE crimes, and criminals, based on who they stop and how they escalate interactions.

FWIW my wife, who teaches in a high school, says there have been fights that only police were able to break up, including one where a school security guard had her collarbone broken trying. She also says that restorative justice approaches have often been ineffective between high school kids who get into these kinds of fights. I don't think they have a police officer stationed in the school nor do I think she is advocating that, but she is glad to have the police as a last resort.

also in spite of the school to prison pipeline, which is a real thing, the involved kids were not charged or jailed.

xxp ie "looking suspicious" or "fits the description" or "empty your pockets" for no reason (which is against the law btw but who's going to stop them?) and then arrest you for something they find during an illegal search of your person. Or your vehicle.

Or quite frankly just plant fucking evidence on people.

Abolishing police doesn't mean your wife goes to work one day and there's no one who can intervene in a physically dangerous situation. It means that those kids getting in fights are also coming from over-policed communities where people are brutalized by police and broken systems, suffering injustices, having a worse quality of life and widespread PTSD, and it's creating the environment in which they choose violence/conflict. Abolishing the police and the carceral system is about a network of alternatives that are based on completely different assumptions, because they start from the point of view of wanting a different world.

It just seems a little bit like a spend too much time behind the computer hot take to imagine that the police have no legitimate public safety role whatsoever, even if that role should be radically reduced and reshaped.

I just gotta say it's genuinely amazing to see how fast public opinion has turned on this. It didn't even take 2 weeks. Prison abolition is now a tangible, long term political possibility, and defunding the police will be a major issue this election, and probably a "purity test" (ugh) for future candidates.

I think it's great, in all sincerity--reform just doesn't work, and the cops will be empowered by any concessions made.

You want to accuse the thousands on the street for the past week of spending too much time behind the computer?

The “data” supporting that idea always seems to come from very limited studies. Is there any “data” on what happens when you just don’t have a police force in a major city?

flappy it didn’t change in two week! 2014 and BLM happened and when a moment came again it turned out many, many more people were ready to hear the message

“Data-driven decision-making” is a crock of shit anyway.