Abolish the Police

besides the violence aspect re cops, there is also the fact that once the cops get involved, a lot of the time, the person in question gets tossed into the criminal justice system because that's the structure, even when the individual cop doesn't think that's appropriate, that's the structure ... so you have mentally ill people and especially mentally ill homeless people being criminalized because the cops were called to deal with a conflict.

exactly, and there's no reason why in institutional settings like schools and hospitals you can't have non-police who are trained and insured and paid appropriately to deal with and de-escalate physical threats. i realise the US's gun fandom makes this issue a bit different to lots of other countries but still.

to solve a specific school's problems wld require a lot of knowledge of the communities, the history of schooling & law enforcement in that area and the relationship between the two, and all the other exceptional circs that explain how while millions of schools in all sorts of communities manage to handle violence with just their teaching staff, these particular schools ended up in this situation in which you have some combination of fear and a failure of imagination that leaves teachers thinking that only police can handle violence in their school. you can ask "what about x?" questions that are hard to answer about all manner of existing, successful systems, it's concern-trolling

xp fwiw my wife's school does not have police stationed *in* the school, they just have protocols that they can call the police and the police respond very quickly is my understanding, and if that works then I don't see a need to have the physical presence of police in the school at all times

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Sunday, June 7, 2020 2:05 PM (eight minutes ago)

Ah ok, got it. FWIW my thinking on this is strongly informed by the time my sister worked for the NYCLU on a class action suit against the NYPD's School Safety division--she told me some sickening examples of abuse and misconduct.

Much (much, much) more broadly, I feel like some of the tactical political gaming & how-to pragmatic critique of the idea of abolition obscures the moral imperative to answer the question: what do we do about the police being a fundamentally racist institution. IMO it behooves non-abolitionists to explain how to address that (while acknowledging the failure to fix it with programs like bias training).

to solve a specific school's problems wld require a lot of knowledge of the communities, the history of schooling & law enforcement in that area and the relationship between the two, and all the other exceptional circs that explain how while millions of schools in all sorts of communities manage to handle violence with just their teaching staff, these particular schools ended up in this situation in which you have some combination of fear and a failure of imagination that leaves teachers thinking that only police can handle violence in their school.

This is really overcomplicating things. Sometimes fights happen and you have to stop them so someone doesn't get hurt or killed.

Sure. Why the cops?

xp this is that failure of imagination. there are doubtless lots of things that are unique about the situation in america that require particular solutions but "dangerous fights between pupils that need to be stopped" is not one of them

xp Because ordinary teachers and administrators do not have the physical strength or training to be able to restrain two very strong seventeen year olds without getting hurt themselves, and have no adequate consequence with which to threaten the students if they do not stop fighting.

xp How about instead of "imagination" you give me a concrete example of how to stop a dangerous fight? You're not going to reinvent the wheel through "imagination."

so you ensure that schools do have members of staff who are capable of doing this without calling the police

xp ogmor's right, you're just concern trolling at this point and arguing in bad faith

I don't think I'm arguing in bad faith, I'm explaining why I believe in the existence of a last-resort option with a monopoly on force and therefore don't truly believe in abolishing the police. But I do think it's become circular at this point, so I'm going to stop commenting ITT.

what do we do about the police being a fundamentally racist institution.

not to play both sides of the fence, but the police are fundamentally racist in that they are the repressive arm of a racist society. What replaces the police has to be structured such that we are not just re-creating that relationship. I'm not saying we have to "solve racism" before we can abolish the police, but removing the police is not going to solve racism, and it is likely that some of these alternatives could have similar problems (minus the murder). ... there are things like the "stand your ground" laws that allow racist murder by civilians, there are private security forces and neighborhood groups that are like the KKK-lite.

p sure no jujitsu is taught as part of your pgce and yet somehow teachers across europe somehow manage to restrain fighting kids all the time. mental health hospitals do have specially trained staff, but afaik not police per se

maybe the US just needs to import teachers from Europe then ...

if kids are uniquely violent in america then police in schools is a way down your list of things to address

man alive why is the existence of a job role with the training and authorization to bodily break up a fight but not toss teenagers in lockup and charge them with assault so hard to conceive of

You could probably even hire and train some ex-cops to do it, the ones who can pass a background check anyway.

I agree with all that sarahell. To throw it back to man alive: how do you imagine a racist society can maintain a "last-resort option with a monopoly on force" in a manner that won't result in racist injustice?

maybe American kids need to learn to respect teachers more ... idk ... but man alive is right, in that abolishing police is not going to magically eliminate violence that requires some sort of repressive force. I get that plenty of posters on this thread are not saying that it will magically do this. However, some ppl on this thread are coming across like that. I, personally, feel like it would definitely reduce violence and racist violence and oppression, and thus is a worthwhile cause.

there will always be some level of violence/criminality/contrary behavior. but the vast majority of cases are best handled by not cops.

I’ll even let you keep the SWAT team as long as you can keep them sitting on their asses 99% of the time

At least until we round up all the guns

you seem to have a very pleasant life in a very pleasant place, silby

Bro if I still lived in my old apartment I’d have had tear gas wafting in last week

No argument otherwise tho.

congrats! I had flash bang grenades, sirens, police helicopters and looting in my neighborhood for 5 days straight!

Whose fault is that

okay -- there were only 2 days of looting.

Admirable restraint on the part of the looters, I daresay

freedom's just another word for nothing left to loot

. so you have mentally ill people and especially mentally ill homeless people being criminalized because the cops were called to deal with a conflict.

― sarahell

This. The story of a Down syndrome boy who was murdered by police for "refusing to leave a movie theatre" several years ago was one of the more distressing stories i had read.

Naturally, they cleared themselves

I've seen bouncers at clubs effectively break up fights many times without causing bodily harm or escalating

man alive already invented municipal bouncers yesterday!!

Friendly reminder that nurses have to restrain violent, confused, intoxicated, and belligerent people all the time.

And we make it happen without crushing anyone’s windpipe. #BlackLivesMatter

— Mama Curry (@Nurse_Curry) June 2, 2020

Xpost Any type of resolution that doesn't involve shooting an unarmed person for failing to comply with commands in 0.02 seconds is an upgrade.

I have also seen bouncers make shit worse and be racist af -- and then people call out the club/bar and sometimes the bad bouncer gets fired and sometimes the owner/management double down and defend the behavior

but there are other clubs/bars people can go to, so it isn't the end of the world

Hey I'm doing housework (finally) but popping in to address the idea that when ppl advocate to abolish the police they might not have an answer to every hypothetical--and I am extremely NOT well informed about the underlying work, I'm just going off what little I've read. But I have seen this question addressed, that the new structures currently being posited are not "complete" or "perfect"--and it's urgently important to remember that WHAT WE HAVE NOW IS TERRIBLE AND NOT PERFECT EITHER. We've just mostly accepted it, as a society, and decided that the losses and suffering of certain parties, who have those imperfections displaced onto them and away from "us," are an acceptable trade off.

Or as someone already said, why is it more "radical" to fund support services and reduce human suffering than it is to accept militarized thugs killing us and our neighbors right in plain sight?

Xpost And at least usually nobody is dead afterwards

* racist, homophobic, transphobic -- just to be thorough in terms of community complaints re bouncers I am aware of

congrats! I had flash bang grenades, sirens, police helicopters and looting in my neighborhood for 5 days straight!

the system works!

my point being, if we replace cops with municipal bouncers, we need to have a way to get rid of the shitty ones

xp Simon H -- seriously, after 5 days of that, i was like, abolish the police, please!

What if we had a way to get rid of shitty cops?

lol yeah -- one that was paid for out of the police budget, that didn't get increased in order to pay for the damages awarded to plaintiffs who were victims of shitty cops???? ...

sarahell at 2:05 7 Jun 20

I have also seen bouncers make shit worse and be racist af -- and then people call out the club/bar and sometimes the bad bouncer gets fired and sometimes the owner/management double down and defend the behavior moving


totally, should have added more detail. First Avenue after they reopened changed over a lot of security staff and just made safer, less confrontational bouncing a priority. the people running security now don't have those big hulking dudes that wanted to kick ass and they now tend to deescalate and concentrate on moving them towards the door

club feels much safer now

The Riders scandal seems like forever ago .... but we are still paying for it.

xp matt -- yeah!! like, even the Whole Foods (lol i know) replaced their contracted security company after one of the previous company's guards decided that a black guy arguing that his EBT card should work was such a threat he deserved to be severely beaten ... new guards are way more chill and look less like actual cops (whereas the previous company looked like cops)

anyway abolish the police

The worst bouncers I ever worked with were off-duty cops that the PD blackmailed my then-girlfriend into hiring.