Abolish the Police

one reason that clubs are more likely to control their bouncers - at least in the UK - is because they can lose their licence if shit gets out of hand on their premises

doesn't seem to apply to cities and cops for some reason

i found the actual worst blobby pic.twitter.com/vMsBRPLvPd

— Karl Remain Indoors Barx 🚦 (@JohnMcMarx) June 7, 2020

seems pretty good idk

https://i.postimg.cc/CwChXbkj/image.png

HELLO, SOME NEWS: Minneapolis is going to disband its police department. This is not a drill. https://t.co/VsxTp1JYVI

— Jay Willis (@jaywillis) June 7, 2020

just coming here to post that

Minneapolis City Council Members Announce Intent To Disband The Police Department, Invest In Proven Community-Led Public Safety

xxp thank you, unintelligible symbols, for that chart. I couldn't find it earlier re body cameras.

Intrigued by the idea that teachers/schools are unable to break up physical fights given that I've been physically assaulted by teachers more times than I have the police ( 3-0). Perhaps there are less violent teachers now than in the 80's.

well...depends how bad of a fight and the age/size of the kids, really. there was a middle school in my area where teachers getting severely beaten by students was a regular occurrence.

BUT...definitely doesn't require law enforcement, no. half the time...they aren't the ones who wind up breaking them up.

pvmic, i am a HS teacher and i have broken up a lot of fights. we have two full-time armed officers and surveillance cams almost everywhere that are monitored by said officers. occasionally we get more officers if there have been a number of fights in a short amount of time.

abolish the police btw

Time to find out if u can do capitalism without cops I guess!

no abolish that too

Yer preaching to the choir!

there was only one time in my entire life I was very appreciative for a police presence in my area. Which was when my autistic son went on a walkabout and I was in such a fucked up and distressed state when they found him I was hugging a couple of them and saying you people have done such a fucking good job here I'll never slag you off again! But the same ones that found him and took him to safety when he was 13 or 14 yrs old could be the same ones kneeling on his neck or violently manhandling him at some future point in his life because he is non-verbal and having a meltdown or misusing their power to have him sectioned just because they are ignorant of autism and can't be arsed.

I can't stand them tbh and personally have bad experiences with them and especially when they got me to sign a bullshit caution for theft while I was tired, hungry and being kept in a cell after a hard day at work. A caution that haunted me every time an employer did an enhanced background check for years to come, but tbf the d+d charges didn't help either! But it strikes me there are a hell of lot of people who can barely count on one hand how many times the police have helped them and the column of them being complete thuggish wankers is usually a few hands worth.

https://truthout.org/articles/breaking-with-afl-cio-affiliated-labor-council-may-vote-to-expel-police-union/

"The executive board of MLK Labor, the central body of labor groups which represents more than 150 unions and 100,000 workers in the Seattle, Washington, area approved a resolution Thursday giving an ultimatum to the Seattle Police Officers Guild: Address Seattle Police Department’s systemic racism or face potential expulsion."

https://www.8toabolition.com/

i am listening to the majority report on my lunch break and alex vitale is on. he mentioned a book called decriminalizing domestic violence by leigh goodmark, which i had heard about but have not read. (dv in the criminal justice system is a topic that became v frustrating to me in my old job and i was so burned out i would never have been able to read it--i think that it is one of the top problems, next to drug criminalization, that police/prosecutors actively make worse). i was looking for it and found an interesting thread she posted today.

As questions come up about responding to #domesticviolence in a #DefundThePolice world, people are recommending my book. I really appreciate that. But I have to warn you--I wasn't an abolitionist when I wrote the book. I am now.

— Leigh Goodmark (@LeighGoodmark) June 8, 2020

thanks for that! this nyt oped she wrote last year is good: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/opinion/domestic-violence-criminal-justice-reform-too.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur

One unanswered question I have about police abolition that leaves me a little uneasy: where do the cops go? Once they're out of a job, those guys are going to take their agenda and their energy somewhere else, and I feel like a lot of them are the types who will join fringe right-wing militias, where there is no means even in theory to hold them accountable. In a weird and awful way, it seems like keeping them where they are is the only way to guarantee the people maintain a modicum of control over them. Can anyone point me to some abolitionist thinkers/activists who have thought that question through?

they're out of control already and they probably already belong to fringe right-wing militias.

Right and right, but if they're part of the state, then there is at least the chance we can *gain* control over them is what I mean. You can point toward existing reforms and say "we've tried," but I would say we (meaning the state, not the activists who have been fighting for this for decades) haven't tried hard enough.

stripping them of all institutional power is the only way forward, they cannot be reformed or controlled through the state

this has been abundantly demonstrated over decades

Fair enough!

I agree that your concern is valid and will probably have to be addressed on some level, btw

give em all jobs like

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9o7Ad5hBWeU/TtOol9h2gaI/AAAAAAAAX5w/SsnYYiiXAAY/s1600/shield-desk.jpg

if they're part of the state, then there is at least the chance we can *gain* control over them is what I mean

let's not try leninism again plz

yall know that "abolish the police" includes the fbi, cia, atf, the judges, the courts, the prisons, ice, the military, liberal peace police, and the state right?

— white anarchist collars 💣💥🌳🌲 (@Chlxr1n3) June 8, 2020

One unanswered question I have about police abolition that leaves me a little uneasy: where do the cops go? Once they're out of a job, those guys are going to take their agenda and their energy somewhere else, and I feel like a lot of them are the types who will join fringe right-wing militias, where there is no means even in theory to hold them accountable. In a weird and awful way, it seems like keeping them where they are is the only way to guarantee the people maintain a modicum of control over them. Can anyone point me to some abolitionist thinkers/activists who have thought that question through?

― american primitive stylophone (zchyrs), Monday, June 8, 2020 3:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

admittedly there are certain things I have yet to see totally explained, but this one seems pretty easy:

1. The recruiting into right-wing militias is already happening, both on the job (those stories about Border Patrol Facebook groups, etc.) and off it. I guess theoretically there might be somebody driven to join the local KKK because they're mad they lost their job, but usually the seeds for that were planted ages ago.
2. The question seems to imply that 100% of these guys' violence is committed on the clock, which just isn't true.

abolish planet

xxp eyes on the prize

my home state at it again. don't live near Brevard, but just about the entire city lit up their FB thread yesterday when they posted this shit.

their comeback this morning was a GIF meme with doctored crime stats proving there was no systemic racism

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/brevard-county-florida-police-union-misconduct-trnd/index.html

XPs to Left; I definitely don't want to see anything like Leninism. "Control" maybe not the best word...I just want to see real honest-to-god accountability.

ok but surely trying to achieve that through the police or state is just self defeating

yall know that "abolish the police" includes the fbi, cia, atf, the judges, the courts, the prisons, ice, the military, liberal peace police, and the state right?

no, it doesn't

it does actually

weird radical v reformist push pull under the same banner going on atm

I like the state actually and I don’t know what “liberal peace police” are but the rest of those things definitely on the abolition table just my imho

it's cute how anarchists see demonstrations against racist institutions and assume that everyone has suddenly become an anarchist

i'm pretty sure abolishing "the state" would not get rid of racist violence, quite the opposite in fact

abolish all matter

who is assuming everyone is an anarchist (whatever that means)?

how is the state currently preventing racist violence? how/why would you abolish police while maintaining the state? how would the state then prevent racist violence in this scenario?

Man, liberals are getting spicy in their negative takes on human nature.

I don't understand the conceptual separation of police & state at all tbh

also hobbes can eat a fat one

anarchists really "getting out over their skis" rn, to use a phrase that has suddenly been everywhere

"Don't you think that if we did away with the people committing the racist violence being protested that the masses would just erupt in an orgy of racist violence?"

liberals are getting spicy in their negative takes on human nature.

We are speaking of that same sunny, reliable human nature that turns out racists and death cultists by the bushel basketful, right?

ideology