Abolish the Police

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

my memory is not very good, was ‘abolish the police’ always a central BLM message or was that just something that got going in the last 2 weeks during snowballing success off the current round of protests? seems to be part of the discourse in a way it wasn’t before at least

i read about camden NJ disbanding their police dept. they actually increased funding and increased the number of cops, and crime fell. i expect BLM people to stop using it as an example of what mpls should do once people catch on

it was definitely part of The Discourse preivously

What is the #abolishthepolice case against the Camden model?

i don’t support abolishing or fully defunding. im not sure what would even entail, and it obviously won’t happen, so it seems like a distraction to argue about it. saw a thread on twitter with someone responding to the good question “what about rapists?” and they said that when the cops put a rapist father in jail the kids grow up without a father. that doesn’t seem like a satisfying rebuttal, and the rest of the thread was similar whataboutery.

i feel like “abolish“ is the overton window shifting signal for “radically circumscribe police as currently designed”, which i do support, and that’s what ive spent most of my energy arguing for. the one “real” encounter i had with the cops was when we called 911 after my roommate got roofied and OD’d; they came in and beat the shit out of him (he was spastic and totally unaware of what was happening) then they beat the shit out of his girlfriend for freaking out at them while they beat her partner, and then arrested her and now she has a criminal record. it was a confusing and terrible situation but i feel like as a society someone else should have been the first responder to that kind of call. reading social media the last 2 weeks, it seems that everyone has stories like this.

the number and function of cops seems like it’s chosen by an unholy alliance between real estate developers, business groups and police unions, all of whom have selfish reasons for wanting police depts to be inefficiently large and powerful. and of course police unions want cops to be unaccountable, which the other 2 are happy to oblige. i hope this moment creates a countervailing popular movement that can permanently change the political economy and create some democratic accountability and smaller police depts

What is the #abolishthepolice case against the Camden model?

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Monday, June 8, 2020 9:56 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

just that they didn’t abolish the police. they disbanded, immediately reinstated, and then hired many more cops

flopson, I know, I mean what is the critique of the tear down/rebuild differently approach in Camden - obviously you can find plenty of people claiming it "worked." Are there good critiques of it out there?

o Left, ye idiot still speaketh

saw a thread on twitter with someone responding to the good question “what about rapists?” and they said that when the cops put a rapist father in jail the kids grow up without a father.

You probably should have looked for the responses to that from women talking about how police ignored, harassed or blamed them for their sexual assault instead of that dipshit.

the people i know who are most interested in restorative justice are also victims' advocates who have had to deal most with the shortcomings of the criminal justice system when it handles sex crimes and domestic abuse

xp actually "what about rapists" is not a good question see lost rape kit links upthread

mostly agree with yr last 2 paras tho, yes it is an Overton Window slogan but also legit orgs have been working for this for years

morbs still reactionary creep

i'm a weirdo

xp - You should meet him sometime before you assign him a label and dismiss him.

You probably should have looked for the responses to that from women talking about how police ignored, harassed or blamed them for their sexual assault instead of that dipshit.

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, June 8, 2020 10:14 PM (forty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was the thread:

For people who ask "what about the rapists?" during abolition conversations:

— Wagatwe Wanjuki 🇰🇪 🇧🇸 (@wagatwe) June 8, 2020

i don’t think the person who wrote it is a dipshit. it’s a decent attempt to answer a hard question, it just didn’t convince me. cops ignore and blame women for sexual assault, but they also do put some rapists in jail. imo they put too few in jail; i don’t know the source but the stat you often see is 0.5%. depressingly low but higher than 0 which is what it would be under abolition. a good friend of mine is very happy that her rapist is in jail. it’s hard to say whether or how an alternative system without a state monopoly on violence would be able to deliver her that peace of mind

changing how sexual assault is dealt with should be part of “radically circumscribing police” but i’m not yet convinced that switching to largely untested restorative justice and community based methods is the way to go

imo these debates are kind of troll-ey word games and largely besides the point

Was it Kierkegaard or Dick Van Patten who said, "If you label me, you negate me?"

Either/Or is Enough

i don’t think the person who wrote it is a dipshit.

Even under the most radical non-incarceral abolish prisons and police worldview, "rapists need to be able to raise their kids" isn't in the top 1000 reasons for that worldview

depressingly low but higher than 0 which is what it would be under abolition

this is just simply not true, c'mon dude

abolishing the police still leaves social workers, medical system, legal system, all kinds of accountability

ya it’s a bad point. her broader argument is basically that the “multiplier” from jailing a rapist is bigger than 1. jailing a rapist begets more rape through perpetuating a cycle of trauma and violence.