Abolish the Police

In a letter sent this week to the House Judiciary Committee, a coalition of national advocacy and local grassroots organizations have called on representatives to “permanently end and cease any funding to local law enforcement in any form.”

Specifically, the group called on Congress to defund the COPS Program — which stands for “Community Oriented Policing Services” — a federal initiative that critics have long accused of hiding behind the sweet-sounding notion of police developing relationships with communities while de facto flooding those communities with more officers. “The COPS Program has helped precipitate the policing crisis that we find ourselves in today,” the group wrote. “This is money that should have gone directly to people instead of policing.”

The COPS Program was established as part of the 1994 Crime Bill and to date has granted more than $14 billion to state and local governments, much of it used to hire more police. In the first few years of its existence, it contributed to the swelling of local law enforcement agencies by some 100,000 officers. The program has also funded new equipment and technology for police across the country and has resulted in the escalation of militarized SWAT teams even in small-town departments.

https://theintercept.com/2020/06/11/defund-the-police-joe-biden-cops/

Los Angeles Unified school police officials said Tuesday that the department will relinquish some of the military weaponry it acquired through a federal program that furnishes local law enforcement with surplus equipment. The move comes as education and civil rights groups have called on the U.S. Department of Defense to halt the practice for schools.

The Los Angeles School Police Department, which serves the nation’s second-largest school system, will return three grenade launchers but intends to keep 61 rifles and a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle it received through the program.

L.A. Unified is one of at least 22 school systems in eight states that participate in the program, which provides law enforcement agencies with the extra military-grade gear at no charge.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-schools-weapons-20140917-story.htm

WHAT the FUCK

url doesn't work fwiw and I can't find the story

also from url that looks like it's from 2014

ah, you're right about the date (pulled it off twitter and didn't notice):

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-schools-weapons-20140917-story.html

Okay I'm glad I messed that up as it turns out the students forced them to return all their DoD equipment in 2016: https://www.alternet.org/2016/05/how-teenagers-and-activists-got-police-back-down-demilitarize-their-own-school/

It's interesting how police abolition became mainstream so quickly while prison abolition still seems fringe, even as the pandemic provides the strongest and most broadly understood evidence yet that incarceration is a multiplier of social harm.

— Aarón Cantú (@aaron_con_choco) June 11, 2020

FWIW I just had a conversation with a friend who is sort of politically mixed, left on some things but more reactionary on others and who was having a lot of mixed feelings herself about the defund the police concept. I very non didactically brought up Alex Vitale. Five minutes later she was watching a video interview with him, an hour later she was sharing it on her own social media.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, June 10, 2020 10:39 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

this has also been my anecdotal experience

like the hand-wringing about the "branding problem" seems to be premature given the actual reception to/polling about it

yep

anecdotally I have been seeing more "defund" than "abolish" messaging quite suddenly

also xxp -- the "awful url" comment wasn't criticizing you, just the website

I think "defund" is better messaging than "abolish" because defund arguably has gradations (people can get behind "well what if we at least took *some* money from police budgets and gave it to x).

all social media has been on my wall for the past fuckin 24 hours is the battle of the DEFUND memes, where one half is saying STOP SAYING DEFUND, IT HURTS OUR MOVEMENT, and the other half saying STOP WHINING ABOUT "DEFUND".

I saw this headline and thought for a second "holy shit there's a structural critique of capitalism in The American Conservative" but turns out not quite:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/seven-reasons-police-brutality-is-systematic-not-anecdotal/?fbclid=IwAR0OUSKWCGTdm6SKsp5VWF5WWKoGAsIwR4-8lzi4fshc6coeO4VMgC2iJYM

REDIRECT COP CASH still hasn’t caught on like I thought it would

fbclid=IwAR0OUSKWCGTdm6SKsp5VWF5WWKoGAsIwR4-8lzi4fshc6coeO4VMgC2iJYM?

in be4 sic

I don't really listen to very many of those true crime podcasts, but I gotta imagine a portion of the apparent cop loving is no doubt down to their sources often being current and/or retired cops, no?

it's interesting -- I think some of the appeal of true crime and cop shows is about solving a puzzle and detective-work, and less about celebrating the punishment aspect of police? Like I feel that they are two separate functions narratively, and wonder if they can actually be separate in reality.

In my own (limited) experience with American cops there a there is a vast gulf of experience and understanding between the detectives, who have to figure shit out, and the beat cops

Not that detectives aren't raging assholes too, of course. They came up through the system too.

and going back and responding to stuff upthread -- can we please not use "what about rapists?" as an example here? ... esp. considering, at least among _my_ friends, most of them who have been raped were raped by friends (now ex-friends), relatives, friends of family members, or teachers/coaches and many of those rapes weren't reported. Maybe the Police-defenders (or people on the fence about this issue) should use murderers as an example instead.

esp. since the majority of posters in this thread are cis-men?

otm

like abolishing the police and discussing restorative justice and other alternatives is already a big issue, and a complex issue ... getting into the politics of rape or turning this into a discussion about how to deal with/punish rapists ... like, no, that's another thread, and for me, I really don't want to get into it. Though, the one parallel I see is that currently on my FB feed there's a lot of divisiveness in terms of degree of anti-cop sentiment and how to resolve it ... and some of the same people who are "fuck the pigs, anyone not posting #abolishthepolice is a bootlicker" are also still friends with dudes who have raped/sexually assaulted women I know.

not all of them, though. Some of the cops-aren't-all-bad people also are still friends with rapists. Basically abolishing the police and dealing with rape/sexual assault that occurs within "the scene" are both seriously fraught and divisive.

to say nothing of where those points intersect
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/19/us/police-sexual-assaults-maryland-scope/index.html

No one interviewed for this story could give an estimate, even ballpark, on how underreported these types of crimes might be.

so like, in regards to "what about murderers/rapists/serial killers/jeffrey epstein," I guess what I find intensely frustrating, as someone who is like maybe 90% on board, is that nobody has actually answered the question. they have brought up good points, like the fact that a lot of those shitheads are cops, and a lot of these cases don't get solved but those good points don't actually answer the question. they contextualize the question, they dodge the question, they illuminate the fact that the question needs asking, but there's this hole where the answer is supposed to be.

and I want there to be an answer! I just want somebody, anybody, to actually attempt to answer the question, but The Discourse has moved on to "well we already did answer it, so fuck you if you're still asking, you're basically a cop yourself." the closest thing to an answer I have ever found, and I've read everything I've been told to read, is "well, we'll still have investigators/social workers/psychiatrists/lawyers/teachers and then... you know what, answer over" (and then others reply "no, we also want to get rid of investigators/social workers/psychiatrists/lawyers/teachers," so not even that answer feels OK to accept).

tbf, that's exactly how I feel when I ask "What should schools do when there is violence that they can't contain?" -- no one can actually answer the question, there are just a lot of dodges and clever remarks. And someone asked "well why can't school resource officers do it?" And I thought about that, and I realized the answer is: "For the same reason that NYPD can't be mental health counselors" DOE is not a security agency, it's an education agency.

well, yeah, let me walk back "anybody" because I guess "just give all the schools grenade launcher" technically qualifies as an answer, just an awful one

Legalization of drugs is the secret sauce complementary policy that unlocks massive amount of defunding of police

an other one that’s more low hanging fruit is to make a ‘traffic patrol’ who give people speeding tickets but don’t have guns and can’t search your car or do anything else

the answer to "what about..." is destruction of capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, etc.

that's not a dodge, the point is to destroy as much as possible the conditions that turn people into rapists and murderers, of which cops and prisons are a major part of worldwide. it's hard to imagine at the moment from within, it feels almost impossible but I know how stifled my imagination is

tbh my preferred solution would be to shoot them but I know that's dodgy and based more on feelings than anything else. still the notion that we need pigs to keep people in cages because some of them are dangerous, that the state is necessary because it kills and imprisons bad guys sometimes as well as loads of good people is way more horrific to me

I could ask the defenders of the state "what about murderers/rapists/serial killers...?" why do they exist? some of them are presidents, cops, CEOs, popular celebrities... so why are they not being taken care of?

I want to despair when people talk about how different carceral institutions will deal with things in the absence of police. fuck them all

I mean, I guess "just shoot them" is closer to an answer than I've seen (one I hate, but that is also dodgy and based more on feelings), but even then: who does the shooting?

there was an article in N+1 several years ago that argued that the movement to abolish the death penalty was a waste of time, and that the real goal to pursue was abolishing prisons -- which, the article contended, could best be achieved by simply executing every murderer. i found this ridiculous and kind of horrifying but i guess it has a certain logic to it.

i guess it has a certain logic to it.

First objection: in reality there is a marked difference between "every murderer" and "everyone convicted of murder". Innocent people can be and are convicted of murder.

Second objection: in reality the law recognizes many kinds of murder, including first degree, second degree, manslaughter, and negligent homicide. Where is the cut off point to be drawn among these? And if some lead to automatic execution, while others do not, won't this lead to even more egregious abuses of prosecutorial power when determining the charges that will be pursued, especially racial disparities?

Sometimes logic supplies really stupid conclusions.

i'm guessing that ppl who want to throw out the entire judicial system are not terribly concerned about the nuances of what happens afterward. tbh i've always been skeptical of the prison abolition arguments because i suspect that they inevitably lead toward conclusions like "just shoot them all."

I mean I am one of those mythical nonexistent people who wants to repeal the second amendment and get rid of everyone's guns, so I'm not sure I'm the best person to argue here

I'm sorry but the number of lives saved each year by abolishing police so grossly outnumbers the lives that would be lost if school personnel couldn't call militarily armed police on school age children that it renders this point infuriating.

180 lb 17 year old = “school age child”.

ikr superpredators

Jesus fucking Christ guys. I am talking about actual situations my wife has been in where she has been in danger and her colleagues have been seriously injured. But keep it up with the cool guy radical twitter rhetoric so you don’t have to face reality.

It’s not going to matter anyway because six months from now everything in NYC including police, schools and social services are all going to be facing severe budget cuts. There isn’t going to be money to take from the police and put into other things.

We can at least make sure the police get as many cuts as our schools do, if not more.

Police will be the only thing to take money from.

who does the shooting?

the workers

seriously though I know it's a bad solution and possible recipe for new proto cop forms of organisation. I don't have a better idea, some people probably do. otoh I don't think we need to have this all figured out theoretically, I don't know if we even can under current conditions

cool guy radical twitter rhetoric so you don’t have to face reality

why specifically have these radical demands (which are not new and certainly not a product of twitter) become amplified now, to the extent that people are arguing about it on a half-dead liberal music forum? who is responsible for making this conversation (such as it is) possible? not whatever hip stereotype you're trying to imply. have you tried facing reality lately it's terrifying, people who have been forced to face reality for too long have had enough

*looks at the vast numbers on people out protesting for days* wow I didn't rad twitter was the real world.

Love how some people here can't wait for things to get back to a normal of budget cuts, voting for a half dead candidate, etc.

oh I see you want trump to win too

Is he the one legalizing drugs? I hear that's the easiest way to cut a police budget.

"The idea that residents and local organizations can play a central role in creating safe and strong communities is not new, and it is not particularly controversial. And yet we have never made the same commitment to these groups that we make to law enforcement..." https://t.co/VLPifIrSp1

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) June 14, 2020

people are arguing about it on a half-dead liberal music forum

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