Abolish the Police

I had no idea this scenario requires pointing a gun at a child

Maybe when Capitalism is dismantled we won't be required to work for rent, or even go to school as it is or take an exam anymore let me have me this dream!

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/12/21289495/trump-fox-news-chokehold-lincoln

On Friday, Fox News released an interview with President Trump by journalist Harris Faulkner. The interview was a disaster, a case study in why Donald Trump is not and cannot be the person to handle this moment in time.

When asked about police use of chokeholds on suspects like George Floyd, who was killed after a Minneapolis officer pinned him by the neck with his knee for nearly nine minutes, Trump initially told Faulkner, “I don’t like chokeholds,” even saying that “generally speaking, they should be ended.” But he contradicted that pretty quickly, saying when you’ve got someone who is “a real bad person ... what are you gonna do now — let go?”

He even went further, saying that “the concept of chokehold sounds so innocent, so perfect,” if a lone police officer is attempting to detain someone.

His position, as far as I can tell, seems to be that maybe sometimes individual officers need to use chokeholds,

man alive's position

just delurking momentarily to say that as a high school teacher who works in 100% low income school that is 99% students of color these anecdotes about violent kids sound completely absurd to me. we don't have cops on campus and we've never had a fight in the five years i've been there. we've called the cops a few times on kids that were dealing drugs at school but that didn't require anyone armed, just someone legally empowered to grab and hold on to drugs.

you want to protect your helpless white women from 180 lb 17 y.o. teenage superpredators? try making a school that isn't like a prison, try building a strong school culture. that's what restorative justice is for. in the meantime i'm a lot more worried about teenagers of color being victims of over-reactive state violence than teachers getting hurt.

also if an elementary school student feels the need to draw a knife on you maybe it is because you are a scary person who shouldn't be allowed near children?

i know that sounds absurd but so does an elementary school child threatening someone with a knife

yeah that sounds dumb as shit sorry

Blessings upon you, tlg. For the work you do all the time.

the school is all the things you are saying and more, violence still happens

full disclosure - i actually had a sheriff take a student who took a swing at me out of my classroom in my second year of teaching. you know whose fault it was? mine. because i was improperly trained and had no idea how to deescalate a bad situation. this is a deep source of shame i carry around with me, and it's why i have no sympathy for poorly-trained, insensitive teachers who feel threatened by their students.

fuck you dude

fuck you too

hey you two don't make me call the resource officer

lol

xp Who provides 0 resources iirc or if you don't agree let me know when that person can provide me with paper, markers, a chalkboard, some laptops, or any other resources my school doesn't fund.

I mean the name is just the dumbest obfuscation.

in a way is not violence the most essential resource

also if an elementary school student feels the need to draw a knife on you maybe it is because you are a scary person who shouldn't be allowed near children?

That seems unfair. I know a very good, not-at-all-scary middle-school teacher who had a kid pull a knife on her. Nothing to do with her teaching, the kid was having a bad day. She's pretty fearless and had a good relationship with the kid so she just talked them into giving her the knife, no harm done, no cops called. But these things do happen, even to good teachers.

sorry i've been teaching for 15 years and i don't know a single person who's ever had a knife drawn on them, it still sounds absurd

anyway it sounds like that teacher was well trained and did the right thing so good for them and more proof cops in schools are unnecessary

maybe you should try teaching as a 5'2" pregnant woman before you mock "poorly trained, insensitive white women" or w/e

the problem with so many of the objections here is they're assuming the part about the police keeping us safe and then demanding alternatives to fit this imaginary role. people are being accused of dismissing reasonable objections for calling into question the premises the objections are based on. then being called stupid children who don't understand the real world, the standard response to any suggestion of changing it

weird seeing people talking as if standard mainstream opinions you can probably read today in the new york times are embattled or even being silenced here

is it a bad time to point out the education system is also part of the carceral apparatus

no it's absolutely time to bring up the school to prison pipeline

i could have ruined that kids' life

also if an elementary school student feels the need to draw a knife on you maybe it is because you are a scary person who shouldn't be allowed near children?

xpost My friend Megan. Teaches middle school math in California.

I'm not arguing that cops in school are necessary, not at all. But I do think teachers will at times need someone to call, and who that is and how they're trained should should be part of the discussion.

Would also add, the late great, as a fellow teacher, that being improperly trained is not your fault, it is the fault of a training system that provides very little guidance in handling difficult situations and then expects teachers to learn on the job while working more than full time. Blaming teachers in their first years of teaching for not being trained to adequately de-escalate every violent situation seems like a recipe for burnout.

Sorry guys I realize I’m arguing about what we should be allowed to argue about.

I would rather not have schools

not unrelated to the subject of this thread or the current discussion

Look, here's what I think. Given the way public schools operate:

Schools will always have some number of kids who are carrying around a lot of trauma, anger and/or mental illness, and who will at times be violent toward others, whether that's students or teachers.

Schools will always have teachers who are relatively new at their jobs and don't know how to de-escalate a situation.

Sometimes de-escalation isn't possible.

So there will inevitably be some cases where someone needs to be called in to help. That being so, it's absurd that teachers are currently forced to choose between putting themselves and their students at risk and calling in a bunch of armed goons to start a kid on the school-to-prison pipeline. This isn't a reason not to abolish the police, it's a reason TO abolish them and replace them with something better.

agree 100%

Show me a "something better" that doesn't look like underpaid, undertrained rent-a-cops and I'm on board

I've seen the gap between ideal and implementation in schools enough times to have that concern

try anarchy

not “anarchism”, mind

xp

Cops aren’t exactly the cream of America’s youth as it is

people keep conceiving of this as “what we have now, but there are no cops” and then pointing to all the things that would still be shit

Show me a "something better" that doesn't look like underpaid, undertrained rent-a-cops and I'm on board

undertrained at what? being cops? cops are already undertrained in almost everything that matters

Look, here's what I think. Given the way public schools operate:

Schools will always have some number of kids who are carrying around a lot of trauma, anger and/or mental illness, and who will at times be violent toward others, whether that's students or teachers.

Schools will always have teachers who are relatively new at their jobs and don't know how to de-escalate a situation.

Sometimes de-escalation isn't possible.

So there will inevitably be some cases where someone needs to be called in to help. That being so, it's absurd that teachers are currently forced to choose between putting themselves and their students at risk and calling in a bunch of armed goons to start a kid on the school-to-prison pipeline. This isn't a reason not to abolish the police, it's a reason TO abolish them and replace them with something better.

― Greetings from CHAZbury Park (Lily Dale), Sunday, June 14, 2020 12:02 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, I agree with all of this, just show me what the "something better" actually looks like beyond vagaries. Does each school have full-time bouncer-sized guys who are also trained in deescalation on site? Is there some kind of "physical security and deescalation agency but definitely not cops" that you can call that will be there in 5 minutes the way the cops are?

I mean, I agree with all of this, just show me what the "something better" actually looks like beyond vagaries.

i think addressing this would be a good start:

Given the clear benefits of investing in school mental health resources, it would make sense for school boards, school principals, and government leaders to be using every available resource to increase school-based health professionals. Yet, that has not been the trend. Instead, funding for police in schools has been on the rise, while public schools face a critical shortage of counselors, nurses, psychologists, and social workers. As this report reveals, millions of students are in schools with law enforcement but no support staff:

1.7 million students are in schools with police but no counselors
3 million students are in schools with police but no nurses
6 million students are in schools with police but no school psychologists
10 million students are in schools with police but no social workers
14 million students are in schools with police but no counselor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker

Even schools offering some mental health services are still grossly understaffed. Professional standards recommended at least one counselor and one social worker for every 250 students and at least one nurse and one psychologist for every 750 students and every 700 students respectively. These staffing recommendations reflect a minimum requirement.

Nonetheless, our report shows that 90 percent of students are in public schools that fail to meet these standards. Yet in those schools with a significant lack of health support staff, law enforcement presence is flourishing. Many states reported two to three times as many police officers in schools as social workers. Five states reported more police officers in schools than nurses.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/cops-and-no-counselors

btw i also agree that it's lame when people try to shut down questions about how abolishing the police would work. i get that it's obvious and you've studied the ways, but out here irl a lot of people still raise their eyebrows at the very concept, and it's useful to be able to explain why it's a good idea and how it can actually happen.

So, I 200% agree that we need way more counselors, school psychologists, social workers, nurses, etc. And also that cities need better homeless services, more mental health services, etc. And this gets to a different issue, which is that there isn't actually enough money in police budgets to fund all of these things, even if you 100% abolished police. Alex Vitale himself says so. So if the argument is "abolish the police because then we'll have enough money for all the other stuff that will help to obviate the police," that's demonstrably false. If anything, I think it would make more sense to increase funding for those other things now and then demonstrate that the police become less necessary as a result and gradually defund them.

then demonstrate that the police become less necessary as a result and gradually defund them.

you must know that would never happen, though. any progress made toward that goal would be instantly erased after the next school shooting

but then the problem with that is there are also people saying, with equal conviction, "no, get rid of the social workers and mental health workers too, they're also bad"

In a way it's almost like having an "Abolish Private Insurance" campaign instead of "Medicare For All." Private insurance is shit and everyone knows a million reasons why it's shit and has personal bad experiences with it, but if you just suggest taking it away as the goal in itself instead of making the replacement the focus, that won't be very popular.

you must know that would never happen, though. any progress made toward that goal would be instantly erased after the next school shooting

― our god is a wee lil god (Karl Malone), Sunday, June 14, 2020 12:46 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

But just flat out abolishing the police is even less likely to happen, so

xps
who is advocating getting rid of social and mental health workers? i honestly have never seen that, but is it a hannity thing? if so, fuck that, and conviction doesn't equal coherence or deserve equal footing in a debate

I am advocating that, I might be the only one idk

why on earth do people want to maintain this horrible dystopia