Abolishing the Police

To what extent could the rates of violent crime perpetrated by African-Americans affect the police’s subconsciously?

According to Arrests by offense, age, and race

Violent crime rates for all ages are described as follows:
*Black offenders are arrested for murder and robbery at 7x the rate of white offenders
*Black offenders are arrested for violent crime at nearly 4x the rate of white offenders

Notwithstanding the obvious number of racist police officers in PDs all over the country, it’s hard to imagine that cognitive biases based upon these statistics aren’t playing some latent role in police response.

I also think police work is a very easy job to Monday morning QB: it’s far more stressful than basically any other job. It’s hard to imagine a job where you’re constantly having to think about whether someone might kill you (I guess high risk military zones).

2x more farmers die on the job every year than cops. It’s not a very dangerous job, and most of the danger is self inflicted.

It’s not just a few bad apples.

I would prefer he chokes himself out.

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And half of them (prob 3/4 of the white bloc), even though obviously politically motivated and plugged in, won’t vote for Biden. Shame.

Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush received a call that the office had been burglarized almost two weeks ago. Security footage didn’t show burglars — but about eight officers “lounging” in the office, the Democrat said in a joint press conference with the mayor on Thursday.

“They had their feet up on the desk, one was asleep on my couch in my campaign office,” Rush said. “One had his head down on his desk. One was on his cell phone. They even had the unmitigated gall to go and make coffee for themselves and to pop popcorn, my popcorn, in my microwave.”

The congressman accused the officers of relaxing while looters were “within their reach” at the shopping center where the campaign office is located. Lightfoot called the incident a “personal embarrassment” to her.

The mayor described the officers as having a “little hangout” as businesses in the south side of the city were looted and burned. Lightfoot said the officers depicted in the video showed disrespect to the badge and all officers will be identified.

“And I can tell you one thing for certain, not one of these officers will be allowed to hide behind the badge and go on and act like nothing ever happened,” Lightfoot said. “Not anymore. Not in my city, not in your city.”

Those advocating for community policing ITT would be well served to familiarise themselves with the Stanford Experiment.

Well, people will tell you that’s been discredited, but it’s more of an experiment about police policing rather than community policing.

Sorry, I think I might have misunderstood what community policing is. I thought it was a proposal to totally abolish the police and somehow have the community take over that function.

You understood that. You seem to have misunderstood the Stanford Prison Experiment and how it relates to conventional vs. community policing. Conventional police are given authority from authority and are separated from the community. Community policing, in the abolish the police sense, is different.

You don’t think implicit power hierarchies will end up being created anyway? Seems like human nature. I don’t think for the results of the Stanford experiment it necessarily matters whence the power hierarchy is derived, only that it exists. That may be a naive interpretation on my part, though.

It’s an impossibility to have zero domestic public safety officers.

However, Camden, NJ saw a nearly 50% drop in crime after the city disbanded the PD and rebuilt it to be a much less aggressive and more of a positive community partner.

If your point is that hierarchy leads to abuse then I’m with you brother, but the Stanford Prison Experiment CERTAINLY is like conventional policing and maybe abolishing the police will eventually lead to a situation like we have today where police are more separated from the community.

But doesn’t Camden spend more on police than ever before? So it’s not an example of defunding the police, but rather an example of successfully reforming the police. Quite literally reforming in this specific case.

A story that is more like what you’re getting at is Lord of the Flies, which is fiction (perhaps like The Stanford Prison Experiment (though I’m not sure the debunking is complete)). Here’s a true story though:

Yeah, that makes sense to me. More like the UK model. It’s not perfect here, but doesn’t seem to suffer the same endemic issues as the US model, where it’s basically a paramilitary force.

“It’s called dominate the experiment”

As far as the bolded goes - ok, yeah, maybe it takes more than just an immediate dose of authority to turn them evil, but cops are very clearly indoctrinated to exert all kinds of control over “prisoners”. It would take a longer experiment, but systems with such levels of authority almost surely tend towards such indoctrination.