If cops aren’t armed and everyone else is they might learn how to deescalate.
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That might be true. But I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.
But the idea of non-police dealing with a lot of disturbances is great.
I honestly don’t understand why adding our insane gun laws to the list of things that need to change in order to curtail police shootings is getting so much pushback on here. I guess because it deflects some small % of responsibility away from cops. I’m not interested solely in excoriating cops, I’m trying to think up realistic changes to stop this madness.
While it’s an uphill climb, changing gun laws is still probably more likely to happen than a lot of the ideas floated itt.
I’m sure it feels great to say abolish the police or take away all their guns, and it’s certainly a very simple policy position that is hard to pick apart at the edges. But I don’t see any realistic path to those actually happening, nor do I personally think either would be a good idea as a blanket policy (god help me for admitting that).
I think no cops can work for small communities. But until we re-organize the country into self-policed anarchist communes or w/e, cops are necessary (again, god help me for admitting to a belief that 99.9% of the general population would think is trivial common sense).
I watched Burning Man grow from 10k people and almost zero problems to 50k people with constant bike theft, stuff stolen out of tents, and old dudes jerking off on people and trying to film them naked. When things grow beyond a certain size you have to deal with the small % of bad apples who try to ruin it for everyone. It sucks.
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https://projects.dailynews.com/north-hollywood-shootout/
The North Hollywood shootout is given a lot of credit for escalating the arms race between cops and bad guys. It dragged on for 45 minutes. The cops were completely outgunned at first, until they broke into a gun store.
Now you can certainly argue that this is still no excuse for the cops to jack up their arsenals and they should just deal with these rare cases as they come up. And I’d agree with that. But I also have zero faith cops, their overlords, or enough voters would go for that (well maybe that’s changing - depends on the racial makup). So as long as we live in a democracy I’m not sure that’s as realistic as…
… making it really freaking hard to get military grade assault rifles, bulletproof vests, and high-capacity magazines.
Cops in Europe don’t have to worry about this stuff. And even when they do (Bataclan), they still don’t feel the need to be constantly armed to the teeth with fingers on the trigger - because they know guns are extremely unlikely to come out.
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At least with Biden we’re not a dictatorship and AOC is drawing live.
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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113810693713920
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113812832808961
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113814716125184
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113816439906304
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113818168033281
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113819933786113
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113822139994113
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113823717101568
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1304113825365372929
This shit man. JFC. I want to say end police unions, but I know that will find a way to destroy good unions. Ugh.
I’d be fine with firing the whole force and hiring back the good ones who actually complained about this guy. But of course - can’t do that.
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I really have no desire to get into a huge thing with you again. But this is 100% what I was talking about. To me this attitude is just another version of the “Yet you participate in society, curious” guy. It offers no ideas or suggestions that could ever actually be implemented to help people in these communities end police brutality - just a blanket platitude that feels good to say.
I get that “abolish the police” is a great starting point to the negotiation, and fine for a sign during the protest. But I take issue that it’s a realistic stance to take here in the barbershop - where we discuss ideas that no one outside of our group pays any attention to.
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Suzzer, gun control while a worthwhile effort does nothing for police shootings. They kill unarmed people all the time.
When JFK said we will land a man on the moon by the end of the decade, that could also be viewed as just a platitude. Part of what made it more than a platitude was that NASA was being funded and thousands of engineers were working towards that goal.
I agree that if you look only at the words “Abolish the Police” it could be viewed as a platitude. There is more to it than that though. The activists and abolitionist organizations have done more than simply coined a phrase, dusted off their hands, and back patted themselves. They are organizing and struggling right now.
The struggle to abolish the systems of oppression and institutions that enforce the oppression within our society will by necessity not be lead by the people who have control of those systems and institutions. That the government that established the police is not providing funding to them like they did NASA, should come as no surprise. That their views and work are not prominently displayed on corporate owned media and social media, should come as no surprise to us. There is no multi-million dollar marketing campaign, no think tank with a billion dollar endowment churning out papers, etc.
When slavery abolitionists organized and advocated for their cause in the past, they had no certainty when it would end(it still hasn’t been fully eradicated), but they knew that abolition was the goal to target. Not a kinder and gentler form of oppression, but an end to that oppression.
Here is one organization that I’ve donated to and purchased materials from. http://criticalresistance.org/
There are more, and they do have ideas and suggestions. I would agree that there is a lot of resistance to their implementation, but to say that there are none, or to discount them because the battle to implement them will be difficult, seems to be self constricting.
From my perspective, this is(or at least could be) a good space to discuss these ideas. I’m a little curious why you would think it isn’t.
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Sorry “abolish the police, forget all other possible policy fixes” is perfectly reasonable and really helping!
My bad. Let’s just keep toeing that line instead of trying enact incremental change that could actually help people - since it won’t affect our comfy white lives either way - and it feels a lot cooler to just sit back and smugly say one sentence vs. get bogged down in messy legislation and other boring arcana.
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Slavery is inherently evil.
No society on earth has subsisted without police outside of some communes and other regions. Even the semi-autonomous Zappatistas have their own internal police to deal with issues.
Saying abolish slavery and abolish the police are not the same things.
I see the protests going on now as two different animals:
- The initial protests that spring up organically after a police shooting of a POC - out of pain, anger and frustration boiling over
vs.
- Whatever the hell is happening in Portland (almost all white people) and now LA (which even though it’s in South LA seems to be largely white people). I don’t really understand what the goals are but it seems like something more than abolish the police. It seems like abolish the state (and replace it with? anarchy? communism?). Which is fine, but let’s call it what it is.
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What’s the diff? We have no power. I will vote really hard for Biden, but aside from that I just get to say what I believe for whatever that’s worth. Abolish the police.
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There are all kinds of policy positions we can and should support, which I am constantly mentioning itt. Despite this being the barbershop, we do have some influence in our spheres. Abolish the police is a copout (lol) imo.
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No one cares what policy positions I support.
Ok well if we’re just being nihilistic then fine, say whatever you want. The optimist in me would like to actually help people who are suffering - by voting, donating, and trying to influence those around me when I can.
I have 567 friends on FB - at least 30 of which actually read my politcal posts. It’s something. Even if I’m largely preaching to the choir, I arm them with ideas they can take to their spheres of influence. I’m pretty sure my Mom is solely voting Biden because of me (assuming she does).
While I won’t be delving into police policy much, my book is a chance to change opinions on Mexico, Central America and the plight of indigenous (and by extension oppressed) people.
Everyone has some influence on those around them imo.
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LOL no. Police as we know them date to the 1820s.
A important distinction can be made between an outside occupying force (police as we know them) -vs- internal peacekeeping.
It’s also important to remember that these outside occupying forces are tasked with going into other people’s communities and doing stuff like evictions and strike suppression, in addition to (allegedly) keeping the peace. Those first two tasks physically require the ability to project force just like the military does.
The same is simply not true regarding internal peacekeeping.
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When budgets are cut and cities divert calls to social services it will be because enough people said abolish the police and some people did more than say it.
The people who said there are lots of reasonable alternatives will have hindered that progress.
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The Aztecs had police. Not sure where you’re getting this from. The Greeks seem to have had police.
A important distinction can be made between an outside occupying force (police as we know them) -vs- internal peacekeeping.
It’s also important to remember that these outside occupying forces are tasked with going into other people’s communities and doing stuff like evictions and strike suppression, in addition to (allegedly) keeping the peace. Those first two tasks physically require the ability to project force just like the military does.
The same is simply not true regarding internal peacekeeping.
So isn’t this just an argument for reforming the police back to something that resembles community policing? Could you try to accomplish that through legislation like what NY tried to do in opening up police discipline records? (now being fought by the police union in court)
Hey, this almost feels like we’re having a substantive discussion about ways to fix the police.
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So you’re saying “abolish the police” is a good negotiation starting point for the kind of reforms and slashing budget that we want? IE - the same thing I just said a few posts above?
Clearly I’m not arguing with that. I’m arguing with “Nah, abolish the police bro. It’s just that simple.” itt - where I don’t think it’s that useful.
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And most of those are “I thought he had a gun”. It’s a lot hard to argue that in a sane country not full of Yosemite Sams.
I’m not saying it will fix everything but man it would make things a lot better wrt to police contact if weapons weren’t easier to get than cigarettes in a lot of states.
And gun control a good goal even if you don’t think it will make a difference in police shootings.