Police (and other law-enforcement) are an exercise of the power of government. The former exists to ensure the latter can continue to exist.
Therefore, police (and law-enforcement) exist to enact laws to preserve the status quo and whatever accepted social mores happen to be in vogue at the time via statute. Protecting you and your loved ones only occurs when your needs align with the desires of the state.
If you happen to be part of a marginalized group, often, power structures dictate that the desires of the state run contrary to your needs, or, more often, the desires of the state are literally enacted to make your life more difficult.
For example - Where I live, we have a saying, "No cops, no problems." This is because a) police take 45+ minutes to respond because we're very rural, b) police generally only respond by taking notes and harassing anyone they find on the scene, regardless of their role, and c) police, once they respond, are well known to run warrants on anyone around just to be able to say they've arrested someone that day (the second part of that is my conjecture, but I also can't come up with a reason they would run warrants on an innocent bystander, regardless of said bystander's past).
My need of having my car not be stolen apparently does not align with the government's need to ensure my father is prosecuted for low-level drug offenses from many years ago. (to use the next word too much, I think) Therefore, police do not have my interests at heart. Please apply this lesson to any other marginalized group to see where the problems with police come from, and why I called you naive.
Society needs an authority to turn to to resolve disputes or injustice and to maintain order, the alternative is chaos.
That authority may not be perfect, it may have certain biases that need to be worked on, but without it, disputes will be won by the superior marksman.
I guess, then, at the heart of the 'defund the police' movement is an attempt to move toward working on those biases.
That is what is lost in much of the conversation - we need to fix certain things in the policing of the US - because people immediately turn to 'what will we do if there are no police'.
I guess, how do we turn the conversation from 'defund the police' to 'fix this shit' without losing people along the way?
I don't have answers for any of this.
Allegedly the unions have positioned themselves as the chief obstacle to any & all reforms.
Deuteronomy 16:18
I'm not a minority and I grew up solidly upper middle-class. But even as a child, I knew that it was really dangerous to piss off the police.
Because the police were generally considered to just be the biggest and best armed gang. Because they acted that way.
Things have gotten much better in the ensuing 35-40 years here, but there are still serious, structural problems with police impunity -- especially if you're a minority[0][1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/10/13/nypd-stop-frisk-warrants...
Modern polling is what I based by contention on, and I don't think citing the most notorious counter-example (and reaching back before reforms to solve exactly the problem you allege) is much of a response.
Minority communities routinely poll in favour of INCREASED presence in their communities nowadays.
I'm pretty much with George Carlin (at least I'm pretty sure it was him) WRT the police: "It's not that I don't like the police, I just feel better when they're not around."
This is like the review site problem... people don't tend to walk around giving random anecdotes about good experiences with routine or common services.
But the polling is what I based my comment on. Even in minority communities, increased police presence polls significantly higher than decreased presence - and that's before proposing any reforms.
For most people, these two things align.
Most. Not all. That is my point. I live in a community that the police absolutely have no interest in protecting. We are a problem to be dealt with, not a community to protect.
Not everyone has that experience, I understand that. But police are, by virtue of who pulls the purse strings, an extension of the power of government.
I never said all police don't care about protecting you. I said they absolutely care about protecting you, as long as your wants align with the needs of the state.
> If you genuinely believed the police are there to protect you, and not to ensure the status quo is enforced and continues, you are naive, or you are not part of a marginalized group.
Do you know this is just regurgitated political theory from Karl Marx and wasn’t considered even remotely true for thousands of years?
Is it true now? Probably not, but you seem convinced it’s true...
And dictatorship in what way? You mean that the president repeatedly asked mayors and governors to ask for national guard, as required by law, but couldn't do anything because they said no? You mean the president has no power over state or city jurisdiction so he could only yell on Twitter for opening the cities -- pathetic in a way. You mean the president has no authority to ban critical race theory so all he could do is to ban them in federal agencies, again under his full authority? You mean the president has no power over media so all he could do is to call them fake news? Or you mean that the first thing that Hitler did to gain power is to disband the police, just like many of our justice fighters have been demanding?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHb3xVqxcp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EgMijMhS_U
I think you need a different perspective.
Is it because 1. I didn't state facts? I double checked videos 2. I took what politicians' words out of context? Again, I double checked the context. 3. I should not use a gun whatsoever? But then how do I protect myself, assuming escaping is not an option (of course I'll try to run first). 4. This is advocating violence? Then what's a better alternative?
"when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police"
AOC on looting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzlRVUJLOwo
Seattle council member on looting of stores: "Colleagues, I hope we’re all saying we understand why that destruction happened and we understand why people are upset", and "I don't want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told looting doesn't solve anything."
Minneapolis council woman supports "dismantle" police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idw83kGmwzw
And didn't Don Lemon, the warrior of our justice warriors publicly called democrats to stop rioting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp7oPgIwpZ8? To be fair, being silent does not mean supporting rioting. I guess that the Portland government letting "protesters" destruct federal court building for 5 months is not condoning either. But hey, it is the righteous people who told us "silence is violence, not me.
> because the police in your community are perfect doesn't mean real problems don't exist elsewhere.
Of course not. But following the same logic, we should "abolish" or "dismantle" police for a few bad apples?
What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.
On that, as an aside... I will say that as black-belt in Aikido, I remain flabbergasted that police officers are not taught simple techniques to subdue or disable people/threats without resorting to deadly force.
To your original post I will also say that owning a gun does not make you and your family impervious to crime! You cannot protect your family with a gun, it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield. On the contrary you will likely escalate a situation.
Why make such an obviously false claim? It already has in the past.
> it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield
Non-sequitur.
I wish that's the discussion, but I failed to see that's what actually happened. I'm aware that many people argue that "defund police" means allocating fund for better use, but it sounds revisionism. The word "defund" means stop funding, simple and clear. BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police. The word "abolish" does not mean restructuring, nor does it mean improving. The Minneapolis council woman was specifically asked for her view about "dismantling police", and I don't see how the word "dismantling" can be interpreted as routing fund to a better org.
So, no, the left populists did ask for reallocating funds to "handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling". They were asking for dismantling police. People may take "defund" as "reallocate fund", but that's interpretation that is not supported by facts.
It seems nothing I can say will have you reflect on your viewpoint, so I won't. Take care.
> BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police.
Because that sentence is literally correct.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte...
https://blacklivesmatter.ca/defund-the-police/
https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-lives-matter-philadelphia-l...
https://facebook.com/sometimesantisocialalwaysantifascist/po...
You know that the aphorism is "a few bad apples spoils the bunch", right? The underlying metaphor is that you have to get rid of the entire group because the infection has spread to all of them even if it's not immediately visible from the outside.
> It frustrates me to no end that people will hear one boogeyman then start talking about the end of civilization.
It also frustrates me to no end that people will see one police brutality case, which was later challenged with tons of video evidence, then start talking about all cops are bad, there is this and that evil systemically, and then start rioting and looting with all righteousness.
https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-the-...
A number of jurisdictions adopted steep police budget cuts in recent months (including e.g. Seattle and Portland - home to multi-month violent riots), and Minneapolis literally dismantled their police department. So I challenge this assertion.
I also don't get how cutting LE budgets is supposed to improve policing.
In a near-zero-sum municipal budget, funding increased homelessness assistance, increased staffing for mental health response, increased investment in lower income/higher crime areas would necessitate funds being reduced elsewhere; many suggest reducing police funding in places where those new services would step up.
If cops stop responding to certain kinds of emergency calls, is it not reasonable the funding for that capacity get shifted to the group that does respond? If cops were fighting fires and then a fire department was created, wouldn't you shift some of the firefighting budget to the new crew?
From https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...:
"The Police Department reductions passed Monday represent only about $3 million in 2020 savings; the department was allocated $409 million this year — more than the city spends annual on parks and social services."
Quote: "Though the council’s bills were expected to immediately slice only about $3 million from the Police Department’s $400-plus million annual budget — nowhere close to the 50% that seven council members in July vowed to extract — the council members described the trims as a crucial “down payment” on more sweeping changes to come."
Dig a little deeper next time. Don't fall for fake news.
https://battlepenguin.video/videos/watch/9f81cd38-3ee9-4f26-...
I'm in contact with people in Seattle frequently. I'm still really shocked at how bad things have gotten. I knew police officers and defense attorneys there too. This defunding thing is not going to end well.
Wear your mask, wear your seatbelt, get exercise and don't do drugs.
Any guns you own are statistically more likely to kill/injure your family than protect them.
And from personal experience - I live in Minneapolis, and at no point during the unrest did I fear for my personal safety or my property. Well, except when the police with machine guns rolled through my city yelling and shooting "less-lethal" ammunition at anyone who dared peek out their front door.
I appreciate your point of view and anyone who didn't condemn violence should be roundly criticized.
However, my experience here in NYC was much different.
Not only did pretty much everyone decry the violence (a significant portion of which -- and there's plenty of video evidence too -- was instigated by police), but time and again over the two or three days that there was looting, the protestors took it upon themselves to stop the looters, because no one wanted that -- except the looters.
What's more, much (not all) of the violent actions against police property were perpetrated by folks from out of town.
I can't speak to Portland or Seattle or Kenosha, but here in NYC, even some of the police[0][1] stood (and knelt) with the protestors to condemn police violence and urged the protestors (to cheers, I might add) to kick the looters and other violent folks out.
There's nuance there and it's sad (especially in the context of discussing social media) that those nuances are lost in social media bubbles where the loudest and most extreme are given undue exposure, if not primacy in the discussion.
[0] https://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/nypd-chief-of-departme...
Before the internet, the amount of damange a single guy with free speech could do was pretty limited. But with the internet, we're all force-multiplied. This message is probably going to be read by hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. In meat space, i'd have to be standing in a large concert hall for that kind of audince.
I still believe in free-speech, and frankly I also believe regular individuals should be able to buy machine guns. But I don't blame people for having some hesitation about that. Crazy people exist... and force-multiplying those individuals can cause a lot of harm to society. I'm very pro-speech, but I respect that we might need to have a conversation about it.