Exclusively? No. But on the balance? The scale of budget they co-opt to pay for the harm they inflict makes a pretty strong case that they're net negatives.

> the harm they inflict makes a pretty strong case that they're net negatives

Do you really think a private legal system would be better? That is the alternative, you can't enforce laws without a police force.

Most of Europe is a good example of how much better policing can be done than we do it here.

A pretty huge part of the problem is that our police act as vastly inferior substitutes to just proper social services. An incredibly simple and good example of how this could be done better is being demonstrated in Denver, where they have unarmed mental health first responders, because most of the time someone is in crisis they're only a threat to themselves, so being armed only makes the situation worse.

They're also trained to view the public as the enemy (warrior training), making them a walking threat. Our police kill people at a rate many times higher than other comparably developed nations; about 60x the UK, for reference. Yes our gun ownership is higher, but the relatively low rate of police deaths shows that their readiness to resort to violence is unjustified.

If we allocated even half of our police budgets towards social services, we'd live safer lives.

Your argument says that we can improve the police, not that the police is net negative. You said that there are strong arguments for the police being net negative, that is very extreme.

Net negative means that society would improve if we just removed it without replacing it with anything. Can you defend that?

"The police are a net negative" does not mean that they are irreparably terrible, and "net negative" even makes it clear that I think they have some benefits.

But yes, I think freeing up that enormous amount of budget for almost any other purpose would be an improvement.

> But yes, I think freeing up that enormous amount of budget for almost any other purpose would be an improvement.

Do you have good arguments for this? For example, if we dismantled the entire police force to reduce the government deficit, or to increase healthcare spending, or to reduce taxes, do you really think society would improve?

Your examples above didn't dismantle the police entirely and had a very small set of alternative spending. It isn't consistent with what you said in this post. You need to explain why you think that dismantling the entire police force would be a net positive, how do you think that society would work without a police force?

You keep bringing up dismantling the police force, but the person you're repsonding to never said that. Argue against their points, not the positions you have imagined for them in your head.

> Your argument says that we can improve the police, not that the police is net negative.

>Net negative means that society would improve if we just removed it without replacing it with anything. Can you defend that?

Also, net negative means that their negative actions outweigh their positive actions. I don't know how you got the idea that negative == not repairable. You're putting arguments that they didn't say into their mouth. You're only arguing in false dilemmas.

If we demolished the police to spend instead on social services and taking care of more people with mental illness, improving fire and EMT services, and providing a very small number of detectives to handle investigating significant crimes, I believe my specific county would be overalls safer. The idea that maintaining public order takes a cop with a gun for every 300 or 400 citizens is just ludicrous. I live in a county with a large rural area and even here we have a cop with a gun for every 600 to 700 citizens which is still far too many. There are over 100 CHP for about 25 miles of highway in the area, for Pete's sake.

It can simultaneously be true that X causes more problems than it solves, and that the disappearance of X would cause even worse problems. Also, this is a common strawman: almost no one advocates police abolition over police reform, but discussions about police reform very often involve someone who advocates reform being asked to defend abolition anyway.

> It can simultaneously be true that X causes more problems than it solves, and that the disappearance of X would cause even worse problems

No it can't, if removing X causes more problems then having X prevents those worse problems.

> Also, this is a common strawman: almost no one advocates police abolition over police reform

The person I responded to argued just this. This is what police being net negative means, that society would improve by removing the police. I wouldn't have said anything if he just thought that the police could use a budget cut or a reform.

>Our police kill people at a rate many times higher than other comparably developed nations; about 60x the UK, for reference. Yes our gun ownership is higher, but the relatively low rate of police deaths shows that their readiness to resort to violence is unjustified.

TBF I still feel that's a gun problem. It's very hard to "accidentally" kill someone with a baton, taser, or even a knife (not that I know any police with a knife). Meanwhile, richochet bullets can kill someone in the complete opposite direction of fire if your're really unlucky. more likely, a shot misses and goes past the scene and into the crossfire of someone innocent.

but as anyone battling 2A knows, that's (and was) going to be a very long debate.

There's more possibilities than "corrupt, abusive police" and "corrupt, abusive private security". The police, in the US at least, are in clear need of some reform.

Yeah, the US police probably needs to change, but it is a long stretch to argue they are net negative to society.

> you can't enforce laws without a police force.

You can in USA. Inform the grand jury and they can investigate and indict. Most anyone can do this by, for example, mail to the grand jury foreperson. I pulled up a big State for you:

"DUTIES OF GRAND JURY. The grand jury shall inquire into all offenses subject to indictment of which any grand juror may have knowledge or of which the grand jury is informed by the attorney representing the state or by any other credible person."

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CR/htm/CR.20A.htm

Informing a court isn't enough to enforce a law. Who is going to carry out the punishment of that jury if not for the police? I don't think you understand how society works, without the police the courts doesn't have power to punish you.

Police are called law-enforcement for a reason, it is because they are how we enforce laws.

In USA, grand jury is not court - they are the grand jury and can indict. In USA, court decides punishment like prison or fine and that (punishment for a crime) is defined by Legislature. Sublime sang about a specific criminal code of California: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

But who puts you in prison? Indictment doesn't matter if there is nobody to enforce it. Laws without law enforcement doesn't work.

What will happen if you remove the police force is that someone creates a private police force, like a mafia. So now the government no longer can make laws, the mafia makes the laws, essentially dismantling the country.

I guess you could use the military to enforce laws, but martial law isn't a good thing either.

So saying you think the police is net negative is essentially saying you think it would be better to live with a mafia ruling your life. They would knock on your door and demand money instead of the democratically decided tax rates etc, is that really better?

Courts have bailiffs, judicial marshals, and security officers. They should have no problem transferring convicted criminals to jail. Police aren't required at all.