My impression is that it’s not unions that make it hard to get rid of bad cops, but police culture in general.
Because when we say “bad cops” we’re not talking about people who are mediocre performers at their jobs, but rather people who behave in criminal ways (and those who cover for them). This is not a story about Joe worker who lazes around half the time who management wants to get rid of but can’t because of the Evil Union. This is the story of Joe worker who beats people up on the job, and who management and the rest of his coworkers insist is just doing his best.
And do you imagine that there were all sorts of rapists and robbers just peering out from behind their windows, thinking, “I can’t wait 'till those coppers go home so I can start mugging and raping all over Philadelphia!!” ?
Or, to put it more benignly, there’s a difference between “feeling safe” and “being safe”, and there’s no reason to believe that they go hand in hand.
Also, what cost to others is worth it for you to “feel safe”? Are you black? I wonder whether a black visitor or resident might be more likely to feel more or less safe with plenty of police around.
What was the old Seinfeld bit about cops that aren’t doing anything to pick up a broom and start sweeping up the streets. I like the idea, might make them a little more humble.
They did exactly this with bad public schools in NYC. The high school I went to in Queens was shut down, and two or three new “schools” were opened in the same building, with new, more junior teachers. Each school has its own mission, I think – like two small magnet schools rather than one local school. I have no idea how it’s working out.
The dubious eyebrow was more about whether pro-Camden leftists really knew what they were getting into.The more I read about the Camden police reorganization the more I like it. I am not an anti-union fanatic but if a police department or school is failing, disbanding it and renegotiating contracts seems a reasonable option. Cities are going to be under huge financial pressure and if these protests makes it politically easier to take on police unions something good would have come out of them.
BTW we haven’t talked about the use of technology in Camden:
Again interesting and impressive but I suspect that this is not what leftists are thinking of.
Anyway this thread has completely turned my opinion on the issue of disbanding police departments. If it is politically feasible and along the lines of the Camden model, it should definitely be looked at. I still think that abolish/defund/disband the police is a terrible slogan.
They are part of the problem, yes, but it’s police departments who are the face of power in this country. They are the ones who pull people over for a busted tail light. They are the ones actually putting people in jail over having an expired license or insurance certificate, or loitering, or vagrancy, or possessing small amounts of marijuana.
I absolutely agree that discussions about policing communities needs to go beyond police conduct and also address the parties that tacitly encourage police aggression. BLM and other protesters aren’t just reacting to George Floyd’s death; they’re protesting persistent systemic injustice in all its forms.
As it regards police departments, they don’t have to enforce all laws all the time. If they did, jails would be full. They need to be part of the community, not behaving like an occupying army. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan can tell you what happens when you behave like an occupying army - it makes it a hell of a lot more dangerous for the boots on the ground.
Another example of a complete police re-org was the abolition of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as part of the Good Friday Accord. The RUC was seen as a Protestant organization, with links to the loyalist para-militaries. It was disbanded and replaced with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which was consciously modelled to be as representative as possible of the different communities it serves.
I know a small town in Missouri that was having a problem with meth and the mayor fired the police chief and hired a new one who reformed the department and they cleaned up the meth problem.
As i said in the other thread, how can anyone justify the terms “abolition” “defunding” or even “disbanding” the police when immediately after doing so, you create another organization with the term “police” in its name and rehire the very same people only now without a union?
Many American police departments have been disestablished and replaced over the centuries. Review for example the agencies that preceded the NYPD. In this situation, it seems the model is Camden New Jersey.
The situation in Camden was bad. The police were both ineffective and brutal. "Bad Apples"were protected by the station house culture and a strong union. So in 2011, the government disbanded the Camden city police. At the same time they established the Camden County Police Department. The new department allowed the officers of the old department to apply, but had no obligation to hire the worst of them. In one fell swoop a lot of the problems of the old entrenched way of doing business were swept away.
So as I understand it (and correct me if I am wrong) the idea is the the Minneapolis Police Department is well passed saving and it is time to start again with a clean slate.
Seems like a good thing to do.
I agree. Intelligent people think that means get rid of the cops, while it means firing the guys who like to kick ass, and hiring guys who want to work for the Peace Corps.
Cops don’t vote for Democrats atm anyway,so no risk if Democrats defund them. They’re a lost demographic anyway, let them loose support and make up for the minuscule votes elsewhere. And when their wages and benefits plummet? Sucks to be dicks
To be honest I’m with you here, surprisingly. This is not what most people I’ve talked to actually running protests and the like have in mind by the slogan. And the Camden model is absolutely not what is intended (for one, virtual patrols over widespread surveillance is definitely not intended considering the intent is also to lessen the enforcement of petty crimes since they disproportionately cause arrests for BIPOC). It seems more like just police union busting. (Note: I don’t think police belong in the labor movement for a variety of reasons and a lot of unions I know are trying to get the AFL-CIO or other parent unions to kick out police unions, especially since police are the first called in the break strikes).
Anyway, the main competition to policing is Community Accountability and Transformative Justice practices. The goals of transformative justice are:
Community accountability is a framework under which transformative justice happens where individual communities (churches, neighborhoods, schools, etc) put the needs of a survivor or victim of crime first and give them what they need to heal, while also giving the perpetrator the help they need to change themselves (e.g. mental health support, trauma counseling and many other things). It’s also comprehensive social restructuring in communities to get rid of the conditions that cause crime in the first place - not much reason to steal from the local supermarket when you’re guaranteed food and a place to live, for instance.
Note that this doesn’t propose a single agency you plop in the place of the police that handles everything labelled “crime” right now. There’s no community accountability process to handle going 55 in a 45 zone. Instead it’s talking about forwarding various crimes to different, specialized mediators and handlers in the community who can facilitate a harm for that specific problem. There’s no uniform solution for every existing crime or community, but that’s the generally “shape” of the proposal.
There’s a book I highly recommend called Fumbling Towards Repair by Mariame Kaba and Shira that gives a lot of concrete details about how this looks, and very practical advice from people who have been doing TJ/CA facilitation and work for years (though it almost exclusively focuses on sexual violence work, with is a bit restrictive when talking about how to handle, e.g., murder and such), but I want to start with quoting two of their sections on common challenges to the idea, because that’s always the first thing that comes up:
In addition, I’ll say that as a rape victim, a lot of people don’t report their rape because they don’t want the severe consequences for their rapist. A lot of people love their rapist, and have complex feelings about them. They may be very hurt, and need to not see the person again (or some people remain friends), and want to be able to heal and have their rapist become a better person, and not want to sentence them to years in prison and have a forever-standing red mark that bars them from a lot of employment. It provides more space for survivors to get what they need.
In short: the current criminal justice system has a tendency to create the very problems it justifies itself as solving, and restructuring the police to other entities more naturally handles various societal ills. Does that mean complete police and prison abolition? We can squabble about individual instances and hypotheticals here and there, but I think the broader point remains that in many and most cases, crimes are either not adequately handled by the police or would be better handled by other agencies with specific training. And almost never in the current system is the root cause of the crime handled (e.g. poverty or trauma), nor are the needs of the victim considered.
