Just a bit, overall the point that is missed is that if Trump had been a regular Republican president that would be worrisome, right now even an active General has apologized for being present in Trump’s total disregard of the first amendment right (and others) of the peaceful protesters against police brutality at Lafayette Plaza. Former military leaders, current religious leaders, and elected officials also condemned Trump for the event.
Policing down, homicide rates up.
Camden in no way shape or form 'abolished the police". They just used a trick to get out of a contract with the current Police officers.
They rehired almost all the cops- except for some who left for greener pastures.
Nor did Camden “reform” their police.
Their contract was too expensive so they got out of it by puling a trick- that is all.
Yeah, you use June, I give you August:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-13/minneapolis-falters-in-plan-to-disband-the-police
# Minneapolis’s Plan to Disband the Police Falters in First Test
They were never going to do it, it was simply a political gesture.
Ellison says the council hopes to put a similar measure on the November 2021 ballot, and that in the meantime, members of the council will focus on debating Mayor Jacob Frey’s forthcoming budget proposal and passing other reforms.
Changing the charter is a prerequisite to any plan to dismantle — or even meaningfully defund — the police, organizers say. The charter, which is kind of like a local constitution for the city, specifically defines the department’s role, size, funding and oversight structure. Besides stipulating that a police department must exist, it gives the mayor “complete power over the establishment, maintenance, and command of the police department.” This means the mayor can do things like appoint police chiefs, and limits the council’s legislative authority over the department.
The report says that this was the first test, not the last. I know enough history to say that I do expect the reforms to not be as extensive as one would want, but that is what one gets for negotiating as it should.
Oh sure, there will be token reforms, maybe even a substantive reform. But they aint abolishing any police. They never were. It was purely, 100% a political gesture.
Well thanks for remarking on the point me and many others did thorough this and other threads. Abolishing the police was really something to the done in extreme cases, reforms will be expected rather than abolition.
The way to understand where me and others come from is curiously one lesson I leaned early coming to America, out of all places, was from an old TV show called Perfect Strangers. The immigrant from a fictional Baltic country learned about how to organize and lead a strike against bad working conditions. His American friend had to give him in the end the already old lesson that they indeed got something good from the negotiations, while it was true that Balki was very disappointed that they did not get all the very nice but extreme items they wanted, most of his coworkers that did agree with the new contract were ok with it as it got some items that they wanted. Balki had to learn that one basic way to negotiate is to demand a bit more than what you think you will get.
It’s interesting how pro-police people talk in these threads; they work from the assumption that if one is a victim of a crime, the police are likely to investigate, and that if you’re under threat police will defend you from the threat. Yet police agencies have gone to court multiple times to establish that they have no duty to defend a person from a threat (even something as blatant as 'my ex-husband, who I have a restraining order against, is banging on the door threatening to kill me) and those cases highlight that they often won’t defend you. And a great many people who have actually been a victim of a crime that’s reasonably provable and went to the police find that the police don’t actually care, and often make the situation worse. Plus, of course, there are the victims of crimes comitted by the police in the first place, who really have nowhere to go.
So while the narrative is ‘what are you going to do without the police protecting you’, the reality for most people is that the police aren’t actually going to do anything to protect you or to punish the perpetrator, and may well make the situation worse. I think a lot of the pro-police posters are either highly priviledged or are in for a big shock if they ever actually need to call on the police for protection or in the aftermath of a crime.
A few personal experiences:
I had a friend who got an online death threat from a local guy. I also got a death threat from the guy but figured he was just bluffing and figured that trying to involve the police would be a waste of time. She did not think he was bluffing, however, and the account had his phone number, picture, and some other identifying information so she went to the police. The police did little more than send it on to the prosecutor’s office, the prosecutor did attempt to prosecute the guy, but three years later the case panned out. So I was correct, even with an unambiguous threat of murder the police didn’t actually do anything, and all the prosecutors did was get the guy to hire a lawyer.
In my younger days when all of my friends were moving between cheap places, I knew a number of people who had houses or apartments broken into, called the cops, and had no response or a lackadasical officer show up later to take a report and then do nothing else. Now that I hang around queer circles, I have a number of friends who have received death threats for looking too butch or femme or otherwise non standard while doing such things as stopping at a gas station or grocery store outside of a major city. None of them are suicidal enough to contact the local police about those threats, of course.
I know a number of people who have experienced rape or sexual assault, and all of them either didn’t go to the police or regret having gone to the police as it made the situation worse. The stories of high stress interrogation, forced medical examination, questions about things like ‘what were you wearing?’, ‘did you maybe come on to him at all?’ ‘what is your sexual history’ (to a 12-year-old in one example!), getting paraded around school or work by police, and the like, all ending up with no charges even being filed are strikingly similar.
And it’s not just an anecdotal sample, here are some articles about the topic:
Here’s an article by someone pro-abolishment who discusses that police are more likely to hurt than help victims:
Here’s an article where a survivor talks about her experience with the police and their unwillingness to do anything useful:
Police often just decide not to believe the victim:
And count cases where the rapist never actually gets arrested as successfully closed:
In some cases, police commit the rape in the first place and it’s not even considered a crime!:
Yep. Decades ago, somebody burgled my apt, took a gun, cash, other stuff. The police did a report "for your insurance’ but even when I pointed out obvious fingerprints, including one in blood (they cut themselves on the broken window, leaving palm, forefinger and thumb print even a blind man could see, tru DNA had just started, so Ok on that but…)- they collected no evidence at all, and even got pushy when I couldn’t give them a receipt for the old shotgun that was taken.
I called on a man making violent threats to his wife - nothing.
Yeah, I was a member of the Joint Crime Tax force, and sure at that level, they care and devoted lots of time and manpower, but if your criminal isnt a cartel member or something, you wont get much "investigation’ for your tax dollars.
Mind you, I hardly expected “CSI Hollywood” but those fingerprints were about as obvious as you can get. “Probably some transient” was their excuse.
Sure, and even below that level police protect businesses much more than individuals - if you own or manage a retail business (store, bar, etc.), while there is wide variation you can generally expect them to handle things like escorting away trespassers and investigating crimes reasonably well. Though even then, it’s common to hire private security under the name ‘bouncers’ or ‘loss prevention’ who do most of the ground work for dealing with unruly or unwanted patrons and solving minor theft, who just turn over someone who’s been detained/arrested to the police for processing.
Since others have only chimed in to say that you’ve been using it wrong, but not pointing out what the correct usage is - usually, I’ve seen "Resolved: ___ " with the “___” being your thesis statement, ie. what you are arguing for. So “Resolved: Police is effectively abolished” would suggest that your OP was going to argue that in the current state of things, police are already abolished. I think a better title for you would be “Resolved: Abolishing the police will result in net negative outcomes to society” or something along those lines.
Regarding the OP, I generally agree that if police as an institution were truly abolished (ie. ceases to exist in any form), most of the things on your list seem pretty likely to occur. But one thing I found rather mindblowing was listening to this Radiolab podcast about how the police, as they currently exist in the US, have no constitutional duty to protect the public. Thus, given that police actually have no legal obligation to “serve and protect”, one could actually make the argument that the police ARE effectively abolished, or perhaps more accurately, never existed in the fashion that most people believe - as an organization with a legal duty to protect the public. There’s my contribution to your original “Resolved” 
Resolved: Poster @Delayed_Reflex has lived up to his user name. 
Haha, touche 
I’m still waiting on Ted Cruz to abolish the IRS.
I don’t think there was even a solid argument, much less evidence, that ending the War on Some Drugs and reallocating the money that is currently going into ever-more expensive police forces bedecked with armor, electrified shields, armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and chemical weapons into community programs will result in less violent activity overall. A huge amount of violence in the US occurs directly or indirectly because of the huge profits to be made from illegal drugs, and none of the people predicting doom have addressed that fact as far as I can tell. Removing the drug war removes everything related to dealing drugs, handling drug money, securing territory for dealers, transporting drugs across the border, and the like. Removing both the drug war and police means there’s no massive police violence against populations near drugs. No one has offered any evidence that random violence would be higher than drug violence, and the idea that there would be a rise in organized crime when current organized crime organizations make their money by moving illegal products (and often with the help of police) seems a bit sketchy.
Further, there are a lot of populations that currently have no police protection, or that have only police protection in a limited area. Telling someone who’s experience with the police has been intimidation and dead family members that they’re going to face unchecked violence if police are abolished rings a bit hollow, since that’s already what they face. Same if you’re telling someone who’s actually been told ‘we don’t want your kind around here, be out of town before sundown’ by the local sheriff. The person who’s been threatened with being dragged to death in a small town and knows damn well that calling 911 about it would be extremely dangerous is not going to be convinced either.
I think it’s telling that long-established law that police departments have bitterly fought to establish is ‘mind-blowing’ to people. The perception that a lot of people have of police and what they do and don’t do is starkly at odds with the reality.
There would be roadblocks everywhere as people would work to either prevent others from coming into their “turf” or would exact tolls on those whom they do allow to come thru.
There would also be no utilities or services like cell phones without a safe, regional grid. incidentally I read how in Somalia they created a government from warring factions just so they could get cell phones and electricity again.
In my state (a VERY long time ago) they did effectively abolish the police. Labor strike, lock out, no police.
And the police went criminal. It’s normally inferred that they went criminal in order to convince the citizens that they really did need the police, or maybe just because they really wanted to, but whatever. Nobody ever’s been game to do a walkout/lockout since. The dispute was about supervision.
Melbourne.Victoria.Australia 1923.
The main idea behind abolish the police is that, at least in the U.S. the police are hopelessly compromised as an organization. All the things they are supposed to be doing will be done by different, usually more appropriate groups. This would leave a smaller law enforcing and investigative group, but not the current police.
Some things to keep in mind: most police organizations started one of two ways:
- Slave catchers
- Business enforcers
And current police departments, and their unions, often act more like criminal enterprises than law enforcement.