We need to stop focusing on all the non-violent offenses like drug possession, prostitution, selling loose cigarettes, falling asleep in a drive through line, etc. There are better ways than police to deal with those things. At the same time the truly dangerous and violent offenders need to go away for a long time. No excuses for growing up poor but no excuses for growing up rich either. Make the justice system truly blind and focus on locking up violent people.
I’m thinking that after the first few of the unarmed conflict-resolution-type-cops are bludgeoned to death, this system would hastily be abandoned.
And what if we deploy some technology to help the police out?
Send in a drone with an ipad for some face timing with a suspect. Use it to go around the corners ahead of you and scout. It can have IR vision, giving much better situational awareness than just a cop with his biological eyeball.
Best part is, it’s not a person. If someone beats it, or shoots it, or does anything else to it, who cares? Add it to their list of crimes if you want, but they are not actually threatening injury to a human.
That eliminates the need for cops to choose between protecting their community and being in constant fear for their life.
For the record, I would be very against arming the drones, even with “less than lethal” force. The entire point of them would be that we can lower the tensions and decrease the chances of anyone getting hurt.
What about the middle ground of property crime? Should we have laws against property crimes? Should the government have agencies which investigate property crimes? Should people be arrested for property crimes? Should punishments be imposed and, if so, what punishments?
Let’s try a thought experiment. I’m not making any accusations of wrong doing, just pointing out the consequences of actions that may be trivial at the individual level, but cause harm when aggregated across a significant body of people.
The person who wrote that New York Times article was paid to do so. Presuming that person is a journalist, their livelihood depends on the existence of media organisations such as the New York Times. The main part of any major newspaper’s income is advertising, but subscriptions make up a significant income stream. These days, the New York Times probably has more internet-only subscriptions than it has print-only subscriptions. They’ve reviewed their business model, and concluded that the best way to maximise their income is to have their internet content behind a paywall, available mainly to subscribers. This is to ensure they are making a profit, not a loss. If they make a loss of over many years, they’ll go out of business. The New York Times is one of the most successful US newspapers. If they have to use a paywall to maintain profitability, then so do many other less profitable newspapers. If the majority of those newspapers go out of business, then the journalist who lost his livelihood will no longer be able to sell his articles and those articles won’t be the subject of discussion such as being done in this thread. Your bypassing of the paywall represents an opportunity cost for the New York Times. They would like you to either pay for the content they’re providing, or not receive it. The fact that you’re receiving it for free by bypassing the paywall represents lost income to them. Your individual bypassing of the paywall is of small significance. However, If a large proportion of their online content recipients are people who choose to bypass the firewall rather than be online subscribers, then subscriptions for online content are an nonviable income stream for the New York Times. Maybe it’s made up for by online advertising revenue. However, that’s something else that can be bypassed. If the New York Times loses the ability to make an online profit, they’re probably going to eventually go out of business. Again, they’re one of the most successful newspapers in the US. If they’re having this problem, hundreds of other newspapers are having the same problem. And guess what? There have been lots of newspapers going under over the last 15 years because they’ve been unable to compete against free content.
So we’ve established that your bypassing of the New York Times paywall is doing that newpaper harm. It’s admittedly a small harm, but if that small harm is repeated by a large proportion of the New York Times’ content recipients, then it turns into a great harm. If that harm is repeated against most other US newspapers, then most of those newspapers are going to go out of business. Which means that the journalist who wrote the article raised in the OP will no longer have a market for his articles, and will probably be doing something else rather than writing them.
So, now you’ve been educated on the harm that’s caused by bypassing paywalls. It’s obvious you’re doing something the content provider would prefer you’d not do. The less obvious, but industry-wide loss-making implications of bypassing paywalls have been elaborated. Having been educated, will you stop your practice of bypassing paywalls
Yes, of course the USA will still need a police force in the future. Who else is going to put the current government in jail if not them when their term is finally over? I mean, the alternative would be lynching, would it not? Oh, wait…
No, better not start down an alley we don’t know where it ends, right? We can agree on that much, I hope (from the safety of Western Europe, to my relief :p)
Originally Posted by bump View Post
That said, I agree that maybe there should be a multiple tiered sort of police force- a sort of unarmed, conflict resolution type cop whose job is to be engaged in the communities, help people by finding them appropriate aid and services, etc… and who have the power to arrest, etc… but who aren’t armed- not even nightsticks. Maybe pepper spray is as far as I’d allow. Anyway, they’d be trained more in conflict resolution, and getting people the correct aid as needed, and would have basically self-defense training and/or minimal training to subdue people.
Then the second tier would be the big boys- their ENTIRE job would be to be the government’s monopoly on force, as personified by the police force. Basically they’d act more like a SWAT team; the “normal” cops would have to summon them, and they’d show up, be armed, and ready to crack heads, subdue unruly suspects who resist all the attempts of the normal, unarmed, peaceful cops to get them to comply without violence.
Isnt this basically how the UK police does things ?
These new social workers could be trained like the cops in the future in Demolition Man.
Once again, all of these problems have a simple solution: simply hire better quality people and/or train police in strict escalation of force rules and have a board that enforces these rules. No drawing guns on prostitution suspects. No hard takedowns “for officer safety.” Make the rules almost if not exactly like the amount of force any other person could use in the same situation.
But back to the OP. I think posters are greatly overestimating the number of people who could be helped by education or counseling. I know I am invisible, but I have said it before; I work in the criminal justice system. We spend massive amounts of money on these programs already and they very seldomly work. Ten to fifteen percent, tops.
For example, if a person is arrested for domestic battery (as long as the injury was not too severe), generally the offer is a diversion agreement whereby they complete 28 weeks of anger management classes and the charge is dismissed. Isn’t that what you are looking for?
Yeah, well, usually by week eight that person is arrested for yet another domestic battery, or failed to show up for anger management, or showed up to anger management drunk, or told the anger management counselor that he was cured, or slept through class, or met other violent people in anger management who teach them how to hit your wife without leaving marks, . Then what?
And like another poster said upthread, if I pirate software or litter or piss in the storm drain, I know it is illegal. What possible good is counseling me about it going to do?
These new social workers could be trained like the cops in the future in Demolition Man.
Once again, all of these problems have a simple solution: simply hire better quality people and/or train police in strict escalation of force rules and have a board that enforces these rules. No drawing guns on prostitution suspects. No hard takedowns “for officer safety.” Make the rules almost if not exactly like the amount of force any other person could use in the same situation.
But back to the OP. I think posters are greatly overestimating the number of people who could be helped by education or counseling. I know I am invisible, but I have said it before; I work in the criminal justice system. We spend massive amounts of money on these programs already and they very seldomly work. Ten to fifteen percent, tops.
For example, if a person is arrested for domestic battery (as long as the injury was not too severe), generally the offer is a diversion agreement whereby they complete 28 weeks of anger management classes and the charge is dismissed. Isn’t that what you are looking for?
Yeah, well, usually by week eight that person is arrested for yet another domestic battery, or failed to show up for anger management, or showed up to anger management drunk, or told the anger management counselor that he was cured, or slept through class, or met other violent people in anger management who teach them how to hit your wife without leaving marks, . Then what?
And like another poster said upthread, if I pirate software or litter or piss in the storm drain, I know it is illegal. What possible good is counseling me about it going to do?
Abolishing the police would seem a more realistic goal if the US didn’t already have the world’s greatest percentage of it’s citizenry locked up. Though that does explain the backlash.
Instead of baby steps it seems some want the baby to ride a bike first.
I agree that the policing system is broken and needs to be fixed. I read this excellent article in Rolling Stone by one of my favorite writers, Matt Taibbi, who has researched policing problems extensively and written a couple of books on the subject.
His theory is that the current abuses stem from the “broken windows” theory of policing, (which places outsized emphasis of cracking down on minor offenses) and incentive systems based on this theory in combination with the post 9/11 militarization of the police.
Its a good article and worth a read.
I’m not talking about the police; you are. The “what about rape?” quote comes immediately after the proposal that towns use “restorative justice” instead of prison. Before I bother explaining further, did you actually read the article and do you understand that the OP is not asking about abolishing the police?
Hiring better quality cops is simple?
Oh and there usually is an internal affairs bureau that supposedly enforces the existing rules against excessive use of force. Seems it’s not working to the satisfaction of the general public. Guess we need to hire better people for that, too. Wonder how we’re going to do that.
The solution is simple. I’m not a hiring manager, so the implementation would be difficult, but when the goal is clear, it should be straightforward enough. We want X, Y, and Z qualities in police officers. Let’s find them.
I suppose you can make anything simple if you zoom out far enough and ignore the problems with implementation. Hey, I’ve got an even simpler solution: let’s just dismantle systemic racism. Boom, conversation over, no followup questions please.
I never said “no followup questions.” Sure, there are details and procedures and training and regulations to make sure that you hire people who are arresting a resisting suspect who is handcuffed that they do so without killing him.
But to me, that seems far simpler than firebombing the whole system and replacing it with a new system of deploying varying professionals depending on the sketchy details of an initial report.
Define the problem, find a solution. If the problem is that too much force is being used to effectuate arrests, then do what you can to tone down the force, not launch a neutron bomb at it. When I say “simple” I mean the solution, not the implementation.
So you admit that your “simple” solution may actually be more difficult to implement, or may be less effective, than the alternative being proposed? So why should we do it your way?
If you’re trapped under a large object, the simple solution is for me to pick it up and free you. But if I try and can’t do it, we need to start thinking in terms of levers and pulleys. If I decline to engage in that discussion because I have some irrational affinity for the simple solution, I don’t imagine you’d be particularly sympathetic to my perspective. But when it comes to racism, you’re not the one being crushed, so you see no reason to acknowledge that the simple solution isn’t working.
[QUOTE="Velocity, post:13, topic:855708]
The thread is not about abolishing the police (although that is tangential,) but rather, whether or not there are some criminals who are simply incorrigible and bent on killing and burning and destroying no matter what - and, in a society without police, what should be done about these crooks.
[/QUOTE]
One solution is aversion therapy. The “Ludovico technique” in A Clockwork Orange is a form of aversion therapy.
~Max
My personal opinion, it would be about like the “law” was in the wild west.
Those with the power, would control. Those without would grovel or make due.
Hearing some of the folks here that think it would be better like it was then uhh because? I’m sure it comes from a point of viewing people in better light than what reality actually is.
There is about a zero percent chance of us doing away with the rule of law, and you have got to be able to en’force’ those laws. Without the threat of force, people are going to do what they want to do, society be damned.
Oh, I forgot something. Traditionally the solution would be a death penalty.
~Max