Why though? Is there not a legitimate role for policing in a civil society? And if there is, don't they need to coordinate and collaborate just like any other organization?
To put it into computer terms, it is the equivalent of your computer performance degrading over time. You can try force closing programs, restarting the computer, removing programs from autorunning at startup, updating drivers, uninstalling unused programs, etc. However sometimes none of that will truly work and you will need to reinstall the OS.
Using a problematic customer like that as a marketing highlight is just not a great idea.
I feel like this entire movement is really taking away credit from the "ok" and "good" cops. How many cops are there in America? Ok, some of them aren't perfect. They are racist/dicks/thirsty for power. Why does this mean as a citizen I should feel less safe because we want to defund police and have less cops protecting us? Because "cops aren't protecting us?" They are. Even if there were 1,000 police brutality related deaths a year (there aren't), police would still be a huge net win for society, no? Am I missing something?
I feel the response to this movement shows that there are fewer good cops that anyone would have expected. They protect their own at the cost of citizens they should be protecting. They lie. They cheat. They assault and murder without consequence.
> Even if there were 1,000 police brutality related deaths a year (there aren't), police would still be a huge net win for society, no? Am I missing something?
Yes. You're missing the fact that it doesn't have to be this way. That police don't have to work entirely without consequences. They don't have to militarized. This is not required for them to do their jobs. And it can be changed.
What leads you to believe this at an empirical level, though? The inciting incident of course sadly shows yet another example of detestable police and policing, and the reaction shows additional instances of cruel and overly aggressive policing (arresting and assaulting peaceful protesters and reporters in some cases), but the reaction also shows instances of officers standing with the protesters and treating them appropriately.
I don't know how many law enforcement officers in the US are fundamentally moral or not. I really have no idea if this event makes me think there are more or less of them than I thought there were before, if looking at all LEOs in the country. How can you, I, or anyone know any of the true statistics?
Since we can't, I think the most important and most practical task is to try to improve and fix the system and the systemic issues as much as possible, and to try to decrease the odds that shitty cops will be hired or promoted and increase the odds that shitty cops will be quickly identified, removed, condemned by their former peers, and, if appropriate, prosecuted.
The huge number of officers that surrounded Derek Chauvin's house, for example.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/29/officers-protect-home-of-derek...
The video is actually just creepy. But that's empirical evidence that you can verify by observation of said video.
> How can you, I, or anyone know any of the true statistics?
We actually know that the US ranks as high as many 3rd world countries when looking at the murder of black people by police. Even the murder of white people is staggeringly high compared to other western countries. The statistics are there.
> Since we can't, the most important thing is to try to improve and fix the system and the systemic issues as much as possible, and to try to decrease the odds of hiring shitty cops and increase the odds that shitty cops will be quickly identified, removed, and, if appropriate, prosecuted.
I agree. That's actually what we all want. And that's not happening now.
Because the leadership at any level could not address this so we are obviously left to destructive behavior on all sides. But that conversation doesn’t attract eyeballs.
Honestly I'd rather be surprised if there is any street cop who do not show up.
Yes, this sort of thing is of course very troubling. But this isn't anything we don't already know: many cops will support each other almost no matter what. If you try to think from the perspective of being an officer in a police department for a moment, you can see how it becomes like any other sort of politics. America does something shitty; some other country criticizes it; lots of Americans rise to America's defense. Democrats/Republicans do something shitty; Democrats/Republicans come to the defense of their team.
People with strong group identities can be very biased and have trouble attributing bad intentions or actions to their side. Their judgment is completely clouded, and they often literally will not see or accept the same facts. (This is very evident in current politics.) Many of those cops may have genuinely and truly believed that Chauvin was not responsible for George Floyd's death, for example. (Rather than holding some malicious belief like "that black guy deserved to be killed by him".)
That doesn't defend their actions or their incorrect or shitty beliefs, but it shows how the police are probably just like a country or political party or whatever. Humans are often pretty useless when it comes to neutrally and impartially evaluating their own side/tribe. And if rumors of some police departments trying to filter out applicants who have too high of IQs are true... that would exacerbate that issue, probably. And there's probably an overrepresentation of tribalistic personality types, and people working together in risky situations often develop tighter bonds, etc.
Also, it's possible some of those cops did think Chauvin was in the wrong and deserves to be fired, convicted, and imprisoned, but were there just to prevent a mob from going to his house and killing him, and possibly were ordered to go there.
And in terms of empiricism: this is still anecdotes, not really data. Even if you assume every one of those cops is an irredeemable shitbag (which I think is highly possible; it's not really provable or disprovable, though), this is 20 - 50 cops or something. Even if for the sake of argument we say it's 100 cops in front of his house, that number is tiny compared to the number of all LEOs in the country. It doesn't necessarily give you an accurate assessment of the average police officer in every town in every state.
>We actually know that the US ranks as high as many 3rd world countries when looking at the murder of black people by police. Even the murder of white people is staggeringly high compared to other western countries. The statistics are there.
Yes, this is true. I utterly agree that the situation is completely fucked. It's just a matter of, I guess, how one should think about individual LEOs at the scale of the nation. I'm not saying this is true and have no idea if it's true or what the real numbers could be, but hypothetically if it were the case that most PDs had like 10% terrible cops and 90% good cops, it might be possible that that could be enough to cause these horrible national policing statistics. Or perhaps the same could be also true if there were some PDs with like 80% terrible cops but most PDs had under 10%, or something like that.
>I agree. That's actually what we all want. And that's not happening now.
Yes, for sure. I completely support the protests and protesters. I just think people shouldn't necessarily vilify an individual law enforcement officer without additional supporting evidence about that person, basically.
Then, after the cops who nearly killed the man got suspended, all 57 people on that particular team resigned "in disgust because of the treatment of two of their members, who were simply executing orders,"[2].
Since you want empirical results, that is 0 good cops out of the 57 people on the force. We can employ the rule of 3 to establish an upper bound good cop rate as 5.2% (95% CI).
This isn't to say that the cops are by nature bad. Rather, the institutions and norms that exist in many police departments ensure that nearly all cops become bad cops.
[0]: https://news.wbfo.org/post/graphic-video-two-buffalo-police-...
[1]: https://www.investigativepost.org/2020/06/05/police-unit-res...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(statistics)
There is a set of the population for which this is a reality. In time of need, their call for assistance gets met with presumption of guilt, leaving them worse off than if they had not called for help.
> Even if there were 1,000 police brutality related deaths a year (there aren't), police would still be a huge net win for society, no?
Yes, unless you belong to the group from which those 1,000 come from.
The alternative is Slack using someone else as their marketing example, and maybe taking down this blog post. Which is what they've done.
> I feel like this entire movement is really taking away credit from the "ok" and "good" cops.
Why would good, or "okay" cops have to worry about being reprimanded?
What has happened is a "bad" cop issued a no-knock warrant on an innocent woman, and then shot her to death inside of her own home, and then was UNPUNISHED.
Then a few days later, a 2nd "bad cop" stepped on the neck of an African American on the street, killing him. Without the protests, this 2nd "bad cop" wouldn't have met any charges what so ever.
I think what the people want, is a form of feedback that actually works. If we see a bad cop, then surely we should be able to get that bad cop punished without rioting. No one wants to riot to get justice... but it seems like its the only option right now.
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Case in point: there are unbadged, unmarked, nameless officers patrolling Washington DC right now. Surely this should not be condoned.
Or do you think that "good cops" are allowed to run around without badges, refusing to identify themselves while shooting tear gas at protesters? Because that's literally what is going on this week.
What is going on right now, is a discussion about what to do about bad cops. And sure, we'll want to protect the "good cops" and "okay cops" who protect us. But what do you expect the public to do against bad cops?
I am certainly no fan of no-knock warrants though. There are processes than can be fixed.
We all know bad cops exist. The problem is that we cannot get these bad cops fired or otherwise thrown out of the police force.
> I am certainly no fan of no-knock warrants though. There are processes than can be fixed.
I'm not even asking for no-knock warrants to be banned. The underlying issue is far more severe. We need JUSTICE. We need someone to accept responsibility for Briana Taylor's unnecessary death.
Who issued the no-knock warrant? Who was the Lieutenant in charge of the operation? Where is the police body cam footage? Why were the officers in plainclothes instead of their uniforms? Why is so much information seemingly missing about this botched operation?
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The best the family of Birana Taylor is able to do under these circumstances... is file a "Wrongful Death" claim against the police department. If they win the court case... the taxpayers of Kansas will pay for the death, while the officers who were in charge of the operation will be let onto the streets again without any real repercussions.
THAT is the problem. There's no mechanism of feedback what so ever. The "bad cops" remain on payroll, and will continue to make the same mistakes in some future case.
Yes, you are. Police are the solution for mental health. Police are the solution for roving dogs. Police are the solution for kids out of school. Police are the solution for drug addiction.
The alternative is to defund the massive chunk of budgets that go to police and invest in commmunity support, from medicalised addiction treatment to educational opportunity to mental health support.
Or, we could let these problems continue to fester because people in wanton and willful ignorance embrace your false dichotomy and legislate on the assumption that anything but police with (even more) laser sights and (even more) armor played APCs is a commitment to Mad Max.
Here are some things that the US does that could be changed and, to an outsider in a different country, seem utterly absurd:
1. Refer to the police as 'LEO' or 'law enforcement officers', thus establishing their primary duty to 'the law' and not 'the community they're supposed to serve'
2. Protection of police from most if not all consequences of gross misconduct
3. Silly good guys vs. bad guys dichotomy where it's all to obvious that bad guys is a synonym for 'black person'
4. Dehumanising labels: referring to groups of people as 'blacks', 'whites', 'innocents', 'hispanics', etc. (this is as jarring to me as saying 'females' instead of women). Really instils an 'us v them' mentality.
5. Perpetual war mentality: war on drugs, war on this, war on that.
6. Excessive militarisation: cops with guns is one thing, cops driving tanks and armoured vehicles is another
7. Escalation to ridiculous extremes by default: in what world does a police force start a gunfight using other drivers' cars for cover, or driving a tank through a house to catch a shoplifter?
8. Constant media glorification of police brutality and breaking the rules to catch the criminal - as long as you catch the bad guy it doesn't matter
9. Private prisons and convicting people for profit
10. Things like no-knock warrants and excessive use of SWAT teams, civil asset forfeiture, etc.
11. Failure to meet basic human rights even in overnight jail
The list honestly goes on and if this is what you require to feel safe, then this safety is coming at the expense of many of your fellow Americans, most of whom pay with their lives: black people, poor people. Many countries in the world thrive without hiring a gang of armed thugs to defend their laws and treat the country as a self-contained penal colony. We have several Nordic countries in Europe that go even further to treat people who break the law as valid human beings.
Ok and good cops don't require credit for meeting the minimum expectation of a good police officer, and for as long as they don't blow the whistle they are still complicit. My own thinking is that this goes back to the US' attitude to slavery in its formative years and what you see is a deep-seated desire to use forms of slavery as a means to fulfil your own American dream. Much easier to do when your police service is an oppressive force.
Have you ever called 911 to summon the police? Do you know anyone who has? It's quite uncommon.
The average police response time is almost 10 minutes. In an emergency situation it might as well be 10 hours. In general by the time they get there, whatever was happening has already happened. Which means you have to be prepared to deal with it on your own anyway.
Most of what the police actually do is not shootouts with bank robbers. It's writing stuff down.
For example, a major function of the police time-wise is vehicle accident reports. You don't need a police officer for that, only any trustworthy official. We could give vehicle accident reports to the fire department and then have more firefighters and fewer police.
We could hire clerks to man a desk who are not police, are not issued weapons and have no authority to cite, arrest or give orders to anyone, give them responsibility for all filing of "police reports" and then have more clerks and fewer police.
We could end the war on drugs and have many fewer police.
By the time you get to the point that the police only investigate murders and such and take everything else away from them, you can get rid of 80% of them and then have 80% less of all the bad stuff associated with whatever percentage of the police are bad cops. We might even do better than that, because when there are fewer of them you can spend more resources vetting each one and pay higher salaries that attract higher quality applicants. Make a police job harder to get, better to have and easier to lose and see what it does to their behavior.
I'd really like them to step up. Where's the intervention and condemnation from the presumed silent majority of good cops in any of these incidents?
https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/31/21276044/police-violence-...
Here's a video of an old man being attacked by police in Buffalo, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/buffalo-police-shove-p... How many of the presumed silent majority walked by him as he bled on the ground? How many have stood up and said, the people who did this don't stand for what I stand for. How many cops are demanding reform and threatening to quit otherwise?
The Buffalo police initially lied about how this man was hurt, claiming he "tripped and fell", https://twitter.com/JeffRussoWKBW/status/1268712651292643334.... Where's the condemnation of that from the officers who were on the scene? And even if we presume this guy gets justice, where's justice for the presumed many people who aren't sympathetic old white dudes whose assault was captured on camera? They would have gotten away with it if it weren't for the video, and indeed they may still get away with it.
Where are the police unions in taking a stand against this kind of violence?
I dunno, like you I don't currently believe that we should entirely eliminate police from our societies. But if the silent majority of good cops we presume exists isn't willing to take a stand against what is clearly evil in their ranks, how good are their actions, really? Kneeling doesn't get you very far.
Where are the good apples?
American citizens are not equal, especially so in the eyes of law enforcement. If you are trying to group minorities into the protectorate under the law by saying "us", then no, American citizens cannot claim that the police protect and serve. If you say "us", then neither can you.
Actually it hovers around 1,000 a year, but even that's up for debate because reporting and data collection are questionable. For example, police departments may have been obligated to report shooting-related deaths, but not choking-related (like George Floyd). But even with the tracking we have today, it's beyond clear that at a minimum ~1,000 American's are killed every year by police.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends
> defund police and have less cops protecting us?
There is no reason our civilian police force should be armed like our federal military. It's absurd how many police departments have MRAPs, string-rays, and drones. None of this equipment is necessary for effective civilian policing.
In the U.S., police kill around 46.6 citizens per 10 million every year. Iraq is 45.1, and Iran is 36.6. Compare this to Japan (0.2), Germany (1.3), UK (0.5), France (3.8), Canada (9.7), Poland (0.5), or Australia (1.7).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
Why should your feelings trump the safety of human beings? Can you show that defunding the police will lead to less safety for you personally? Are you aware that in the event the police were defunded many of their functions would continue in an unarmed capacity?
>Even if there were 1,000 police brutality related deaths a year (there aren't), police would still be a huge net win for society, no?
You make a very specific claim here. I'd love to hear you articulate how you define a "net win". Please keep in mind that human lives have value too when crafting your response:
https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/2016...
If Slack employees said they felt is was unethical to serve chocolate over vanilla ice cream, none of us would pay attention.
Maybe there are situations where it's justifiable to sell goods or services to a PD (if there are situations where it's justifiable to buy a smartphone or laptop, this is probably the case in my opinion) but it's still unproductive to dismiss someone who disagrees out of hand. They are probably disagreeing because they have a strong moral feeling about the practice, and it's worth respectfully listening to the reasons they have for feeling so strongly, rather than dismissing it out of hand because you don't think it's feasible to implement universally.
My original comment was the opposite of an out-of-hand dismissal. I thought about what he was proposing, carried it to it's logical conclusion, and showed that it was flawed. I then invited him to propose a fix. No fix has been suggested.
> I think it's more appropriate to carefully listen to the compassionate concerns of others than to try and develop ways to ignore them.
Strong, unprincipled moral feelings come to every human since they are a small child. There is good evidence that these are very biased and lead to results that are immoral upon reflection. The world is awash in people announcing their unreflected moral feelings, and these point in contradictory directions. "Listen to this particular random person's feelings....but don't challenge their validity" is not useful advice.
[0]: On the grounds that when you give someone something in exchange for a promise of theirs that you are using them as a means to an end. [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1999/09/11/a...
Belittling another person is the last thing I want to do, so I'll thank you for the opportunity to improve my manners and drop the issue here, sincerely wishing you the best.
It’s true crime is down from the historical highs of the 70s and 80s, but there are very much still murders and thefts that need to be investigated and punished.
The reality is if police were abolished we’d go back to the bad old days of private detective agencies being used for security. Would you rather have some sort of unholy fusion of Blackwater and the Pinkerton detective agency performing policing tasks in our country?
There's no need for police to be first-responders in purely medical situations. It's unfair to expect that police also take up the burden of medical care. While we are at it, it's also silly that the fire department responds to non-fire medical incidents in their big ass fire truck. Doing so compromises their abilities to handle situations where their expertise is explicitly required.
Every town in America does not need a SWAT team. Thsoe should be specialized agencies that serve a particular region and have a limited number of deployments.
If we were building a system from scratch today, people would not suggest dumping these duties on beat cops.
So a police detective? I don’t really see how renaming police detectives “Investigator” or some similar name shuffling changes or resolves anything. Unless you’re suggesting farming these tasks out to the private sector. I guess towns could contract with PIs or a private detective agency, but I find it hard to believe such a privatized agency would be any better than sworn LEOs in terms of corruption, brutality, etc.
The comparison with a fire marshal is instructive; according to Wikipedia “Fire marshals may be sworn law-enforcement officers and are often experienced firefighters.” In other words, just like in the case of police detectives, it’s seen as a good thing for them to have experience and authority.
> There's no need for police to be first-responders in purely medical situations. It's unfair to expect that police also take up the burden of medical care. While we are at it, it's also silly that the fire department responds to non-fire medical incidents in their big ass fire truck. Doing so compromises their abilities to handle situations where their expertise is explicitly required.
I don’t think acting as EMTs is a big part of police calls. As you note, the FD often responds to such purely medical incidents as they are better trained and have better resources.
I agree that the use of SWAT teams for small towns should be looked at. In my opinion, these specially trained officers should be part of state police or big cities only. State police could support local PDs if needed.
In general, your post is about some types of police reform.
It doesn’t interact with the post I originally responded to, which posited that “police” are “very much not necessary” in modern America.
Using it as marketing material optically looks even worse.
Look around. Most Americans would say no to this question.
I don’t think they’ve thought through the consequences of that, but I guarantee a random poll would show most Americans want to abolish or >70% defund the police (which is effectively the same).
How is it possible to conclude this? There have been polls the last few days where more than half of respondents of both parties support sending the National Guard to quash the rioting and looting, and a significant proportion of Democrat respondents think the Federal government should send the U.S. military to do the same.
If you live in a place where people broadly do not support the police as an institution, you live in an odd place.
Now, given recent events on the top of the national consciousness, there is broad concern that some very bad police tend to be protected in many police departments, but that's an entirely different opinion.
This could be the case. Tier 3 on the West Coast in the US. Everyone marching and protesting want the police either completely gone or heavily defunded to the point where they basically don't exist.
Or in a community that is majority minority where they seem to get the brunt of “a few bad cops”.
Actually random polls say the exact opposite of your guarantee.
Only 15% of Americans support cutting police funding.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
One, your statistics are the reverse of reality.
Two, the people that want to defund police are not the people that want to abolish the police. Considering the LAPD budget is 1.8 billion, and the NYPD budget is 6 billion, do you think that's by definition a bad position?
Three, the minority that want to abolish the police (me, various anarchist and communist groups, some general leftist groups, alt-right libertarians), absolutely have thought out the consequences of that. Most are more on the "abolish and then reform from scratch" train, because there's evidence that this works (on mobile and can't grab right now, sorry), others are on the "abolish and then reform into an entirely different concept from what exists now train" (see: https://bostonreview.net/law-justice/derecka-purnell-what-do...), and the tiniest sliver are on the "get rid of them all and make them never come back" train.
I hope this helps clear up any confusion and/or strawmen.
Tearing down a house and building a car with the materials doesn't make a new house.
Quite, you are accurately highlighting some of the differences between the various abolish/reform positions. I don't sense you challenging the supposition that simply lumping the abolish/reform groups into the same category is absurd given the above, so I'm not sure the purpose of your comment.