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Comment by sunseb | Hacker News Reader

What could go wrong? Lunatics are running the asylum it seems. Authority is always here. Disband the police and you will get another arbitrary authority (being gangs, some kind of political repression, and so). There already are no-go zones in Europa where the police don't go anymore, believe me, you wouldn't want to live there.

If you don't want the official police anymore, why not starting with your place, your home and your family?

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I agree that the risk of disbanding a police department is underappreciated and there are some scary alternatives that can form. This isn't an action people should be taking or proposing lightly. I'm worried it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

How is that any different than the lawless gangs that have the force of government behind them?

There exists a decent real world example of "a tale of two police strategies" in two demographically similar cities: Juarez and El Paso. Juarez and El Paso are situated across from each other along the U.S.-Mexico border. In some ways they are the same city, with many residents traveling across the border each day. Juarez is the second most deadly city in the world, at over 100 murders per 100K population [1]. El Paso has just 3.3 murders per 100K population [2]. The difference is that the police and legal system work better in the U.S. compared to Mexico. In many parts of Mexico, gangs run the streets, and officials are either in bed with gangs or often intimidated by gangs [3]. That's what fills the power vacuum in the absence of effective policing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate [2] https://www.areavibes.com/el+paso-tx/crime/ [3] https://apnews.com/231aec4552f040e49095f77968e6345c

The power of Mexican drug cartels is scary. Someone like El Chapo is essentially above the law. The only reason he's still in prison is because he as extradited to the US.

At least in the case of George Floyd, one of officers was charged with murder, the other three with aiding and abetting, so they're clearly not lawless gangs. We'll see what happens at trial, but this is a fair level of scrutiny for what happened; if police faced charges like this every time one of these deaths happened, they'd be a lot more careful.

Only because it was filmed. The entire system tried to cover it up at first from the police force, to the coroner, to the DA.

When two police were fired and charged with assault for shoving a 77 year old man. 49 other officers resigned in protest.

There are plenty of cases where police acted inappropriately. Like raiding the wrong house and shooting a lady while she was sleeping.

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/13/855705278/sleeping-while-blac...

And nothing happens. The entire system is corrupt.

> Only because it was filmed.

This is a big reason why I'm in favor of police body cams. In an innocent until proven guilty legal system, it's too easy for people to get off by saying "he lunged at me and I defended myself."

> coroner

Really? I assume you mean the country medical examiner. He ruled the death a homocide. I think people want there to be a simple explanation like "he was choked," but it was actually pretty complicated because of drugs in his system, underlying heart disease, and covid-19. I honestly think both reports are generally true, and there's enough room for difference of opinion in the exact cause of death that I'm not concerned by the different conclusions.

Do you (or others) actually believe this statement, or are you being contrarian to make another point?

If you do, what sort of experience / data leads one to believe that policing in western societies are top-line equivalent to the strong-armed lawlessness that exists in many failed states around the globe. Genuinely curious.

The data that we have is racial bias in stop and frisk (no evidence of crime before the stop), bias is traffic stops, bias in tickets being issued for the same offense, racial bias in sentencing.

Not to mention that almost every case that came to trial against police came about after video came out. Before the video, they tried to cover it up.

How many times have we seen recently that when “the few bad apples” were fired and/or charged, “the good cops” objected?

> What could go wrong? Lunatics are running the asylum it seems. Authority is always here. Disband the police and you will get another arbitrary authority (being gangs, some kind of political repression, and so). There already are no-go zones in Europa where the police don't go anymore, believe me, you wouldn't want to live there.

> If you don't want the official police anymore, why not starting with your place, your home and your family?

Europa? I hope that’s a typo and not a dog whistle. I’ll assume good faith but your comments in this thread have a lot in common with views promoted by Identity Evropa and other white supremacist groups. Just in case you weren’t aware of the ambiguity in a typo like Europa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement

Sorry, it's because I am French, my English is not that good yet.

My country (France) is sinking: daily violence, ethnic gangs, religious fanaticism, tribalism, women being harassed daily in the streets. It's really scary for the future actually.

So when I read comments on HN about disbanding the police, it seems to me that some guys in here have lost touch with reality. It's not because you are a good person with moral values that all people in the world are like you.

Gangs breed in places where basic needs aren't being met. Poverty and economic despair drive people both to join gangs and to buy from them. A big part of this movement involves re-allocating the enormous budgets that many of these police departments have, towards social services like affordable housing, education, and rehabilitation programs. In theory, those programs could treat the problem at the source.

People in middle-class neighborhoods refrain from stealing and shooting people not because they have superior moral fiber, but because their needs are met, and therefore crime isn't in their best interest.

If an apartment block were riddled with termites, asbestos, and concrete cancer, the people saying that it should be demolished aren't proposing that the residents revert to sleeping under the stars in the empty lot left behind.

Likewise, the people proposing that the MPD be abolished aren't saying that Minneapolis should go without a police force, just that they need a whole new one, without the legacy of the old one.

If this is accurate, then they are indeed talking about going without a police force, in their words a "police free" future. https://mobile.twitter.com/MattFinnFNC/status/12697741470239...

Interesting...though they are talking about replacing the MPD with something ("a new transformative model") at least, not leaving the lot empty, to continue the metaphor.

Do you have unspoken reasons why it would be worse than current?

Those silly East Germans, disbanding the Stasi...

There’s plenty of precedence for replacing a broken police force with one which actually works properly.

(Shrug) If another street gang takes over, at least my taxes won't be paying their salaries.

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