what a bunch of assholes, that's like calling police "community environment integrity" officers
Do you really think a private legal system would be better? That is the alternative, you can't enforce laws without a police force.
A pretty huge part of the problem is that our police act as vastly inferior substitutes to just proper social services. An incredibly simple and good example of how this could be done better is being demonstrated in Denver, where they have unarmed mental health first responders, because most of the time someone is in crisis they're only a threat to themselves, so being armed only makes the situation worse.
They're also trained to view the public as the enemy (warrior training), making them a walking threat. Our police kill people at a rate many times higher than other comparably developed nations; about 60x the UK, for reference. Yes our gun ownership is higher, but the relatively low rate of police deaths shows that their readiness to resort to violence is unjustified.
If we allocated even half of our police budgets towards social services, we'd live safer lives.
Net negative means that society would improve if we just removed it without replacing it with anything. Can you defend that?
But yes, I think freeing up that enormous amount of budget for almost any other purpose would be an improvement.
Do you have good arguments for this? For example, if we dismantled the entire police force to reduce the government deficit, or to increase healthcare spending, or to reduce taxes, do you really think society would improve?
Your examples above didn't dismantle the police entirely and had a very small set of alternative spending. It isn't consistent with what you said in this post. You need to explain why you think that dismantling the entire police force would be a net positive, how do you think that society would work without a police force?
> Your argument says that we can improve the police, not that the police is net negative.
>Net negative means that society would improve if we just removed it without replacing it with anything. Can you defend that?
Also, net negative means that their negative actions outweigh their positive actions. I don't know how you got the idea that negative == not repairable. You're putting arguments that they didn't say into their mouth. You're only arguing in false dilemmas.
No it can't, if removing X causes more problems then having X prevents those worse problems.
> Also, this is a common strawman: almost no one advocates police abolition over police reform
The person I responded to argued just this. This is what police being net negative means, that society would improve by removing the police. I wouldn't have said anything if he just thought that the police could use a budget cut or a reform.
TBF I still feel that's a gun problem. It's very hard to "accidentally" kill someone with a baton, taser, or even a knife (not that I know any police with a knife). Meanwhile, richochet bullets can kill someone in the complete opposite direction of fire if your're really unlucky. more likely, a shot misses and goes past the scene and into the crossfire of someone innocent.
but as anyone battling 2A knows, that's (and was) going to be a very long debate.
You can in USA. Inform the grand jury and they can investigate and indict. Most anyone can do this by, for example, mail to the grand jury foreperson. I pulled up a big State for you:
"DUTIES OF GRAND JURY. The grand jury shall inquire into all offenses subject to indictment of which any grand juror may have knowledge or of which the grand jury is informed by the attorney representing the state or by any other credible person."
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CR/htm/CR.20A.htm
The district attorney can present, and so can "any other credible person."
Police are called law-enforcement for a reason, it is because they are how we enforce laws.
edit: A criminal defendant may be tried in front of a jury. A grand jury is something completely different - regular people who meet in private, can review information, and can indict.
What will happen if you remove the police force is that someone creates a private police force, like a mafia. So now the government no longer can make laws, the mafia makes the laws, essentially dismantling the country.
I guess you could use the military to enforce laws, but martial law isn't a good thing either.
So saying you think the police is net negative is essentially saying you think it would be better to live with a mafia ruling your life. They would knock on your door and demand money instead of the democratically decided tax rates etc, is that really better?