Appologies, but I don't know what you mean.
Abusing surveillance tools has nothing to do with legitimate policing, so "over-policing" is probably the wrong word.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sure sounds bad. Poor communities have frequently suffered the most from police forces, since by and large police are designed and funded by the wealthy to protect their interests.
The police have always been oriented towards protecting the wealthy from the poor.
Police perform an important function. Unregulated, unchecked, untrained, militarized police taught that they are immune from prosecution for crimes against citizens do not.
Drawing an equivalence between these two muddies the waters in an extremely unhelpful way.
A well-regulated police force drawn from the population it is sworn to protect is a good thing. It's a hard, important job.
And yes, it's obvious Flock was going to be abused and no I don't think a well-regulated police force should have access to pervasive surveillance. But that doesn't mean I want to do away with police in general.
The whole ACAB narrative is one of the most deeply unpopular views of the American left, polling at something like 80% disapproval. I guess ACAB people think my friend who went to the police to report sexual abuse by her step father (leading to his arrest and incarceration) should have hired a... community councilor? A mercenary? Gotten out the community pitchforks? Because that ends well as a mechanism for justice? I genuinely don't know, but I think people who want less policing (as opposed to accountability, transparency, and demilitarization) aren't thinking very clearly.
They also suffered from a lack of point to point teleportation. Or, I mean, they would if that existed.
The point being that it's not terribly useful to talk about things that only exist in theory.
Police, rather by definition are regulated by the people with money because they can afford it. The people in "poor neighborhoods" can't afford to pay for police.
> Drawing an equivalence between these two muddies the waters in an extremely unhelpful way.
Says the person trying to change the topic of discussion to hypothetical ideal instead of the world we actually live in.
As for ACAB and its polling, well, that's like saying "socialism polls badly", it probably does, but also nobody answering the polls actually agrees on how to define it.
There is an absolutely massive amount of (american) propaganda devoted entirely to portraying police in the best possible light and influencing people towards that end. We have endless movies and tv shows and books and cable news shows and radio talk shows and on and on.
> I guess ACAB people think my friend who went to the police to report sexual abuse by her step father (leading to his arrest and incarceration) should have hired a... community councilor?
No, literally nobody thinks that and it's a pretty sad attempt at rhetoric to suggest it.
> but I think people who want less policing (as opposed to accountability, transparency, and demilitarization) aren't thinking very clearly.
I'm not sure why you're trying so hard to draw a distinction here, if you actually look at americans, you can pretty easily divide them into two groups, one of which that wants "transparency and demilitarization" and one of which wants a police force with more military style weapons and equipment, and if you are on the side of demilitarization, then guess what, you're on the same side as everyone yelling acab.
You aren't some kind of special person who can some how see the perfect compromise between all positions that everyone else has missed.
"Police should be monitored by a complete separate agency with no chain of command in common with the police force, answerable to voters in a more direct way, as well as trained to de-escalate situations and held accountable for their crimes" doesn't fit on a placard and it's hard to chant. ACAB is a lot shorter.
Also, as a final takeaway, the phrase is "a few bad apples SPOILS THE ENTIRE BARREL" not "a few bad apples are perfectly fine and nobody minds them".
I'm sure most police aren't actually committing crimes and abuse of power. But they also refuse to hold the ones that do accountable and are therefor 100% complicit with all the abuses.
The poorest communities need good policing the most, and suffer from bad policing the most. Both things are true at the same time.
That's really not what policing is about even in the most charitable view. It's certainly what policing has been propagandized to be.
Besides playing candy crush in a cruiser, the vast majority of policing everyday is responding to complaints that happen after a crime happens (or someone getting nervous).
The role of police, in the most charitable framing, is to catch people suspected of committing crimes.
Evil is also something I'd quibble over. For example, the cops that are doing things like hiding in closets to catch people jumping a turnstile certainly aren't "stopping evil people". People are complex, there are few that are truly "evil".
Now, my less charitable read on cops is they have overbloated budgets, too little oversight and consequences, and they certainly don't prioritize impactful crimes to low class people. Cops, for example, very rarely try and catch/stop bike theft. Cops primarily exist to punish people that pester the rich and well connected. See, for example, BAM and reckless ben.
Mugged, no. But I've certainly had someone try and pickpocket me.
> you are clearly someone who already doesn't have to deal with crime
Not in my day to day. In fact, most people don't. I've certainly known people who have been mugged and the thing they've said is universal "The police didn't do jack shit".
> and are projecting your own insecurities about it.
That's an uncharitable reading of my comment.
> In real life, good people want criminals stopped at all costs, especially when it inevitably happens to them.
In real life, police don't stop crimes. They don't stop muggings. That's not the job of cops. As I stated and you don't really want to contend with, the role of cops is catching the people that mug after the muggings happen. Unless you want to literally blanket the streets with cops, they will never have enough presence to stop a mugging because, spoiler, muggers don't tend to be blind and they don't tend to mug when cops are around.
Also here's that "good and evil" stuff again. No, good people don't have universal beliefs, you are using your own standards as "good" and classifying anyone who disagrees with you as evil. Life isn't black and white. I gave some pretty clear examples of that already (which you didn't respond to).
> but being unconditionally anti-police is a great way to get normal people to disagree with your politics, and we get people like trump.
Where, anywhere, have I stated that I'm anti-police? You are strawmanning me.
Police are a necessity that should exist. But, unlike you, I realize they aren't superheroes flying in to stop crime. The state has to have enforcement of it's laws and something like cops will always exist. The question is, how much should we fund them and how much accountability should we expect.
My standard is that cops who flagrantly abuse their authority (such as the cops in this article) should lose all ability to be cops. They are done, no more career. Do you disagree with that?
Unless you are making the argument that it's impossible for cops to not power trip, then you should be able to clearly see that I'm not advocating that we abolish the police.
Stop trying to play armchair psychologist and actually address my comment in your next response. It's annoying that you decided to put forward so many bad faith and misrepresentations of my argument in just a few sentences.
While I don't think police are omniscient superheros stopping crime before it happens, they are often true heros in every sense of the word. They put their lives on the line in very dangerous situations to try and prevent danger to others, and cops are killed in duty very regularly to no fanfare outside the local community.
Police are a public good. Without a public police force the wealthy would happily fund their own security, and most already do. There are neighborhoods in San francisco with private security teams who simply bypass the shortcomings of SFPD. I'm not sure I follow why police inherently exist to serve only the interests of the wealthy. I agree with most everything else you said.
There's a lot of stats on this, cops are just as likely to die in a car accident as they are to die from being shot (not very). It is a dangerous job, but not one that requires heroic fortitude.
I believe the way you view police directly contributes to their lack of accountability. They are just people. Getting training and a badge doesn't transform someone into the hero you expect them to be. There is an endemic of bad cops because they very often get a "these are heroes" treatment by a large percentage of the public.
I actually want cops to be the heroes TV portrays them to be. But to do that, you have to weed out the losers and bullies who figured out it's a cushy job that pays pretty well for very little education and oversight. That will involve doing things the police union will certainly protest. For example, a national registry of police misconduct and mandatory background check. To stop the problem of a cop who egregiously violates someone's rights from just moving to the next town over.
I agree police are a public good that society should maintain. The alternative is just a pile of bad ideas.
That being said, we, as in America, do a terrible job of maintaining our police force as a public good.
You talk about being "heroic" and "risking their lives", and that's technically true, but only for a very tiny subset, a larger subset is abusing their power and authority, and more crucially, never being held accountable.
Preventing all crimes is functionally impossible, although the incidence can be reduced in certain ways, but what we need is the criminals to be prosecuted. And a lot of police who commit crimes are not.
That tiny subset of heroics is not trivial just because it's a small number. Police are in danger every day and even if they draw a weapon .1% of the time that 1/1000 is everything, if they're not respected for putting their lives on the line then why would anyone take on the job. SF already can't hire enough police in part because of the anti police culture and overtime rates are a huge drain on the budget.
Preventing all crimes is impossible, but the culture that forms around taking them seriously or not absolutely contributes to local crime rates. In SF gangs and like minded criminals all talk to each other, they know whether they will get away with crimes, and it's why young children feel brazen enough to commit violent crime knowing the system will protect them.
Ivory tower academics can analyze police all they want from their already safe neighborhoods, the rest of us have no patience for it. I said this topic was a wedge, and even if I'm wrong it absolutely represents the sentiment of a huge portion of regular people who vote, and will vote red on this issue alone.
Malfeasance is the $10 word that's probably more appropriate here for the actions of officers intentionally abusing the systems their authority grants access to.
‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party
IIRC originally posted in reference to anti-trans women who voted Republican and were shocked to find out that women’s rights weren’t a priority