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I live in a small town in the rural south.
The 'community patrols' would very quickly turn into KKK lynch mobs going after anyone that was 'woke'.
Yeah, ACAB, but the alternative that would happen in most places is pretty bad too. There's gotta be a 3rd way to keep people safe without using either cops as they exist now or vigilance committees.
I can also see community "policing" in cities devolve into chaos as a bunch of petty kings pop up in every neighbourhood.
The guys in those hypothetical lynch mobs are the cops today.
At least in this scenario you could get your buds and shoot back at the klan fuckers, maybe.
Why are so many people convinced the Police we have are the only ones we COULD have?
We don't want NO Police
We want BETTER Police
Ive repeated this argument so many times.
They need to have a FEDERAL licence to provide law enforcement. So you cant just move when you get in trouble.
Each officer needs to carry their own "malpractice" insurance so the city/state doesnt have a financial interest in ignoring bad behavior.
Make "Abuse of the public trust" a federal felony. Officer making bad judgement calls in the heat of the moment is one thing but calculated corruption should be a federal offence.
I had an argument about this with a friend once. I was saying if we just abolish the police, private enterprise will probably step in to fill the gap. I don't want that. I don't want amazon offering policing services (as part of Prime. vomit).
I think the police need to be split up into smaller institutions, and have a lot less murder powers.
Someone needs to address the "Someone broke into my house and stole my TV" problem, without a profit motive and with accountability.
There should be something to address "My neighbor is screaming at his wife and I think he's hitting her" that doesn't involve some low empathy assholes with guns rolling up to mock the woman.
I don't know how to fix this.
Cops are deliberately trained to be be fearful and quick to shoot. You start by reforming how cops are trained. Literally following how the military trains their troops would be a big improvement. This vet got fired for deescalating a situation, per his military training, but counter to his police training.
How the fuck is military training actually doing this better than police training… wow
Because the militarization of police is just them larping after watching too many war movies.
Strict hiring policies so you aren't scraping the bottom of the barrel. Better and longer training pipelines so you're getting career professionals instead of thugs. Better accountability and enforcement of regulations so they're being held to standards consummate with their responsibilities. Letting beat cops police their own communities so they have a stake in things.
And this I think is unique to the US, getting rid of the mind boggling layers of law enforcement. In Australia, we have state and federal police. Not state, federal, county, city, campus, sherrifs, and whatever.
I mean, it think it's the wrong question. I think the question is, what can we do to minimize the need for police? The problem there is it usually involves lifting up poorer communities and no one wants to supply these communities with the resources to do it.
Amen. What I find fascinating and difficult to swallow is impoverished (and non) people's desire to have kids and not raise them, almost as if they are happy with their shit sandwich, and think "yeah" I'll give this to a another human. Boy o boy have I seen deplorables breed when they are in no capacity to look after themselves. It comes across to me as a type of evil. The meat grinder is made from this stupidity.
Boy o boy have I seen deplorables breed when they are in no capacity to look after themselves.
This is why I decided I didn't want kids many years ago. I can barely look after myself, I can't imagine having to take care of kids.
Agreed. It is multi step
You reduce the need for it, you reduce their military power. You give them better training and force them to use non lethal forces when possible (usually it is)
Stop breaking into people's houses incorrectly and shooting them
Also forced body cameras and strict follow up
Police should be needed less, but police still need to be policed by the people
Mmm, not sure I like this better. If the majority in your community are filled with religious crazies suddenly you're ruled by backwards ass religious laws from millenia ago. Laws and enforcement would be even more incoherent, not less. No matter who is enforcing the laws, we need ways to keep ALL people in power accountable regardless of how it's organized and I don't think that goes away in a more anarchist kind of world.
I've never needed a cop for anything, and in the case of theft, I hardly expect the item back in any usable condition anyway.
If someone shoots me and runs off, the cops can't unshoot me, or unbeat me up, or unrape me. They might beat me up just for asking for help. Who's to say I get a good cop that day?
Communities organizing themselves into squads to handle criminals and undesirables is also how we ended up with the KKK. Also the kinds of people who volunteer for unpaid security work tend to be pretty conservative in my experience.
a) isn't "the police" just a wider definition of "a community organizing itself"
b) half the police are in the fucking klan anyway lol
The police is supposed to be a standardized rules based version of this, where the whole force is subject to law and can be held accountable, because chances are that unless you're lucky or able to move, you'll have a less than ideal local community.
It's not exactly unusual for people to be either lazy or unethical.
You're almost lucky if they just reject your efforts to organize, the guys in your community could easily do like crooked cops and repurpose the group to do crimes like harassment, theft, extortion, assault, kidnapping, rape and murder together. Of course the first ones being more likely.
Some of you might prefer the targets they pick, though. Like beating a racist Asian grocer, threatening a woman 10 blocks away who cheated on one of the guys, and maybe kidnap and sodomize some dweeb none of you liked since high school. Shit like that.
American police probably has too many issues to be reformed without being completely rebuilt with fresh hires across the board and making new rules and procedures. All "cops" should be fired, all "cop" culture must be cleaned out and left to rot in shitty bars where old gangster cops will inevitably gather in the aftermath, where an actual new and accountable police force will likely arrest them and put them in prison for whatever fucked up shit they've just done.
Yes exactly, "Policing activity" will happen one way or another. It's the regulation, transparency, accountability that is used to weed out bad cops that is needed to make it beneficial to society.
yeah, it was only when we added in paychecks they became police.
If a society is a the point of calling for a substitute to police, then you are fucked. at that point you are just gonna build two armed factions which are illegitimate in each others eyes. thats how you get a civil war.
Can we get the slavery aspect far the fuck away from punishment as well? I’m sick of this country (America) acting like the moral arbiter of the world while we still practice slavery.
Couldn't those community patrols be considered a type of police
Normally theyre called gangs. The thing that made the black panthers special is that as a cause it was killed before it deteriorated. A lot of gangs form to protect from other gangs, police corruption, and general sense of community.
Usually most folks aren't willing to do things free, so it devolves as it grows. Loses the original basis for formation. It's why christians is a confusing term, you have atheists, catholics, buddhists, etc. All lumped in while all can and are christian, there is degrees of severity.
Oh so like first it starts out protecting the community from issues but then it turns into "the crips have to pay" and now heroin to pay for a turf war...
That's interesting
You start protecting the community but who is paying you, your rent, or your food? You have to start charging and now you're another tax. Tensions rise. And yes this would impact drug trafficking which is usually lethal. Note, junkies are relatively safe, dont get between their drugs or stare and you are good.
Trying to do good is difficult because by definition, the only good thing you can do is retain the status quo. Any change will have negative repercursions.
A good goal quickly deteriorates when the power structure forces you to deal with the devil. And where does he reside?
I agree with you. What would be the use of those patrols if not to police behaviour?
Maybe someone with more historical knowledge could expand on the meaning of "Black Panther style community patrols".
I think the difference is the idea of people from the community, with the consent of the community, policing said community. From the community, for the community. I think it's a nice idea, but it really depends on the actual community what that would look like. More peaceful and inclusive in some places, horribly authoritarian and racist (even worse than US cops now) in others.
But yeah it'd just be different form of policing and those doing it could be just called police.
I feel like this sounds like a great idea until you end up with a bunch of unregulated militias run by the George Zimmermans of the world in every red state with a government who doesn’t give a shit, but I’d absolutely love to be proven wrong
We already have that. Cops with qualified immunity are almost definitionally an unregulated militia
Cops still have rules of engagement. Whenever you think “this could not get any worse” it could actually get worse. A lot worse.
We could have large gangs of white men conducting pogroms, moving house to house shooting anyone they found who wasn’t white. They could be torching every house and creating wildfires that destroy large sections of the cities.
This is all the kinda stuff that happened in the past. Antisemitic pogroms in Europe in the 20th century and earlier, for example.
What we need is a police force of negotiators and social workers.
A police officer should only get a job after a mandatory time spent as a social worker and a expensive study of law and peaceful conflict resolving.
Before that: no weapons and no authority.
Also accountability: every bullet and every taser use has to be explained. Cams 24/7 on the job, disabling them should be a grounds for immediate expulsion.
Oh and of course, cops should no longer be above the law.
I think this would also scare away a lot of the people who become police officers for the wrong reasons.
Yes, I believe it could be possible to have good cops - it's just not possible under the current system. Hell, the current system is a deterrent to good cops.
Without cops, who will throw people out on the street when they can't pay rent?
Or who will arrest the folk giving less fortunate people food?
I'm always down with the Black Panthers. ✊🏿 They did great community work.
if they hadn't started school breakfast programs i (decades later) wouldn't have had food as a kid
Cops dont responsibly handle the authority they have been given and they desperately need to be put under adult supervision. We cant count of either of the two political parties to do that. Its been that way for at least 100 years. So maybe getting rid of them and letting something new form is the only way. They are hopeless.
Keep me honest, isn't the gangsta group called Crypts came from this?
Crips, which have been given the backronym "Community Resistance In Progress".
But it doesn't take much research to show they do not stand for the types of values you're referring to.
