Yeah, great other working stuffs as the enemy, that’ll help.
Change hiring practices, change training, police can be a benefit.
Comment on Should law enforcement workers form unions?
jerkface@lemmy.ca 8 months agoPolice aren’t labour.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
jerkface@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
No. It will not help. The problem is not the individuals we hire. It is the job we hire them for. The JOB is not labour. It is violence. The purpose of the police is to maintain the state’s “legitimate monopoly on violence.” The reason every police officer exists in every nation is to do violence against members of a state on behalf of that state’s needs.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
Police are not labour and this is well known. So well known that technically, police in North America (and likely other jurisdictions) are not allowed to form unions. If you take a close look at the “police unions” in North America, you will find that they are all actually “police associations.” They don’t enjoy the same rights and powers as an actual union, but they adopt all the trappings so that people don’t realize, and don’t think about the true relationship between citizen, state, and the police.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 8 months ago
Yes, that’s the reality. But if they actually operated the way people have been led to believe they do, then they would be as much of a labor force as the fire department.
We should talk about getting the police to actually being the fairy tale people think it is first, though.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
That is impossible. If they didn’t do violence to citizens of a state on behalf of the state, then they are not police. They would be something else. A “citizen service league” or something.