in your fantasy world where cops don’t exist, who intervenes when someone inevitably commits a crime?
Who intervenes when cops are around, though? I’ve been laughed at in my face and told they couldn’t do anything despite us having proof in the form of a brick through our window. Not even the restraining order was honored.
Or how about the time I got beat up and all they did was allegedly take some notes and tell me they couldn’t do anything because it was private property?
It’s kind of insane how much we rely on their image rather than their direct actions to even dare be so condescending.
Tedesche@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
All of those instances are examples of either cops not doing their jobs or the law being imperfect. Problems like that will always exist but that just means we need to focus on fixing them, by changing laws and instituting better systems for policing the police. Getting rid of police as an institution is pointless and fixes nothing.
I agree we need reforms in both law and police departments, as well as a better institution than “Internal Affairs” to keep cops in line. More essentially, we need to change the cultural problem at the heart of police corruption. Regular psychological evaluations, deescalation training, and an active stance against authoritarian personalities in police need to be adopted.
kugel7c@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Cops are a few hundert years old concept why would they be necessary now when most places they barely existed pre ww1.
Your second paragraph is just as pie in the sky as abolishing, specifically because as with every position entailing power over others, authoritarians will flock to it.
The police was created so that wealth and power can effectively use part of the state for physical protection of their assets and lives, and that is still their operating background, the management of the local meat packing factory or the amazon warehouse will have much greater access to police resources than you or your plumber, by design, the law is imperfect and cops are not doing their job, more or less on purpose. And this status quo will not change unless at least some part of this system is entirely redone.
If the greater context in which the police exists, makes normal people scared of consequences, and powerful people immune to consequences enacted by police, why should any normal person argue for their existence.
mrbutterscotch@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
So say we abolish the police. What happens when someone has been robbed?
kugel7c@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Either the robbery is severe enough for the person who was robbed to assemble a little group to catch the robber or they just let it slide. If we know some info about the robber we could let any institutions in the surrounding area know that this person is to be exiled or at least that his missteps be brought up before he is again considered to be part of polite society.
Local neighbourhood watch /militias could also exist and take over some of the polices current work especially when it comes to groups of potentially violent perpetrators.
None of this is going to be particularly effective but it’s not like currently a robbery, or most other crimes are likely to be effectively prosecuted either so I don’t see the big issue.
There are more watertight arguments made by anarchists, syndicalists and the like that you could read and agree or disagree with. But at the end of the day there is little ability for either of us to demonstrate, to me that the police can be fixed with any proposed method, and to you that society without police would work/ be more fair. So ultimately we are not gonna get much further here.
Tedesche@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
LOL, wtf are you smoking, dude? This is why conversations about this topic on Lemmy are so consistently bad; ACAB folks just make shit up. Societies have had police in some form or another since practically the beginning of civilization. And to the extent that they didn’t, crime was up and vigilante justice was the only recourse.
You’re a damn fool, and I don’t take you seriously.