Maybe it’s because I live in a country where the police don’t carry guns (and sex work is legal), but I found it really hard to put my finger on exactly what they are advocating for here.
They seem to be saying that police only exist to enforce middle class interests? I don’t think that’s entirely true.
I would like to see more change in how policing is done, but the idea that communities self-police is idealistic. Sure they do in some ways, but it can be just as selective and just as damaging as anything police do.
I think the idea is more that police are actually mandated to enforce state power through violence. Middle-class usually just match up in their interests with the interests of the state. Even in countries where police don’t carry guns, they are still used to forcefully combat protests or other things which oppose or obstruct government interests, and they still enforce laws unequally among different demographics (and to be clear, even when they don’t carry guns around with them normally, they will still go get guns whenever they feel they need to).
Community policing is important in that it eliminates the use of one group to police another. White middle-class cops being used to police poor minorities, for example. Does it eliminate all biases? Of course not. But studies have shown that police are far less likely to employ excessive force against members of their own neighborhoods and communities.
There’s a lot of issues with this self policing thing that I don’t think is considered. If there’s nobody whose job is policing then you’re expecting people to put their lives on the line for strangers for free. What happens to isolated people? Who do they call? Who decides on what actually happens in justice? If someone killed your relative for example, and you were allowed to take that person and torture them, then would you? Many would.
There might be problems with current systems in different places, but the whole “get rid of the police” thing doesn’t make sense.
I think your questions reveal a lot more about how you envision society working, than they do to question the validity of alternatives. Are you under the impression that police have existed a phone call away for most of history? Why do you sound like you think they underpin all social order?
you’re expecting people to put their lives on the line for strangers for free
Not at all. Why are you under the impression that community labor is uncompensated? That has never been the case. Hell, even right now gated communities often hire private security guards.
What happens to isolated people? Who do they call?
Who do they call now that can actually intervene? Police response times in rural communities are often northward of 45 minutes already. People who live isolated like that already take steps ensure their own protection (including by organizing with their nearest neighbors).
Who decides on what actually happens in justice?
Are you under the impression that police oversee trials or sentencing or set punishments? Police have nothing to do with “what actually happens in justice”. I feel like you are confusing “police-less” with “society-less”. Police do not underpin all social systems. Are you aware that police have not existed for most of human history?
Look, no offence, but I think you are under a lot of really fundamental misunderstandings about the role of police in our current society, nevermind alternative models of policing.
Police are not omnipresent, instantly-available guardians. Police are not the creators or interpreters of law, nor are they responsible for punishments for breaking laws. They don’t even determine if a law has been broken, that’s what a court does. The only single thing that police are mandated to do is to investigate and intervene in activities which may violate laws.
They have no legal obligation to protect you.
They have no legal obligation to intervene before a certain threshhold of crime occurs.
They can legally stand by and watch someone shoot you, and arrest them afterwards, and in fact often they have.
Modern-day US police, as an institution, are not rooted in the city-guards of the Middle Ages, they’re a progression from slave-catching patrols, and their system of roving around looking for ‘trouble’ is a much more direct analogue to British colonial occupation forces in Africa than to the Bobby stationed in a police box on the street corner back home.
I imagine it would look in some ways like Burning Man. I’ve only been once a long time ago, but when I went we had social order without police.
On the extremely rare occasions someone was out of line, tearing down art or picking fights with people, random burners would step into the policing role and get the guy under control.
It worked pretty well. In our case it was a city of about 40,000 that only existed for two weeks, so it’s hard to say how it might scale. But that was my first exposure to anarchy as a governmental model, and it worked extremely well. As in, not only was Black Rock City functional, it was also incredible.
It just wouldn’t work in the real world. Burning man is a group of like minded individuals.
Many people would just steal all your shit at every opportunity if they knew they could get away with it.
if they knew they could get away with it
Why do you assume that not having police means they would get away with it?
Yeah I guess if we had a force to police what you can and can’t do it’ll be alright.
We’d also need some sort of court system to make sure justice is done so you can’t just accuse people.
But to be serious all of human history and the way criminals currently operate even with a police force.
And when those people eventually get caught, they would be dealt with by the populace. Consequences for people’s actions is the same deterrent that currently “stops” people from stealing shit all the time (i.e. people still steal shit with the existence of police)
And when those people eventually get caught, they would be dealt with by the populace.
How exactly do you imagine this happening? A tarnished reputation and nobody wanting to associate might work well for petty theft. But I would rather have some sort of court system for more complicated issues. But if you have a court system, you have to have some way of making a person show up, no?
In our case it was a city of about 40,000 that only existed for two weeks, so it’s hard to say how it might scale
Keeping order is one thing, but police do a bunch of things no one else has time for.
Endless follow ups, liaising with social workers, taking long statements for inquests, or spending all day protecting someone’s right to peacefully protest.
None of those activities seemed necessary, or maybe they were happening without my knowledge
That’s due to the short duration of BM. There’s not enough time for societal conflicts requiring maintenance paperwork - domestic violence and family breakdowns, child custody battles, litigation involving multiple parties with warrants served for trial discovery. BM is also a self-selecting population of (let’s face it) upper-middle class people who are there for a generative purpose. It’s like saying you don’t notice the need for a welfare councilor or federal free lunch voucher program at a $100k/yr private school. That’s not a problem that comes up in that demographic.
It’s strange but there has never been an instance where police have made me feel safer.
Overall I don’t think the issue is with police as a concept but instead with the current implementation of our police.
Well sure, “police” is just a label. You can call an ad-hoc community-defense group in a stateless society “police” if you want. People aren’t opposed to the word itself, they’re opposed to what modern-day police as an institution are (enforcers of state authority against the populace).
The whole reason that US law forbids the US military from being deployed internally without congressional approval is because it was assumed that local police would be made up of members of the community they police, and not treat the community as an adversary, whereas a national military member would probably be from somewhere else.
Without getting into the slave-catching origins of police in general, the militarization of the police (as well as the large areas which they cover beyond just their local neighborhoods) has effectively turned our police into the very thing the Posse Comitatus Act was trying to prevent; an occupier force to impose government authority and the threat of violence in peoples’ everyday lives.
