This is how you end up with gangs and a return to fiefdoms, nobility and all that bullshit. It doesnt scale.
When you definitely understand history.
The end of the feudal era was not ushered in by the institution of police, it came because feudalism loses to capitalism in an industrialized nation. Abolishing police is a principle of a new society that gives people direct democratic control over their own lives and workplaces. Just like the capitalists were forced to overthrow their nobility and reorganize society in order to become free (replacing one ruling class with another,) the people are being forced to overthrow the capitalists and reorganize society in order to become free.
The irony of course is that the billionaires want a return to serfdom and nobility, only hemispherical rather than regional, and they are arming and empowering police to repress the people who want to stop them, and force their new regressive form of techno serfdom into existence. The police are enforcing the will of people who literally consider themselves the divinely ordained kings of the planet, on a local scale.
There’s plenty of good criticisms of “abolish the police” but this isn’t one of them.
Here is a real example of a place (Cherán, pop. 16,000) which kicked out their police, party-politicans and other organized criminals in 2011, replacing it with a local militia of citizens and direct democracy. Crime dropped massively, “Right now there is no crime. These days, it doesn’t get worse that a brawl. A bar fight, a street fight.” Their homicide rate is (last I remember) the lowest in their state and among the lowest in the country.
How is a local militia of citizens different than the police?
That’s literally what the police are. The police are a local militia of citizens.
The police are state-controlled rather than community-run, following state laws not community rules.
And as the results show, empowering the community to defend itself works out much better.
The police aren’t state controlled where I live. We have a seperate provincial police force that is different than than the local police force that polices our city.
That’s still part of the state apparatus.
Any group of people who are given power over others will inevitably become “the police”.
Maybe a grassroots effort is made to pick people from your local area to be the police, it might seem rosy for a couple of years, but they will still be the police, they will still become corrupted by the power they wield.
Which is why the entire community is responsible not a group of people.
And no, you can look at autonomous regions in Mexico that have been doing this for decades now and still going ‘rosy’. I understand you have a need to rationalise why the system we use must be the best, but reality says otherwise.
That’s just not true though right? You’re making up falsehoods. The entire community meaning every single person, is not responsible for keeping the peace and security. It is still only a group of people from within that community.
Where I live our police are local and our police are chill and we don’t tend to have many conflicts or issues with them. I agree with keeping police as local as possible. I disagree with pretending that a local community electing a local group of people to ensure law and order is fundamentally different that a police force.
And no I’m not going to “look at autonomous regions in Mexico” aka “do my own research”. It’s up to you to provide evidence for claims that you are making. You tell me how exactly it’s different rather than taking me down into your logical fallacy.
Police are frequently not citizens of the place where they work. I work for a small city in the Development department, and not a single person at City Hall from police to court to administration has ties to the city itself.
In our case it’s because the tiny city is an enclave for the mega-rich and you literally can’t buy a house for under 3 million dollars right now, and the new-build homes are between 5 and 30 million, and they’re not gonna pay staff enough money to live in town.
But even in other places, lots of police live outside the city where they work, if for no other reason than specifically because they don’t want to enforce the laws on their neighbors.
How is a local militia of citizens different than the police?
The police is unaccountable and above the law.
That’s a non-answer.
Explain who a local militia of citizens would be more accountable than a local police force.
The militia itself makes (or not) the people accountable, versus the judicial system where the laws are heavily biased towards cops (qualified immunity for example).
Another community doing the same thing could end badly, but at least, there isn’t a judiciary system in place, with a different caste, that favors one group over the other.
So, creating a militia doesn’t guarantee accountability, but it gets rid of a system heavily in favor of cops not being held accountable, thus giving it a chance to hold everyone accountable.
Ok so get rid of qualified immunity, that’s an actual tangible change that could be made. Changing the oppressors from one group to the other doesn’t sound like a solution to me. We need a strong rule of law that places limits on the power of whomever is doing the policing.
Who enforces the ‘strong rule of law’? There’s no way we can have some perfect incorruptible authority on which to depend and that’s why organizations that are more horizontal than vertical are better for us. A citizen militia is organized enough to get shit done and leaderless enough to be resistant to centralized corruption. The model is not without its flaws but we mustn’t pretend that the coercive vertical hierarchy of our current system is better.
The limits on power you desire can only be enforced with power and it’s best if the power doing that work is decentralized.
Ok, so police reform. Sounds like a good idea.
The police structure is not strictly local, that’s an assumption I wouldn’t make. Here’s a reddit thread (I’m assuming mostly USA responses) with many verified officers saying they live half an hour, an hour or more away from their jurisdiction: https://reddit.com/r/ProtectAndServe/comments/1c59je6/how_far_away_do_you_live_from_your_department/ - “Seems most LEOs I’ve met don’t live in the same area they work”
Someone in another thread says to an OP: “I am assuming you are in the US, but elsewhere it is somewhat unusual for a police officer to live within the jurisdiction they police. Often you will find particular towns where officers might cluster, but living in the same part of a city, or in the same small town, is undesirable due to familiarity and reprisals. Obviously there are exceptions.”
A local militia of citizens will tend to be more familiar and accountable to the community they work within than some strangers working for the state, who are alienated to the subjects of their law enforcement. Plenty of systemic issues with police are a result of this alienation from the society they police.
In this example of Cherán, IIRC the corrupt police they evicted were municipal police, not local. By being members of the community, the local militia that replaced them could resolve more issues socially rather than by violence (inc. threat of violence) and were not accountable to the national government, but instead to a local government directly elected by citizens. So what this means is, unlike most police forces, these law enforcement agents are accountable to the community they govern. This reduces the tendency for corruption and abuse, and makes the job less enticing to those would seek to abuse it.
Where I live the police are accountable to our city and not to our state. Their budget comes from municipal taxes.
They are still the police.
Give any group of anyone power over others and eventually they will act like the police do.
It’s still a job someone has to do, so instead of “abolish” it should be “replace”. The core duty of keeping the people safe is something that needs to be done even if the current forces aren’t doing it very well or at all.
Now split up keeping the peace amongst the community and give everyone a small pebble of it and you will never have to worry about a good ol’ boy in blue deciding “justice”.
Yes, because mob justice historically worked great /s
What you need is a highly educated and regulated police. What we currently have is neither.
Cops learn SWAT techniques and interrogation “tricks” ( close to torture). What they should learn is non violent conflict resolution and the law.
Also an impartial cop surveillance agency is sorely missing.
That’s how people like Emmet Till get murdered…
The role of keeping the community safe should be done by the community . You cannot reform that which is fundamentally flawed from conception.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/community-self-defense
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/community-defense
It is my personal opinion we cannot escape bias or loopholes no matter the system adopted as we ourselves are flawed.
The self and the community will unavoidably come into conflict at some point and sacrificing the self for the community is improbable as community is sought for the self’s protection.
Individually, we either choose ourselves and our loved ones over the community or we become subordinate to that community. A subordination which can only lead to the death of individuality.
So abolish police forces and replace them with militia? What’s the difference?
Okay, the big difference I can see is accountability. Police forces tend to have immunity or at least functional immunity, you saw that with the Renee Good execution in Minnesota. With a militia, without a police group protecting them, if they executed someone in the streets, they would theoretically be held accountable.
They also wouldn’t get those sweet benefits, either.
Oh, and it sounds a lot like lynch mobs. We gotta be careful we aren’t advocating for mob rule. If a guy is caught messing with someone’s child, I’m all for the mob stringing them up and whatever, but if they start going on allegations and being led by shady people or organisations, then we have a problem, and arguably a worse one.
So abolish police forces and replace them with militia? What’s the difference?
Cherán did this in 2011. The difference is massive. Crime dropped massively, and the community trust their militia. “Right now there is no crime. These days, it doesn’t get worse that a brawl. A bar fight, a street fight.” Their homicide rate is (last I remember) the lowest in their state and among the lowest in the country.
It certainly helps that they didn’t just drive out police, but also political parties, implementing their own direct democracy.
No, “mob rule” or community defence is exactly what we need. You’ve been taught it’s a dirty word, it’s not.
The choices of how crimes are handled are best handled at the local level. The people living in the same places as the victims and perpetrators know best how to deal with each instance. Once you absolve that power to a police force people stop taking personal responsibility for their wellbeing and that of their community. The loss of sense of community is the worst thing that can happen for stopping crime.
This already plays out today in places such as the Zapatista autonomous territory in the Chiapas. There they work on a reformation model, with the community patrolling and defending itself, the guilty are still judged and sentenced by their community in fair trials. It’s a far more just system then the “justice” model we employ.
As for violent axe murderers who are irredeemable, those account for 0.3-3% (recidivism rate) of 0.43% (homicide rate) of all crimes.
The question this notion leaves me with is this: how does this style of a system deal with cases where its not so much one criminal, but the community itself, or someone with power in or over the community, that’s in the wrong? This covers a few different types of scenario; cases where a “cult” (doesn’t have to be a religious type group per se, but more high-control social groups that grant a leader significant power) has high membership in a given community and whose leaders abuse that status, cases of organized crime where a gang or mafia style group might have significant numbers within a community or community leaders in their pocket or just enough firepower that they’d win against the locals in a fight, and cases where a local culture springs up that enables some kind of abuse as a norm (as an example of what I mean with this, there’s the case of Pitcairn island, in which a small and isolated community developed a culture of sexual abuse, such that when it finally attracted outside attention and intervention, about half of the adult men on the islands were charged.) If left entirely to itself for justice, is it not likely that in cases like this, the response by the community will oftenbe to allow abuse to continue, given the percentage of the community involved and their social standing?)
Mind, this is still an exceptional type of scenario, and I do agree that for many crimes, especially more minor offenses or those committed by lone individuals, keeping things to a local level probably works better than involving an outside organization that can’t easily account for nuance and context. However, I’m still left feeling that there are plenty of cases where those in the wrong simply will have more power, be it social standing or some kind of direct influence, over their community than the victims and those who believe them do, and in those cases, there’s utility in having a higher level to appeal to if justice on the local level is denied.
The choices of how crimes are handled are best handled at the local level. The people living in the same places as the victims and perpetrators know best how to deal with each instance. Once you absolve that power to a police force people stop taking personal responsibility for their wellbeing and that of their community. The loss of sense of community is the worst thing that can happen for stopping crime.
Okay, now imagine living in a majority MAGA city. They have a great sense of community and have determined that you are a threat. Specific reasons don’t matter, they know best though.
Imagine living there today. Don’t think a maga cop is going to help you?
Also: who will keep enforcing laws designed against more than half the people? Would you think of poor unprotected rich?
The police exist to keep us in line, not protect us. We protect Us. Sometimes it’s even from the police. Like this situation. Community is built for this. That’s why they try to tear us apart.
Police work for the ruling class. Always have, and always will.
There is literally zero evidence that police keep us safe now. A ton that says the opposite actually.
What they really mean is “Who will oppress the minorities I hate?”
Yeah, no
This organization is happening because things are BAD, in case you haven’t been paying attention.
People shouldn’t bhave to do this in the first place if you have a well organized well trained police force that actually does what police is supposed to be doing
Don’t abolish police, rebuild it from the ground up until it’s something actually useful
Wrong, ACAB.
What’s your reasoning for ACAB?
Usually, the argument goes something like: cops are selected for and trained to default on violence to control (most) situations they encounter, and are given license to use it in excess. If you passed that selection process and went through the training, you have shown yourself willing to default to violence. Hence, bastard.
But PP is describing the police doing what they are supposed to be doing, i.e. protecting people. If they were doing that, they wouldn’t be using the excessive violence I just described, therefore no ACAB?
I say ACAB becuase their incentives dont align with helping the public.
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Cops will always help each other first at the expenses of everything else.
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Cops have qualified immunity, which corrupts their behavior.
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The SC ruled that cops have no duty to protect, they are only required to investigate and arrest after the incident. See the tragedy in Uvalde.
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there is no check and balance agaisnt the police. If they are suspected of mis-conduct, they invistigate themselves (see point 1).
So, cops cant get in trouble, and have no duty to protect anyone, and wont rat each other out. Seems like an environment ripe for corruption and laziness.
And “rebuild it from the ground up” doesn’t mean these problems don’t exist, it means they could be resolved, as far as I understood the other person.
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It’s supposed to be a system of feedback ♻️ where people decide on rules, the people in power make those rules law, and the law enforcement enforces it. When the laws are made without the people or ignored that’s when law enforcement is working against the people.
But the people don’t decide the rules, the people have very little say in the running of things.
The solution is to remove the positions of power and re-distribute the decision making and enforcement back to the community level.
In a functioning democratic society the people are in control because the representatives speak and make laws based on their constituents and any protest to that should sway them. Sounds like you are talking about an authoritarian government.
Representative democracy and functional democracy are at odds with each other.
No representative can ever fully represent the will of each voter, direct democracy is the only real form of democracy possible.
Empowering the people instead of rulers is literally the antithesis of an authoritarian government.
If you hate police, I don’t think you’ll like vigilantes much better.
Why, have the vigilantes been murdering innocent people on the street and facing no legal repercussions whatsoever?
Historically, yes. Vigilantes tend to do that. If we abolish the cops, it won’t be people armed with whistles that replace them.
Historically the police were slave catchers too.
I think it’s better too improve the police than create a power vacuum that might be briefly filled by peace loving volunteers before they are murdered by armed thugs extorting everyone for protection money.
So the present is them supporting murder, the past was them catching slaves, but in a hypothetical future the alternative is to… pay money? We were asking for improvements before BLM and the police have taken us here. This is what they are and always have been, police are not going to improve.
It’s a Catch 22 because no matter what you do, you’re replacing police with police. The same things are going to happen with the new police force.
This is addressed several other places in the thread. It’s replacing police with a different social structure - police are not just “when people protect things”.
Which do you believe? It’s replaced with something worse that will devolve into having to pay money, or replaced with the same thing, except for now they’re less murderous?