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Topicleftist politics topic
Nrrr
09/12/18 6:05:22 AM
#46:


metroid composite posted...
Nrrr posted...
Genuinely don't see how anyone can support anything but the complete abolition of the police at this point. It is an inherently immoral institution that only serves the purpose of protection of property rights and turning poor people into slaves.

https://www.thenation.com/article/abolish-police-instead-lets-have-full-social-economic-and-political-equality/

From the perspective of someone who is white and female...no I don't agree with abolishing police. (Although granted I am aware there are people with similar demographics to me who are in favour of abolishing police such as Chelsea Manning).

I fully understand that there are police departments in need of reform, and that training of subconscious bias really needs to be a part of basic police training. But I also think there's a lot of vulnerable people who do currently benefit a fair bit from police. Police currently kind-of go off of intuition and stereotypes, which means they will protect old people and women (and yes often fail quite badly at protecting african american men). I would rather reform police departments than protect nobody.

There's pretty clear trends in statistics when you look across multiple countries that for any given crime rates of that crime will go up if punishment is lower, and rates of that crime will go up if enforcement is lower.

I will say, one of the things that the Nation seems to take issue with is that police are primarily enforcing property rights and business rights. And yeah, the Nation is a socialist/communist publication, so it makes sense that they would take issue with property and business rights. But it's not really the job of the police to determine the laws. They just enforce laws. Politicians write laws.

(Whether or not property rights/bussiness rights are a good thing is a different question).


Putting aside my issues with property rights etc I don't think it just a simple "just get rid of it" situation like with ICE, but I am for abolishing the police as it currently exists completely. I think that there are a lot of interesting ideas about what to do instead. One issue is obviously the training and hiring practices, but also the fact that we absolutely do not need heavily armed militarized police for the overwhelming majority of the work that falls under their jurisdiction (and the removal of the intimidation and threat of death/murder would certainly go a long way to addressing the problem). I think some of the work they do could even be handled by completely separate institutions. Not to mention the fact that the police make almost no effort to prevent/apprehend white collar criminals in comparison, despite it being a larger percentage of the crime being committed by FAR. Another major issue, and the major reason it should be abolished as it now stands, is that the police is completely undemocratic, with absolutely no accountability, lacking transparency, and without connection to the people that they "serve", pitting them against communities instead of feeling as though they are a part of them. Police should actually be serving these communities, working to reduce the crime rates by addressing the systemic causes of the crimes that plague their communities, as well as enforcing the laws. The safest places on Earth aren't the places with totalitarian police control by a bunch of fascist thugs, its the places where people have the least reason to commit crimes, because their community has systems in place to take care of more people, there is social trust, etc. Not completely related to the police itself, but obviously the prison system needs to be totally reformed as well at the same time.
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