EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 2403
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
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Mohdoo
United States15723 Posts
On June 09 2020 00:18 Gorsameth wrote: It seems to work in the rest of the world... The issue isn't 'bad cops have to much influence, we should reduce their job responsibilities'. The issue is you have bad cops and their not getting removed/punished. Forgive my ignorance, but to my knowledge most European nations never found themselves in quite the position the US is in with police culture. Fetishization of power and authority doesn't seem nearly as pronounced and the deep claws police have in American culture. I think police will need to be slowly picked apart in order to bring them down in the US. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23459 Posts
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Mohdoo
United States15723 Posts
On June 09 2020 01:29 GreenHorizons wrote: Even the stuff people think we need police for only constitutes a tiny fraction of what they do and where their resources go. Could cut the police down to ~5% of their current force and resources with little to no change in the amount of resources and time they spend on closing rape/murder cases and the like. Another point to make is that it is very rare for police to respond to break-ins, murders, rape and many other acts of violence before it is too late. When someone breaks into your house, if you call the cops, it is very unlikely the cops will be there in time to prevent it. People have an unfounded belief that cops prevent crime through means other than discouragement. It would make sense to have a lot of detectives and less enforcers. | ||
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Erasme
Bahamas15899 Posts
On June 09 2020 00:53 Mohdoo wrote: Forgive my ignorance, but to my knowledge most European nations never found themselves in quite the position the US is in with police culture. Fetishization of power and authority doesn't seem nearly as pronounced and the deep claws police have in American culture. I think police will need to be slowly picked apart in order to bring them down in the US. Yup, our polices are required to file documents whenever they take their weapons out of their holster. There are still some racism issues though, but they're not as flagrant. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26012 Posts
On June 09 2020 00:53 Mohdoo wrote: Forgive my ignorance, but to my knowledge most European nations never found themselves in quite the position the US is in with police culture. Fetishization of power and authority doesn't seem nearly as pronounced and the deep claws police have in American culture. I think police will need to be slowly picked apart in order to bring them down in the US. Agreed, they are fundamentally different institutions, both in their functions but also the cultural values they hold, and how they are perceived within that society. Had some civil but heated disagreements over some ‘blue lives matter’ sentiments from various non-American countries. Best way I could articulate my feelings was that they are viewing the US police through the lens of what the police do in their own particular societies. They are giving US police the benefit of the doubt informed on what their police experiences are, or the prevailing culture of their country. They aren’t the same thing, they’re both called police but they do not even do the same things, their purpose is different and their methodologies sure as fuck are different. I invoke the PSNI (the Police Service of Northern Ireland) quite frequently because we have rioting every single year on the Twelfth of July. They don’t just reliably contain this every year, with little collateral damage. They also go in to contain the violence and prevent escalation. The American forces don’t just fail to contain riots through ineptitude, they go in with a militaristic mindset about crushing disruptive protest. In a sense they aren’t merely inept at crowd control, their very approach to crowd control is entirely different. That’s just one area of policing, can’t comment on riot squads in other nations really, although I know the PSNI is quite in demand in training them so I assume there’s a shared goal there. This doesn’t even scratch the surface in differences, the cops in the States being basically a catch-all for any and all social problems that could be dealt with much better, the much more punitive justice system etc etc | ||
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Silvanel
Poland4733 Posts
I would like to also share what a friend of mine who is polish police officer keeps telling me about police work--> Basically that general population rarely enecounters good police officers. Best and brightest run away towards command, homicide, cybercrimes things like that, people who are left patrolling the streets are mediacore at best. And riot police across the world is THE WORST, he says it is a bunch of morons with more testosteron than IQ that should never be unleashed on general popluation --> In Poland their main use is fighting footbal hooligans. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23459 Posts
On June 09 2020 01:36 Mohdoo wrote: Another point to make is that it is very rare for police to respond to break-ins, murders, rape and many other acts of violence before it is too late. When someone breaks into your house, if you call the cops, it is very unlikely the cops will be there in time to prevent it. People have an unfounded belief that cops prevent crime through means other than discouragement. It would make sense to have a lot of detectives and less enforcers. Defunding in part comes out of abolitionists recognizing how many people couldn't grasp this conceptually, in part (as others have noticed) because their lived relationship with police was so radically different than those that abolitionists were advocating with. There's also an elf on the shelf/Jesus angle where there's a lot of people that didn't really develop a healthy morality imo, but one based in fear of reprisal (going to hell/no gifts) and a constant watcher. They then extend this morality to police. Which, like the other two, coincidentally miss their misdeeds but accurately judge others from their perspective. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11626 Posts
On June 09 2020 01:42 Erasme wrote: Yup, our polices are required to file documents whenever they take their weapons out of their holster. There are still some racism issues though, but they're not as flagrant. And at least here in Germany, there are two different institutions, the police and the "Ordnungsamt"(ministry of order). It differs slightly from state to state, but generally the Ordnungsamt is responsible for all the small stuff. Ticketing, Jaywalking, that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, police is responsible for the bigger crimes, car crashes, and so forth. I honestly don't exactly know where the responsibilities of each institution end. And obviously none of them get to keep the money from tickets, that would just be absurd. | ||
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Nouar
France3270 Posts
On June 08 2020 23:58 Mohdoo wrote: I think one of the most important things to do with police reform is reducing the number of things police do. We need to take away as many of their responsibilities that other groups could be doing as possible. Police should not be handing out tickets, responding to noise complaints or basically anything that doesn't require a gun. We should have a very small number of people with guns and they should be amazingly well trained and accountable. Police as pillars of a community is disgusting. They are shameful people who we have seen represent among the least ethical of groups in our country. An important part in reducing their cultural significance will be reducing what they do. Everyone agrees that cops are required to do too much with too little training. The one size fits all solution doesn't make sense. We could replace cops with social workers in a lot of situations. Hell, let the cops re-train if they want, but it is super important the institution itself is drastically reduced in power, influence and numbers. I want every single stat reduced for cops. Hmmm, I actually think the contrary. Police SHOULD be handing tickets, respond to noise and neighbor complaints, run investigations, and everything that doesn't require a gun. This does not require a large amount of training. Special police forces, highly trained, should respond to dangerous calls and situations. That is what we have here : - police municipale are town police and do what I said, minus investigations. They can also handle "caught in the act" cases. They don't need a gun most of the time and most of them are not armed. This is your neighbourhood police. They cannot search vehicles, do random ID checks, do crowd control etc. - police nationale are national police (...), run by the government, and handle the same, and more complex operations and country-wide investigations. - gendarmerie nationale are "countryside" police (anything out of a town). - special forces (GIGN/GIPN) are highly trained forces for anything complicated or dangerous, often including guns. Then you also have CRS (national) for crowd control etc with specific training and a few others types of specialized units. The army is NOT to intervene in police operations, and is not trained for it. The army is trained to defend or attack while being prepared to kill enemies at any moment. We should not be deployed against civilians inside our borders, though we have some (few) units with crowd control training. Running a military checkpoint and defending a place do not have the same purpose as what's needed to control a protest. Even during the "vigipirate" operation to defend hubs against terrorism, we cannot engage unless lives are directly in danger (and objectively, not subjectively, meaning we are not allowed to open fire first, at all), and we can NOT arrest anyone. Only detain them for a few minutes until a judiciary police officer arrives on site. Granted, the police is different in the US do to the sheer amount of weapons involved in the population so they need more self-defense. But the leeway they are given in their self-defense actions is astonishingly bizarre. Re Cotton, whatever he said in his op-ed, his mentality was to ask for military intervention with "no quarters" against civilians, and that's incitation to violence against your own citizens, denying due process. He should not have been given a platform from the moment he expressed ideas like that, and until he apologised for inciting violence. | ||
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Slaughter
United States20254 Posts
On June 09 2020 01:29 GreenHorizons wrote: Even the stuff people think we need police for only constitutes a tiny fraction of what they do and where their resources go. Could cut the police down to ~5% of their current force and resources with little to no change in the amount of resources and time they spend on closing rape/murder cases and the like. Well Police actually seem to be severely behind in all kinda of investigation work for cases so if you shift a lot of that extraneous shit away and have them focus on the investigation part (while maybe also funding more labs because every lab is backed up for miles on things like rape kits) and less on armed enforcement. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
“As his criminal justice proposal made clear months ago, Vice President Biden does not believe that police should be defunded,” said Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement. (They issued statement to mediaite. Uh, turn on adblocker before going there.... way too many ads). https://www.mediaite.com/politics/biden-campaign-says-he-opposes-calls-to-defund-the-police/ Also, regarding WSJ editorials and Police action, they've issued an editorial calling for disbanding police unions. I believe we may see this as the standard conservative position shortly. Both sides think police unions are awful, and cracking down on them could help limit other unions as well. There are also opeds in the washington examiner and reason calling for the same (I know reason is libertarian, and I think WE is pretty right leaning as well). (Article is paywalled : https://www.wsj.com/articles/bust-the-police-unions-to-rank-and-yank-bad-cops-11591400622 ) My prediction is that there's going to be 3 basic schools of thought for reform : Defund/greatly scale back police/structural reform (leftists), destroy police unions (conservatives/libertarians), and the camden model where we disband the worst departments entirely - LAPD, Minneapolis, etc. and replace them with new police departments (strikes me as the centrist option). Ending qualified immunity is a no-brainer for pretty much everyone though, I think? | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15723 Posts
And truthfully I think allowing certain cities like Minneapolis to show it is good policy, similar to Colorado with legal weed, is gonna be how this goes. We will see lots of major pushes nationally to increase accountability and decrease police brutality, but many people aren't willing to hop off the current rock until you can see the next one. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23459 Posts
On June 09 2020 03:34 Mohdoo wrote: Defund the police is a disaster as a national policy position for a politician. The issue isn't well understood by the vast majority of people. Even a lot of people on the left are like "whoa there, lol lets hold on a sec" And truthfully I think allowing certain cities like Minneapolis to show it is good policy, similar to Colorado with legal weed, is gonna be how this goes. We will see lots of major pushes nationally to increase accountability and decrease police brutality, but many people aren't willing to hop off the current rock until you can see the next one. A poor consolation to those under the rock. The uprising is people just upending the rock whether the people on top are ready to hop off or not. Abolishing the police is about making sure they don't end up under the next one. Probably right that the outrage from many will fade, and they'll be ready to just go back to how it was and hope things get better though. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15723 Posts
On June 09 2020 03:46 GreenHorizons wrote: A poor consolation to those under the rock. The uprising is people just upending the rock whether the people on top are ready to hop off or not. Abolishing the police is about making sure they don't end up under the next one. Probably right that the outrage from many will fade, and they'll be ready to just go back to how it was and hope things get better though. I agree, it isn't an acceptable position, but I am not convinced I will have a better option in November. Democrats have been pushing for more than democrats so far in light of all this, though I fully understand the democrats aren't doing enough. This will be yet another time we agree on accepting shitty to prevent mega shitty. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23459 Posts
On June 09 2020 04:38 Mohdoo wrote: I agree, it isn't an acceptable position, but I am not convinced I will have a better option in November. Democrats have been pushing for more than democrats so far in light of all this, though I fully understand the democrats aren't doing enough. This will be yet another time we agree on accepting shitty to prevent mega shitty. I'll be taking to the streets with my comrades and organizing for the coming months. That there's going to be an election (that won't be highly questionable regardless who wins) and Biden winning it is optimistic wishcasting at best imo. Really it's just more of the same, but backwards from Obama from my perspective. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15723 Posts
On June 09 2020 04:47 GreenHorizons wrote: I'll be taking to the streets with my comrades and organizing for the coming months. That there's going to be an election (that won't be highly questionable regardless who wins) and Biden winning it is optimistic wishcasting at best imo. Really it's just more of the same, but backwards from Obama from my perspective. I mostly agree. And good luck against those stupid fucking fences they are now SECURING TO THE PAVEMENT (fucking pieces of shit SPD). SPD is way out of control and I hope you guys are rid of them soon. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3249 Posts
But the slogan seems to focus on a budgetary or appropriations process; the natural interpretations seems something like “cities, states, feds, etc. should lower the amount of money they appropriate for PDs’ budgets.” But my issues with cops aren’t that they’re overpaid, or that their departments are too loose with taxpayer money. If tomorrow every PD’s budget was set to $0, all the cops agreed to work for free, all their equipment was donated from decommissioned military gear, and wealthy benefactors agreed to pay whatever remaining administrative costs (building rental, electricity, coffee, etc.) I wouldn’t call that much of a win. If you reallocate a lot of emergency services currently provided by police to other administrators organizations, naturally the budget for whatever functions are still filled by police is gonna have to decrease. But to me it seems like very little of the injustice has to do with finances. I realize that “reallocate most of the responsibilities and funding of police departments to other administrative apparatuses better suited to those tasks” doesn’t go great on a sign. But at some point doesn’t a slogan wind up doing more obfuscating than clarifying? | ||
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TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On June 09 2020 03:34 Mohdoo wrote: We will see lots of major pushes nationally to increase accountability and decrease police brutality, but many people aren't willing to hop off the current rock until you can see the next one. Clear parallels to healthcare here. Even when the system is clearly and obviously fucked, many people will continue to rage against any conceivable alternative up to and including the point when the alternative exists and they're already benefiting from it. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23459 Posts
On June 09 2020 05:31 ChristianS wrote: Maybe somebody can help me understand why I’m supposed to like “Defund the police.” Obviously it’s hard to convey complicated policy proposals with simple slogans, and we should expect a certain amount of good faith effort to find out the policy behind the slogan from observers who read the sign and aren’t sure what it means. But the slogan seems to focus on a budgetary or appropriations process; the natural interpretations seems something like “cities, states, feds, etc. should lower the amount of money they appropriate for PDs’ budgets.” But my issues with cops aren’t that they’re overpaid, or that their departments are too loose with taxpayer money. If tomorrow every PD’s budget was set to $0, all the cops agreed to work for free, all their equipment was donated from decommissioned military gear, and wealthy benefactors agreed to pay whatever remaining administrative costs (building rental, electricity, coffee, etc.) I wouldn’t call that much of a win. If you reallocate a lot of emergency services currently provided by police to other administrators organizations, naturally the budget for whatever functions are still filled by police is gonna have to decrease. But to me it seems like very little of the injustice has to do with finances. I realize that “reallocate most of the responsibilities and funding of police departments to other administrative apparatuses better suited to those tasks” doesn’t go great on a sign. But at some point doesn’t a slogan wind up doing more obfuscating than clarifying? Few factors at play. One major one is to make a distinction from reactionary liberal reformist co-opting. People have been agreeing with reforming police for decades. If people having palatable messages to get behind supporting reformist reforms was the problem, we wouldn't be here. You'll notice on the previously linked resources the failure of "let's train police" initiatives is another. It's clear in "Defund" that we're not advocating to fund departments to "improve" | ||
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