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abolish the police (quokk.au)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/peoplemastodon
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[–] 2 points 9 months ago (15 children)

Historically, yes. Vigilantes tend to do that. If we abolish the cops, it won't be people armed with whistles that replace them.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (14 children)

    Historically the police were slave catchers too.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (13 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (12 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (11 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (10 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (9 children)

    I think the police should be de-militarized. They shouldn’t be dressed up like they’re fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. They don’t need body armor and helmets 99% of the time. They should have revolvers instead of automatics. The reason why cops used to carry revolvers in the 20th Century is exactly because of the panicky mag dumping we see all the time today. Better yet, they may need to just carry batons like UK police and have a small force of UK-style Authorized Firearms Officers for truly high risk situations.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (8 children)

    Those are great security policies, but what about structural changes? What's going to stop us from arriving here again?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (7 children)

    Policing culture will change if they aren't constantly training to shoot people. I watch a lot of police cam videos and the US and UK cops handle the same situations very, very differently. If ICE didn't have guns when dealing with Good and Pretti, they would have been forced not to shoot them. It wouldn't be part of their tool set and training.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (6 children)

    Wouldn't ICE and Border Patrol be Authorized Firearms Officers?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (5 children)

    They really shouldn't be. They could have a small force of AFOs for very special operations. But I would imagine that 99% of situations they deal with don't require guns.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)

    So how would we get this policy change, if not by changing the underlying structure like OP suggests?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    I don't understand. You mean by replacing the current police force with a vigilante force? All the image says is that regular people have come out to protect people from ICE and suggests that this type of force can replace the police.

    Instead of Defund the Police or Abolish the Police, we should probably say Disarm the Police. We have the UK and several other countries that prove this is feasible. And it's more rational than just getting rid of police all together. Or if you don't believe that, it's going to sound way more rational to the general public.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    Public opinion is certainly not a good indicator of rationality! More good examples will convince them a lot better than words - once you say socialism, most Americans will stop considering it at all. It's irrational to support something harmful once one sees that better alternatives exist already.

    I'm asking about your proposal - say we disarm the police. What's stopping us from getting fascism again from whoever does have guns? Does the UK strike you as immune to fascism?

    FYI when people say "defund the police" they don't universally mean abolish them like OP and I are suggesting. It often means redistributing most of their budget to other social services that aren't armed, like what you're saying.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    I’m asking about your proposal - say we disarm the police. What’s stopping us from getting fascism again from whoever does have guns?

    The same question applies to vigilante forces. I've seen a lot of vigilante videos from around the world and they are horrifying. My concern is when I hear "regular people self-organized to patrol a city" I see that turning into a mob that beats a suspected thief to death with baseball bats, or restraining them and setting them on fire, or dragging them through the streets by a rope tied around their neck as the neighborhood stones them to death. Any time people are given power, there is a danger of fascist behavior.

    So if we replace the police with a neighborhood watch, what's to stop fascism there?

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