Good to mention also there the same as those who burn crosses. First example off the top...

I never feel quite so alive as when I am looking at what my community needs and seeking to meet that need. It's felt like everyday I've put in at least a little bit of work since Hurricane Helene destroyed my neighborhood. We're still rebuilding from that disaster and building towards a resilient community that can survive the current ongoing disasters, but it's absolutely electrifying the things I've seen in that work:

• people prioritizing amongst themselves who should be seen by triage nurses first at the overworked hospital the night of the hurricane
• groups handing out narcan because in post-disaster scenarios corporations cut their OTC anagesics with fentanyl
• a young boy whose life was saved by some of that narcan after taking some laced tylenol
• the homeless community providing guidance on recognizing patterns of migration amongst law enforcement agencies to help the entire community be more resilient against ICE sweeps
• a group of neighbors standing in the street throwing balls at each other, not with any particular aim, and certainly with no ruleset, just happily enjoying their presence together
• a great many other things I won't go into that are just as grand, just as beautiful, and at the same time smaller and more personal, as any of my other bullet points

In another reply I emphasized the importance of collaborative efforts but I didn't know how to put into words what you've brought up. Anarchism is life-giving. We keep us safe, and you will never feel as safe as when you are working together to keep your neighbors safe, and seeing them work to keep you safe.

It's funny, too, because we have all of these state induced crises thanks to direct attacks on our communities, as well as the state induced crisis of Winter Storm Fern being a result of athropogenic climate change. And still I feel energized, alive, and full of vigor. Something has awoken in my community since I moved away for work in 2018 and then moved back for my wife's education in 2024. I don't know what will come of this current time, but I am filled with a great deal of hope that we can get positive outcomes by organizing ourselves to meet these crises, and by staying organized to keep on meeting the moment until eventually we've changed what's possible entirely.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic about what we can do, but I think there have to be people out there who project positivity without it being a toxic form of positivity that denies the pain we're going through in order to shift what people think is possible. In many ways, I see that as my role in my community. I don't necessarily know when it happened, but I am seen as an elder now. People look to me for advice and guidance. I am asked for my input as someone who has experience speaking up and speaking out for the last 21 years of my life after my neighbor was crushed beneath a boulder. Many of my neighbors are new to this because they weren't even born yet when I became an activist.

Anyway.

This is all WAY too much in response to your little one sentence statement and why I was trying to keep it short in my other comment. But I recommend anyone who feels hopeless right now to go connect with other people. Get involved with mutual aid projects, bail funds, court watchers, and community defense groups. You'll find when you are in those spaces you'll feel less like you've gone completely crazy for a few minutes or hours at a time. It's the very best thing you can do for your mental health, and it will help your community immensely

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”.

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.

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.

How is a local militia of citizens different than the police?

The police is unaccountable and above the law.

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.

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.

Certainly not.
They are not loca and they do not serve the interests of the local people, or any people for that matter, nut only the interest of the state.
In reality the few people who control it.

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.

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?

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.

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