
How much do we need the police? - js2
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police
======
BurningFrog
Montreal once had a 16 hour police strike, creating a natural experiment in
what happens without police.

Steven Pinker describes how that went:

> "As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s,
> I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents'
> argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break
> loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on
> October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the
> first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed
> because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the
> garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers,
> a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into
> several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban
> home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had
> been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass
> had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been
> inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course,
> the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics
> in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist)."[16]

~~~
geofft
But that's a terrible experiment! For one, you're in a situation where the
only people with serious weapons are criminals and police (because non-
criminals could generally trust the police to handle violence for them). You
haven't armed the populace, you haven't set up civilian watches, you haven't
done any of the things that would happen in a society actually set up to be
sustainably police-free. You took a society that assumed the existence of the
police for its stability and then removed them, of course it fell apart.

Apart from violence, there's another big thing that probably went missing, too
- authorization for certain people to enter private property for reasons of
the general good. The reason we call the police for welfare checks, for better
or worse, is that nobody else has the right to enter your house. A doctor
might be better suited to responding to someone undergoing a mental health
crisis, but they can't break in. Similarly, you see stories of "police rescue
deer from rooftop" or whatever because nobody else is authorized to climb onto
random rooftops. If a society wants to get rid of the police, it needs to
designate some other group to handle this use case. It can't simply get rid of
the police.

A "natural experiment" of a world without police is quite unnatural: it's a
world built up around the police with a sudden police-shaped gap in the
middle.

To pick an analogy that should make sense to folks here, it's like shutting
down your datacenter for 16 hours, suffering serious outages, and then
concluding that your company absolutely needs its datacenter. Well, yes, it
does _today_ , but that's not what the people saying you should look at public
cloud are advocating.

~~~
metrokoi
Arming the populace? Having a bunch of untrained people police their own
neighborhoods sounds like a recipe for disaster. Trump supporters and racists
would be watching neighborhoods with lethal weapons.

I'm not saying that Trump supporters should not be able to, but the anti-
police crowd seem to not think far enough ahead to realize that taking power
away from police and giving it to the people means giving it to people that
they see as political and ideological enemies as well.

Edit: would someone like to dispute this instead of just downvoting? I'm
trying to discuss in good faith; this seems to be a real problem with the idea
of arming the populace: inevitably there will be citizens who have different
ideas on self-policing their community. Would we only allow people with
socially acceptable ideologies to have arms?

~~~
sneak
> _Trump supporters and racists would be watching neighborhoods with lethal
> weapons._

You just described the situation today, both inside, and outside, of the
police.

Many (naturally, well-armed) police are both Trump supporters, and racists.

Many Trump supporters, and racists, are extremely well-armed in the USA.

~~~
metrokoi
>Many Trump supporters, and racists, are extremely well-armed in the USA.

Yet they are not bestowed with the power of self-policing, and are still
subject to a higher authority which regulates what is and isn't acceptable
defense of self or property. Who would regulate their behavior? Instead of a
small subset of racists having power, you would have ALL racists having power.
I think they would love to have the ability to police their own communities
without having to go through the trouble of becoming a police officer. There
would be George Zimmerman to type situations happening every other day since
they know police are not coming. Last year 9 black and 19 white unarmed people
were shot by police out of a population of 328 million people. Any number may
be unacceptable, but that number would certainly be orders of magnitude higher
if untrained citizens who do not have the protocols that police must follow
are given the power to self-police.

------
badrabbit
"Police" (Edit:"modern police") is a 19th century invention, well after cities
were a thing. If we get past semantics, a service that provides order and
security to a community is needed. I imagine it more like social workers that
also do criminal investigations for prosecutors instead of a military force
for a city. Perhaps an unrelated armed "police" can help when deadly force is
needed (gangs, armed criminals,etc...).

Disarm and civilize the police but keep their SWAT units as a separate
department that only backs up police when requested.

This would throwing a lot less people in jail and having police that live in
the community. But hey, this is just wishful imagination, politicians and
police union would commit sedition if anything like this happened.

~~~
birdyrooster
By civilizing the police we also mean affirmative action to bring the
demographics of the officers in line with the people they serve. Removing guns
wouldn’t have saved Eric Garner or George Floyd.

~~~
ikeyany
Other ways of turning policing away from "tacticool" policing and towards
community policing: offering cops more $$$; requiring a degree or two; placing
residency requirements (x cops in a precinct must live within y miles of the
community they are to serve) to help weed out the bully types.

That can be done in a reasonable amount of time.

~~~
asdff
To do all that you need to start with offering cops more cash, as in LA at
least there is a huge recruiting problem and a staffing shortage. No one wants
to be a cop, its a notoriously shit job where they haze you worse than boot
camp and that's why many cops come from cop families who don't know any better
than to tow the family line.

Cops in LA are also very highly paid especially in benefits and overtime. Part
of the reason why they are so short staffed is that it is cheaper to pay a cop
well into the 6 figures in over time and pay for one retirement pension then
it is to hire two regular time cops and pay two pensions. I don't know how you
fix this issue beyond enforcing stricter criminal punishment against bad cops
and start actually busting heads instead of slapping wrists.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_a notoriously shit job where they haze you worse than boot camp_

That would indicate a leadership problem. Regular people just won't stay
around when everyone from the top down is bent, even if the salary is
outrageous.

------
rytor718
Please keep in mind that the current protests are only happening _because of
police_. There _is_ a point when they're not the agents of order and safety,
but the agents of violence and disorder. And yes, we ought to question the
value of any police force that kills citizens so regularly -- so normally --
that it's shocking if someone can even ask whether a cop should be charged
with murder after murdering someone on camera. Keep in mind Floyd isn't the
only person to be killed by cops this month, or last month or last year. This
is very, very normal. We're not better for it or safer for it, so yes it may
be true right now that we're more safe without them and less safe with them.

And I'm not really arguing either side so much as pointing out that the
current disorder and violence is in response to regular police violence.
Regular.

No place breaks down due _simply_ to an absence of police. But I've heard of
police states -- and those aren't something anyone talking about the merits of
order and safety should be arguing for.

~~~
AdrianB1
It is not just because of police, it is because the government or mayor that
oversee that police allowed it to become that way and did not immediately take
action.

1\. Police don't just start one day misbehaving without any warning. It takes
years to get there, years where they see there is no consequence for being
more and more out of line and years of having immunity for their actions.

2\. That event was not handled properly, the cop should have been arrested on
the spot or in a couple of hours, not days later. These lack of immediate
action was seen as an attempt to cover up or minimize the gravity of the
situation and that is a very good reason for public protests.

Both #1 and #2 are not the fault of the police, but for people governing over
the police force. Quoting from a well known psychologist, the regular
policemen has an IQ around 90, the police oversight body should compensate for
that.

------
evan_
In Eugene, OR, where I live, there is a program called CAHOOTS ("Crisis
Assistance Helping Out On The Streets") which is more or less the mental
health equivalent of an ambulance. They're dispatched by non-emergency
operators to situations such as mental health crises, public intoxication, and
welfare checks- things where police officers would be asked to serve as a
social worker, as the article puts it.

My understanding is that the program has been quite successful, and other
cities have begun implementing their own similar programs using it as a model.

[https://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots-
faq/](https://whitebirdclinic.org/cahoots-faq/)

~~~
hedora
California used to have programs like this in the 80’s. They were outlawed as
part of Regan’s war on mental illness (or whatever he called it).

A friend of mine went through this, so I went through all the options with the
a few emergency psychiatric wards.

These days, even if the person has medical insurance or someone wants to pay
out of pocket, the mental health professionals aren’t allowed to do anything
without getting the person in need of emergency care to sign an emergency
consent form under their own free will, and while capable of making legal
decisions (which is by-definition impossible). Pre signing the form “just in
case” doesn’t count. My friend did this, in fact.

Other than waiting for the situation to escalate to violence (and getting the
person incarcerated without care) the only option is to have a police officer
(with no medical credentials) come out and make a diagnosis.

The officer almost always (and in this case, did) overrides any doctors and
loved ones involved in the case, and finds that the person does not need care.

The triage nurse at one of the care centers told me that most residents of the
many waterfront encampments in the city were people her office had previously
turned away.

~~~
wahern
The evisceration of mandatory mental illness treatment programs and powers was
primarily driven by psychiatrists' promises and civil rights advocates'
demands. Legislators keen on budget reduction were simply happy to oblige, and
Reagan didn't standout in that regard. He just happened to have a higher
profile due to his being governor of California and then president. All other
states made the same mistake as California, did so at around the same time,
and it all unraveled long before Reagan became president.

Here's a more contemporaneous 1984 NY Times investigative article detailing
the history: "How Release of Mental Patients Began",
[https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-
me...](https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-
patients-began.html)

EDIT: The report mentioned in the article is presumably, "The Homeless
Mentally Ill: A Task Force Report of the American Psychiatric Association",
[https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.36.7.782](https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.36.7.782) I
can't find a freely available copy online, however.

------
js2
I know folks don't always click through, so I'll highlight what I found most
insightful:

> Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep
> imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them
> nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers.
> That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. ... They
> have the legal capacity to use violence in situations where the average
> citizen would be arrested.

> So when we turn a problem over to the police to manage, there will be
> violence, because those are ultimately the tools that they are most equipped
> to utilize: handcuffs, threats, guns, arrests. That's what really is at the
> root of policing. So if we don't want violence, we should try to figure out
> how to not get the police involved.

> Political protests are a threat to the order of this system. And so policing
> has always been the primary tool for managing those threats to the public
> order. Just as we understand the use of police to deal with homelessness as
> a political failure, every time we turn a political order problem over to
> the police to manage, that's also a political failure.

~~~
jbay808
This framing of the police seems very strange to my Canadian sensibilities.
I'm curious about whether Americans largely agree with this description.

~~~
bdamm
As an expat Canadian living in a suburban county in the US, my personal
interactions with the police here have always been cordial engagements as
peacekeepers and caretakers of the community. I have called for welfare checks
on neighbors, called the sheriff when I found a garage opener on the street,
that kind of thing. Of course they were present in the aftermath of a case
when a highschool kid entered a house and shot another highschool kid (who
lived, surprisingly), a real shock in the sleepy community I live in. They
asked around if anyone had video of the suspect approaching or departing the
home.

But maybe that's just me, as a Canadian, with unrealistic beliefs that the
police are on my side.

~~~
klyrs
As an american living in Canada, I can assure you it's not much better here --
cops are generally cordial to my white affluent self, but black and indigenous
people, especially those in poverty, are not served by this justice system.

------
simonebrunozzi
We certainly need a police force to maintain a level of civilization in a
large enough society.

But of course, the problem is different: what KIND of policing we need, and
how do we provide accountability. Quis custodiet custodes? [0]

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F)

edit: note that the "ipsos" part of the sentence in the wikipedia link is
correct, but can be largely omitted. I studied Latin at school (loved it) and
this happens frequently with Latin quotations.

~~~
IggleSniggle
I'm a little bit confused by your statement that the ipsos is both a correct
quotation but can also be omitted. Is there some translation issue wherein the
"ipsos" might or might not be part of the original poem?

~~~
tcell2020
"Quis custodiet custodes" means "Who will watch (the) watchers?" With the
"ipsos" \- "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes", it means "Who will watch the
watchers themselves?" \- i.e. it puts emphasis on "the watchers". Basic
meaning for both is the same, but I think the original version used "ipsos"

------
softwaredoug
Unfortunately police fill in for a lot of our broken social safety net in the
US. They're put in situations they should never be put in.

Instead of an addict finding help, or a poorer community member getting
assistance, or a troubled kid accessing mental health services - they
inevitably instead end up interacting with the police. It's both shortsighted
priorities and not the thing police are supposed to deal with.

~~~
mc32
Police violence doesn’t happen only in the US. There a few mild places where
the police are normally hands off, unless they have to get rough. But those
are an exception.

Unless people become tame and “just get along” police have to confront
violence, like it or not.

Of course, we can improve policing. They can get trained better, they can
learn to deescalate first. But they also need coöperation from the people they
police... and that can take time.

~~~
softwaredoug
Yes I only mean to comment on what I know from US cops I personally know.

------
Animats
Police in the US do now have jobs others used to do. Big cities used to have
more social workers to deal with street people and such. There were "the men
in the white coats" who hauled crazies off to mental institutions. Political
parties had more boots on the ground - in the days of machine politics, you
could talk to the block captain about getting a job.

All those jobs were dumped on cops, who aren't that good at it.

Especially dealing with crazies and druggies, and having no good place to send
them.

On the other hand, cops are too hard to fire. It's not like they're stack-
ranked. The bottom few percent are not fired for underperforming. Bad cops are
a minority, but they're not ex-cops soon enough.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>Bad cops are a minority

And over represented on street duty because the specialty task force jobs,
management and investigator roles are where the high achievers work their way
to.

------
Ididntdothis
I agree that police is being pushed into policing things they aren’t suited
for. For example, cops just shouldn’t be in schools. I think the biggest crime
is the drug war. Most aggravations come from drug related arrests.

~~~
mjevans
I don't do drugs (aside from caffeine) myself, not even the legal ones. I'd
also prefer smoking were banned (please, please, buy edibles). Yet I'd still
generally legalize, and regulate (nearly) everything.

The "drug" war is entirely caused by society being crummy and having
incomplete social safety nets. Those things should ALSO be fixed, but take far
longer than a moderately sized reply to even begin to discuss. Staying on
topic for just 'the drug war' and related arrests.

It would be trivial to make all of the criminals in the drug war vanish nearly
instantly: just make getting a drug fix legal, cheap, and easy. (General
reference, compare the Prohibition of Alcohol to booze today vs other drugs.)

Yes, some drugs are really bad, but making them not-legally-obtainable just
means some criminal's going to fill the gap.

------
Pfhreak
I'm heartened by city council members Tammy Morales in Seattle, Nury Martinez
in LA, and Steve Fletcher in Minneapolis who are all seriously discussing
significantly defunding or disbanding their police departments. While we've
had protests like this in the past, I don't think I've ever seen so many
places seriously asking how much we need our police, and how equipped they
should be.

Clearly, the answer is that police departments are filling roles they do not
need to fill, and have expensive, military style equipment they do not need to
have. I hope we see more cities bringing these ideas to the table.

~~~
missedthecue
Is there any proof that police having a Humvee makes them more violent or is
that an emotional reaction?

~~~
ciarannolan
>Is there any proof that police having a Humvee makes them more violent or is
that an emotional reaction?

The former [1].

>1033 receipts are associated with both an increase in the number of observed
police killings in a given year as well as the change in the number of police
killings from year to year, controlling for a battery of possible confounding
variables including county wealth, racial makeup, civilian drug use, and
violent crime.

[1] [https://www.cato.org/blog/militarization-makes-police-
more-v...](https://www.cato.org/blog/militarization-makes-police-more-violent)

~~~
tathougies
Yes but were not asking the most important question... Is there less crime? If
police departments that didnt receive these weapons are too afraid to enforce
laws then perhaps they should be getting some.

------
always_left
Does anyone ever take justice into their own hands? Not recommending it, but
my neighbor's car was stolen so I went out and found it for them that day. It
was reported missing but I had a feeling it wasn't going to be actively looked
for due to the severity of the crime.

~~~
hedora
The penalties for taking the law into your own hands are generally highly
asymmetric and in favor of the original perpetrator.

For example, if you forced the car thieves out of the car, or parked it in
place by blocking the road, you might be looking at assault charges.

Similar arguments can be said for most other common crimes.

Consider noise ordinances (harassing / threatening your neighbor until they
shut up), trespassers (Threats? Forcibly move them?), burglaries (rob them
back?), domestic violence (victims that kill the assailant are often charged
with premeditated murder), etc.

~~~
vulcan01
Some good legal arguments on whether it is legal to steal something back or
not...
[https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/15869](https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/15869)

------
yters
A lot of the areas the author says police are now dealing with used to be
dealt with by religious organizations. Perhaps religious organizations should
be encouraged to play a bigger role in the public sphere.

To make a tired argument, without any sort of moral guidance, people have no
reason to live other than for their immediate needs. On of my friends grew up
in the Baltimore inner city, and he says this is how most people are. They
just act on their impulses and smash in a friend's face because they owe a few
dollars. What turned my friend's life around is his decision to follow God
instead of his own desires. I think there is something to that. It doesn't
seem that giving people free money and housing solves the problem.

There are many much more destituted countries than inner city USA where people
have much more functional societies with much less. I spent most of my
childhood growing up in such a place. No running water or plumbing. Limited
technology. Electricity one hour a week. Everyone walked everywhere. People
lived off of what they could gather and fish. There wasn't widespread
violence, drug use, sexual abuse, etc. like we see in the inner cities. The
difference is these communities were very religious (muslim and animism) and
they did not have much exposure to corrupting US substances such as drugs and
pornography.

------
pnw_hazor
It is reasonable to consider taking away some responsibilities from sworn
peace officers (armed police). Many US cities have unarmed units for traffic
tickets and some other things.

But a problem arises when community outreach or community contacts by non-
police have a risk of violence associated with them.

Especially contacts with people with a history of mental health related
violence. Or, domestic violence intervention. These two examples is probably
where a lot of unwanted or unexpected police violence occurs. I don't know if
sending in social workers would work well in such contexts.

Sending out social workers with police escorts probably doesn't change
outcomes very much. But is could help depending if the armed police do not
have to lead the encounter.

~~~
LeonB
Social workers are very often sent to help people experiencing mental health
crises, including those with a history of violence. Particularly in countries
other than the US it’s very much the norm.

It’s not a theoretical situation. It sounds like you’re speculating but you
could read about it or talk to people about it.

~~~
pnw_hazor
Good, I know it happens and I hope to see more of it.

------
carapace
I dunno about _no_ police, but Sir Robert Peel has a thought (I posted this
the other day, apologies if you've seen it before.) This seems to me to be
pretty sane.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles)

> The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to
> define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles
> is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other
> countries including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

> In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in
> uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the
> implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates
> that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a
> general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their
> powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability
> for doing so.

~~~
ChristianBundy
Serious question: how can something be called "consent" if it can't be
withdrawn by individuals? That's democracy, not consent.

~~~
carapace
What do you mean?

~~~
ChristianBundy
This advertises itself as "policing by consent", but I'm not sure where the
"by consent" comes from. I'm surely missing something, but if you can just add
"by consent" to violent actions and then say "individuals cannot withdraw
consent", then that doesn't seem like consent to me.

Example: The US military spreading democracy by consent. Sure, lots of
recipients of 'democracy' have expressed that they want us to leave, but
individuals cannot withdraw their consent from our democracy.

~~~
carapace
In re: the Peelian principles I feel that that's addressed in #2:

> To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions
> and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and
> behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

It's a tactical truism that you can't police a city without consent of the
populace. You can destroy it, but not rule it. Look at what happened in
Mogadishu or Baghdad, it takes thousands of troops and the willingness to kill
civilians to hold a hostile city, even for the US military. Recognizing that
is pretty much _realpolitik_.

\- - - -

In re: consent and democracy in general, I dunno. It's not like the social
contract is an actual document that you have to sign (or not), eh? I tried to
build a flying saucer and leave the planet. YMMV.

------
torb-xyz
In Rojava (anarchist autonomous region in Syria) there are been efforts to
replace the police with a better institution. More information:
[http://hawzhin.press/2020/06/01/how-to-abolish-the-police-
le...](http://hawzhin.press/2020/06/01/how-to-abolish-the-police-lessons-from-
rojava/)

------
sys_64738
In some states there are many police force (state, university, city, county,
town). Every one is armed to the teeth. Mental and physical standards for
police are abysmal in the USA. Don't ever try to make a complaint against the
police in your local town or they'll start to intimidate you. Police don't
have an external and independent investigative procedure. It's all rigged.

Police are often the revenue generators for individual towns. That's
inherently wrong.

------
remmargorp64
If you defund the police but keep them around (after all, they _are_
necessary), won't that just force them to self-fund by seeking funding from
corrupt sources such as civil asset forfeiture and drug busts?

Isn't this already a solved problem in other parts of the world, such as
Britain, Ireland, Norway, Iceland and New Zealand, where most officers are
unarmed when they are on patrol? Why can't we learn from other countries?

~~~
macintux
You’re reversing the sequence Mr. Vitale seems to be suggesting.

He’s saying let’s analyze the work they do, find alternatives for those roles,
and _then_ reduce the scope of the police force.

Defunding seems much less important and farther down the road than making
their jobs achievable, and the rest of us safer.

~~~
jakelazaroff
_> Defunding seems much less important and farther down the road than making
their jobs achievable, and the rest of us safer._

There are secondary effects too, though. The police force competes for funds
with other public infrastructure like schools. Defunding the police means we
can allocate that money to more productive and less violent causes.

------
jorblumesea
One of my current frustrations with American politics is how radical
everything has become. The debate is now, either we don't have any police and
defund them, or, we allow them to continue being completely unaccountable.
Neither of those situations sound ideal.

It feels like Europe and other places have a much more reasonable and nuanced
view. Police get funded, and well funded, but the job requirements are strict,
and the emphasis is more about public good and safety. If there's a crime the
police _do_ exist and _do_ show up but they also don't shoot people dead in
their house at 3am.

~~~
nmca
It's a guns issue, surely? Not got the exact stats but for 2019 I think police
killings in the UK ~3 and US ~1000, with only a 5x difference in population.
I'm a well spoken law abiding white guy and American cops frighten me.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_Kingdom)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-
shootings-2019/)

~~~
twyleo123
Let's not forget that the police themselves have their own share of fallen
officers. For 2019, ~150 officers killed, out of ~700k total LEO.

[https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2019](https://www.odmp.org/search/year/2019)

~~~
jessaustin
It seems you're overstating the case. When I click through I see causes of
death like "heart attack" and "automobile crash". Other people die of those
causes as well.

Policing isn't even in the top ten most dangerous jobs. Save the honors for
fishermen and lumberjacks.

~~~
twyleo123
Full data. I'll let you decide which deaths count and which don't.

    
    
        Total Line of Duty Deaths: 147
        9/11 related cancer         24
        Accidenta                   l1
        Assault                      3
        Automobile crash            22
        Drowned                      1
        Duty related illness         2
        Explosion                    1
        Gunfire                     48
        Gunfire (Inadvertent)        2
        Heart attack                19
        Motorcycle crash             1
        Struck by vehicle           14
        Training accident            1
        Vehicle pursuit              1
        Vehicular assault            7

------
Uhhrrr
It's true that police are asked to be solutions for social problems for which
they are unsuited.

However, the reason this interview is topical has to do with someone paying
for cigarettes with a possibly counterfeit bill and refusing to give them
back. That seems to me to be an entirely reasonable reason to call the police.

------
25mph
In the corporate setting, if a large org is deemed incompetent, a common
solution would be to mark that org as second class and create another similar
org with the first class status. The second class org would get funding cut,
no raises, no interesting work. The first class org would be the opposite. A
transition is possible via an interview that filters out the incompetent
types. And one day the second class org is told that there is no more work for
them left and they have 1-2 months to find an internal role or move on.

------
drummer
I bring the below quotes to your attention:

"It would be easy to think that the police officer is a figure who has existed
since the beginning of civilization. […] however, the economics that drove the
creation of police forces were centered […] on the preservation of the slavery
system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols
tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says;
the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in
1704." \- How the U.S. Got Its Police Force [http://time.com/4779112/police-
history-origins/](http://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/)

"Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police
departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For
example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native
Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were
founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and
many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony
of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to
maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering
and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property." \- A Brief
History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing
[https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-
slavery-a...](https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-
origins-american-policing)

While most people today believe that they are “free” and “independent” the
facts are that they’re still living in enslavement. The only difference is
that they’ve been indoctrinated from early childhood to accept their slavery.
And in the case of the police, they’ve been conditioned to accept the
enforcers of their enslavement as something good and beneficial to themselves,
when in fact, the police exist to enforce whatever the masters dictate and to
protect the masters and their economic interests from the slaves. This fact is
proven on a daily basis worldwide; whenever and wherever the slaves rise up
against the current system of enslavement, the police rush in to suppress
them. And yet, very few of the slaves take note of the obvious and ask
themselves the question: who do the police really serve?

~~~
twyleo123
Modern civilization has its roots in the Enligtenment, duh. And it's been
generally a good thing.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/us/historical-study-of-
ho...](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/us/historical-study-of-homicide-and-
cities-surprises-the-experts.html)

> New data presented at the conference by a Dutch scholar, Pieter Spierenburg,
> showed that the homicide rate in Amsterdam, for example, dropped from 47 per
> 100,000 people in the mid-15th century to 1 to 1.5 per 100,000 in the early
> 19th century.

> Professor Stone has estimated that the homicide rate in medieval England was
> on average 10 times that of 20th century England. A study of the university
> town of Oxford in the 1340's showed an extraordinarily high annual rate of
> about 110 per 100,000 people. Studies of London in the first half of the
> 14th century determined a homicide rate of 36 to 52 per 100,000 people per
> year.

You can thank your local police department, among other institutions, for that
dramatic decline in crime rates.

------
PaulKeeble
The American police force seems to be a catch-all for the vast amount of
social problems caused by unequal access to healthcare, limited social
security and a host of puritan laws that ignore peoples needs. Making drug
users criminals despite the massive numbers of them drives up prices and
decreases access causing large amounts of crime out of social problems caused
by missing social systems. The drug war has also caused a lot of organised
crime on an impressive scale and packed out prisons that treat its prisoners
appalling badly, falling very much into the punishing end of the spectrum and
addressing very little rehabilitation which reduces reoffence.

Combine all that lacking social programs and support with the culture around
guns, which a lot of the populace owns, and you have by necessity a very
militant police force. America has a lot of social issues which much of the
populace does not want to address and the police end up arresting it all and
putting them in prison. It impacts the middle classes a lot less and they
don't want to pay for it so as a populace they suffer the consequences of
those choices in their schools and criminal gangs and subsequently military-
like police. There are other ways to do this but I highly doubt America will
choose any of them in the coming decade.

~~~
chrisco255
Agreed drug war is a total failure, policy-wise. Where is the middle ground
between criminalizing everything and legalizing everything? Real lives are
destroyed by drug abuse and particularly with regards to meth, fentanyl, etc
it kills people. I can't imagine a world where we sell these things over the
counter. Would that help or hurt communities?

~~~
creaghpatr
Maybe there’s a legal path to meth but you can literally die from touching a
small dose of fentanyl if you haven’t built a tolerance. Very dangerous for
that to exist in a legal setting.

~~~
barry-cotter
Making things illegal leads inexorably to more of the hard stuff. If you can
buy it at the corner store you’ll go for weak, comparatively safe substances,
opium/morphine or beer. If you’ve got to smuggle it because it’s illegal you
go for harder stuff with a greater intoxication for weight ratio like fentanyl
or before heroin or hard spirits. Most people don’t drink spirits straight,
they drink beer or wine or mixed drinks.

------
nchase
I didn’t see it posted here yet and wanted to spread awareness - the book that
the article/interview is about is a free download here:
[https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-
policing](https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing)

------
gdubs
To pull from fiction, my idealized vision of the perfect police force would be
a “Starfleet”. Someone like Picard who is more than capable of defending
themselves and others if it comes to it, but who goes in with phasers on stun,
and a primary motivation to diffuse a situation through psychology and
diplomacy.

------
arijun
This guy makes good points, and then muddles them by taking them too far. In
the two examples given is basically "don't have these problems in the first
place." Which would be great, if it was that easy. Since no one can snap their
fingers and make all burglaries go away (even by decriminalizing drugs as he
suggests), there will always be a need for some form of policing/intervention.
Now, if you could reduce the amount of need for police while morphing them to
look e.g. more like London's police like someone suggested in this thread, you
could affect real change. But the way he's implying it will go "just give
homeless people housing and you won't need any police for that anymore"
indicates to me that he doesn't know just how difficult these problems are.

------
seph-reed
I prefer the idea of peace officers. The more peace oriented the position, the
less toxic people will be attracted to it. At the same time, there should also
be health/toughness standards lest we want to go full Demolition man.

~~~
julianeon
I think what is looking more like a solution I'd like to see tried, is:

1) Replace 90% of police with community officers (unarmed) and social workers.
Have them working their 'beats' regularly, pro-actively monitoring their areas
and checking in with their charges. Again, unarmed.

2) Keep 10% for old style police work, that are only escalated to when
specific conditions are met: approved by a municipal authority, wear bodycams,
and have the permission of the caller to appear (within reason). Make it a
real pain in the neck to bring them out, so they only show up for truly
dangerous situations, not like some guy reselling cigarettes that ends in
death.

A lawyer recently made an observation that really stuck with me: Only call the
police when you're okay with the person you're calling about possibly dying.
Sounds pretty strong when you put it that way - but it's just making explicit
the implicit idea that the police will show up, the police are authorized
(expected, even) to use force, and if there's disobedience or even just
misunderstanding, the person could end up dead. See for example this story.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Justine_Damond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Justine_Damond)

If peace officers did most of the work, that could be a game-changing
improvement.

------
giardini
_Now_ we absolutely need police. We might have been able to do w/o them for
short periods before these riots and demonstrations occurred, but now the
police are guaranteed a permanent and prominent position in American politics
(until it no longer exists).

Or perhaps we should settle the matter now, distribute working firearms and
ammo to every non-felon over the age of 16 (or possibly 12). Either things
will heat up and cool rapidly or everyone will suddenly acquire good manners.
In the long run the USA can begin a renaissance of political equality and good
will for all.

------
jimkleiber
I love this interview. It seems to say that police are being too violent
because their role is to be violent and that their role has been stretched to
handle too many situations.

While saying we should shrink the police departments, the author seems to say
we should do it to help the cops who are being overburdened with things they
shouldn’t be asked to do.

I like the approach because it’s not saying cops are bad, but rather seems to
say their behaviors are hurting people and they may be hurting as well and
proposes solutions that may help everyone.

Really grateful I read this tonight.

------
aSplash0fDerp
With all of the layers of legislation and enforcement, by in large, most
citizens hands are clean when it comes to the current round of hot-button
issues. (Waiting for someone to post #americashandsareclean and keep the
spotlight on policy)

This appears to be another diversion (or attempt at despair) gathered from all
of the pieces in motion so far in 2020.

Sticking to the policy debate, do you/we really need paramilitary prisons on
american soil would have made for better rootcause reporting.

------
socialdemocrat
Not hard to see this article is written entirely from an American perspective
with zero consideration of what policing looks like in other countries.

I found this part in particular egregious:

> Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep
> imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them
> nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers.
> That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. ... They
> have the legal capacity to use violence in situations where the average
> citizen would be arrested.

Look at American policing from a Northern European perspective in general and
a Norwegian perspective in particular it is pretty clear to me what some of
the problems are.

American police has VERY SHORT TRAINING which from what I have read is very
focused on the use of violence. Even the rule of engagement emphasize shock,
terror and control, rather than de-escalation.

You become a police in the US in mere weeks in a very military style Academy.

In Norway and I believe much of Europe police training is a lot like taking a
Bachelor degree running several years. Training emphasize a lot on social
work, psychology, human rights, understanding behavior of people with mental
problems, the criminal mind etc.

What I have seen from US police recruitment videos seems to be that they are
essentially recruiting some sort of soldier. In Norway it is much more like
recruiting a social worker. For instance far more women work in the police
here. And I know from people who have worked in security that a common
strategy here is to pair up women with bigger guys because women are often
good at defusing situations. They often make people calm down more easily. Big
testosterone brutes shouting loudly, don't calm people down.

The US has a violent police force because that is how they are trained to be.
That is the kind of people they are recruiting and that is how they get
equipped.

It seems profoundly wrong to just sort of "GIVE UP" on policing all together
when there are so many flaws in how it is done.

It does not mean I entirely disagree. I do in fact agree that policing in the
US covers far too many areas. People call cops for things that would be
unthinkable here in Norway. The barrier to calling the police in the US seems
exceedingly low.

Like you see minor disorder in a class causing police to be called. Police is
called to handle situations a teacher should handle.

And yes the US does of course use its police and prison system as a
compensation for having no functioning welfare state. Because the US does not
want to pay money to take care of poor people they instead pay triple to have
the police handle problems a much cheaper civilians agency could have handled.

But I guess in the US it is much easier to get funding for police than for
"soft" government type of jobs. Until Americans stop hating and distrusting
government so much I am not sure how you solve that.

~~~
01100011
Does Norway have as many guns as the US? Do first responders often have to
fear for their lives?

I am all for reforming the US social safety net and criminal justice system,
but I think you need to understand what we deal with. We have, for one reason
or another, very dangerous areas of our nation and they are filled with
weapons and hopeless people willing to use them. I don't think the problem we
face has an easy solution. I think it helps to try to empathize with the
situation black people in America face on a daily basis. Then it helps to
empathize with the situation first responders have to deal with on a daily
basis.

Here is a rather disturbing video which led to a firefighter and a civilian
losing their life:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=fR6lMfMx4O8&...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=fR6lMfMx4O8&feature=emb_logo)

it helped me understand the issue is not so simple.

------
teekert
In the Netherlands the police's motto is "waakzaam en dienstbaar" meaning
something like "vigilant and at your service". I like it, it means they are
servants you can ask things and they are there to help. They are trained to
always de-escalate. Tbh they sometimes get a lot of foul language addressed to
them by certain individuals, yet they usually remain calm. I have a lot of
respect for them.

~~~
vinay427
I think this is what the "serve" in popular US police mottos like "protect and
serve" that some departments use was intended to convey. I suppose the message
got lost (in more than a few cases in the US) somewhere between painting it on
the car and training and managing officers inside the car.

It definitely feels like the police in the US are generally less trained than
those in most western European countries (or at least the one I live in), and
while this doesn't necessarily make them more violent, it does seem to
increase the variance in attitude and behavior I've experienced among cops in
the US. There are those I wouldn't trust to use physical force even when
necessary, and clearly others I would not trust to use force as a secondary or
last-resort option. It's rather concerning when you don't know what you will
get.

This is definitely not equally true of every department. I've lived in some
smaller towns where the police are noticeably more compassionate, as well as
some cities like SF where the presiding strategy seems to be avoiding the
overuse the police partly because of their inherent unpredictability, an
overly punitive justice system, etc.

------
zip1234
Traffic enforcement could be massively reduced if roads were designed
differently to make people go the posted speed and be safer.

~~~
mjevans
Crosswalks in the middle (not at intersections) like the UK. (This is an
engineering solution.)

Make the posted speed limit actually tend to line up for green to green when
going straight, and send turns down the road from the sides just before
straight (to make going a tiny bit slower hit the green).

------
CalmStorm
Preventive measures may be cheaper than enforcement. UBI could reduce the
crime rate and therefore save money on law and order. I think it targets the
root cause rather than fixing the symptoms through more policing.

------
habosa
Would it be possible to unbundle the police? Why are the highway patrol and
the narcotics divison even remotely part of the same organization? Having
"fight crime" as your mandate is much too broad.

------
salutonmundo
also worth reading: [https://www.mpd150.com/faq/](https://www.mpd150.com/faq/)

------
lazylizard
Perhaps just take away their guns?

------
themagician
How much you need the police depends on how much capital you have. If you
don’t have any the police don’t do much for you.

In a world of increasing inequality fewer people need the police.

~~~
01100011
It's this sort of insulting, absolutist bullshit that drags down the debate.
Do you really think police do nothing for, say, abused poor women? Sure, the
cops have serious issues we need to address, but the issue is more nuanced
than 'all cops are evil'.

~~~
themagician
It’s not absolutist at all. I didn’t say they do nothing. I didn’t say all
cops are evil. Those are your words mate.

------
bluedays
> Political protests are a threat to the order of this system

The quality of journalism for NPR has gone downhill so much.

A real "protest" is inherently violent. Your are encouraging the state to use
it's monopoly of force against you. Your goal is to ensure that others see the
state using force needlessly against you. When others see others using
violence against you they begin to reconsider the conditions that put you into
this situation to begin with.

So using the police as a tool against protesters only proves them right. A
protest should never be met with violence, unless you want to encourage more
action from protestors.

In other words the police are the wrong tool for the job. The police
absolutely should _not_ be involved in protests. This is a great job for
social workers.

Riots on the other hand should be met with police action. However, if you have
a riot then that means you didn't hear the demands of the people to begin
with. If you make it to a full blown riot you have MESSED UP.

The whole philosophy behind protests is really easy to understand. Spend a bit
of time reading Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, a little Ghandi and
then you start with a lot of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to understand
the philosophies behind American protests.

~~~
chongli
_Riots on the other hand should be met with police action. However, if you
have a riot then that means you didn 't hear the demands of the people to
begin with. If you make it to a full blown riot you have MESSED UP._

Not necessarily. Riots can begin when bad actors take advantage of the cover
of numbers provided by a peaceful protest. If there are enough bad actors,
usually masquerading as peaceful protesters, to reach critical mass, then a
riot can start.

All it takes is for one person to break a window to signal to the other bad
actors that the riot is about to begin. This piece by Tanner Greer [1]
examines the phenomenon in way more detail than I do here.

[1] [https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-
disor...](https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-
disorder.html)

~~~
bluedays
I can see your point. However, I don't think that the full force of violence
for the entire crowd is necessary.

What if we saw a bad actor at a rally for a politician, and then bring the
full force of the state upon the entire crowd because of that bad actor. It
would be absurd to use that opportunity to mace and teargas and shoot rubber
bullets to disperse the crowd. It is equally absurd to do the same here in
political protests.

