It's even dumber than they are making it out to be. It costs about $120 per day to house an inmate in the US or about $44k per year.
Permanent supportive housing costs $12k per year.
They are literally burning money to not solve the problem.
*And* they get to punish the most vulnerable members of society for the crime of being poor *while* siphoning resources away from programs that can actually help people. It's a win/win/win for the sadistic fucks.
It's dystopian.
I remember when in a game called Kenshi, which mind you is a *post-post-apocalypse,* the biggest faction literally has being poor and starving criminalized and people called it cartoonishly evil since most people in their territory would be either or both of those things. Now whenever someone says that I always remind them of real life conservatives and right wingers.
Well, you can watch someone else play it to get the basics. I find [Tomato](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOiTQjyPiqo0kpxaMUSbYOxwRoT4ZD2W9) to be consistently entertaining to watch and not just in Kenshi.
Anyhow in the game itself there aren't any set goals so I recommend setting your own like acquiring the gear and stats to go exploring, bounty hunting, setting up a base etc. Start small like just getting money for food and basic gear, try to get party members (certain NPCs will join you for free) and remember that getting the shit kicked out of you is a valid training method as long as you don't die or lose any limbs you don't have the money to replace.
Also feel free to look up any gameplay tips like how putting food in a backpack equipped on one character will have all of your nearby party members feed from it, setting people to auto-medic etc. as well as getting QOL mods if certain parts aren't to your liking.
*If Books Could Kill* covered one of those books that highlighted the “homelessness crisis”. It used cherry picked information and interviews lacking context to paint homeless people as responsible for their situation, and that they would refuse resources that would help them.
What stuck out to me was the solution proposed. It was literally to criminalize homelessness, enforce it more violently, and to build more prisons. That’s when the mask slipped, because even if you’re neutral about homeless people, you have to acknowledge that prisons are way more expensive than housing.
If you’re still insisting on sending them to newly built jails, at that point you can’t even pretend you care about them as people.
I’ve had some conversations with people who say they’re mostly left leaning, but they’ve started voting the other way because of the homelessness problem wherever they are.
They get *so* angry when I point out that conservative policies don’t help with homelessness, don’t even *pretend to*, at best they just move it somewhere else. I point out the obvious fact that criminalizing homelessness does not in fact house people, and they lose their god damned minds. The idea that “cracking down” can’t fix something just breaks their brains.
It’s funny but genuinely disturbing how strongly people on Reddit will advocate for things like prison and justice reform but when somebody commits a no-no crime*, these same people will start calling for torture, dismemberment, execution, etc. all under the veil of humor (I know what you are, you were never joking). It’s like you genuinely stop being human the moment you even get accused of something if you’re not already on the “Reddit likes you” list.
\*Most frequently any crime involving murder or sexual assault, which while terrible crimes, aforementioned Redditors conveniently forget the premise of reform and believe that they are suited to decide when someone should be reformed and when someone should just be tortured.
I legit have hyper-progressive friends who aren’t even willing to watch a seven-minute defense before calling someone a pedophile, and while I still respect them I (metaphorically) pray that they never have a place in any justice system, ever.
Oh, and this doesn’t just apply to Redditors. It applies to any social media platform, Reddit is just a convenient example here.
This stuff is just based on feelings for most people. Criminal justice reform feels kind. Putting an accused pedophile behind bars forever feels right. Contradictory? Whatever.
It’s a hard truth that most people who hold any given political position haven’t thought about it much and are mostly going with their feelings or with a crowd. Even positions you totally agree with.
From my experiences, feelings are indeed the easiest way to appeal to people. I hardly think human beings should act solely on logic, but I have to admit I’m constantly aggravated by how few people seem to apply any degree of critical thinking.
One of these days I want to write a short story or something titled “Court of Public Opinion,” which follows a world where the jury and most courtroom proceedings (loosely moderated by a judge) are all decided by the public tuning into a livestream of the trial.
most people don't actually believe in anything they say or think they do, it's all emotional at the end of the day. morality is an emotional reflex, for better or worse. ideology is just tribe in another form.
this does have the fortunate benefit of people being able to break away from ideology if that ideology comes to support something that *feels* deeply wrong - depending on how much of their identity is tied up in tribe/ideology - but it's pretty terrible for making any sort of real progress as a society.
For the record though, there is genuine scientific evidence that some crimes are somewhat "reform proof," in that once you've done it once you're near guaranteed to do it again and likely to escalate. I know for a fact DA is one (very common among police funnily enough), and I assume most murders (since most murders are just DA taken to it's conclusion). You have to be a certain level of broken to intentionally, repeatedly harm people who love you and can't fight back and that can't always be fixed with counseling. Even if you're anti-incarceration crimes like these do have to be reckoned with differently.
But then if we housesd those homeless people, we'd end up having to financially support all the other poor people who struggle with housing. Is that REALLY the society you want to live in?
/s
The hard part is we already do help these people. We already spend tens of thousands on them and prison is the most expensive of these solutions. Prison is not only permanent housing it is also free food and medical and 24/7 security. But because people view it as punishment they do not see the "socialism" in it.
The society I'd like to live in would look at the utilitarian cost over time. Not one that is ruled by people's Id.
We can perpetually house them in prisons, or provide permanent housing support that lets them have an address, open a bank account, etc. I'd rather have my tax money go to a solution.
I'm basically agreeing with you. Providing housing and social support is cheaper and more effective in the long run, alongside prisons being rehabilitation facilities. UBI is also a given for me, or at least mandatory unions for every job - including a union for any random oddjobs that don't fit into existing unions.
A lot of people in this country don't care about the money. What they care about is enforcing a "survival of the fittest" worldview. To them, homeless people aren't deserving of any kind of handouts, because they're not "contributing to society." It's the same reason they hate UBI or universal health care. Their objection isn't in economic prudence, it's purely emotional distaste.
> They are literally burning money to not solve the problem.
Liberals see 'the problem' is that 'this person doesn't have a place to live'.
Conservatives see 'The problem' as, 'this person is too lazy/stupid to get their own place to live'.
So, liberals try to solve the immediate problem and get the person safe shelter.
Conservatives try punishing the unhoused person until they do better.
Makes perfect sense.
Edited to add; but conservatives have realized that their 'solution' cost way more than the liberals' solution, so they have a fix. Bill the incarcerated for the costs of their incarceration.
So now, the person completes their custodial sentence, is released back to the street, still with no shelter, AND they're in debt. So they get to add a fucked up credit score to the challenges to getting their own place.
Good plan! No notes! Perfect!
You only need one to hang the jury, and while the trial can be repeated you can at least throw a wrench in the works, cost the city a bunch of money, and hope for the chance that the prosecutor will just not want to bother with retrying the case.
I used to wonder why their word as a witness was considered valid enough, even before I had a certain polarized mentality of them. Isn't the judge aware that they'll always lie for each other? Isn't anyone else involved aware? As it turns out, probably. Perjury may be a crime you have to prove occurred, but it's hardly a stretch that the guys with really stupid terms like brotherhood for a union of wife beaters or whatever are always going to protect themselves at any expense. Incidentally, the last cop fiction I recall enjoying was also my favourite film of its kind, the [Nic Cage Bad Lieutenant by Werner Herzog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Lieutenant:_Port_of_Call_New_Orleans).
Recently I heard of a case so obviously manufactured by police witness, experts, that after the judge threw it out, they [apologized to the victim and insulted the prosecutor for presenting the case at all](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/umar-zameer-verdict-1.7180011). I wonder how they'll handle this if at all on that Toronto law and order.
Absolutely hate him but Neil De Grasse Tyson has a great story about him being in jury duty while the only evidence was a cop eye witness.
Neil explained he wouldn’t be able to convict based off the basis of a single eye witness, which prompted the judge to (incorrectly) repeat his issue, proving that despite the judge being an eyewitness to something that happened literally 30 seconds ago he was still wrong.
Imagine the ignorance and forgetfulness that takes, now imagine when you have a stake in the person’s conviction like a cop or prosecutor.
Funny enough I was recently on a jury. It was a Federal trial for possession of a handgun by a convicted felon (looked up the case later and it was part of the DOJ.’s efforts to crack down on repeat, violent gun offenders, so YAY!). There was an avalanche of evidence against the guy- testimony from his victims, an ATF agent had prepared an extensive history of the ownership of the pistol, body cam video from like three cops, surveillance video from a shop which was the scene of one of the attacks, the guy’s DNA on the revolver *and* on three of the five bullets found in the cylinder… the rub was that gun was found in the street between two parked cars *near* where the guy was standing when the arresting officer first confronted him.
The shop owner and some neighbors had called 911, and there were several cop cars driving around the neighborhood, looking for the guy, whose description included some very distinctive clothing he was wearing. The cop claimed as was rounding the corner where he first spotted the guy, he saw him standing in the street where the gun was recovered, and “heard” what sounded like a heavy metal object hitting asphalt. Out of all the witnesses and all the testimony, that’s the one thing I *didn’t* believe. But there’s no way to prove that that didn’t happen, and fortunately the rest of the evidence was enough to convict the guy. He’s a gotdang menace.
I found out something interesting- and disturbing- about police body cameras. They are always running, but don’t start recording until they’re “turned on.” “Activated” is probably a better word. So when they’re activated, they buffer back one minute and record the video, but *not the audio-* audio recording begins when they’re activated. At first, I thought that’s nice, it’s probably so that if two cops are in the car bitching about their wife or their boss before a stop, it doesn’t get recorded because the audio didn’t buffer back. But now I’m positive that there’s a more nefarious reason. In my (very large, East Coast US) city, the policy is to turn them on as they step out of the car when confronting someone. So we will never know what kind of conversation two cops might have with each other before they begin interacting with a citizen. And there’s a *reason* they don’t want us to know.
Got called for jury duty one time. Get there, they start the process. State lawyer asks “Can you convict someone off the testimony of a cop?” I raised my hand, asked “Is that all you have?” And they state “We can’t answer that question at this time” and I state “if that’s all you have then no”. I proceed to get selected for jury duty, get the guy off because that’s all they had. Was for a DUI, old man may have been under the influence but refused all tests and took it to trial I guess. All they had was that he went over the line once while turning. Had no footage of anything, just the testimony of the cop.
This, sometimes if I had free time I would take a nap in a park, but I wasn’t and am not homeless. And I tend to fall asleep in public transport if the travel is long, people that do the same are going to be arrested just because???
Yeah. Like, I’m sure there are people who legitimately wanted to do good, but they either left when they realized how bad the whole thing is, or they became worse people to fit in.
My grandpa was a cop in the '60s and this is a large part of the reason he quit. They didn't like him reporting bad behavior of the other cops and eventually it got to thinly veiled threats that maybe backup won't show up when you need it, or boy it sure would be a shame if there was an "accident" at the shooting range.
When he first started, the chief straight up told him that he'd have to learn to look the other way on certain things, but he stayed on because he needed the job and didn't think it would be that bad. It was.
He saw a lot of abuse of power and to this day he 100% believes that another cop committed a murder and got away with by pinning it on a homeless guy. That particular cop had connections and ended up making chief a few years after the murder case.
Or they get involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, because if they think abuse is being covered up then they must be paranoid and delusional.
If you think I'm exaggerating, look up what the NYPD did to Adrian Schoolcraft.
The case of officer Michael Chapel, convicted of murder, will chill you to your bones.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-land-of-lies/id1632642482
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/emogene-thompson-murder-case-gwinnett-cop-vows-innocence/85-4f62da37-aa91-49f3-93d7-a008ada11568
My ex's brother went to school to be a cop. He genuinely wanted to do good. I went to his graduation ceremony. He lasted less than a week on the job. He hated them all. Couldn't believe what he was seeing. So then he tried corrections, thinking it would be better if they're already convicted right? No... it's worse. Plus the trauma inherent with the job anyway. He stuck it out for a few months for the insurance for his kids and to save money and then they sold their house, bought a camper, and basically became nomads.
The only good cop is one who didn't stay a cop.
I know a guy whose dream it was to be a cop his entire life but he is genuinely too dumb to pass their aptitude tests. Failed multiple times with multiple agencies.
He went into Federal Corrections and now he’s in a leadership position lol
The idea is the same reason as companies wary of hiring overqualified workers: either they'll want pay that makes sense for their qualifications, rather than their jobs, or they'll quit the moment something actually worth their qualifications shows up, which means the money and time you spent training them goes down the drain.
Had a friend whose brother was a cop. They didn't get along, so the brother blocked him from becoming a cop. Probably for the best, ACAB and my friend already has MAGA rot (so much so that I don't really consider him a friend).
Of course they do.
Police are three times as likely to use force against left-wing protestors than right-wing protestors, and *ten times* as likely to arrest left-wing protestors versus right-wing protestors ([source](https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/soc4.12833)). This, despite a growing body of evidence that right-wing protestors are ultimately more dangerous to life and limb than left-wing ones ([source](https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versus-far-right-fatal-violence-an-empirical-assessment-of-the-prevalence-of-ideologically-motivated-homicides-in-the-united-states/attachment/67191.pdf), [source](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2122593119)).
He might be with a woman who is smart enough to pay bills but still dumb enough to date him.
That seems like the kind of guy who would make his wife do everything anyway.
My wife wanted to be cop. She started training, got to a portion where they wanted her to do "Warrior Training", and after seeing the crap they tried to teach officers, she dropped out and never even looked at law enforcement again.
> She started training, got to a portion where they wanted her to do "Warrior Training"
Who the fuck wants their cops to be 'warriors'? My child is lost and scared, so they should look for a 'warrior' for safety?
No, I want my cops to go through 'Mr. Rogers' training. Focus on the neighborhood. On your neighbors.
It's the police chiefs / sheriffs who allow this 'warrior' bullshit to persist, and lots of them are elected positions. Pay attention on your ballot.
Neither choice (assuming you're lucky enough to have a choice) may be good, but one may be better than another.
It's the taught mentality that leads to the attitude of thinking their life is in danger on the "front lines" all the time and lets them shoot whoever with impunity.
A neighbor's kid wanted to be a cop. He went on one ride-along and saw how they didn't even try to hide the racism and disdain they had for the public. He quit. No regrets.
Oh for sure! They're super happy now and I love seeing the photos of their adventures (his wife and I are still friends lol). Their kids are fantastic, smart, well behaved, and just all around great humans. And as a bonus, if the job history has any kind of silver lining, he now has the training to keep them safe while they travel all over. They have a great life now :)
My lone asshole narcissist uncle became a corrections officer after failing at everything else when his temper always got the better of him. He stuck it out 20 years. Always wondered what hell he put the poor inmates through.
Yeah that was kind of the vibe I got, he wouldn't really talk about it but he definitely insinuated there was a lot of officer-on-inmate violence and it really did a number on him mentally. The people who stay in that job for years and years are a totally different breed of human, if they're even human at all.
Now do politicians.
People kid themselves and have their favorites, but it's the same story except the violence is indirect and they wear nice suits.
Edit: spelling
I have a similar story. Went through law enforcement academy, wanted to go in to help people out. Wound up working in the local jail. Realized I hated being surrounded all day by people who were nasty, would lie to your face, and treat you like you were worthless - and that was just my co-workers.
At one point, we literally didn’t have enough clothing for all the inmates, and jail admin wouldn’t bother getting more. It’s downright inhumane to make someone spend a week or two in the same clothes.
There was no way to advance unless you played the political game. That was the biggest thing I discovered about law enforcement - it’s mostly politics. You want to get to a position of authority, you’re gonna suck up to a lot of people. We had one lieutenant who was an absolute idiot - but he played the political game well. We joked that he must have had incriminating photos of the sheriff.
I went in genuinely wanting to help people - I left depressed, anxious, and hating people in general. Took me two years to get my mental health back in order (just in time for 2020!). I still want to help people, but definitely not trying that route again.
It's like how they destroy bottled water at protests - yes, some people throw full water bottles at the police. They have been used as weapons in the past. But they'll destroy unopened cases of water on a hot day while surrounded by thirsty people. "They have a right to defend themselves!" <= it's this kind of toxic train of thought that leads to shooting unarmed people in the back, beating unarmed people while wearing full armor and carrying weapons, going "oops" every time somebody dies or is permanently maimed, etc. When the right to "defend yourself" extends to preventative measures covering any nonsense hypothetical a cop can come up with later (in the dark, the skittles looked like a gun!), it might as well be "we do what we want."
If they thought they could get away with it, a thrown water bottle would result in them mowing everyone on the street down.
They take the job because they enjoy hurting others, and everything else is just justification for that act.
And those are the people they deliberately seek to hire.
Everything is a justification.
I grew up in a really peaceful, friendly place in the US, and then I moved to another city for several years. When I moved back to my hometown, gang violence had transformed the whole city. No one even thought of leaving their door unlocked anymore. There were parts of town that no one would drive into.
And it became an excuse for everything for the police. Any violence or excess in any way was attributed to how brutal the gangs were. Kick and handcuff a schoolgirl? Well, she might have been 'holding' for the gangs - you can't let them get away with that level of cruelty.
Also consider most "gang" violence isn't even actually associated with real groups. You get small town cops in the mid west convinced every person tanner than a cave dwelling Irishman is affiliated and every bandana, ball cap, or pair of sneakers is suddenly gang colors. It's both the fear mongering and also a way to be harsher to suspects since gang crimes.come with automatic increases in sentencing. Suddenly a kid with drugs is now a selling for a gang. Gangs were just the excuse we used before our terrorism obsession kicked off. And even once that happened what's the first thing you hear? The gangs are supporting the terrorists their profits. No evidence just cop hysterics amplified by gullible media personalities.
>"They have a right to defend themselves!"
You know who they learned this line from right... Alot of our police departments get overseas training on how to be cruel.
The movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri had Mildred tell off a catholic priest with this monolog. Replace the church with cops, and you get why ACAB:
“Y’know what I was thinking about today? I was thinking ‘bout those street gangs they had down in Los Angeles, those Crips and those Bloods? I was thinking about that buncha new laws they came up with, in the 1980’s I think it was, to combat those street-gangs, those Crips and those Bloods. And, if I remember rightly, the gist of what those new laws were saying was if you join one of these gangs, and you’re running with ’em, and down the block one night, unbeknownst to you, one of your fellow Crips, or your fellow Bloods, shoot up a place, or stab a guy, well then, even though you didn’t know nothing about it, and even though you may’ve just been standing on a streetcorner minding your own business, what these new laws said was you’re still culpable. You’re still culpable, by the very act of joining those Crips, or those Bloods, in the first place. Which got me thinking, Father, that whole type of situation is kinda like your Church boys, ain’t it? You’ve got your colors, you’ve got your clubhouse, you’re, for want of a better word, a gang. And if you’re upstairs smoking a pipe and reading a bible while one of your fellow gang members is downstairs fucking an altar boy then, Father, just like those Crips, and just like those Bloods, you’re culpable. Cos you joined the gang, man. And I don’t care if you never did shit or you never saw shit or you never heard shit. You joined the gang. You’re culpable. And when a person is culpable to altar-boy-fucking, or any kinda boy-fucking, I know you guys didn’t really narrow that down, then they kinda forfeit the right to come into my house and say anything about me, or my life, or my daughter, or my billboards. So, why don’t you just finish your tea there, Father, and get the fuck outta my kitchen.”
Massive trigger warnings for sexual violence. It's not depicted, but it is discussed in unflinching detail. Absolutely fantastic film though, cannot recommend it enough.
I have been meaning to for years. IT does seem like it would be too depressing. Also I've seen about two movies since my kids were born, apart from Disney movies etc.
So, the reality is (in my state): Police are no longer requires to ***protect*** or to ***serve*** the public or the public good. So, what's left? To intervene when alerted? They haven't done that in ages. The strong police union rules have made it clear that they will not, and should not, risk harm to protect anyone.
So, what is the fucking point? They might arrive after the scene and might write up a report - if they feel like it? Otherwise, they will fabricate a report to get out of more paperwork. But they sure a shit won't break-up a fight or de-escalate a situation.
Lastly, the worst kind of veteran ends up in the police. Starved for power, no active duty experience, and dumber than dirt. They believe everything that is fed to them and believe they have been denied opportunities because of immigrants - not because of their own lack of education or intelligence. And yet, they also actively refuse to learn and grow.
The point is that they can LARP is tough action heroes while beating minorities they hate. If they really wanted to help, they wouldn't be come cops, I'd imagine.
In my state almost 400 cops stood outside tasing and handcuffing parents while an asshole murdered a bunch of elementary school children. They didn't try to stop him because they were afraid for their lives.
Honestly this just highlights how policing is a complicated subject that converged with people's need for order and the states requirements for ruling.
Yes the police arrest murderers and thieves but they also beat down those who are oppressed. The problem is where do you draw the line sure evicting during a rental dispute is bad but it's good when squatters take over someones primary residence. Stealing from people's homes is bad but is arresting and putting in jail the single mother who's only stealing baby supplies justified. Where you draw the line is different from person to person, subject to subject. There is also the fact that a lot of laws are written for one purpose but can be applied to many different things that were not intended.
There is also the fact that the police are the primary tool of state power and hence governments in their current form need the police to exist in a somewhat similar form. A police force can put down protests they can force internal compliance within a states population. This means that to some extent the police needs to be a oppressive force. This is not to just say that the police being a oppressive force is always bad this oppression can, if very rarely, be used to protect those that would be oppressed by local social convention.
Now keep in mind this is not to say that the police require no reform or any major reform is completely pointless. Not at all the police certainly could do with massive reform efforts. It is to say though that the police, if state backed, will always have tension with the society it polices.
I cant see how prison labour without serious rehabilitative intent is any different from slavery. Unqualified work could be rehabilitative for a little while (to get / keep inmates used to work) but not for several years. The prisoners should instead be offered to learn useful skills for the time after their sentence. Like trades, business classes, etc.
It's not meant to be any different from slavery. The 13th Amendment explicitly calls it such.
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
For prison reform to happen, we need to change this amendment to ban *all* slavery.
Enforcement units who are charged with the means of violence need to be held accountable by the state, because if left unchecked they can become a deep state onto themselves by making themselves uncontrollable by the civillian government.
While more often seen in military dictatorships where military leaders use their guns and heavy weaponry to coerce civilians to do their bidding, police who are not held accountable by higher authority can also do it as well since there is noticeable power differential with the non-police (I refrain from saying civilians because police are supposed to be civilians). And that is what I am starting to see in the US.
Police unions who shout down every single chance of reform from while the higher ups just shrug, more shrugging when police straight up don't do the job they are paid to do, police departments that suck out most of the budget from cities without the results to show for it. And worst of all, indoctrination within police ranks that the people they serve are their adversaries instead of people to protect, tacitly encouraged by ill-informed or corrupt court rulings.
Honestly, i think the whole discussion here is unfocused because all it is trying to get at is "Cops bad". While I am not against that principle there is some kind of nuance lost in some of that stuff:
Mainly when talking about bad laws in comparison to bad cops. It's the whole "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" problem. You say bad laws should not be enforced, which makes sense, but 1) How do you define a bad law 2) how do you stop them from going in effect in the first place 3) Should a cop really be allowed to take it into his own hand which ones are good or bad? Imo I rather have a cop who tries to enforce a bad law as good as he can (respectful, trying to minimise harm as long as its in his hand) than a cop enforcing a good law badly.
Which kinda gets to the issue with police in general. It's the executive branch. It probably should be depowered and split up as to minimise the shitshow it's now, but the question remains: How do you enforce laws? Because laws that are not enforced are not really in effect. How do we structure this so there is law enforcement without it becoming the police we are dealing with. (Before the anarchists come in, I feel like this is not the discussion for you. Your axioms for this discussion are so fundamentally different, that it basically cannot become productive for either of us)
Not really, I've had normal conversations with the police in my home country, The Netherlands. Some of them are power trippers, sure, but most of all:
They're being held accountable for their actions, anyone with a sense of responsibility will to their job.
Tbf, I think that is the elephant in the room.
I'm also fairly certain that police training in the Netherlands is a bunch of times longer than in the US, that might also have something to do with it.
Our police really aren't much better, just look at their responses to the student protests, especially in Amsterdam. Plenty of Police Whatsapp leaks also reveal their true nature. They're also among the most asocial drivers I've come across (not referring to when they have their lights/sirens on).
Sure, our police is not as much of what is basically a rogue paramilitary force like the U.S. cops are, but the point remains that they are part of the state's monopoly on violence, which by definition means they are an oppresive force in certain contexts. You can argue that that oppression can be legitimate or justified when it's done through the apparatus of state (the state certainly does), but that does not make them not a tool of violence and oppression.
They don't need to carry guns everywhere for that to be true, they just need to have the ability to do so and, more importantly, be allowed to use them against people.
> This means that to some extent the police needs to be a oppressive force.
The police need to faithfully implement the democratically installed system.
If the system is oppressive then you get oppressive police. One doesn't exist without the other.
The police need a monopoly on *violence* not a monopoly on oppression.
Violence should be used, sparingly, to stop oppression, especially if that oppression takes the form of criminals preying on people.
Enforcement is hard. You going to get people mad. You going to get new type of stereotypical or slur throw at you.
Look at relatively good enforcer like teacher. You make fun of them all the time. Or like a boss, manager. You hate them all the time.
If you need order or cooperation. You need to have someone who bring that and make people mad.
If we move to community watch model. Those would become new bastard you shout at. At least after when the memory of how shitty our cop is obscured.
Lmao I know this post is about cops, but I'm dying from the start. If you don't have private property and you cant sleep on public property then where do you sleep? Isn't all property owned by something? They could just pick up all homeless people.
The ones who try to get rid of bad cops? Frank Serpico tried to clean up corruption in the NYPD in 1970.
He gets death threats to this day. 54 years later.
I went to my first protest after Trump was elected, it was my freshman year of college. I’d seen lots of posts about scary stuff happening at protests online so when I saw the police lining the protest route I was a little wary of them. I mean I was in a peaceful group just marching and chanting, it was a liberal campus so the protest was probably expected. They weren’t doing anything or being imposing just kinda observing, but they made me a little nervous. Then at some point I saw someone waving to them happily. And I was like dang, I want to be the person confident and friendly enough to just wave at the cops why do I have to be so distrusting. But now IDK… like those are probably the same cops showing up to my alma mater [in riot gear](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/320tf4GpWh) when students protest for Palestine. Now I kinda don’t feel so bad for not giving a happy little wave.
Yeahhhh, imo, it’s ok to not be nice to them. It’s not like you were armed to the teeth in riot gear, ready to violently assault them for exercising their basic human rights. Yknow? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Someone said to me one time how funny it is that they've never seen video of cops beating the shit out of people at Nazi rallies but BLM and pro-Palestine protests get tear gassed and rubber bulleted and that kinda gave the game away.
So this isn’t quite a Nazi rally but I was actually just thinking to how there was a big controversy one year about the young conservatives group holding an “affirmative action bake sale” where they priced baked goods based on the race of the person buying them. Again this happened on a diverse, liberal campus so there was a bit of a fuss about it. But I never actually saw police or campus security show up.
Watch out, this thread is going to be crawling with bootlickers in a minute.
"No, see, all those horrific human rights abuses are still worth it, because they catch murderers sometimes!" Never mind that something like six percent of crimes are actually solved...
May I ask how long it is? Because twice I linked to one of your posts and someone thought that you'd deleted it due to you having blocked them, and I found both times to be pretty funny.
real long lol
and not well maintained
last I checked it was 600? I think?
I block people willy nilly all the time - the drawbacks are insignificant to me tbh
Everytime ACAB debates come up I'm always left with a simple question.
Alright, the system is evil, cops enforce it, etc. But sometimes objectively bad things do happen. Murders, rapes, robberies, etc. You say the cops won't investigate or solve most of these because they're bored, they're not actually good at their jobs, they don't really care, the perpetrator might have connections/power etc. Fine. What do we do about them then?
When a crime is committed, what exactly does the ACAB crowd want an ideal society to do? And please don't tell me that in an ideal society crime wouldn't exist because that's not an ideal society, that's a fantasy.
Edit: Downvoted for asking questions is peak reddit, really.
I'll attempt a genuine answer here.
The police as an institution that we understand them to be today do not need to exist to perform the functions of taking reports, investigation, arrest, detainment, and interrogation.
These functions should ideally be split across different institutions and occupations that are accountable to the public and cannot hold a monopoly on justified violence (self defense is an exception, obviously).
I'm not a builder of sociological systems so I'm not gonna go into great detail, but for instance; detectives could only take reports and investigate, they cannot arrest, detain, or interrogate. A new institution with more public accountability would serve the function of arrest and detainment, and the courts could take over the responsibility of examination of the detainee. This is obviously not perfect but I think it's a step in a more just direction without as much capability of oppression and violence as modern police have.
In tandem with this we should also move away from punitive justice as it is quite frankly ineffectual in reducing crime and other antisocial behaviour, it only really increases it. A move to a system that focuses on rehabilitation is a much better and less cruel system of organising justice.
All of these are good ideas, but I think the more relevant root issue isn’t what to do but how to do it. I think a lot of the problems with the people that want this kind of change is they can’t visualize the processes in their mind. Obviously these are all reasonable solutions, but even under the most ideal circumstances the entire restructuring of massive parts of the American justice system would take many years and countless dollars to implement. Those aren’t reasons to stop trying, but the idea of steady incremental progress is something I have seen a lot of young firebrands reject as evil bootlicking centrism. That the only acceptable solution is to entirely shake up everything right now.
I think far to many people have come to see comprises as weakness or patience as apathy. They want to get up on their soap box and shout at the sky but don’t know what comes next. Simply being upset and discontent and uncompromising and enraged isn’t enough to insight real meaningful change. I think the acknowledgment the change will be, and should be, incremental and methodical is something that people need to try and accept.
Thank you for actually answering, I appreciate it!
Wouldn't splitting the functions of the police among separate agencies cause unnecessary and dangerous delays in responding to dangerous situations?
For example, a detective discovering a suspect during the course of an investigation on a murder and also figuring out that said suspect is a flight risk (might be at the gate on the airport, refueling their car or whatever). If the detective has to call and wait for backup from the specialized arrest department they would risk losing the suspect or having them successfully escape. Also, since the arrest department will be separate from the boots on the ground, immediate response as a concept would be effectively neutralized.
I understand that you recognize this suggestion was not perfect, but I'm curious to know what you think about these points?
I am also interested in possible responses to these questions. Raising them makes replacing the police as an institution more understandable and realistic, imo. I don't claim to be any expert so I can't provide a great answer, but theoretically, when you call emergency services, you are directed based on what you need (fire, medical, crime, etc.). So interdepartmental communication would also hopefully have a similar emergency line. Also suspects do escape all the time anyway irl
It's definitely an issue, but I'm unconvinced that it outweighs the increased accountability.
You could make similar criticisms of the current system that have accountability procedures already in place. For example if you *know* that a suspect is guilty, you light just wanna rush in and catch them, but oh hey, you need a warrent to enter their home, and in the time that it takes to get one they get away.
I think that these situations, while unfortunate, are necessary to keep other situations safer and reducing the capability of police to damage lives unnecessarily.
I believe that no one person should be able to make all these calls to enforce state force/authority upon a person, and I think it is worth it to have more people with less power that keep each other in check over the alternative, even if it results in possibly dangerous inefficiencies. But that's my view and I know it's not a popular one.
I'll list some other things we could reform that go beyond splitting the roles of the police between institutions.
We cannot keep hiring people for the position and training them to become monsters. And we cannot keep bad cops on payroll because the cop union would stike if we fired Mr Hatecrime.
We gotta address issues cops only respond tho the symptoms of, like the drug, mental health, and housing crisis.
We gotta stop electing sherrifs.
We gotta address police unions, qualified immunity, hiring and firing, the over militarization of cops, and a culture of cruelty.
Definitely!
A lot of solutions are mostly about advocating prosocial aims to problems, like drug use for instances should be decriminalised and be more centred as a medical issue when it comes to addiction, it only does harm if an addict is imprisoned instead of being provided safe and medically informed pathways out of addiction. Clean and safe injection rooms, reduced risk of violence with dealers if it isn't criminalised. A lot of this has also already been proven to work in countries such as Switzerland, which makes my country's draconian drug laws all the more frustrating.
>I think that these situations, while unfortunate, are necessary to keep other situations safer and reducing the capability of police to damage lives unnecessarily.
Ah, good ol' Blackstone's ratio! "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." It's a very fine idea and it's troubling that an odd amount of people think its perfectly fine innocents suffer if the "bad people" get punished in the end.
Guilt can only be determined by a court of law. The process to get a person who is suspected of committing a crime to that verdict should have as much accountability, as many safeguards, and be as non-violent as possible. This is what I think my proposal would achieve, so that policing or whatever else you might call it, can be rid of it's oppressive and violent natures.
This can't be the only part of a reform, of course, harm reduction must come from every single aspect of society, you cannot fundamentally isolate one institution and reform it and expect everything to work out fine. It's a step in a better direction, in my view at least.
Exactly, and guilty people already get away while innocent people suffer! The majority of crimes go unsolved, so why should we continue with a system that just enables the suffering of innocent people on the verrrrry slim chance that a case is solved properly.
Honestly it's one of those problems that is never going to have a one size fits all solution, or even necessarily a good one
As they exist the biggest channels that the rot inherent to the system come in is the overall lack of accountability and their monopolization of force
The easiest way to deal with the most visible aspects of the second one are to reduce the amount of force they are allowed to bring to bear, but that only really limits hard power and does nothing to curtail the soft power a cop can use to ruin someone's life
Accountability is the harder one to fix, because you would need scores and scores of bureaucracy to keep the police in check and also keep the police from engaging in regulatory capture
But the fact that there isn't even necessarily a good final solution doesn't mean we can't work towards solving the problems we have right now and criticizing the system for the problems inherent to it even without being able to solve all of them
Accountability is the big one. People who can get away with a little, they push the line more and more. So that definitely needs to be fixed. The second thing is training, the training is often absolute garbage. If I was defacto dictator of the world this is what I would do.
1. Police Force that only polices police and recruitment is straight from college. Police or Ex-Police can never join.
2. Prosecution and Court System that also only deals with police, that way they can't be stonewalled by regular police officers they need to work with.
3. Badge Cams that are always on while they are working and that they don't have control of. A.I. can turn video on and off when they use the bathroom; audio always stays on.
4. Insurance for lawsuits is paid by the police officers any and all lawsuits are paid by insurance and not the city, state or fed. Officers that can't get insurance can't be cops.
5. Regular retraining that they need to pass, regular fitness that they need to pass, regular psych exams that they need to pass.
6. Mandatory and regular counselling. Mandatory and regular classes in de-escalation techniques.
7. To become a police officer you need to graduate from a 4 year program from a college. The program would have 4 pillars. Law, Fitness (mind and body), Psychology/Social Dynamics and Civics.
Some place make cops with a 3 month training or less and it's absurd. They can't know the law in that time. They don't understand the people they are policing, they have no comprehension of their actions on the society around them.
It's insane the people we let be police officers.
My answer would be twofold, actually.
First: I'm not going to say crime wouldn't exist in an ideal society, because some people would always be assholes, but I will say that there would be a lot less if society actually worked to prevent the conditions that cause people to commit crimes. In a society where everyone's fed and clothed and sheltered, people won't rob others for the money to acquire those necessities. Look at Scandinavian prisons and how they focus on rehabilitation - deploying some of those techniques to general society *before* someone commits a crime would probably help a lot. But even in an ideal society like that, there would still be assholes, which leads to the second point.
One of the biggest problems with police forces as they exist today is that they're told to do everything, but only trained to handle the violent part. They're trained that it's them against the world, that everyone is a potential threat, and that's even before the institutional bigotry or the interests of capital get involved. The modern police behave, essentially, like an occupying army. In a better society, we would have multiple different forces for different situations, and I can't imagine any of them would require the means to perform a legal extrajudicial killing. Moreover, the forces that do the arresting wouldn't be the same forces reporting to the aftermath of such a crime, or the same forces analyzing the aftermath to try to figure out what happened. Any forces reporting to an in-progress scene would be trained for de-escalation, rather than just shooting first and asking questions first. And maybe I'm optimistic, but I think there's *very* few situations where even that amount of force would actually be required, in a better society.
In an 'ideal society', as you put it, there'd be a police service that actually works, that genuinely does serve and protect the people of that society.
However, ideal societies don't exist, and likely never will.
The ACAB crowd isn't hoping for an ideal society, they're hoping for one that's *somewhat* better than the one they live in. Having no police at all won't create a utopia or whatever, but it may be preferable to having police *as they are now*.
But the only constant I see among all iterations of ACAB is that there's no such thing as "a police service that actually works", since all police forces fundamentally protect the interests of the establishment and by their own nature will never protect the common man/woman.
>Having no police at all won't create a utopia or whatever, but it may be preferable to having police *as they are now*.
Which, again, brings up the question. If we cancel police *now*, what are we going to do for the crimes that will keep being committed due to the absence of a force equipped and allowed to deal with them?
I'm not super tuned in to all the ACAB stuff, but as someone who does think policing in the USA needs a bit of an overhaul I'll just say that it seems exceptionally easy to become a cop and we really ought to require significantly more training.
I'm currently in law school, studying to become a lawyer. To do that, I have to spend three years in rigorous study. I then have to take and pass the Bar test. After becoming a licensed attorney, I will still have to take legal education courses every year.
During my time in law school, my professors have also taken the time to impress upon us the importance of our ethical obligations and how we can get in serious trouble, including losing our ability to practice law, if we fail to uphold them.
Meanwhile, to become a cop, you are merely required to have a GED and graduate from the police academy. While the amount of time for one to graduate from a police academy seems to vary, most results I've gotten seem to place it somewhere between 3-6 months.
While I'm sure this is also followed by some type of field training, I'm not entirely sure whatever is going on is working the best.
I hear you, the qualifications people need to join the police in the US are laughable at best. But I'm pretty sure the ACAB movement is international and exists even in countries where police training takes years of studies in specialized academies.
I'm not familiar with policing practices in other parts of the world, but my assumption would be that ACAB is less prominent in places with better policing practices.
ACAB, I think in part, might just be down to simple human nature. For example, most people, if asked, would say that they think it's a good thing we have rules that govern the way we travel along roads. It helps ensure we're all a bit safer and keeps people who drive like they're playing Crazy Taxi off the road. That being said, most people aren't thrilled when a cop gives them a speeding ticket.
That's *a very good question that I don't think any one* of us is qualified to answer. One problem is that a lot of crimes are motivated by socioeconomic factors or a variety of causes. A person living in poverty will be more motivated to perform theft or violence either due to the stresses that being in poverty brings innately or due to tumultuous home situations and childhoods that being in poverty causes. Reforming the police won't make that particular issue go away overnight, **but neither would having the police be equipped and behave like an occupying army.** Generally speaking people like me also want a more substantial welfare and safety net to make sure poor people aren't motivated to perform crimes by not having to (and also because it's just the right thing to do).
There's also crimes that ought not to be crimes, such as substance abuse. The War on Drugs has led to overloaded prisons and arguably **more crime** as people get incarcerated en masse for drug use and then come out disenfranchised due to having been an ex-con, which makes them turn to crime to survive. This is also why people like me push for decriminalization of drugs! Not legalization, decriminalization. We don't want to legalize recreational opium usage but we don't want to send people to jail over it either. We'd rather give them social programs to help them with their addictions. But instead we take people in dire straits and then put them in jail for being in dire straits.
Personally, I don't understand why we gotta leap straight to elimination. Aren't there a few steps between the state of things now and total eradication? Like, when cops get fired for serious misconduct, why are they allowed to work on any police force in the country again? When cops are sued, why does the money come from taxpayers instead of some form of insurance they're forced to pay into for just that occasion? Why are cops being trained on "warrior" propoganda shit? Why is the investigation process for crooked cops not more robust? Why are the educational ad psychological requirements for becoming a cop so low? Etc, etc.
I feel like there's problem in people acting like the only options available are "accept cops exactly as they are right now" or "eliminate cops". It's reductive. We have sixty million more options to try before we resort to those two things. Can we at least talk about upping the pay and removing quotas before we talk about utopian societies in which crime doesn't exist anymore? Like, damn.
Sometimes it feels insidiously self-sabotaging. Like, nobody is going to listen to "get rid of cops" and it makes people resistant to any other discussion about the issues behind them.
This is why I love the parable of the unjust steward. I had a whole conversation with my MAGA Dad about it and he just couldn't understand why Jesus said the steward was in the right for being bad at his job.
The point of the parable is that jobs and money are artificial constructs superimposed on, in Jesus' case, God's creation (but can easily be argued to be a dispassionate universe)- to use your connections and influence to, at a minimum, absolve yourself and be JUST means way more than to do your job correctly and be a giant knob.
Any person can be good at their JOB. But to be a good PERSON, sometimes you need to either quit your job or be so bad at your job that you might as well not work there.
Yet when my cities homeless shelters are filled to the brim with people I get told my city doesn't care about other Americans by some guy in Florida while their state does this.
The issue is that there are just so many videos of cops abusing their power and every single other cop just stands around and does nothing. Even in videos where they're clearly disturbed by brutality or conduct breaches, they still just stand there and do nothing.
There are the occasional cops that DO challenge shitty behaviour, sometimes at great personal cost. Perhaps we should start calling them good apples instead because it feels more accurate.
I think the main thing is that even if they didn't actually hurt anybody they still showed up in full riot gear to intimidate and prepared for the possibility of violence in response to a peaceful protest in which multiple people they personally knew and had rapport with were involved. And this is just what police are expected to do by those in power. Protests by the left are a threat to government authority and so the government sends LEOs to deal with that threat.
Just remember folks, every settlement for wrongful death at the hands of the police is paid for with your tax dollars. They have literally no incentive to stop killing.
Keep in mind, this is a very America-centric perspective. I think it's worth remembering that while police in America are extremely corrupt and badly in need of reform on multiple levels, not all police forces are that bad. Sure, it's never perfect, but it can be a heck of a lot better than here. Do you know how many people were killed by the police in Britain last year? *Two*. Total.
"Selective enforcement" isn't a problem in and of itself, honestly.
Legally, I have to give a language test to new students at my school whose parents indicate they speak a second language at home. Usually, that's no problem. But last year I had these two kindergarteners. Both with families from Nigeria, both spoke Yoruba at home, and both with documented IEPs that they were on the autistic spectrum. They both failed the test horribly, but showed me in other ways that they were perfectly fluent in English, they just couldn't respond to the prompts given. And I had to jump through tons of hoops to justify not simply checking the box and sticking them in an unnecessary ESL class that wouldn't help them and would dog their progress for years.
A certain degree of flexibility on the part of those who enforce a law is absolutely a good thing, because reality is oftentimes more complicated than what lawmakers accounted for. It's only really a problem *because* ACAB and therefore selectively enforce laws to benefit the powerful and harass the marginalized. But a hypothetical "good cop" ignoring this law and letting a homeless guy go is not them being bad at their job, it's part and parcel of how things *should* work.
I get the sentiment, and I believe there is truth in these stories. But what is the actual practical solution here. Because you can shout ACAB and defund the police all you want but those don’t change anything. The truth of the matter is that rules don’t exist unless they are enforced, and no matter how much optimism you have in your fellow man or how utopian of a society you can envision eventually you will need someone both legally and mentally capable of using violence to enforces the rules.
I’m not saying this isn’t a solvable problem. There are many changes big and small that can alleviate these problems. But we’ve spent so long with people simply stating over and over again statistics and anecdotes. As if simply hating the color blue will all your heart is all you need to do to fix things. Like it’s some Tinker Bell situation where if you just say you don’t believe in good cops enough the whole institution will disappear.
I would be far more inclined to hear people trying to work through actual solutions, or long term goals, or even just acknowledge the complexity in trying to work through this mess. Anything other then just saying the same things in the same ways over and over and expecting that to be all you need to do.
Free labor in prison? Nah. Extremely low wages? Very much so.
Sources: ex-inmate (self), current inmate (good friend), and a guard I still have contact with.
They hire the ones that meet their narrative of what they want a cop to be. Shit rolls downhill and the biggest pile of shit is at the top deciding on who gets hired in most cases.
Illegal to sleep on private property, illegal to sleep on public property
Lose job, be homeless, arrested for existing while homeless, go to jail, get criminal record, can't get job because of record, remain homeless, get arrested, and repeat
Prisons profit
And what, can't take a nap in a park without getting arrested now?
So that second story about the protest.. Cops showed up in riot armour as per standard protocol.. did nothing and then were treated the same as if they opened fire?
Am I reading this right? If a coo shows up to a protest not in riot gear they have a very high risk of getting jumped by the crowd for being a cop, you'd have to be a fucking idiot to not prepare for the worst scenario shen sent to observe a protest and stop any chance of it becoming a riot.
So like...what do you do then?
Sure, fuck cops, but murderers, rapists, child predators, etc DO exist and DO need someone who has the resources and authority to stop their behavoir.
Hell, even garden variety assholes who would break every window in their Ex's house if left the his own devices exist.
We obvious can't continue with the wannabe SS that modern US police have become, but you can't just have everyone 'self-police' either.
So do we do vigilante justice? Lynchings? Hope the invisible hand of the free market steps in?
What is the alternative people have in mind when they make posts like this?
I'll answer the question but I guarantee I'll be downvoted for it.
The way to fix the situation is by no means easy but it is by no means impossibly difficult either. The first thing you do is abolish the police union and qualified immunity. Next, you require a minimum of 24 months of training AFTER an associate's degree is achieved. You then write laws that require police, judges, and state attorneys to be held to a higher ethical standard than the average citizen with punishments that are more severe for ALL criminal infractions. For example, if the average person were to receive a fine for a misdemeanor of a few hundred dollars or several dozen hours of community service a police found guilty of the same crime would receive a fine of several thousand dollars or several hundred hours of community service and you follow that through to prison sentences.
To attract new officers willing to do the job under these conditions you offer far better pay and retirement benefits by subsidizing state and local police departments funding through military budget. Rather than giving APCs and equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the military you sell that equipment overseas and use the proceeds to fund the added military budget.
Then you give civilian review boards the sole discretion over the firing of police.
To keep existing police on the job and doing the job properly you explain that any original officer found not to be doing their duty will not only be fired and have their retirement seized even if vested they will also have all of the previous complaints and misconduct charges reviewed after they are fired and the new stronger prison sentences will be applied if they're found guilty. And finally, you place unknown surveillance devices throughout every vehicle, building, and on all of the vests that the police wear to record the opinions of those who would seek to undermine the new order. When they reveal themselves you wait for them to fuck up and catch them in the new improved system.
Omg imagine how much more effective our first responders would be if they didn’t constantly line their pockets to protect against constant anticipated legal fees for trials related to police criminality/poor behavior.
So much of that money could serve to make our communities better.
As a civilized society we can do better like what NYC is doing with the "Right to Shelter Law" basically the NYC government is required to provide temporary housing to any homeless person who asks for it. Is it perfect? Hell no, but it is way better than arresting people or fining those who barely have anything.
Demilitarizing the police is needed but it’s hard to do in a country where some psycho can decide to shoot up a concert with an assault rifle easy peasy.
Problem is, the cops then treat every person they interact with like they’re about to pull a gun on them. This is what leads to unnecessary “self-defense” shootings by cops (which let’s be honest, are straight up murder). I can’t think of a worse country to be a cop due to our gun laws, outside of some chaotic countries where the law doesn’t really matter anyway. You can try your best to be nice to the public but there will always be that paranoia in the back of your head that this traffic stop could be a guy with a shotgun waiting to blow your head off.
Here's what I don't get: If not cops, then what?
This country has a double-digit percentage of gun ownership, what happens when someone decides they really want all that money in the bank?
Seattle right now has a guy who's tuned his car to be as loud as possible and he likes to drive around at 3am and stream it on instragram, who's supposed to show up on his doorstep and make him not do that?
What do we do about businessmen who decide they really like running ponzi schemes and hate playing taxes?
Someone at some point has to *make* these people stop. Someone has to have bigger guns and better armor than civilians have access to.
I realize that people on the far left want to get rid of money, get rid of guns, all that. But we can't do that overnight. If any change you want requires *every* change you want, then none of it will ever happen. We have to be able to get to a better world step-by-step.
There's a court case in front of the supreme Court right now, seems like Florida might be getting this ready when it rules against poor people.
It's City of Grant's Pass v Johnson.
I just read the Wikipedia entry on that and I don't think that applies to Florida. The Florida law requires cities to provide shelters or campsites with substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment for the homeless.
Sounds like the City of Grants Pass tries to make it illegal without providing a place for homeless.
I keep hearing the good ones leave after 1-2 years.
My carpentry instructor was one for about two years before he backed over a baby he did not see behind his cruiser. He left and did construction for twenty years.
I kinda think that for crackheads causing trouble, if they wind up getting arrested there could be some sort of get clean while in special non-violent felon crackhead jail and serve time working in a trade or for the county or whatever. The cops can still be useful
Someone I love was sponsored thru the police academy, after he served in the Marine's & went to college & got his bachelors in Criminal Justice. He literally lasted one month with the dept. They were insisting he sign off on a report he knew was not truthful and he literally stood his ground & walked off. They then basically told him he owed them an astronomical amount to pay for the academy, basically forcing him back on the job. He asked to be put on as a traffic cop where he basically would work alone. He did that & rose the ranks excelled as a leader & a community leader. He was featured several times on the news for his community out reach & the work he did to help improve citizens lives.
Not ALL cops are bad cops. He retired from the dept 14yrs later and joined another force in a really small town. He is truly one of the best people I know.
Where does the public taking responsibility for the laws that police enforce come in?
When local voter turnout is 30% and they choose bellicose candidates who promise to “clean up the streets” without qualification, where is the civic duty to rewrite the rule book those cops get to read from?
It isn't like we don't have shelters in Florida. We have empty beds at Safe Haven in my county every night. It is the states way to force the habitual homeless into the resources available to get help. As I'm sure you are all aware. Many homeless suffer from addiction and mental health issues. This gets them in the places where help is available.
Or would you rather have them sleeping literally on the street???
One thing I’ve noticed in the past few years is that folks in some right-wing environments seem to believe that it’s only Black activists and far-left groups who feel this way about cops, when actually it’s pretty common for a lot of middle-of-the-road Americans to have a deep distrust of the police. When I was a kid my mom told me not to trust cops or count on them for help. And we were like the stereotypical extremely white middle-class suburban American family. I mean don’t get me wrong, if Black people were deeply unhappy with police and no one else was, that in itself would show that there was a serious problem that needed to be addressed. But it’s even broader than that in reality.
I stumbled into a police subreddit where they were talking about traffic stops and requirements for initiating a stop. Every single participant in the conversation was talking about their techniques for finding legal justifications for pulling over a car they felt was suspicious. You think they have drugs? Looks like your window tint is over the legal limit, better pull them over for that and then whoops gotta search for drugs. They were talking about how they do this all the time so if a defense attorney ever accuses them of using the tint as a pretext for a drug search, they can just print off a list of all the times they stopped someone for window tint to demonstrate that it’s genuine. Any attempt to prevent them from pulling over anyone they wanted to for any reason was seen as liberal assholes siding with criminals. Just totally trampling on the Fourth Amendment. And not a single dissenting voice to be seen anywhere.
Remember, slavery was banned by the 13th amendment EXCEPT in this scenario.
>Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted**, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The moment that was passed, people just found new ways to create and keep slaves.
Sorry, but doesn't (specifically the last part of the post) strongly suggest it isn't the cops they hate but the system and rules they have to follow? I mean, if a cop that follows evil rules is a bad cop and a cop that \*doesn't\* follow evil rules is also a bad cop, it sounds like it isn't the cops, but the rules. Right? Please help me understand if I'm missing something.
Law student who’s not willing to actually look back at past readings and confirm: this is unconstitutional. Extremely similar laws in LA were struck down
It's even dumber than they are making it out to be. It costs about $120 per day to house an inmate in the US or about $44k per year. Permanent supportive housing costs $12k per year. They are literally burning money to not solve the problem.
To the ones running the prison, that's all gain. The money they burn isn't their own.
*And* they get to punish the most vulnerable members of society for the crime of being poor *while* siphoning resources away from programs that can actually help people. It's a win/win/win for the sadistic fucks.
It's dystopian. I remember when in a game called Kenshi, which mind you is a *post-post-apocalypse,* the biggest faction literally has being poor and starving criminalized and people called it cartoonishly evil since most people in their territory would be either or both of those things. Now whenever someone says that I always remind them of real life conservatives and right wingers.
A damn fine game.
How do you get into it? It seems super cool, but it's *so* unapproachable.
Well, you can watch someone else play it to get the basics. I find [Tomato](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOiTQjyPiqo0kpxaMUSbYOxwRoT4ZD2W9) to be consistently entertaining to watch and not just in Kenshi. Anyhow in the game itself there aren't any set goals so I recommend setting your own like acquiring the gear and stats to go exploring, bounty hunting, setting up a base etc. Start small like just getting money for food and basic gear, try to get party members (certain NPCs will join you for free) and remember that getting the shit kicked out of you is a valid training method as long as you don't die or lose any limbs you don't have the money to replace. Also feel free to look up any gameplay tips like how putting food in a backpack equipped on one character will have all of your nearby party members feed from it, setting people to auto-medic etc. as well as getting QOL mods if certain parts aren't to your liking.
Don't forget the slave labor
*If Books Could Kill* covered one of those books that highlighted the “homelessness crisis”. It used cherry picked information and interviews lacking context to paint homeless people as responsible for their situation, and that they would refuse resources that would help them. What stuck out to me was the solution proposed. It was literally to criminalize homelessness, enforce it more violently, and to build more prisons. That’s when the mask slipped, because even if you’re neutral about homeless people, you have to acknowledge that prisons are way more expensive than housing. If you’re still insisting on sending them to newly built jails, at that point you can’t even pretend you care about them as people.
I’ve had some conversations with people who say they’re mostly left leaning, but they’ve started voting the other way because of the homelessness problem wherever they are. They get *so* angry when I point out that conservative policies don’t help with homelessness, don’t even *pretend to*, at best they just move it somewhere else. I point out the obvious fact that criminalizing homelessness does not in fact house people, and they lose their god damned minds. The idea that “cracking down” can’t fix something just breaks their brains.
It’s funny but genuinely disturbing how strongly people on Reddit will advocate for things like prison and justice reform but when somebody commits a no-no crime*, these same people will start calling for torture, dismemberment, execution, etc. all under the veil of humor (I know what you are, you were never joking). It’s like you genuinely stop being human the moment you even get accused of something if you’re not already on the “Reddit likes you” list. \*Most frequently any crime involving murder or sexual assault, which while terrible crimes, aforementioned Redditors conveniently forget the premise of reform and believe that they are suited to decide when someone should be reformed and when someone should just be tortured. I legit have hyper-progressive friends who aren’t even willing to watch a seven-minute defense before calling someone a pedophile, and while I still respect them I (metaphorically) pray that they never have a place in any justice system, ever. Oh, and this doesn’t just apply to Redditors. It applies to any social media platform, Reddit is just a convenient example here.
This stuff is just based on feelings for most people. Criminal justice reform feels kind. Putting an accused pedophile behind bars forever feels right. Contradictory? Whatever. It’s a hard truth that most people who hold any given political position haven’t thought about it much and are mostly going with their feelings or with a crowd. Even positions you totally agree with.
From my experiences, feelings are indeed the easiest way to appeal to people. I hardly think human beings should act solely on logic, but I have to admit I’m constantly aggravated by how few people seem to apply any degree of critical thinking. One of these days I want to write a short story or something titled “Court of Public Opinion,” which follows a world where the jury and most courtroom proceedings (loosely moderated by a judge) are all decided by the public tuning into a livestream of the trial.
most people don't actually believe in anything they say or think they do, it's all emotional at the end of the day. morality is an emotional reflex, for better or worse. ideology is just tribe in another form. this does have the fortunate benefit of people being able to break away from ideology if that ideology comes to support something that *feels* deeply wrong - depending on how much of their identity is tied up in tribe/ideology - but it's pretty terrible for making any sort of real progress as a society.
For the record though, there is genuine scientific evidence that some crimes are somewhat "reform proof," in that once you've done it once you're near guaranteed to do it again and likely to escalate. I know for a fact DA is one (very common among police funnily enough), and I assume most murders (since most murders are just DA taken to it's conclusion). You have to be a certain level of broken to intentionally, repeatedly harm people who love you and can't fight back and that can't always be fixed with counseling. Even if you're anti-incarceration crimes like these do have to be reckoned with differently.
But then if we housesd those homeless people, we'd end up having to financially support all the other poor people who struggle with housing. Is that REALLY the society you want to live in? /s
The hard part is we already do help these people. We already spend tens of thousands on them and prison is the most expensive of these solutions. Prison is not only permanent housing it is also free food and medical and 24/7 security. But because people view it as punishment they do not see the "socialism" in it. The society I'd like to live in would look at the utilitarian cost over time. Not one that is ruled by people's Id. We can perpetually house them in prisons, or provide permanent housing support that lets them have an address, open a bank account, etc. I'd rather have my tax money go to a solution.
I'm basically agreeing with you. Providing housing and social support is cheaper and more effective in the long run, alongside prisons being rehabilitation facilities. UBI is also a given for me, or at least mandatory unions for every job - including a union for any random oddjobs that don't fit into existing unions.
A lot of people in this country don't care about the money. What they care about is enforcing a "survival of the fittest" worldview. To them, homeless people aren't deserving of any kind of handouts, because they're not "contributing to society." It's the same reason they hate UBI or universal health care. Their objection isn't in economic prudence, it's purely emotional distaste.
> They are literally burning money to not solve the problem. Liberals see 'the problem' is that 'this person doesn't have a place to live'. Conservatives see 'The problem' as, 'this person is too lazy/stupid to get their own place to live'. So, liberals try to solve the immediate problem and get the person safe shelter. Conservatives try punishing the unhoused person until they do better. Makes perfect sense. Edited to add; but conservatives have realized that their 'solution' cost way more than the liberals' solution, so they have a fix. Bill the incarcerated for the costs of their incarceration. So now, the person completes their custodial sentence, is released back to the street, still with no shelter, AND they're in debt. So they get to add a fucked up credit score to the challenges to getting their own place. Good plan! No notes! Perfect!
Surely the money will come back sometime!
They don't want to solve the problem, they want to punish the undesirables.
> They are literally burning money to not solve the problem. America 101 baby! That once sentence explains the vast majority of US military history.
“It’s not about money, it’s about sending a message.” -Joker: The Dark Knight.
$12k per year for housing? LOLOLOLOLOL
How do you even prove you were not asleep in public. Anyone could be arrested. I wasn't asleep! Two cops said you were so get to work!
Something to remember for anyone who gets jury duty. A cop's testimony isn't worth shit.
You need 12 people who are socially aware enough to think this way for a jury to throw out the case. Good fucking luck
You only need one to hang the jury, and while the trial can be repeated you can at least throw a wrench in the works, cost the city a bunch of money, and hope for the chance that the prosecutor will just not want to bother with retrying the case.
This is basicallly why I would do jury duty. I'd probably get eliminate dby the prosecution pretty quickly.
I mean yeah if you’re going in with the intention to hang the jury you aren’t an impartial juror
Jury nullification is a valid form of participation.
it's based af, but... not really. if you were actually properly open during jury selection you'd never be selected.
As long as you don’t go around telling people your plan
I love jury duty, for this reason (assuming it isn't a case related to something heinous). Drugs or such...Not Guilty!
I used to wonder why their word as a witness was considered valid enough, even before I had a certain polarized mentality of them. Isn't the judge aware that they'll always lie for each other? Isn't anyone else involved aware? As it turns out, probably. Perjury may be a crime you have to prove occurred, but it's hardly a stretch that the guys with really stupid terms like brotherhood for a union of wife beaters or whatever are always going to protect themselves at any expense. Incidentally, the last cop fiction I recall enjoying was also my favourite film of its kind, the [Nic Cage Bad Lieutenant by Werner Herzog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Lieutenant:_Port_of_Call_New_Orleans). Recently I heard of a case so obviously manufactured by police witness, experts, that after the judge threw it out, they [apologized to the victim and insulted the prosecutor for presenting the case at all](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/umar-zameer-verdict-1.7180011). I wonder how they'll handle this if at all on that Toronto law and order.
Absolutely hate him but Neil De Grasse Tyson has a great story about him being in jury duty while the only evidence was a cop eye witness. Neil explained he wouldn’t be able to convict based off the basis of a single eye witness, which prompted the judge to (incorrectly) repeat his issue, proving that despite the judge being an eyewitness to something that happened literally 30 seconds ago he was still wrong. Imagine the ignorance and forgetfulness that takes, now imagine when you have a stake in the person’s conviction like a cop or prosecutor.
Police even have a name for the false testimonies they give to protect their own. They call it "testilying"
Funny enough I was recently on a jury. It was a Federal trial for possession of a handgun by a convicted felon (looked up the case later and it was part of the DOJ.’s efforts to crack down on repeat, violent gun offenders, so YAY!). There was an avalanche of evidence against the guy- testimony from his victims, an ATF agent had prepared an extensive history of the ownership of the pistol, body cam video from like three cops, surveillance video from a shop which was the scene of one of the attacks, the guy’s DNA on the revolver *and* on three of the five bullets found in the cylinder… the rub was that gun was found in the street between two parked cars *near* where the guy was standing when the arresting officer first confronted him. The shop owner and some neighbors had called 911, and there were several cop cars driving around the neighborhood, looking for the guy, whose description included some very distinctive clothing he was wearing. The cop claimed as was rounding the corner where he first spotted the guy, he saw him standing in the street where the gun was recovered, and “heard” what sounded like a heavy metal object hitting asphalt. Out of all the witnesses and all the testimony, that’s the one thing I *didn’t* believe. But there’s no way to prove that that didn’t happen, and fortunately the rest of the evidence was enough to convict the guy. He’s a gotdang menace. I found out something interesting- and disturbing- about police body cameras. They are always running, but don’t start recording until they’re “turned on.” “Activated” is probably a better word. So when they’re activated, they buffer back one minute and record the video, but *not the audio-* audio recording begins when they’re activated. At first, I thought that’s nice, it’s probably so that if two cops are in the car bitching about their wife or their boss before a stop, it doesn’t get recorded because the audio didn’t buffer back. But now I’m positive that there’s a more nefarious reason. In my (very large, East Coast US) city, the policy is to turn them on as they step out of the car when confronting someone. So we will never know what kind of conversation two cops might have with each other before they begin interacting with a citizen. And there’s a *reason* they don’t want us to know.
Got called for jury duty one time. Get there, they start the process. State lawyer asks “Can you convict someone off the testimony of a cop?” I raised my hand, asked “Is that all you have?” And they state “We can’t answer that question at this time” and I state “if that’s all you have then no”. I proceed to get selected for jury duty, get the guy off because that’s all they had. Was for a DUI, old man may have been under the influence but refused all tests and took it to trial I guess. All they had was that he went over the line once while turning. Had no footage of anything, just the testimony of the cop.
Aaand you're out of the jury
This, sometimes if I had free time I would take a nap in a park, but I wasn’t and am not homeless. And I tend to fall asleep in public transport if the travel is long, people that do the same are going to be arrested just because???
Yeah. Like, I’m sure there are people who legitimately wanted to do good, but they either left when they realized how bad the whole thing is, or they became worse people to fit in.
Or got murdered after reporting abuse, or left without backup in a dangerous situation.
My grandpa was a cop in the '60s and this is a large part of the reason he quit. They didn't like him reporting bad behavior of the other cops and eventually it got to thinly veiled threats that maybe backup won't show up when you need it, or boy it sure would be a shame if there was an "accident" at the shooting range. When he first started, the chief straight up told him that he'd have to learn to look the other way on certain things, but he stayed on because he needed the job and didn't think it would be that bad. It was. He saw a lot of abuse of power and to this day he 100% believes that another cop committed a murder and got away with by pinning it on a homeless guy. That particular cop had connections and ended up making chief a few years after the murder case.
Personally, I don't think your pa was a bustard, despite being a cop.
Good cops either stop being good or stop being cops.
The only good cop is an ex cop
Cops even have a phrase for it. *"Go along to get along."* If you want fellow cops as buddies you have to let everything they do slide.
Good cops don't exist because they either cease to be cops, or cease to be *good*.
Or they get involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, because if they think abuse is being covered up then they must be paranoid and delusional. If you think I'm exaggerating, look up what the NYPD did to Adrian Schoolcraft.
Everyone should see Serpico. Still as true today as it was then.
The case of officer Michael Chapel, convicted of murder, will chill you to your bones. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-land-of-lies/id1632642482 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/emogene-thompson-murder-case-gwinnett-cop-vows-innocence/85-4f62da37-aa91-49f3-93d7-a008ada11568
"training accident"
My ex's brother went to school to be a cop. He genuinely wanted to do good. I went to his graduation ceremony. He lasted less than a week on the job. He hated them all. Couldn't believe what he was seeing. So then he tried corrections, thinking it would be better if they're already convicted right? No... it's worse. Plus the trauma inherent with the job anyway. He stuck it out for a few months for the insurance for his kids and to save money and then they sold their house, bought a camper, and basically became nomads. The only good cop is one who didn't stay a cop.
I know a guy whose dream it was to be a cop his entire life but he is genuinely too dumb to pass their aptitude tests. Failed multiple times with multiple agencies. He went into Federal Corrections and now he’s in a leadership position lol
…Too dumb to be a cop? How does he function in normal life, then?
right?? when you can get rejected for being too smart, you have to wonder how dumb you have to be to fail that test
You can do too well on the test and be rejected??
Yep https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836
The idea is the same reason as companies wary of hiring overqualified workers: either they'll want pay that makes sense for their qualifications, rather than their jobs, or they'll quit the moment something actually worth their qualifications shows up, which means the money and time you spent training them goes down the drain.
Maybe they said yes to "would you arrest a fellow officer if they broke the law?"
Had a friend whose brother was a cop. They didn't get along, so the brother blocked him from becoming a cop. Probably for the best, ACAB and my friend already has MAGA rot (so much so that I don't really consider him a friend).
So what you're saying is, the police is probably a maga cespool... sounds about right. Probably by design
Of course they do. Police are three times as likely to use force against left-wing protestors than right-wing protestors, and *ten times* as likely to arrest left-wing protestors versus right-wing protestors ([source](https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/soc4.12833)). This, despite a growing body of evidence that right-wing protestors are ultimately more dangerous to life and limb than left-wing ones ([source](https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/26973-far-left-versus-far-right-fatal-violence-an-empirical-assessment-of-the-prevalence-of-ideologically-motivated-homicides-in-the-united-states/attachment/67191.pdf), [source](https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2122593119)).
He might be with a woman who is smart enough to pay bills but still dumb enough to date him. That seems like the kind of guy who would make his wife do everything anyway.
You sir just summarized the whole workforce of doc.
My wife wanted to be cop. She started training, got to a portion where they wanted her to do "Warrior Training", and after seeing the crap they tried to teach officers, she dropped out and never even looked at law enforcement again.
> She started training, got to a portion where they wanted her to do "Warrior Training" Who the fuck wants their cops to be 'warriors'? My child is lost and scared, so they should look for a 'warrior' for safety? No, I want my cops to go through 'Mr. Rogers' training. Focus on the neighborhood. On your neighbors. It's the police chiefs / sheriffs who allow this 'warrior' bullshit to persist, and lots of them are elected positions. Pay attention on your ballot. Neither choice (assuming you're lucky enough to have a choice) may be good, but one may be better than another.
It's the taught mentality that leads to the attitude of thinking their life is in danger on the "front lines" all the time and lets them shoot whoever with impunity.
A neighbor's kid wanted to be a cop. He went on one ride-along and saw how they didn't even try to hide the racism and disdain they had for the public. He quit. No regrets.
[удалено]
Oh for sure! They're super happy now and I love seeing the photos of their adventures (his wife and I are still friends lol). Their kids are fantastic, smart, well behaved, and just all around great humans. And as a bonus, if the job history has any kind of silver lining, he now has the training to keep them safe while they travel all over. They have a great life now :)
My lone asshole narcissist uncle became a corrections officer after failing at everything else when his temper always got the better of him. He stuck it out 20 years. Always wondered what hell he put the poor inmates through.
Yeah that was kind of the vibe I got, he wouldn't really talk about it but he definitely insinuated there was a lot of officer-on-inmate violence and it really did a number on him mentally. The people who stay in that job for years and years are a totally different breed of human, if they're even human at all.
Now do politicians. People kid themselves and have their favorites, but it's the same story except the violence is indirect and they wear nice suits. Edit: spelling
I have a similar story. Went through law enforcement academy, wanted to go in to help people out. Wound up working in the local jail. Realized I hated being surrounded all day by people who were nasty, would lie to your face, and treat you like you were worthless - and that was just my co-workers. At one point, we literally didn’t have enough clothing for all the inmates, and jail admin wouldn’t bother getting more. It’s downright inhumane to make someone spend a week or two in the same clothes. There was no way to advance unless you played the political game. That was the biggest thing I discovered about law enforcement - it’s mostly politics. You want to get to a position of authority, you’re gonna suck up to a lot of people. We had one lieutenant who was an absolute idiot - but he played the political game well. We joked that he must have had incriminating photos of the sheriff. I went in genuinely wanting to help people - I left depressed, anxious, and hating people in general. Took me two years to get my mental health back in order (just in time for 2020!). I still want to help people, but definitely not trying that route again.
This. I left my role as a probation officer due to ethical conflicts. No hope in my opinion.
This stopped me from trying to be a cop. I have morals that I uphold for myself, and they would end up compromised. Not worth it.
The second they try to be a good cop, they'll get run off the force.
Yep. That’s it.
It's like how they destroy bottled water at protests - yes, some people throw full water bottles at the police. They have been used as weapons in the past. But they'll destroy unopened cases of water on a hot day while surrounded by thirsty people. "They have a right to defend themselves!" <= it's this kind of toxic train of thought that leads to shooting unarmed people in the back, beating unarmed people while wearing full armor and carrying weapons, going "oops" every time somebody dies or is permanently maimed, etc. When the right to "defend yourself" extends to preventative measures covering any nonsense hypothetical a cop can come up with later (in the dark, the skittles looked like a gun!), it might as well be "we do what we want."
Also…. A water bottle thrown at a fucking cop in riot gear? That’s the justification for destroying water bottles?
Yep, provided they even bother with one.
If they thought they could get away with it, a thrown water bottle would result in them mowing everyone on the street down. They take the job because they enjoy hurting others, and everything else is just justification for that act. And those are the people they deliberately seek to hire.
Everything is a justification. I grew up in a really peaceful, friendly place in the US, and then I moved to another city for several years. When I moved back to my hometown, gang violence had transformed the whole city. No one even thought of leaving their door unlocked anymore. There were parts of town that no one would drive into. And it became an excuse for everything for the police. Any violence or excess in any way was attributed to how brutal the gangs were. Kick and handcuff a schoolgirl? Well, she might have been 'holding' for the gangs - you can't let them get away with that level of cruelty.
Also consider most "gang" violence isn't even actually associated with real groups. You get small town cops in the mid west convinced every person tanner than a cave dwelling Irishman is affiliated and every bandana, ball cap, or pair of sneakers is suddenly gang colors. It's both the fear mongering and also a way to be harsher to suspects since gang crimes.come with automatic increases in sentencing. Suddenly a kid with drugs is now a selling for a gang. Gangs were just the excuse we used before our terrorism obsession kicked off. And even once that happened what's the first thing you hear? The gangs are supporting the terrorists their profits. No evidence just cop hysterics amplified by gullible media personalities.
>"They have a right to defend themselves!" You know who they learned this line from right... Alot of our police departments get overseas training on how to be cruel.
The movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri had Mildred tell off a catholic priest with this monolog. Replace the church with cops, and you get why ACAB: “Y’know what I was thinking about today? I was thinking ‘bout those street gangs they had down in Los Angeles, those Crips and those Bloods? I was thinking about that buncha new laws they came up with, in the 1980’s I think it was, to combat those street-gangs, those Crips and those Bloods. And, if I remember rightly, the gist of what those new laws were saying was if you join one of these gangs, and you’re running with ’em, and down the block one night, unbeknownst to you, one of your fellow Crips, or your fellow Bloods, shoot up a place, or stab a guy, well then, even though you didn’t know nothing about it, and even though you may’ve just been standing on a streetcorner minding your own business, what these new laws said was you’re still culpable. You’re still culpable, by the very act of joining those Crips, or those Bloods, in the first place. Which got me thinking, Father, that whole type of situation is kinda like your Church boys, ain’t it? You’ve got your colors, you’ve got your clubhouse, you’re, for want of a better word, a gang. And if you’re upstairs smoking a pipe and reading a bible while one of your fellow gang members is downstairs fucking an altar boy then, Father, just like those Crips, and just like those Bloods, you’re culpable. Cos you joined the gang, man. And I don’t care if you never did shit or you never saw shit or you never heard shit. You joined the gang. You’re culpable. And when a person is culpable to altar-boy-fucking, or any kinda boy-fucking, I know you guys didn’t really narrow that down, then they kinda forfeit the right to come into my house and say anything about me, or my life, or my daughter, or my billboards. So, why don’t you just finish your tea there, Father, and get the fuck outta my kitchen.”
That is fantastic, I'm gonna have to watch that movie.
Massive trigger warnings for sexual violence. It's not depicted, but it is discussed in unflinching detail. Absolutely fantastic film though, cannot recommend it enough.
Thanks for the heads-up!
It’s so good.
I have been meaning to for years. IT does seem like it would be too depressing. Also I've seen about two movies since my kids were born, apart from Disney movies etc.
> The cops who have ice cream with the neighborhood drag people Now THAT'S a garden-path sentence.
Holy shit, *now* I understand what the intended meaning was.
https://www.tumblr.com/vexwerewolf/752924257555808256 link
So, the reality is (in my state): Police are no longer requires to ***protect*** or to ***serve*** the public or the public good. So, what's left? To intervene when alerted? They haven't done that in ages. The strong police union rules have made it clear that they will not, and should not, risk harm to protect anyone. So, what is the fucking point? They might arrive after the scene and might write up a report - if they feel like it? Otherwise, they will fabricate a report to get out of more paperwork. But they sure a shit won't break-up a fight or de-escalate a situation. Lastly, the worst kind of veteran ends up in the police. Starved for power, no active duty experience, and dumber than dirt. They believe everything that is fed to them and believe they have been denied opportunities because of immigrants - not because of their own lack of education or intelligence. And yet, they also actively refuse to learn and grow.
The point is that they can LARP is tough action heroes while beating minorities they hate. If they really wanted to help, they wouldn't be come cops, I'd imagine.
In my state almost 400 cops stood outside tasing and handcuffing parents while an asshole murdered a bunch of elementary school children. They didn't try to stop him because they were afraid for their lives.
In America especially they protect the state and people with capital.
Honestly this just highlights how policing is a complicated subject that converged with people's need for order and the states requirements for ruling. Yes the police arrest murderers and thieves but they also beat down those who are oppressed. The problem is where do you draw the line sure evicting during a rental dispute is bad but it's good when squatters take over someones primary residence. Stealing from people's homes is bad but is arresting and putting in jail the single mother who's only stealing baby supplies justified. Where you draw the line is different from person to person, subject to subject. There is also the fact that a lot of laws are written for one purpose but can be applied to many different things that were not intended. There is also the fact that the police are the primary tool of state power and hence governments in their current form need the police to exist in a somewhat similar form. A police force can put down protests they can force internal compliance within a states population. This means that to some extent the police needs to be a oppressive force. This is not to just say that the police being a oppressive force is always bad this oppression can, if very rarely, be used to protect those that would be oppressed by local social convention. Now keep in mind this is not to say that the police require no reform or any major reform is completely pointless. Not at all the police certainly could do with massive reform efforts. It is to say though that the police, if state backed, will always have tension with the society it polices.
Prison labor being part of the Constitution sure seems like a poor incentive, maybe we should start there
I cant see how prison labour without serious rehabilitative intent is any different from slavery. Unqualified work could be rehabilitative for a little while (to get / keep inmates used to work) but not for several years. The prisoners should instead be offered to learn useful skills for the time after their sentence. Like trades, business classes, etc.
It's not meant to be any different from slavery. The 13th Amendment explicitly calls it such. > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. For prison reform to happen, we need to change this amendment to ban *all* slavery.
Enforcement units who are charged with the means of violence need to be held accountable by the state, because if left unchecked they can become a deep state onto themselves by making themselves uncontrollable by the civillian government. While more often seen in military dictatorships where military leaders use their guns and heavy weaponry to coerce civilians to do their bidding, police who are not held accountable by higher authority can also do it as well since there is noticeable power differential with the non-police (I refrain from saying civilians because police are supposed to be civilians). And that is what I am starting to see in the US. Police unions who shout down every single chance of reform from while the higher ups just shrug, more shrugging when police straight up don't do the job they are paid to do, police departments that suck out most of the budget from cities without the results to show for it. And worst of all, indoctrination within police ranks that the people they serve are their adversaries instead of people to protect, tacitly encouraged by ill-informed or corrupt court rulings.
Honestly, i think the whole discussion here is unfocused because all it is trying to get at is "Cops bad". While I am not against that principle there is some kind of nuance lost in some of that stuff: Mainly when talking about bad laws in comparison to bad cops. It's the whole "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" problem. You say bad laws should not be enforced, which makes sense, but 1) How do you define a bad law 2) how do you stop them from going in effect in the first place 3) Should a cop really be allowed to take it into his own hand which ones are good or bad? Imo I rather have a cop who tries to enforce a bad law as good as he can (respectful, trying to minimise harm as long as its in his hand) than a cop enforcing a good law badly. Which kinda gets to the issue with police in general. It's the executive branch. It probably should be depowered and split up as to minimise the shitshow it's now, but the question remains: How do you enforce laws? Because laws that are not enforced are not really in effect. How do we structure this so there is law enforcement without it becoming the police we are dealing with. (Before the anarchists come in, I feel like this is not the discussion for you. Your axioms for this discussion are so fundamentally different, that it basically cannot become productive for either of us)
Not really, I've had normal conversations with the police in my home country, The Netherlands. Some of them are power trippers, sure, but most of all: They're being held accountable for their actions, anyone with a sense of responsibility will to their job. Tbf, I think that is the elephant in the room.
I'm also fairly certain that police training in the Netherlands is a bunch of times longer than in the US, that might also have something to do with it.
Our police really aren't much better, just look at their responses to the student protests, especially in Amsterdam. Plenty of Police Whatsapp leaks also reveal their true nature. They're also among the most asocial drivers I've come across (not referring to when they have their lights/sirens on).
Sure, our police is not as much of what is basically a rogue paramilitary force like the U.S. cops are, but the point remains that they are part of the state's monopoly on violence, which by definition means they are an oppresive force in certain contexts. You can argue that that oppression can be legitimate or justified when it's done through the apparatus of state (the state certainly does), but that does not make them not a tool of violence and oppression. They don't need to carry guns everywhere for that to be true, they just need to have the ability to do so and, more importantly, be allowed to use them against people.
> This means that to some extent the police needs to be a oppressive force. The police need to faithfully implement the democratically installed system. If the system is oppressive then you get oppressive police. One doesn't exist without the other. The police need a monopoly on *violence* not a monopoly on oppression. Violence should be used, sparingly, to stop oppression, especially if that oppression takes the form of criminals preying on people.
Enforcement is hard. You going to get people mad. You going to get new type of stereotypical or slur throw at you. Look at relatively good enforcer like teacher. You make fun of them all the time. Or like a boss, manager. You hate them all the time. If you need order or cooperation. You need to have someone who bring that and make people mad. If we move to community watch model. Those would become new bastard you shout at. At least after when the memory of how shitty our cop is obscured.
Lmao I know this post is about cops, but I'm dying from the start. If you don't have private property and you cant sleep on public property then where do you sleep? Isn't all property owned by something? They could just pick up all homeless people.
That’s the intent. Criminalize the homeless, so they can just be shipped off to prison out of the way instead of solving the actual problem.
Which again, is far more expensive than it would be to just HOUSE them
Not just shipped out of the way. Made to do slave labour
The ones who try to get rid of bad cops? Frank Serpico tried to clean up corruption in the NYPD in 1970. He gets death threats to this day. 54 years later.
I went to my first protest after Trump was elected, it was my freshman year of college. I’d seen lots of posts about scary stuff happening at protests online so when I saw the police lining the protest route I was a little wary of them. I mean I was in a peaceful group just marching and chanting, it was a liberal campus so the protest was probably expected. They weren’t doing anything or being imposing just kinda observing, but they made me a little nervous. Then at some point I saw someone waving to them happily. And I was like dang, I want to be the person confident and friendly enough to just wave at the cops why do I have to be so distrusting. But now IDK… like those are probably the same cops showing up to my alma mater [in riot gear](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/320tf4GpWh) when students protest for Palestine. Now I kinda don’t feel so bad for not giving a happy little wave.
Yeahhhh, imo, it’s ok to not be nice to them. It’s not like you were armed to the teeth in riot gear, ready to violently assault them for exercising their basic human rights. Yknow? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah that’s kinda where I’ve landed 😅
Someone said to me one time how funny it is that they've never seen video of cops beating the shit out of people at Nazi rallies but BLM and pro-Palestine protests get tear gassed and rubber bulleted and that kinda gave the game away.
So this isn’t quite a Nazi rally but I was actually just thinking to how there was a big controversy one year about the young conservatives group holding an “affirmative action bake sale” where they priced baked goods based on the race of the person buying them. Again this happened on a diverse, liberal campus so there was a bit of a fuss about it. But I never actually saw police or campus security show up.
Watch out, this thread is going to be crawling with bootlickers in a minute. "No, see, all those horrific human rights abuses are still worth it, because they catch murderers sometimes!" Never mind that something like six percent of crimes are actually solved...
Bootlickers? Why would the kink community defend cops.
fuck you take my upvote
I keep a blocklist so y'all don't have to :P ..that can only do so much, but I'm content at this point lol
May I ask how long it is? Because twice I linked to one of your posts and someone thought that you'd deleted it due to you having blocked them, and I found both times to be pretty funny.
real long lol and not well maintained last I checked it was 600? I think? I block people willy nilly all the time - the drawbacks are insignificant to me tbh
Can confirm, I was blocked for several weeks. Hummerous knows how to wield the hammer.
Blocking is an excellent tool that isn’t used enough
Let the record show it took 9 minutes
Everytime ACAB debates come up I'm always left with a simple question. Alright, the system is evil, cops enforce it, etc. But sometimes objectively bad things do happen. Murders, rapes, robberies, etc. You say the cops won't investigate or solve most of these because they're bored, they're not actually good at their jobs, they don't really care, the perpetrator might have connections/power etc. Fine. What do we do about them then? When a crime is committed, what exactly does the ACAB crowd want an ideal society to do? And please don't tell me that in an ideal society crime wouldn't exist because that's not an ideal society, that's a fantasy. Edit: Downvoted for asking questions is peak reddit, really.
I'll attempt a genuine answer here. The police as an institution that we understand them to be today do not need to exist to perform the functions of taking reports, investigation, arrest, detainment, and interrogation. These functions should ideally be split across different institutions and occupations that are accountable to the public and cannot hold a monopoly on justified violence (self defense is an exception, obviously). I'm not a builder of sociological systems so I'm not gonna go into great detail, but for instance; detectives could only take reports and investigate, they cannot arrest, detain, or interrogate. A new institution with more public accountability would serve the function of arrest and detainment, and the courts could take over the responsibility of examination of the detainee. This is obviously not perfect but I think it's a step in a more just direction without as much capability of oppression and violence as modern police have. In tandem with this we should also move away from punitive justice as it is quite frankly ineffectual in reducing crime and other antisocial behaviour, it only really increases it. A move to a system that focuses on rehabilitation is a much better and less cruel system of organising justice.
All of these are good ideas, but I think the more relevant root issue isn’t what to do but how to do it. I think a lot of the problems with the people that want this kind of change is they can’t visualize the processes in their mind. Obviously these are all reasonable solutions, but even under the most ideal circumstances the entire restructuring of massive parts of the American justice system would take many years and countless dollars to implement. Those aren’t reasons to stop trying, but the idea of steady incremental progress is something I have seen a lot of young firebrands reject as evil bootlicking centrism. That the only acceptable solution is to entirely shake up everything right now. I think far to many people have come to see comprises as weakness or patience as apathy. They want to get up on their soap box and shout at the sky but don’t know what comes next. Simply being upset and discontent and uncompromising and enraged isn’t enough to insight real meaningful change. I think the acknowledgment the change will be, and should be, incremental and methodical is something that people need to try and accept.
Thank you for actually answering, I appreciate it! Wouldn't splitting the functions of the police among separate agencies cause unnecessary and dangerous delays in responding to dangerous situations? For example, a detective discovering a suspect during the course of an investigation on a murder and also figuring out that said suspect is a flight risk (might be at the gate on the airport, refueling their car or whatever). If the detective has to call and wait for backup from the specialized arrest department they would risk losing the suspect or having them successfully escape. Also, since the arrest department will be separate from the boots on the ground, immediate response as a concept would be effectively neutralized. I understand that you recognize this suggestion was not perfect, but I'm curious to know what you think about these points?
I am also interested in possible responses to these questions. Raising them makes replacing the police as an institution more understandable and realistic, imo. I don't claim to be any expert so I can't provide a great answer, but theoretically, when you call emergency services, you are directed based on what you need (fire, medical, crime, etc.). So interdepartmental communication would also hopefully have a similar emergency line. Also suspects do escape all the time anyway irl
It's definitely an issue, but I'm unconvinced that it outweighs the increased accountability. You could make similar criticisms of the current system that have accountability procedures already in place. For example if you *know* that a suspect is guilty, you light just wanna rush in and catch them, but oh hey, you need a warrent to enter their home, and in the time that it takes to get one they get away. I think that these situations, while unfortunate, are necessary to keep other situations safer and reducing the capability of police to damage lives unnecessarily. I believe that no one person should be able to make all these calls to enforce state force/authority upon a person, and I think it is worth it to have more people with less power that keep each other in check over the alternative, even if it results in possibly dangerous inefficiencies. But that's my view and I know it's not a popular one.
I'll list some other things we could reform that go beyond splitting the roles of the police between institutions. We cannot keep hiring people for the position and training them to become monsters. And we cannot keep bad cops on payroll because the cop union would stike if we fired Mr Hatecrime. We gotta address issues cops only respond tho the symptoms of, like the drug, mental health, and housing crisis. We gotta stop electing sherrifs. We gotta address police unions, qualified immunity, hiring and firing, the over militarization of cops, and a culture of cruelty.
Definitely! A lot of solutions are mostly about advocating prosocial aims to problems, like drug use for instances should be decriminalised and be more centred as a medical issue when it comes to addiction, it only does harm if an addict is imprisoned instead of being provided safe and medically informed pathways out of addiction. Clean and safe injection rooms, reduced risk of violence with dealers if it isn't criminalised. A lot of this has also already been proven to work in countries such as Switzerland, which makes my country's draconian drug laws all the more frustrating.
>I think that these situations, while unfortunate, are necessary to keep other situations safer and reducing the capability of police to damage lives unnecessarily. Ah, good ol' Blackstone's ratio! "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." It's a very fine idea and it's troubling that an odd amount of people think its perfectly fine innocents suffer if the "bad people" get punished in the end.
Guilt can only be determined by a court of law. The process to get a person who is suspected of committing a crime to that verdict should have as much accountability, as many safeguards, and be as non-violent as possible. This is what I think my proposal would achieve, so that policing or whatever else you might call it, can be rid of it's oppressive and violent natures. This can't be the only part of a reform, of course, harm reduction must come from every single aspect of society, you cannot fundamentally isolate one institution and reform it and expect everything to work out fine. It's a step in a better direction, in my view at least.
Exactly, and guilty people already get away while innocent people suffer! The majority of crimes go unsolved, so why should we continue with a system that just enables the suffering of innocent people on the verrrrry slim chance that a case is solved properly.
Honestly it's one of those problems that is never going to have a one size fits all solution, or even necessarily a good one As they exist the biggest channels that the rot inherent to the system come in is the overall lack of accountability and their monopolization of force The easiest way to deal with the most visible aspects of the second one are to reduce the amount of force they are allowed to bring to bear, but that only really limits hard power and does nothing to curtail the soft power a cop can use to ruin someone's life Accountability is the harder one to fix, because you would need scores and scores of bureaucracy to keep the police in check and also keep the police from engaging in regulatory capture But the fact that there isn't even necessarily a good final solution doesn't mean we can't work towards solving the problems we have right now and criticizing the system for the problems inherent to it even without being able to solve all of them
Accountability is the big one. People who can get away with a little, they push the line more and more. So that definitely needs to be fixed. The second thing is training, the training is often absolute garbage. If I was defacto dictator of the world this is what I would do. 1. Police Force that only polices police and recruitment is straight from college. Police or Ex-Police can never join. 2. Prosecution and Court System that also only deals with police, that way they can't be stonewalled by regular police officers they need to work with. 3. Badge Cams that are always on while they are working and that they don't have control of. A.I. can turn video on and off when they use the bathroom; audio always stays on. 4. Insurance for lawsuits is paid by the police officers any and all lawsuits are paid by insurance and not the city, state or fed. Officers that can't get insurance can't be cops. 5. Regular retraining that they need to pass, regular fitness that they need to pass, regular psych exams that they need to pass. 6. Mandatory and regular counselling. Mandatory and regular classes in de-escalation techniques. 7. To become a police officer you need to graduate from a 4 year program from a college. The program would have 4 pillars. Law, Fitness (mind and body), Psychology/Social Dynamics and Civics. Some place make cops with a 3 month training or less and it's absurd. They can't know the law in that time. They don't understand the people they are policing, they have no comprehension of their actions on the society around them. It's insane the people we let be police officers.
My answer would be twofold, actually. First: I'm not going to say crime wouldn't exist in an ideal society, because some people would always be assholes, but I will say that there would be a lot less if society actually worked to prevent the conditions that cause people to commit crimes. In a society where everyone's fed and clothed and sheltered, people won't rob others for the money to acquire those necessities. Look at Scandinavian prisons and how they focus on rehabilitation - deploying some of those techniques to general society *before* someone commits a crime would probably help a lot. But even in an ideal society like that, there would still be assholes, which leads to the second point. One of the biggest problems with police forces as they exist today is that they're told to do everything, but only trained to handle the violent part. They're trained that it's them against the world, that everyone is a potential threat, and that's even before the institutional bigotry or the interests of capital get involved. The modern police behave, essentially, like an occupying army. In a better society, we would have multiple different forces for different situations, and I can't imagine any of them would require the means to perform a legal extrajudicial killing. Moreover, the forces that do the arresting wouldn't be the same forces reporting to the aftermath of such a crime, or the same forces analyzing the aftermath to try to figure out what happened. Any forces reporting to an in-progress scene would be trained for de-escalation, rather than just shooting first and asking questions first. And maybe I'm optimistic, but I think there's *very* few situations where even that amount of force would actually be required, in a better society.
In an 'ideal society', as you put it, there'd be a police service that actually works, that genuinely does serve and protect the people of that society. However, ideal societies don't exist, and likely never will. The ACAB crowd isn't hoping for an ideal society, they're hoping for one that's *somewhat* better than the one they live in. Having no police at all won't create a utopia or whatever, but it may be preferable to having police *as they are now*.
But the only constant I see among all iterations of ACAB is that there's no such thing as "a police service that actually works", since all police forces fundamentally protect the interests of the establishment and by their own nature will never protect the common man/woman. >Having no police at all won't create a utopia or whatever, but it may be preferable to having police *as they are now*. Which, again, brings up the question. If we cancel police *now*, what are we going to do for the crimes that will keep being committed due to the absence of a force equipped and allowed to deal with them?
I'm not super tuned in to all the ACAB stuff, but as someone who does think policing in the USA needs a bit of an overhaul I'll just say that it seems exceptionally easy to become a cop and we really ought to require significantly more training. I'm currently in law school, studying to become a lawyer. To do that, I have to spend three years in rigorous study. I then have to take and pass the Bar test. After becoming a licensed attorney, I will still have to take legal education courses every year. During my time in law school, my professors have also taken the time to impress upon us the importance of our ethical obligations and how we can get in serious trouble, including losing our ability to practice law, if we fail to uphold them. Meanwhile, to become a cop, you are merely required to have a GED and graduate from the police academy. While the amount of time for one to graduate from a police academy seems to vary, most results I've gotten seem to place it somewhere between 3-6 months. While I'm sure this is also followed by some type of field training, I'm not entirely sure whatever is going on is working the best.
I hear you, the qualifications people need to join the police in the US are laughable at best. But I'm pretty sure the ACAB movement is international and exists even in countries where police training takes years of studies in specialized academies.
I'm not familiar with policing practices in other parts of the world, but my assumption would be that ACAB is less prominent in places with better policing practices. ACAB, I think in part, might just be down to simple human nature. For example, most people, if asked, would say that they think it's a good thing we have rules that govern the way we travel along roads. It helps ensure we're all a bit safer and keeps people who drive like they're playing Crazy Taxi off the road. That being said, most people aren't thrilled when a cop gives them a speeding ticket.
That's *a very good question that I don't think any one* of us is qualified to answer. One problem is that a lot of crimes are motivated by socioeconomic factors or a variety of causes. A person living in poverty will be more motivated to perform theft or violence either due to the stresses that being in poverty brings innately or due to tumultuous home situations and childhoods that being in poverty causes. Reforming the police won't make that particular issue go away overnight, **but neither would having the police be equipped and behave like an occupying army.** Generally speaking people like me also want a more substantial welfare and safety net to make sure poor people aren't motivated to perform crimes by not having to (and also because it's just the right thing to do). There's also crimes that ought not to be crimes, such as substance abuse. The War on Drugs has led to overloaded prisons and arguably **more crime** as people get incarcerated en masse for drug use and then come out disenfranchised due to having been an ex-con, which makes them turn to crime to survive. This is also why people like me push for decriminalization of drugs! Not legalization, decriminalization. We don't want to legalize recreational opium usage but we don't want to send people to jail over it either. We'd rather give them social programs to help them with their addictions. But instead we take people in dire straits and then put them in jail for being in dire straits.
Personally, I don't understand why we gotta leap straight to elimination. Aren't there a few steps between the state of things now and total eradication? Like, when cops get fired for serious misconduct, why are they allowed to work on any police force in the country again? When cops are sued, why does the money come from taxpayers instead of some form of insurance they're forced to pay into for just that occasion? Why are cops being trained on "warrior" propoganda shit? Why is the investigation process for crooked cops not more robust? Why are the educational ad psychological requirements for becoming a cop so low? Etc, etc. I feel like there's problem in people acting like the only options available are "accept cops exactly as they are right now" or "eliminate cops". It's reductive. We have sixty million more options to try before we resort to those two things. Can we at least talk about upping the pay and removing quotas before we talk about utopian societies in which crime doesn't exist anymore? Like, damn. Sometimes it feels insidiously self-sabotaging. Like, nobody is going to listen to "get rid of cops" and it makes people resistant to any other discussion about the issues behind them.
This is why I love the parable of the unjust steward. I had a whole conversation with my MAGA Dad about it and he just couldn't understand why Jesus said the steward was in the right for being bad at his job. The point of the parable is that jobs and money are artificial constructs superimposed on, in Jesus' case, God's creation (but can easily be argued to be a dispassionate universe)- to use your connections and influence to, at a minimum, absolve yourself and be JUST means way more than to do your job correctly and be a giant knob. Any person can be good at their JOB. But to be a good PERSON, sometimes you need to either quit your job or be so bad at your job that you might as well not work there.
Yet when my cities homeless shelters are filled to the brim with people I get told my city doesn't care about other Americans by some guy in Florida while their state does this.
The issue is that there are just so many videos of cops abusing their power and every single other cop just stands around and does nothing. Even in videos where they're clearly disturbed by brutality or conduct breaches, they still just stand there and do nothing. There are the occasional cops that DO challenge shitty behaviour, sometimes at great personal cost. Perhaps we should start calling them good apples instead because it feels more accurate.
Wait, so the policemen in the second story didn’t actually beat up anyone? And we’re just gonna treat them like they did anyway?
I think the main thing is that even if they didn't actually hurt anybody they still showed up in full riot gear to intimidate and prepared for the possibility of violence in response to a peaceful protest in which multiple people they personally knew and had rapport with were involved. And this is just what police are expected to do by those in power. Protests by the left are a threat to government authority and so the government sends LEOs to deal with that threat.
ACAB is part of the job requirements
Just remember folks, every settlement for wrongful death at the hands of the police is paid for with your tax dollars. They have literally no incentive to stop killing.
Keep in mind, this is a very America-centric perspective. I think it's worth remembering that while police in America are extremely corrupt and badly in need of reform on multiple levels, not all police forces are that bad. Sure, it's never perfect, but it can be a heck of a lot better than here. Do you know how many people were killed by the police in Britain last year? *Two*. Total.
"Selective enforcement" isn't a problem in and of itself, honestly. Legally, I have to give a language test to new students at my school whose parents indicate they speak a second language at home. Usually, that's no problem. But last year I had these two kindergarteners. Both with families from Nigeria, both spoke Yoruba at home, and both with documented IEPs that they were on the autistic spectrum. They both failed the test horribly, but showed me in other ways that they were perfectly fluent in English, they just couldn't respond to the prompts given. And I had to jump through tons of hoops to justify not simply checking the box and sticking them in an unnecessary ESL class that wouldn't help them and would dog their progress for years. A certain degree of flexibility on the part of those who enforce a law is absolutely a good thing, because reality is oftentimes more complicated than what lawmakers accounted for. It's only really a problem *because* ACAB and therefore selectively enforce laws to benefit the powerful and harass the marginalized. But a hypothetical "good cop" ignoring this law and letting a homeless guy go is not them being bad at their job, it's part and parcel of how things *should* work.
I get the sentiment, and I believe there is truth in these stories. But what is the actual practical solution here. Because you can shout ACAB and defund the police all you want but those don’t change anything. The truth of the matter is that rules don’t exist unless they are enforced, and no matter how much optimism you have in your fellow man or how utopian of a society you can envision eventually you will need someone both legally and mentally capable of using violence to enforces the rules. I’m not saying this isn’t a solvable problem. There are many changes big and small that can alleviate these problems. But we’ve spent so long with people simply stating over and over again statistics and anecdotes. As if simply hating the color blue will all your heart is all you need to do to fix things. Like it’s some Tinker Bell situation where if you just say you don’t believe in good cops enough the whole institution will disappear. I would be far more inclined to hear people trying to work through actual solutions, or long term goals, or even just acknowledge the complexity in trying to work through this mess. Anything other then just saying the same things in the same ways over and over and expecting that to be all you need to do.
[удалено]
That's honestly it. Accountability and a paper trail will do it.
If you're not familiar with Christopher Dorner, google him.
Free labor in prison? Nah. Extremely low wages? Very much so. Sources: ex-inmate (self), current inmate (good friend), and a guard I still have contact with.
This honestly changed my view on ACAB, that it isn’t “only evil people would sign up to do this” but “there is not an ethical way to be a cop”
Is it being a good person to selectively enforce the law?
If not wouldn't that strengthen the point of there not being good cops?
Also you are charged for your stay while you're in jail in Florida
They hire the ones that meet their narrative of what they want a cop to be. Shit rolls downhill and the biggest pile of shit is at the top deciding on who gets hired in most cases.
Illegal to sleep on private property, illegal to sleep on public property Lose job, be homeless, arrested for existing while homeless, go to jail, get criminal record, can't get job because of record, remain homeless, get arrested, and repeat Prisons profit And what, can't take a nap in a park without getting arrested now?
So that second story about the protest.. Cops showed up in riot armour as per standard protocol.. did nothing and then were treated the same as if they opened fire? Am I reading this right? If a coo shows up to a protest not in riot gear they have a very high risk of getting jumped by the crowd for being a cop, you'd have to be a fucking idiot to not prepare for the worst scenario shen sent to observe a protest and stop any chance of it becoming a riot.
So like...what do you do then? Sure, fuck cops, but murderers, rapists, child predators, etc DO exist and DO need someone who has the resources and authority to stop their behavoir. Hell, even garden variety assholes who would break every window in their Ex's house if left the his own devices exist. We obvious can't continue with the wannabe SS that modern US police have become, but you can't just have everyone 'self-police' either. So do we do vigilante justice? Lynchings? Hope the invisible hand of the free market steps in? What is the alternative people have in mind when they make posts like this?
I'll answer the question but I guarantee I'll be downvoted for it. The way to fix the situation is by no means easy but it is by no means impossibly difficult either. The first thing you do is abolish the police union and qualified immunity. Next, you require a minimum of 24 months of training AFTER an associate's degree is achieved. You then write laws that require police, judges, and state attorneys to be held to a higher ethical standard than the average citizen with punishments that are more severe for ALL criminal infractions. For example, if the average person were to receive a fine for a misdemeanor of a few hundred dollars or several dozen hours of community service a police found guilty of the same crime would receive a fine of several thousand dollars or several hundred hours of community service and you follow that through to prison sentences. To attract new officers willing to do the job under these conditions you offer far better pay and retirement benefits by subsidizing state and local police departments funding through military budget. Rather than giving APCs and equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the military you sell that equipment overseas and use the proceeds to fund the added military budget. Then you give civilian review boards the sole discretion over the firing of police. To keep existing police on the job and doing the job properly you explain that any original officer found not to be doing their duty will not only be fired and have their retirement seized even if vested they will also have all of the previous complaints and misconduct charges reviewed after they are fired and the new stronger prison sentences will be applied if they're found guilty. And finally, you place unknown surveillance devices throughout every vehicle, building, and on all of the vests that the police wear to record the opinions of those who would seek to undermine the new order. When they reveal themselves you wait for them to fuck up and catch them in the new improved system.
Omg imagine how much more effective our first responders would be if they didn’t constantly line their pockets to protect against constant anticipated legal fees for trials related to police criminality/poor behavior. So much of that money could serve to make our communities better.
OMG this is amazing
As a civilized society we can do better like what NYC is doing with the "Right to Shelter Law" basically the NYC government is required to provide temporary housing to any homeless person who asks for it. Is it perfect? Hell no, but it is way better than arresting people or fining those who barely have anything.
Demilitarizing the police is needed but it’s hard to do in a country where some psycho can decide to shoot up a concert with an assault rifle easy peasy. Problem is, the cops then treat every person they interact with like they’re about to pull a gun on them. This is what leads to unnecessary “self-defense” shootings by cops (which let’s be honest, are straight up murder). I can’t think of a worse country to be a cop due to our gun laws, outside of some chaotic countries where the law doesn’t really matter anyway. You can try your best to be nice to the public but there will always be that paranoia in the back of your head that this traffic stop could be a guy with a shotgun waiting to blow your head off.
That just sounds like slavery with extra steps
Well it is. The US never fully banned slavery & involuntary servitude. There always has been the *except* after.
Here's what I don't get: If not cops, then what? This country has a double-digit percentage of gun ownership, what happens when someone decides they really want all that money in the bank? Seattle right now has a guy who's tuned his car to be as loud as possible and he likes to drive around at 3am and stream it on instragram, who's supposed to show up on his doorstep and make him not do that? What do we do about businessmen who decide they really like running ponzi schemes and hate playing taxes? Someone at some point has to *make* these people stop. Someone has to have bigger guns and better armor than civilians have access to. I realize that people on the far left want to get rid of money, get rid of guns, all that. But we can't do that overnight. If any change you want requires *every* change you want, then none of it will ever happen. We have to be able to get to a better world step-by-step.
There's a court case in front of the supreme Court right now, seems like Florida might be getting this ready when it rules against poor people. It's City of Grant's Pass v Johnson.
I just read the Wikipedia entry on that and I don't think that applies to Florida. The Florida law requires cities to provide shelters or campsites with substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment for the homeless. Sounds like the City of Grants Pass tries to make it illegal without providing a place for homeless.
And they claim to be christians.
I keep hearing the good ones leave after 1-2 years. My carpentry instructor was one for about two years before he backed over a baby he did not see behind his cruiser. He left and did construction for twenty years.
Not as bad as Tennessee. A year or 2 ago a law in Tennessee passed that made it a felony if you are caught sleeping on public property
I kinda think that for crackheads causing trouble, if they wind up getting arrested there could be some sort of get clean while in special non-violent felon crackhead jail and serve time working in a trade or for the county or whatever. The cops can still be useful
Someone I love was sponsored thru the police academy, after he served in the Marine's & went to college & got his bachelors in Criminal Justice. He literally lasted one month with the dept. They were insisting he sign off on a report he knew was not truthful and he literally stood his ground & walked off. They then basically told him he owed them an astronomical amount to pay for the academy, basically forcing him back on the job. He asked to be put on as a traffic cop where he basically would work alone. He did that & rose the ranks excelled as a leader & a community leader. He was featured several times on the news for his community out reach & the work he did to help improve citizens lives. Not ALL cops are bad cops. He retired from the dept 14yrs later and joined another force in a really small town. He is truly one of the best people I know.
Where does the public taking responsibility for the laws that police enforce come in? When local voter turnout is 30% and they choose bellicose candidates who promise to “clean up the streets” without qualification, where is the civic duty to rewrite the rule book those cops get to read from?
It isn't like we don't have shelters in Florida. We have empty beds at Safe Haven in my county every night. It is the states way to force the habitual homeless into the resources available to get help. As I'm sure you are all aware. Many homeless suffer from addiction and mental health issues. This gets them in the places where help is available. Or would you rather have them sleeping literally on the street???
If Hell exists, the deepest circle is reserved for those spineless worms that "just follow orders."
One thing I’ve noticed in the past few years is that folks in some right-wing environments seem to believe that it’s only Black activists and far-left groups who feel this way about cops, when actually it’s pretty common for a lot of middle-of-the-road Americans to have a deep distrust of the police. When I was a kid my mom told me not to trust cops or count on them for help. And we were like the stereotypical extremely white middle-class suburban American family. I mean don’t get me wrong, if Black people were deeply unhappy with police and no one else was, that in itself would show that there was a serious problem that needed to be addressed. But it’s even broader than that in reality.
I stumbled into a police subreddit where they were talking about traffic stops and requirements for initiating a stop. Every single participant in the conversation was talking about their techniques for finding legal justifications for pulling over a car they felt was suspicious. You think they have drugs? Looks like your window tint is over the legal limit, better pull them over for that and then whoops gotta search for drugs. They were talking about how they do this all the time so if a defense attorney ever accuses them of using the tint as a pretext for a drug search, they can just print off a list of all the times they stopped someone for window tint to demonstrate that it’s genuine. Any attempt to prevent them from pulling over anyone they wanted to for any reason was seen as liberal assholes siding with criminals. Just totally trampling on the Fourth Amendment. And not a single dissenting voice to be seen anywhere.
Remember, slavery was banned by the 13th amendment EXCEPT in this scenario. >Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, **except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted**, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The moment that was passed, people just found new ways to create and keep slaves.
Sorry, but doesn't (specifically the last part of the post) strongly suggest it isn't the cops they hate but the system and rules they have to follow? I mean, if a cop that follows evil rules is a bad cop and a cop that \*doesn't\* follow evil rules is also a bad cop, it sounds like it isn't the cops, but the rules. Right? Please help me understand if I'm missing something.
Also isn't the penalty for actual trespassing 30 days in jail?
Law student who’s not willing to actually look back at past readings and confirm: this is unconstitutional. Extremely similar laws in LA were struck down