daniel s.you can't reform this
mischief brewer@selfagency there are no good cops. The ones that might be considered "good" either don't get hired (pictured) or quit quickly
FoolishOwl@mbrewer @selfagency Nor is this new. The fact that "good cops" are weeded out has been known for generations.
You can't talk of the police being corrupted because there was never a time police were anything but evil.
Stuart (moved)@foolishowl @mbrewer @selfagency
Oh what a sad and, dare I say, ill informed post.
I am in the jurisdiction of London's Metropolitan police who have an appalling record of corruption and abuse. I've supported campaigns to right wrongs. The current culture issues are not exaggerated.
Yet I have met numerous good police going well beyond their duty. They are there - or you should be doing everything to get them there.
The fight against corruption can only win if we find and empower them.
@stuart @foolishowl @mbrewer The U.S. and the U.K. are vastly different countries. The U.S. has ~1,000 killings by police officers every year. The U.K. has ~3.
@selfagency @stuart @mbrewer A major influence on UK police was the Peterloo Massacre; they were intended to suppress labor actions and mass unrest with more limited violence than the army. But they grew out of strikebreakers and were informed by the practices of colonial occupation forces.
US police grew out of strikebreakers, slave patrols, and genocidal frontier militias.
Arguably US police are worse, but UK police are not good.
@foolishowl @selfagency @mbrewer
I would bet few in the police will even know of the Peterloo massacre. The miner's strike in the 1980s is more relevant.
Even that is less problematic than 'lad's culture' which generates misogyny and racism plus the demographic and the necessity of having to deal/trade with criminal elements is a breeding ground for corruption and worse.
It will always be a fight. But giving up is not a civilised option.
@stuart @selfagency @mbrewer "Civilized" is another problematic term. Cities existed for millennia without police. "Reform" and "corruption" imply that there is some good form of policing that used to exist but has been distorted or lost. That isn't the case, and that's why I brought up the Peterloo Massacre. There has never been a time when the police served a good purpose.
@foolishowl @selfagency @mbrewer
Cities still operate police free most of the time. The last time I interacted with the police was when they rescued my senile aunt from a busy road. With care and consideration. The complaint here is there isn't enough of them to go after petty criminals.
Crime wasn't invented by the police. The Bow Street Runners (1749) were founded to take enforcement out of the hands of unregulated private citizens (vigilantes).
@stuart @selfagency @mbrewer According to the police, there are never enough police.
The NYPD has 35,000 officers and 15,000 staff, and an annual budget of $5.4 billion. They still complain they don't have enough.
The Bow Street Runners did not exist in Çatalhöyük in 7400 BCE, nor in Teotihuacan in 100 BCE, nor in countless other cities over thousands of years across the world.
@foolishowl @selfagency @mbrewer
We know little about social organisation & control in those ancient cities. It's brave to use them as exemplars of how to run cities a magnitude or two greater in the 21st century. Wow, you wouldn't try to police New York like London or vice versa.
Using the police to achieve political objectives and allowing the systemic support of misogyny, racism and corruption, however, is a universal issue.
@stuart @selfagency @mbrewer The point, again, is "corrupt" is misleading, because it implies there's a proper form for police that they have been corrupted from. Police and policing have a relatively recent origin. There's no good model of policing to return to.
The other problems are universal because they are the primary functions of police.
@foolishowl @selfagency @mbrewer
I agree that some of the stuff they do you may regard as 'corrupt'. However, I was using the term where they acted against the law for monetary gain or to harm others.
I also agree there is no golden past to return to. Even if there was it wouldn't cope with now or the future. A good model will always be a work in progress.
@selfagency @foolishowl @mbrewer
Re the imbalance in killing citizens is a function of the respective number on guns. A US cop must fear that they are always under threat of being shot. Hence, unsurprisingly they are more trigger happy. I would, you probably would.
So before you can expect better from the police you need to work on reducing the threat to them. Until the NRA becomes a proscribed terrorist organisation I guess there is no hope.
@stuart @selfagency @mbrewer This is police propaganda. US police don't face particularly great threats of violence, and their rates of injury and death on the job are considerably lower than for workers in construction or outdoor labor.
RDS (shawphd on Twitter)@stuart @foolishowl @mbrewer @selfagency That has little bearing on what happens in US police departments.
@shawrd773 @foolishowl @mbrewer @selfagency
This thread is about all cops and police being bad per se. There was no specificity about a particular police department, state or country. Problems and solutions vary and we all have much to learn from each other.
Just abolishing policing is certainly a brave policy. The alternate is to find ways of curbing its excesses. Do we have a real choice?
@stuart @shawrd773 @foolishowl @mbrewer yeah the real choice is not to spend billions of dollars annually to arm people who have a penchant for killing minorities with military grade weapons and instead slash their budgets and reinvest that money in things like mental health resources, peer mediation counselors, after school programs, and other things proven to reduce violence.
@stuart @shawrd773 @foolishowl @mbrewer if you want to reduce crime like theft, reduce poverty. if you want to reduce crime like murder, reduce the availability of guns. if you want to reduce gendered violence, reduce socially acceptable toxic masculinity. we have solutions for every problem. but the real problem is: we only ever throw cops at our problems instead of actual solutions — especially when solutions involve disrupting capitalists raking in money hand over fist.
Anarchist Quotes (@[email protected])
A man won't steal, ordinarily, unless that which he steals is something he cannot as easily get without stealing; in liberty the cost of stealing would involve greater difficulties than producing, and consequently he would not be apt to steal. -- Voltairine de Cleyre #anarchism #quote #bot
@selfagency @shawrd773 @foolishowl @mbrewer
Absolutely agree.
The only question is how you achieve it. Abolishing the police and presumably relying on anarchy might work. I'd prefer a less risky route even if it took longer and was less complete.