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No, that's not the goal of police abolitionists: [1] 1. https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-abolition-george-floyd/ https://www.motherjone
by guerrilla 6y ago
No, that's not the goal of police abolitionists: [1]
1. https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-abolition-george-floyd/ https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-abo...
Some more references:
1. https://www.8toabolition.com/ https://www.8toabolition.com/
2. https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1268547515038806018 https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1268547515038806018
3. https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1268510966116954114 https://twitter.com/TravelingNun/status/1268510966116954114
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoBefore you edited your post to fix your typo I thought that was a clever pun.
- guerrilla 6y agoJust some tablet typing on the go :)
- frosted-flakes 6y agoI can understand the sentiment of the people behind those writings, but it doesn't really answer my question. What will replace the Minneapolis police department if it's disbanded? Many (most?) of its current responsibilities and funding can be given to social workers, traffic wardens, and other people not armed with guns, but that doesn't obviate the need for officers of the government to enforce the law. Laws can change and become less strict, but we will always need some form of police.
- fzeroracer 6y agoThe answer is in the article itself. The goal of disbanding the police is so that you can rebuild it from the ground up. It does not mean 'no police ever', it means clearing out the weeds by the roots so that they don't choke the new trees you're trying to plant.
- frosted-flakes 6y agoguerilla's comment about police abolitionists says that the police would be abolished, that is, not exist anymore. That's not realistic, and I assumed "disbanding" meant what you said. But how would that work in practice? What happens in the interim? Does another PD take over temporarily? Are any members of the old police force allowed to re-join the new one? What happens to cases currently under investigation? I saw a comment that said that Camden, NJ disbanded its PD and the county PD expanded into the city, so I guess that's one option. In Canada, if a city's police service is disbanded, I think the provincial police service (if there is one) or federal police will automatically take over. In Ontario, that would be the Ontario Provincial Police, but most of the country is policed by the federal RCMP (Canada has a single criminal code).
- newen 6y agoThey didn't really have the county PD expand into the city. They created a brand new PD, rehired a lot of the old people, named it the county PD (I guess for optics), had new management etc, had drastically different training, priorities, slogans, etc that focuses on the community and not on murdering people when they twitch.
- guerrilla 6y agoAbolishing the police means abolishing it. Nothing will replace it. Crime will be prevented by eliminating its causes and there will be some mechanisms to deal with last resort cases. The articles explain this.
- crimsoneer 6y agoI sure hope the mechanism for last resort cases isn't men and women in uniform with guns, because then social workers will be very unwilling to approach any potentially violent situation without the not-police-uniform-gun-men there. Sorry to be cynical, just the experience of a police officer in a place where social services are funded far, far better than the US - police don't want to deal with mental health all the time, but being the agency of last resort makes it very easy to abdicate responsibility to.
- guerrilla 6y agoIndeed, I think it helps to understand what police authority and responsibility is exactly and then one can more easily see what variations are possible. See my response to the comment sibling to yours.
- frosted-flakes 6y ago> will be some mechanisms to deal with last resort cases. Like police? I read the article and Twitter threads. They don't explain it.
- guerrilla 6y agoNo, first, like re-callable community self-defense who would answer to competent managers of specific situations rather than being incompetent managers of situations themselves, be internal rather external to the community and be re-callable at any time rather than essentially having immunity. It's a mistake to assume that police abolition means pacifism. It's also a mistake to assume the use of violence means policing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]