6 ms·

I wonder what the end game is. The police is not going to disband. People asking for that don't understand how States work. You cannot have a State without a mo

I wonder what the end game is. The police is not going to disband. People asking for that don't understand how States work. You cannot have a State without a monopoly on violence. America disbanded police once, in 2003, in a city called Baghdad. That turned out wonderfully. I suspect they'll all just get bored at some point.

virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago
It's less about end game than it is simply about practicing a set of ideas, and really just about living life the way they want to live it. Isn't that the essence of America? And will it last forever? No, probably not. That doesn't mean it was a failure or that it wasn't worth doing.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> I wonder what the end game is I don't know, it's like a massive catch-22. People are sick of police abuses, but society needs police to some extent. I agree with much of what the protests are about, but struggle with their solutions.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  But if you look at the numbers, police abuse has gone down. There were 1007 shootings by US police last year. Yes, that's still terribly high, even per-capita, for a high income/developed nation, but police departments have been embracing body cameras. If you watch YouTube channels like Donut Operator where people do police breakdowns, a lot of people .. really do deserve to get shot. Body cameras also make it way easier to get rid of police who are psychos who shouldn't be on the force, and can help push back against police unions. Body cams are great solutions, and we're already seeing departments firing people who turned them off in bad faith (mostly due to these protests). Maybe more money should be diverted to training and wages, and less to equipment and vehicles? I think there were already a lot of positive changes, and this whole set of protests may give us more. By disbanding or defunding the police is an absolutely crazy idea, that I think the vast majority of Americans do not support. I get it. I hated cops in my 20s. I hated speeding tickets and saw friends get busted for pot and minorities get pulled over a lot. But a lot of that changed via policy. Pot is less of an issue in many places, and legal in several states. As far as people calling the cops on people (one of my good friends, black, had a neighbour call the cops on him, while he was jogging in his own neighbourhood, where he was a home owner)... yes that's racism, but not from the police; from a person in his community. That said, I have seen neighbours pulled over and searched in Cincinnati and it seemed like it was totally because they were black in a cheap car. shrug I no longer hate cops. I've seen some do really amazing things for people they didn't need to. Yes there are probably 8%~10% that are psychos and I think most officers wish they could get rid of those people from their ranks too, but hating police just for hating police is childish. All these people calling for disbanding feel like they're just children.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    > Maybe more money should be diverted to training and wages, and less to equipment and vehicles? The police in my town make more than I do. NYPD officers make way more than I do and get sweet benefits I will never enjoy. In return they act petulant and ignore their duties whenever someone forces them to apply less than brutal tactics to non-threatening people. They need comprehensive retraining and removal of the problem cases.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      I grew up in a small city in Tennessee. I remember reading about a cop whose income topped out at $38k when he retired. I was making $45k in my 2nd job, in my 20s, only a few years out of college. Sure my job probably required more knowledge, but I'd argue his was more dangerous. I dunno .. there are a lot of trade-offs and it varies greatly per municipalities. Not all police departments in all cities and counties can be lumped together under the same metrics.
      - mixmastamyk 6y ago
        Depends on the city of course, but a lot of officer compensation is in the form of overtime, pension, early retirement, and other benefits.
    - boomfus 6y ago
      85k for almost 6 years of experience in New York is pretty severely underpaid. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-benefits.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-be...
      - mrep 6y ago
        How so? The median individual income in New York City is $50,825 [0]. [0]: https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-nyc#:~:text=According%20to%20U.S.%20Census%20Bureau's,New%20York%20City%20is%20%2457%2C782 https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-nyc#:~:t....
ascagnel_ 6y ago
The endgame is a radical re-think of society, and how society is funded. You've probably seen "defund the police" as a slogan bandied about lately -- police departments have been taking an ever-increasing chunk of city budgets, while education and other social services have either remained at the same funding level or have been cut. Spend less money on the state's monopoly on violence, spend more on reducing the need for violence.
- Khaine 6y ago
  Not according to marginal revolution[1] who presented a graph showing it remaining flat relative to other spending [1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/have-we-already-defunded-the-police.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/ha...
mcv 6y ago
They apparently also did it in Camden, NJ, and that turned out quite well. I think the real issue here is: the police want to show that without them, things turn to chaos. Instead, they show that with them, things turn to chaos. Meanwhile, the protesters want to show that without the police, things are peaceful, and they seem to be succeeding. That's not a great story for people who believe in police brutality, of course. And yes, if the entire police department believes that they need to use force to dominate the American people, they refuse to stop when ordered to by the civilian government, and resist change, then disbanding the police and starting over with a better organised police force might not be such a bad idea at all. It's not easy, and it's important to quickly have some alternative to fall back on, but when it's the police itself that's part of the problem, something needs to be done about that.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  > Camden, NJ People keep brining up Camden, but in that instance, didn't the State Troopers still maintain control of the area during the transition? From a political perspective, "disbanding" will most likely mean just making existing cops re-apply for their current roles (like how TVA did mass layoffs and rehires in the 90s). I'm still convinced actual disbanding, without a security force in the interim, will be straight up disastrous.
  - mcv 6y ago
    Some other, less toxic police force during the transition seems totally fine to me. Didn't State Troopers also take over at some point in Ferguson? I don't know what state troopers in Minnesota or Washington are like, but having them step in during the transition while those cities rebuild healthier police forces, sounds like a reasonable idea. Though I'm not convinced it will actually be disastrous to do without police, or with dramatically reduced police, for a short period.
- devalgo 6y ago
  >They apparently also did it in Camden, NJ, and that turned out quite well. This is an appalling misunderstanding of what really happened in Camden. Take a trip there, know what you'll find? Police cars, policemen and police stations. THEY STILL HAVE POLICE! What they REALLY did was a police reboot, essentially fired everyone and rebuilt from the ground up. People who point to Camden to try and support their narrative are dangerously misinformed.

virgil_disgr4ce 6y ago

It's less about end game than it is simply about practicing a set of ideas, and really just about living life the way they want to live it. Isn't that the essence of America? And will it last forever? No, probably not. That doesn't mean it was a failure or that it wasn't worth doing.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> I wonder what the end game is I don't know, it's like a massive catch-22. People are sick of police abuses, but society needs police to some extent. I agree with much of what the protests are about, but struggle with their solutions.

djsumdog 6y ago
But if you look at the numbers, police abuse has gone down. There were 1007 shootings by US police last year. Yes, that's still terribly high, even per-capita, for a high income/developed nation, but police departments have been embracing body cameras. If you watch YouTube channels like Donut Operator where people do police breakdowns, a lot of people .. really do deserve to get shot. Body cameras also make it way easier to get rid of police who are psychos who shouldn't be on the force, and can help push back against police unions. Body cams are great solutions, and we're already seeing departments firing people who turned them off in bad faith (mostly due to these protests). Maybe more money should be diverted to training and wages, and less to equipment and vehicles? I think there were already a lot of positive changes, and this whole set of protests may give us more. By disbanding or defunding the police is an absolutely crazy idea, that I think the vast majority of Americans do not support. I get it. I hated cops in my 20s. I hated speeding tickets and saw friends get busted for pot and minorities get pulled over a lot. But a lot of that changed via policy. Pot is less of an issue in many places, and legal in several states. As far as people calling the cops on people (one of my good friends, black, had a neighbour call the cops on him, while he was jogging in his own neighbourhood, where he was a home owner)... yes that's racism, but not from the police; from a person in his community. That said, I have seen neighbours pulled over and searched in Cincinnati and it seemed like it was totally because they were black in a cheap car. shrug I no longer hate cops. I've seen some do really amazing things for people they didn't need to. Yes there are probably 8%~10% that are psychos and I think most officers wish they could get rid of those people from their ranks too, but hating police just for hating police is childish. All these people calling for disbanding feel like they're just children.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  > Maybe more money should be diverted to training and wages, and less to equipment and vehicles? The police in my town make more than I do. NYPD officers make way more than I do and get sweet benefits I will never enjoy. In return they act petulant and ignore their duties whenever someone forces them to apply less than brutal tactics to non-threatening people. They need comprehensive retraining and removal of the problem cases.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    I grew up in a small city in Tennessee. I remember reading about a cop whose income topped out at $38k when he retired. I was making $45k in my 2nd job, in my 20s, only a few years out of college. Sure my job probably required more knowledge, but I'd argue his was more dangerous. I dunno .. there are a lot of trade-offs and it varies greatly per municipalities. Not all police departments in all cities and counties can be lumped together under the same metrics.
    - mixmastamyk 6y ago
      Depends on the city of course, but a lot of officer compensation is in the form of overtime, pension, early retirement, and other benefits.
  - boomfus 6y ago
    85k for almost 6 years of experience in New York is pretty severely underpaid. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-benefits.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/careers/police-officers/po-be...
    - mrep 6y ago
      How so? The median individual income in New York City is $50,825 [0]. [0]: https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-nyc#:~:text=According%20to%20U.S.%20Census%20Bureau's,New%20York%20City%20is%20%2457%2C782 https://smartasset.com/retirement/average-salary-in-nyc#:~:t....

ascagnel_ 6y ago

The endgame is a radical re-think of society, and how society is funded. You've probably seen "defund the police" as a slogan bandied about lately -- police departments have been taking an ever-increasing chunk of city budgets, while education and other social services have either remained at the same funding level or have been cut. Spend less money on the state's monopoly on violence, spend more on reducing the need for violence.

Khaine 6y ago
Not according to marginal revolution[1] who presented a graph showing it remaining flat relative to other spending [1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/have-we-already-defunded-the-police.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/ha...

mcv 6y ago

They apparently also did it in Camden, NJ, and that turned out quite well. I think the real issue here is: the police want to show that without them, things turn to chaos. Instead, they show that with them, things turn to chaos. Meanwhile, the protesters want to show that without the police, things are peaceful, and they seem to be succeeding. That's not a great story for people who believe in police brutality, of course. And yes, if the entire police department believes that they need to use force to dominate the American people, they refuse to stop when ordered to by the civilian government, and resist change, then disbanding the police and starting over with a better organised police force might not be such a bad idea at all. It's not easy, and it's important to quickly have some alternative to fall back on, but when it's the police itself that's part of the problem, something needs to be done about that.

djsumdog 6y ago
> Camden, NJ People keep brining up Camden, but in that instance, didn't the State Troopers still maintain control of the area during the transition? From a political perspective, "disbanding" will most likely mean just making existing cops re-apply for their current roles (like how TVA did mass layoffs and rehires in the 90s). I'm still convinced actual disbanding, without a security force in the interim, will be straight up disastrous.
- mcv 6y ago
  Some other, less toxic police force during the transition seems totally fine to me. Didn't State Troopers also take over at some point in Ferguson? I don't know what state troopers in Minnesota or Washington are like, but having them step in during the transition while those cities rebuild healthier police forces, sounds like a reasonable idea. Though I'm not convinced it will actually be disastrous to do without police, or with dramatically reduced police, for a short period.
devalgo 6y ago
>They apparently also did it in Camden, NJ, and that turned out quite well. This is an appalling misunderstanding of what really happened in Camden. Take a trip there, know what you'll find? Police cars, policemen and police stations. THEY STILL HAVE POLICE! What they REALLY did was a police reboot, essentially fired everyone and rebuilt from the ground up. People who point to Camden to try and support their narrative are dangerously misinformed.