9 ms·

When the community elects to police itself, if someone volunteers to watch a neighbourhood for a night are they considered law enforcement? If not, why? I recog

When the community elects to police itself, if someone volunteers to watch a neighbourhood for a night are they considered law enforcement? If not, why? I recognize there's a difference but this license makes no effort to distinguish between those two things. And if your starting point for why a term of a license is "we don't need laws", what exactly is the point of having a license anyway?

colesantiago 6y ago
> When the community elects to police itself, if someone volunteers to watch a neighbourhood for a night are they considered law enforcement? It is 'community enforcement', they volunteered didn't they, it's not by force, by state, or are being paid to do it.
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  Sure, that's fine - my point is that a blanket "you can't be law enforcement" doesn't make this distinction. If you want to include something like that in your license, you need to be a lot more clear about what "law enforcement" entails. Right now it makes no mention of whether it's speaking about professional law enforcement, state-operated law enforcement, or anything like that.
guerrilla 6y ago
> When the community elects to police itself, if someone volunteers to watch a neighbourhood for a night are they considered law enforcement? If not, why? The difference would be that they would be chosen from the community by the community, not external to it and chosen by external actors. > "we don't need laws" This confounds laws with law enforcement. The concepts you're missing are consent and cooperation.
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  > This confounds laws with law enforcement. The concepts you're missing are consent and cooperation. I'm not the one making the claim that laws are a social construct and we don't need them.
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    > I'm not the one making the claim that laws are a social construct Now you're confounding two further ideas. Laws are obviously a social construct, nobody serious is going to disagree with that. We create them, unlike the laws of nature.
    - slowmovintarget 6y ago
      You created a straw-man by omitting "and we don't need them" from your quote. Laws are a social construct. We do need them. Civilization has proven this time and again over thousands of years.
- nailer 6y ago
  > The difference would be that they would be chosen from the community by the community, not external to it and chosen by external actors. So law enforcement chosen by the community is not law enforcement?
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    It is not what people call law enforcement today, correct.
krapp 6y ago
As I understand it, the difference is that law enforcement exists to maintain a state's authority and control of its monopoly on violence, whereas community policing claims no such authority or interest.
- ryanbrunner 6y ago
  There's nothing inherent to the words "law enforcement" that necessitates that they are state run or makes any claim about the state's position on violence. I get that's what the authors are getting at, but it's not clear.
  - krapp 6y ago
    Yeah... there's a reason people hire actual lawyers to write these things. The authors probably thought the meaning would be obvious to everyone because it was obvious to them, but that's not how binding legal contracts work.

colesantiago 6y ago

> When the community elects to police itself, if someone volunteers to watch a neighbourhood for a night are they considered law enforcement? It is 'community enforcement', they volunteered didn't they, it's not by force, by state, or are being paid to do it.

ryanbrunner 6y ago
Sure, that's fine - my point is that a blanket "you can't be law enforcement" doesn't make this distinction. If you want to include something like that in your license, you need to be a lot more clear about what "law enforcement" entails. Right now it makes no mention of whether it's speaking about professional law enforcement, state-operated law enforcement, or anything like that.

guerrilla 6y ago

> When the community elects to police itself, if someone volunteers to watch a neighbourhood for a night are they considered law enforcement? If not, why? The difference would be that they would be chosen from the community by the community, not external to it and chosen by external actors. > "we don't need laws" This confounds laws with law enforcement. The concepts you're missing are consent and cooperation.

ryanbrunner 6y ago
> This confounds laws with law enforcement. The concepts you're missing are consent and cooperation. I'm not the one making the claim that laws are a social construct and we don't need them.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  > I'm not the one making the claim that laws are a social construct Now you're confounding two further ideas. Laws are obviously a social construct, nobody serious is going to disagree with that. We create them, unlike the laws of nature.
  - slowmovintarget 6y ago
    You created a straw-man by omitting "and we don't need them" from your quote. Laws are a social construct. We do need them. Civilization has proven this time and again over thousands of years.
nailer 6y ago
> The difference would be that they would be chosen from the community by the community, not external to it and chosen by external actors. So law enforcement chosen by the community is not law enforcement?
- guerrilla 6y ago
  It is not what people call law enforcement today, correct.

krapp 6y ago

As I understand it, the difference is that law enforcement exists to maintain a state's authority and control of its monopoly on violence, whereas community policing claims no such authority or interest.

ryanbrunner 6y ago
There's nothing inherent to the words "law enforcement" that necessitates that they are state run or makes any claim about the state's position on violence. I get that's what the authors are getting at, but it's not clear.
- krapp 6y ago
  Yeah... there's a reason people hire actual lawyers to write these things. The authors probably thought the meaning would be obvious to everyone because it was obvious to them, but that's not how binding legal contracts work.