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I'm not going to say ACAB, but many who do believe that no matter how nice of an individual a cop might be, they are still working within an organization that p

I'm not going to say ACAB, but many who do believe that no matter how nice of an individual a cop might be, they are still working within an organization that pushes for privacy shredding technologies like this. You can be a sweet, community oriented beat cop out there doing your best, but behind you stands surveillance, militarization of police, and the tragedy of prisons in America. Maybe this isn't a generalization that's fair -- should/do we fault all FAANG employees because their parent companies are doing unethical things? I don't know the answer, but articles like this definitely make me think a whole lot more about whether individual police can be ethical while operating in the way the departments do today.

ssklash 6y ago
I don't think you can separate the individual from the organization when the organization either fundamentally or in practice is engaged in negative/harmful activities. Policing is broken in the US, and though its original intention is good, the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no longer has the original intent as its goal. The same applies to companies like Facebook and Google. They fundamentally exist to extract data from their users. They never had another legitimate mission that was corrupted over time, unlike the police. Apple, Netflix, Amazon at least have services that do not revolve around taking advantage of their users and manipulating their behavior. Organizations are made up of individuals at the end of the day. If you are a cop or work at companies like Palantir, Google, Facebook, you are helping prop up organizations that actively do harm to many people. You may not be as responsible as cops that murder or decision makers at the top, but their guilt would not be possible without you. Please think long and hard about where you work and why you work there.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Are you honestly saying that FB and Google don't provide anything that users value?
  - kchr 6y ago
    Sure they do. But at a huge cost for our society.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  I agree with much of what you have said but you appear to be lumping all policing organizations together on the basis of some recent high-profile events. Many cops work in local departments serving communities across the US and we simply do not have data on how prolific (or not) these abuses are, nor do we have data on the natural background rate of human-on-human abuses with which to compare the current level of abuses with a hypothetical alternative (such as mafia rule). This is akin to saying that all programmers are evil because of the actions of google et al.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Is there an appreciably significant number of police departments that are structurally not prone to these kinds of a abuses? And if there are, how many of them don't enable others who do? Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      The issue is not the social function though, it’s flaws in some police departments. Even on the left, there are very few who actually don’t want police around serving the function of stopping crimes when they occur.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        It's not a flaw in some police department, it is a flaw in the social order that manifests itself in abuses by numerous police departments, but the seeds of that are present in essentially all of them. Expressing the violence of the state is much broader than stopping crimes when they occur.
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      the coercive function in society is prone to abuse but that does not imply that all personnel engaged in the coercive function are complicit in what amounts to a criminal conspiracy. > Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument. The social function that cops represent is the enforcement of laws and many of these laws are of a net benefit to society. it is an error to reduce the law enforcement function to brutality and expropriation when there are plenty of violent, malevolent, and larcenous individuals who are not police and still engage in socially undesirable behaviors.
- kortilla 6y ago
  By this poisoned well logic, you are responsible for any increase in crime that occurs from a reduction in policing. Adults that work for an organization which is critical to every civilization to date (law enforcement) work to fix it from the inside. Only immature people take the unethical stance that there should be no law enforcement because there are flaws in the current structure. Even in Minneapolis, the only thing the council can agree on is that “defunding the police” doesn’t actually mean taking away the police funding. Only a small anarchist percentage of the population wants nobody to actually be in the police. > the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no longer has the original intent as its goal. Care to say what the goal of the Boulder, CO police department is? How about the one for Waco? If the goal is not law enforcement, how does that square with the fact that people keep electing the heads of these orgs (Sheriff, Mayor, etc)?
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    Does defunding police increase crime? Police department budgets have absolutely ballooned in many places, but crime hasn't really dropped a commensurate amount. (In Seattle, police budget has increased over 33% in the past decade, while crime rates haven't moved.) Reductions in policing are paired with increases in spending on community and social programs that address the root causes of crime rather than just punishing those who turn to it from necessity. With the two combined, it's plausible that reducing police funding could actually reduce crime rates if the money was well invested elsewhere.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Depends on what defunding means. If it’s the textbook definition of stopping funds entirely [1], then it’s definitely going to increase crime. Only a fraction of criminals turn to it from necessity. - The Kansas City mob is not operating out of necessity. - The Mexican cartel is not operating out of necessity. - Child traffickers are not operating out of necessity. When someone hears their drunk neighbor beating his spouse, who should be called if there are no police? 1. https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund
kortilla 6y ago
> but behind you stands surveillance, militarization of police, and the tragedy of prisons in America. Prisons are not related to police anymore than the citizens who vote the legislators in who pass the laws and the judges who sentence to prison for violating said laws. As a cop (beat or all of the way up to chief of police) you have no say over private vs public prisons, prison policies, or even prison sentencing because they are not the same organization. Moreover, surveillance and the militarization of police are both policies of local police departments. You can make a completely ethical decision to join the sheriff’s department in a local town that has none of these capabilities nor wants them. The law enforcement of a locality is strictly a result of that city’s politics. There is no national police force nor standard in the US that makes sense to hold all enforcement officers accountable for.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Prisons are absolutely related to police. The only way I'm aware of to get into prison is via an arrest by police. So, every arrest a police officer makes, they need to consider, "knowing what I do about prison, is it ethical to arrest this person?" Police militarization is supported at the federal level through grants of military equipment, and nationwide through the use of trainings that teach officers they are "warriors" or "sheep dogs". And yes, police are fragmented from a logistical standpoint, but culturally they are very similar. Police unions make holding bad cops accountable nearly everywhere, prosecutors refuse to prosecute bad police because their jobs require a good relationship with police, the idea of the "thin blue line" permeates every police dept, etc. They might all have different funding and standards, but there are systemic nationwide problems.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    > Prisons are absolutely related to police. The only way I'm aware of to get into prison is via an arrest by police. Nope, you can go to prison without being arrested first if you showed up to court voluntarily. > So, every arrest a police officer makes, they need to consider, "knowing what I do about prison, is it ethical to arrest this person?" Nope, most arrests don’t result in prison time and unless the crime is particularly bad, the cop can’t even know if prison time is a realistic outcome. It sounds like your beef is with state prosecutors (e.g. Kamala Harris) and you just don’t understand the system well enough to know the actors involved. > Police militarization is supported at the federal level through grants of military equipment, and nationwide through the use of trainings that teach officers they are "warriors" or "sheep dogs". This is not “nationwide” in the sense that it’s up to each department if they want to participate. A city can absolutely refuse to participate in this programs and most rural places don’t (perhaps because they are ineligible, but either way not nationwide). > They might all have different funding and standards, but there are systemic nationwide problems. You have yet to identify these problems though. What issues do you think the officers in Cody, WY have?

ssklash 6y ago

I don't think you can separate the individual from the organization when the organization either fundamentally or in practice is engaged in negative/harmful activities. Policing is broken in the US, and though its original intention is good, the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no longer has the original intent as its goal. The same applies to companies like Facebook and Google. They fundamentally exist to extract data from their users. They never had another legitimate mission that was corrupted over time, unlike the police. Apple, Netflix, Amazon at least have services that do not revolve around taking advantage of their users and manipulating their behavior. Organizations are made up of individuals at the end of the day. If you are a cop or work at companies like Palantir, Google, Facebook, you are helping prop up organizations that actively do harm to many people. You may not be as responsible as cops that murder or decision makers at the top, but their guilt would not be possible without you. Please think long and hard about where you work and why you work there.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Are you honestly saying that FB and Google don't provide anything that users value?
- kchr 6y ago
  Sure they do. But at a huge cost for our society.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
I agree with much of what you have said but you appear to be lumping all policing organizations together on the basis of some recent high-profile events. Many cops work in local departments serving communities across the US and we simply do not have data on how prolific (or not) these abuses are, nor do we have data on the natural background rate of human-on-human abuses with which to compare the current level of abuses with a hypothetical alternative (such as mafia rule). This is akin to saying that all programmers are evil because of the actions of google et al.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Is there an appreciably significant number of police departments that are structurally not prone to these kinds of a abuses? And if there are, how many of them don't enable others who do? Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    The issue is not the social function though, it’s flaws in some police departments. Even on the left, there are very few who actually don’t want police around serving the function of stopping crimes when they occur.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      It's not a flaw in some police department, it is a flaw in the social order that manifests itself in abuses by numerous police departments, but the seeds of that are present in essentially all of them. Expressing the violence of the state is much broader than stopping crimes when they occur.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    the coercive function in society is prone to abuse but that does not imply that all personnel engaged in the coercive function are complicit in what amounts to a criminal conspiracy. > Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument. The social function that cops represent is the enforcement of laws and many of these laws are of a net benefit to society. it is an error to reduce the law enforcement function to brutality and expropriation when there are plenty of violent, malevolent, and larcenous individuals who are not police and still engage in socially undesirable behaviors.
kortilla 6y ago
By this poisoned well logic, you are responsible for any increase in crime that occurs from a reduction in policing. Adults that work for an organization which is critical to every civilization to date (law enforcement) work to fix it from the inside. Only immature people take the unethical stance that there should be no law enforcement because there are flaws in the current structure. Even in Minneapolis, the only thing the council can agree on is that “defunding the police” doesn’t actually mean taking away the police funding. Only a small anarchist percentage of the population wants nobody to actually be in the police. > the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no longer has the original intent as its goal. Care to say what the goal of the Boulder, CO police department is? How about the one for Waco? If the goal is not law enforcement, how does that square with the fact that people keep electing the heads of these orgs (Sheriff, Mayor, etc)?
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Does defunding police increase crime? Police department budgets have absolutely ballooned in many places, but crime hasn't really dropped a commensurate amount. (In Seattle, police budget has increased over 33% in the past decade, while crime rates haven't moved.) Reductions in policing are paired with increases in spending on community and social programs that address the root causes of crime rather than just punishing those who turn to it from necessity. With the two combined, it's plausible that reducing police funding could actually reduce crime rates if the money was well invested elsewhere.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Depends on what defunding means. If it’s the textbook definition of stopping funds entirely [1], then it’s definitely going to increase crime. Only a fraction of criminals turn to it from necessity. - The Kansas City mob is not operating out of necessity. - The Mexican cartel is not operating out of necessity. - Child traffickers are not operating out of necessity. When someone hears their drunk neighbor beating his spouse, who should be called if there are no police? 1. https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund

kortilla 6y ago

> but behind you stands surveillance, militarization of police, and the tragedy of prisons in America. Prisons are not related to police anymore than the citizens who vote the legislators in who pass the laws and the judges who sentence to prison for violating said laws. As a cop (beat or all of the way up to chief of police) you have no say over private vs public prisons, prison policies, or even prison sentencing because they are not the same organization. Moreover, surveillance and the militarization of police are both policies of local police departments. You can make a completely ethical decision to join the sheriff’s department in a local town that has none of these capabilities nor wants them. The law enforcement of a locality is strictly a result of that city’s politics. There is no national police force nor standard in the US that makes sense to hold all enforcement officers accountable for.

Pfhreak 6y ago
Prisons are absolutely related to police. The only way I'm aware of to get into prison is via an arrest by police. So, every arrest a police officer makes, they need to consider, "knowing what I do about prison, is it ethical to arrest this person?" Police militarization is supported at the federal level through grants of military equipment, and nationwide through the use of trainings that teach officers they are "warriors" or "sheep dogs". And yes, police are fragmented from a logistical standpoint, but culturally they are very similar. Police unions make holding bad cops accountable nearly everywhere, prosecutors refuse to prosecute bad police because their jobs require a good relationship with police, the idea of the "thin blue line" permeates every police dept, etc. They might all have different funding and standards, but there are systemic nationwide problems.
- kortilla 6y ago
  > Prisons are absolutely related to police. The only way I'm aware of to get into prison is via an arrest by police. Nope, you can go to prison without being arrested first if you showed up to court voluntarily. > So, every arrest a police officer makes, they need to consider, "knowing what I do about prison, is it ethical to arrest this person?" Nope, most arrests don’t result in prison time and unless the crime is particularly bad, the cop can’t even know if prison time is a realistic outcome. It sounds like your beef is with state prosecutors (e.g. Kamala Harris) and you just don’t understand the system well enough to know the actors involved. > Police militarization is supported at the federal level through grants of military equipment, and nationwide through the use of trainings that teach officers they are "warriors" or "sheep dogs". This is not “nationwide” in the sense that it’s up to each department if they want to participate. A city can absolutely refuse to participate in this programs and most rural places don’t (perhaps because they are ineligible, but either way not nationwide). > They might all have different funding and standards, but there are systemic nationwide problems. You have yet to identify these problems though. What issues do you think the officers in Cody, WY have?