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What would be the difference between those two things? As in, what would a police who’s job it was to “protect society” do that current police do not? Or vice-v

What would be the difference between those two things? As in, what would a police who’s job it was to “protect society” do that current police do not? Or vice-versa, would such a police still protect from theft or violence?

Arrath 5y ago
They would still protect from theft and violence, of course. Lets keep in mind that as it stands now, the police don't do that great in the realm of theft anyway.[0] But there are many shortfalls in the system as a whole, and not just the beat cops doing the policing. We need police back in neighborhoods, doing beat patrols, living the in cities and suburbs they police, not commuting in from an hour away. Being rich shouldn't be an easy out because you can hire a high power lawyer, or treat most offences as a minor fine. Why does robbing the bank from the inside get a relative slap on the wrist, while robbing it through the front door gets you shot? Lets hit a few high points: End the 'boys club', actually go after sex crimes with a sense of urgency and not let rape kits pile up in evidence rooms, untested?[1] Not run straight up black sites?[2] Properly allow freedom of speech and expression, and not come down harder on protests the police themselves don't agree with?[3] Do a little introspection and address the rampant domestic abuse perpetrated by police?[4] [0]https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/clearances https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nationwide-epidemic-of-untested-rape-kits-atlantic-daily/594046/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nati... [2]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli... [3]https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/us/protest-disparity-study-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/us/protest-disparity-study-tr... [4]https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...
- nemo44x 5y ago
  > Why does robbing the bank from the inside get a relative slap on the wrist, while robbing it through the front door gets you shot? Because when you rob it from the outside you're probably using violence to threaten people with their lives. You don't think that's many, many times worse than someone cooking the books or stealing from the register?
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    There are plenty of cases where the social standing of the defendant is determinant of the level of violence brought. Consider shop lifting vs. wage theft. Both are non violent, the latter is estimated to be many times more prevalent than the former. Only one will get you violently arrested though, and one is far more likely to be prosecuted than the other.
  - themaninthedark 5y ago
    Also if you use violence once, then you are more willing to use it in the future. This is bad for society as a whole.
sneak 5y ago
I wrote about this specifically: https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-america/ https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-ame...
ashtonkem 5y ago
> What would be the difference between those two things? The difference between those things is who the police actually do anything for. Who gets (violently) arrested and who gets away with it is strongly connected with your position in social order. Simply put, steal $20 from the register or a loaf of bread from the store and the state will pony up tens of thousands of dollars to try and arrest you, detain you, prosecute you, and punish you. But if you decide to steal overtime from your employees, what do you think the chances are of you finding yourself in cuffs? It's estimated that wage theft involves three fold as much theft as other kinds of robbery combined; why is violence necessary to stop 1/4 of theft, but not the remaining 3/4? Take a look at protestors too, and see how the police change treatment based on the content of the protest. It's been shown that cops are 3x more likely to react violently to left wing protests than right wing protests in general, and 3.5x more likely to attack peaceful left wing protests than peaceful right wing protests. That is not protecting society, that is protecting the social order. > As in, what would a police who’s job it was to “protect society” do that current police do not? Processing all the rape kits they have sitting around would be a fantastic start. Nationally the clearance rates for all kinds of violent crimes are abysmal, maybe cops should stop focusing on grifting overtime and do something about that? More importantly, a cop whose job is to protect society should stop doing things that are actively harmful to society. Such a list would include but is not limited to: Not shooting unarmed people, not choking a handcuffed man to death, not tear gassing whole city blocks after being ordered not to by their bosses, not pulling over black people at unusually high rates, not destroying homeless camps, not destroying cooling centers for the homeless during a historic heat wave, not lying to children to make them confess, not beating a family near a protest and then pretending that "antifa" abandoned the child at a "riot", not arresting citizens that they ran into while driving recklessly, not lying in court repeatedly and constantly to get convictions of the poor and powerless, not abusing people in their custody, not raping people in their custody, and not protecting other cops that blatantly break the law. Cops in the United States have effective blanket immunity for anything short of calmly strangling a handcuffed man on camera[0]. Not only is there no effective means for them to be prosecuted, given the close reliance DAs have on cops, but there is also a specific carve out for them to be protected from civil liability that is absurdly protective of them. Simply put, unless if a cop does something that has specific precedent for, you cannot sue them. And very little precedent can be made because nobody can sue them in order to create precedent. This gets down to the level of "sending the attack dogs against a surrendering person in the woods is a violation of their rights, but not in a 'grassy ditch' because there is no precedent for that in a ditch. Case dismissed". A police force that is supposed to protect society would itself be expected to actually follow the laws that they are nominally enforcing, not be given special protection from illegal conduct. > Or vice-versa, would such a police still protect from theft or violence? Do you believe that cops actually protect you from theft and violence? How soon do you believe a cop will be there if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night? Cops are really there to punish people after the fact, not to protect you[1][2]. How much effort they'll put into actually solving the crime is very much dependent on who you are and what happened to you. Ask a rape survivor how sympathetic and helpful the cops were, if you can stomach such stories. 0 - Make no mistake, Derek Chauvin would still be a cop if that had not been video taped. The official police press release after that was that a man died due to a "medical incident" in their care; a blatant lie. Makes you wonder how many citizens cops have murdered and blamed it on drugs or "medical incidents". 1 - Well, that and arrest random people to find drugs and steal money from citizens to fund their own department. 2 - They in fact have no legal obligation to try and protect you from violence.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alasdair_ 5y ago
Society is individual people and their interactions. Societal order is the dominant power structures of the society, with little heed given to individuals.

Arrath 5y ago

They would still protect from theft and violence, of course. Lets keep in mind that as it stands now, the police don't do that great in the realm of theft anyway.[0] But there are many shortfalls in the system as a whole, and not just the beat cops doing the policing. We need police back in neighborhoods, doing beat patrols, living the in cities and suburbs they police, not commuting in from an hour away. Being rich shouldn't be an easy out because you can hire a high power lawyer, or treat most offences as a minor fine. Why does robbing the bank from the inside get a relative slap on the wrist, while robbing it through the front door gets you shot? Lets hit a few high points: End the 'boys club', actually go after sex crimes with a sense of urgency and not let rape kits pile up in evidence rooms, untested?[1] Not run straight up black sites?[2] Properly allow freedom of speech and expression, and not come down harder on protests the police themselves don't agree with?[3] Do a little introspection and address the rampant domestic abuse perpetrated by police?[4] [0]https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/clearances https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nationwide-epidemic-of-untested-rape-kits-atlantic-daily/594046/ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2019/07/nati... [2]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli... [3]https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/us/protest-disparity-study-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/us/protest-disparity-study-tr... [4]https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-officers-who-hit-their-wives-or-girlfriends/380329/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

nemo44x 5y ago
> Why does robbing the bank from the inside get a relative slap on the wrist, while robbing it through the front door gets you shot? Because when you rob it from the outside you're probably using violence to threaten people with their lives. You don't think that's many, many times worse than someone cooking the books or stealing from the register?
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  There are plenty of cases where the social standing of the defendant is determinant of the level of violence brought. Consider shop lifting vs. wage theft. Both are non violent, the latter is estimated to be many times more prevalent than the former. Only one will get you violently arrested though, and one is far more likely to be prosecuted than the other.
- themaninthedark 5y ago
  Also if you use violence once, then you are more willing to use it in the future. This is bad for society as a whole.

sneak 5y ago

I wrote about this specifically: https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-america/ https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-ame...

ashtonkem 5y ago

> What would be the difference between those two things? The difference between those things is who the police actually do anything for. Who gets (violently) arrested and who gets away with it is strongly connected with your position in social order. Simply put, steal $20 from the register or a loaf of bread from the store and the state will pony up tens of thousands of dollars to try and arrest you, detain you, prosecute you, and punish you. But if you decide to steal overtime from your employees, what do you think the chances are of you finding yourself in cuffs? It's estimated that wage theft involves three fold as much theft as other kinds of robbery combined; why is violence necessary to stop 1/4 of theft, but not the remaining 3/4? Take a look at protestors too, and see how the police change treatment based on the content of the protest. It's been shown that cops are 3x more likely to react violently to left wing protests than right wing protests in general, and 3.5x more likely to attack peaceful left wing protests than peaceful right wing protests. That is not protecting society, that is protecting the social order. > As in, what would a police who’s job it was to “protect society” do that current police do not? Processing all the rape kits they have sitting around would be a fantastic start. Nationally the clearance rates for all kinds of violent crimes are abysmal, maybe cops should stop focusing on grifting overtime and do something about that? More importantly, a cop whose job is to protect society should stop doing things that are actively harmful to society. Such a list would include but is not limited to: Not shooting unarmed people, not choking a handcuffed man to death, not tear gassing whole city blocks after being ordered not to by their bosses, not pulling over black people at unusually high rates, not destroying homeless camps, not destroying cooling centers for the homeless during a historic heat wave, not lying to children to make them confess, not beating a family near a protest and then pretending that "antifa" abandoned the child at a "riot", not arresting citizens that they ran into while driving recklessly, not lying in court repeatedly and constantly to get convictions of the poor and powerless, not abusing people in their custody, not raping people in their custody, and not protecting other cops that blatantly break the law. Cops in the United States have effective blanket immunity for anything short of calmly strangling a handcuffed man on camera[0]. Not only is there no effective means for them to be prosecuted, given the close reliance DAs have on cops, but there is also a specific carve out for them to be protected from civil liability that is absurdly protective of them. Simply put, unless if a cop does something that has specific precedent for, you cannot sue them. And very little precedent can be made because nobody can sue them in order to create precedent. This gets down to the level of "sending the attack dogs against a surrendering person in the woods is a violation of their rights, but not in a 'grassy ditch' because there is no precedent for that in a ditch. Case dismissed". A police force that is supposed to protect society would itself be expected to actually follow the laws that they are nominally enforcing, not be given special protection from illegal conduct. > Or vice-versa, would such a police still protect from theft or violence? Do you believe that cops actually protect you from theft and violence? How soon do you believe a cop will be there if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night? Cops are really there to punish people after the fact, not to protect you[1][2]. How much effort they'll put into actually solving the crime is very much dependent on who you are and what happened to you. Ask a rape survivor how sympathetic and helpful the cops were, if you can stomach such stories. 0 - Make no mistake, Derek Chauvin would still be a cop if that had not been video taped. The official police press release after that was that a man died due to a "medical incident" in their care; a blatant lie. Makes you wonder how many citizens cops have murdered and blamed it on drugs or "medical incidents". 1 - Well, that and arrest random people to find drugs and steal money from citizens to fund their own department. 2 - They in fact have no legal obligation to try and protect you from violence.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alasdair_ 5y ago

Society is individual people and their interactions. Societal order is the dominant power structures of the society, with little heed given to individuals.