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Because every police department is organized in the same general way and has the same incentives. It's not at all about the individual officers - it's that orga

by geofft 5y ago

Because every police department is organized in the same general way and has the same incentives. It's not at all about the individual officers - it's that organizing the police in this way has a corrupting influence. (Or, at best, it attracts people who wish to abuse power in various ways.) As mentioned upthread, this story of the small town that has turned into a front organization for a police force that, were they not operating under the label "police," would be a gang of highwaymen, is a pattern that repeats itself a lot! When you see something that happens repeatedly from many different individuals who all happen to be in the same circumstance, Occam's Razor demands you at least consider investigating the circumstance and not the people. There are almost certainly a large number of genuinely good and kindhearted and well-intentioned people in the employ of various police departments. They should leave their jobs, lest they stop being good and kindhearted and well-intentioned and become dangerous to society. Ideally, they would do that of their own free will; alternatively, we can defund their payroll. I have no problem with the individual former police officer merely by virtue of their former employment, and I am more than happy to judge them as an individual on their own merits.

adamrezich 5y ago
might it be possible that entire police/county sheriff departments are actually generally good people who don't do anything wrong? when you frame things as "'the police' are bad, except for some individuals," you are implicitly discounting this possibility, instead choosing to make broad sweeping statements about tens of thousands of people spread across millions of square miles, in wildly differing settings, with wildly differing local circumstances. (I will refrain from commenting on your last paragraph so as to not get into an ideological flamewar.)
- geofft 5y ago
  Well, I am not actually framing things as "'the police' are bad, except for some individuals." Sorry if that was unclear. I really don't think it is either well-defined or relevant whether the individuals are "good" or "bad." As an analogy that is hopefully clear at the risk of being a little inflammatory: almost all of the 18-year-old conscripts of any random country you might be at war with have absolutely zero influence over the political direction of that country. But that doesn't change the fact that people handed them a gun and told them (even, perhaps, forced them) to shoot at you. They can be utterly kind and friendly individuals (see e.g. the World War I Christmas truce), but if they're about to shoot at you, that's a problem regardless of whether they're kind. When someone says "The XYZ army is about to invade us," it makes no sense to say "Well most of the XYZ soldiers are good people!" And no, the distinction is not whether they're actually shooting at you. If they're lined up on the border ready to invade, if they're in training camps practicing shooting, if they're not assigned to be a footsoldier but they are assigned to build infrastructure and implement logistics for the invasion, etc., they're contributing to the invasion, and you'd still say that the entire invading army needs to be stopped. Saying that most of the invading army hasn't seen active combat yet and therefore isn't personally culpable is also nonsensical. Or put another way - in gang-ridden territories or in post-war countries ruled by warlords, it's often the case that gang members or soldiers will do things to genuinely benefit the people who live there, running essential food and medicines across blockades, keeping people safe from other gangs or warlords, etc. That hardly justifies the gang or the warlord as a good government, though! Every single person who works for a police department, without exception, works for an organization that is doing bad things. If, somehow, the specific things they do as individuals are good, when they do them on behalf of the organization, it serves to increase the legitimacy of that organization to gain more power and do more bad things in the future. If they are good people who haven't incurred personal moral culpability for doing anything wrong, great! I'm not in the business of judging souls for heaven or hell. I'm in the business of having opinions, as a citizen of a republic, about how that republic should be constituted.
  - UncleEntity 5y ago
    Well… Every single person who votes in an election , without exception, votes for an organization that is doing bad things. The simplest thing to do to solve this problem is just do away with elections, no?
    - geofft 5y ago
      There are in fact multiple political movements, from all sorts of perspectives, that refuse to vote because they don't want to grant legitimacy to an organization they have problems with! This is certainly a position I've seen on the American far left about our elections, but you also see it from entire political parties (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott), and there's the more interesting position where Sinn Fein to this day gets elected to Parliament and refuses to participate or vote on things (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstentionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstentionism). So, yes, I think that's a defensible position, and if you wanted to characterize my decision to vote as evidence that I believe that my government as an institution is salvageable and not inherently hopeless the way I believe the police as an institution are, I don't think you'd be wrong. The other thing is that you wouldn't really do away with elections, you'd do away with the whole organization (the government) that you're electing people to. Which is, in fact, the anarchist position, and I think that position is also defensible.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    > Every single person who works for a police department, without exception, works for an organization that is doing bad things. I find this assertion, combined with the final paragraph from your previous post, interesting—given the very loose and broad criteria of "doing bad things" here, could you not replace "police department" with "government"? if so, then should your previous post's third paragraph not also apply to all employees of city, county, state, and federal governments as well? if this is your end goal: uh, do you know anyone who's hiring?
  - kansface 5y ago
    This argument is hopelessly generalizable. Who in the world would does it not apply to!? Literally ever organization does “bad things” sometimes. That’s just the nature of groups of people. You are throwing out the baby with the bath water if you disregard kind, degree, personal involvement, etc.

by geofft 5y ago

adamrezich 5y ago

might it be possible that entire police/county sheriff departments are actually generally good people who don't do anything wrong? when you frame things as "'the police' are bad, except for some individuals," you are implicitly discounting this possibility, instead choosing to make broad sweeping statements about tens of thousands of people spread across millions of square miles, in wildly differing settings, with wildly differing local circumstances. (I will refrain from commenting on your last paragraph so as to not get into an ideological flamewar.)

geofft 5y ago
Well, I am not actually framing things as "'the police' are bad, except for some individuals." Sorry if that was unclear. I really don't think it is either well-defined or relevant whether the individuals are "good" or "bad." As an analogy that is hopefully clear at the risk of being a little inflammatory: almost all of the 18-year-old conscripts of any random country you might be at war with have absolutely zero influence over the political direction of that country. But that doesn't change the fact that people handed them a gun and told them (even, perhaps, forced them) to shoot at you. They can be utterly kind and friendly individuals (see e.g. the World War I Christmas truce), but if they're about to shoot at you, that's a problem regardless of whether they're kind. When someone says "The XYZ army is about to invade us," it makes no sense to say "Well most of the XYZ soldiers are good people!" And no, the distinction is not whether they're actually shooting at you. If they're lined up on the border ready to invade, if they're in training camps practicing shooting, if they're not assigned to be a footsoldier but they are assigned to build infrastructure and implement logistics for the invasion, etc., they're contributing to the invasion, and you'd still say that the entire invading army needs to be stopped. Saying that most of the invading army hasn't seen active combat yet and therefore isn't personally culpable is also nonsensical. Or put another way - in gang-ridden territories or in post-war countries ruled by warlords, it's often the case that gang members or soldiers will do things to genuinely benefit the people who live there, running essential food and medicines across blockades, keeping people safe from other gangs or warlords, etc. That hardly justifies the gang or the warlord as a good government, though! Every single person who works for a police department, without exception, works for an organization that is doing bad things. If, somehow, the specific things they do as individuals are good, when they do them on behalf of the organization, it serves to increase the legitimacy of that organization to gain more power and do more bad things in the future. If they are good people who haven't incurred personal moral culpability for doing anything wrong, great! I'm not in the business of judging souls for heaven or hell. I'm in the business of having opinions, as a citizen of a republic, about how that republic should be constituted.
- UncleEntity 5y ago
  Well… Every single person who votes in an election , without exception, votes for an organization that is doing bad things. The simplest thing to do to solve this problem is just do away with elections, no?
  - geofft 5y ago
    There are in fact multiple political movements, from all sorts of perspectives, that refuse to vote because they don't want to grant legitimacy to an organization they have problems with! This is certainly a position I've seen on the American far left about our elections, but you also see it from entire political parties (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott), and there's the more interesting position where Sinn Fein to this day gets elected to Parliament and refuses to participate or vote on things (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstentionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstentionism). So, yes, I think that's a defensible position, and if you wanted to characterize my decision to vote as evidence that I believe that my government as an institution is salvageable and not inherently hopeless the way I believe the police as an institution are, I don't think you'd be wrong. The other thing is that you wouldn't really do away with elections, you'd do away with the whole organization (the government) that you're electing people to. Which is, in fact, the anarchist position, and I think that position is also defensible.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  > Every single person who works for a police department, without exception, works for an organization that is doing bad things. I find this assertion, combined with the final paragraph from your previous post, interesting—given the very loose and broad criteria of "doing bad things" here, could you not replace "police department" with "government"? if so, then should your previous post's third paragraph not also apply to all employees of city, county, state, and federal governments as well? if this is your end goal: uh, do you know anyone who's hiring?
- kansface 5y ago
  This argument is hopelessly generalizable. Who in the world would does it not apply to!? Literally ever organization does “bad things” sometimes. That’s just the nature of groups of people. You are throwing out the baby with the bath water if you disregard kind, degree, personal involvement, etc.