5 ms·

It's a complete fantasy from someone who is lucky to have never needed to call the Police. Unfortunately someone's gotta take out the trash. The real problem

It's a complete fantasy from someone who is lucky to have never needed to call the Police. Unfortunately someone's gotta take out the trash. The real problem is we need police to be accountable, but that's easier than it sounds, apparently.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
The police certainly serve their purpose well for those comfortable calling other people trash, yes. My assertion isn't that they're ineffective at their purpose, but that their purpose is not one worth serving. We almost certainly disagree on this, but you should not be making any assumptions about what my relationships to the police are or have been.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Interesting. 1. I took a much more charitable interpretation of their post - "Somebody has to take out the trash" to mean somebody has to be the janitor / garbage disposal expert, even though it's not traditionally a desired or easy position. And therefore in the context of this discussion, to mean "Somebody (Police, or whatever we call them) has to respond to crime and danger". 2. When you say "their purpose is not one worth serving", I don't think we merely disagree; I am honestly having a hard time fathoming the framework/thought/life perspective/point/literally anything. The purpose of police is to "serve & protect". We can agree or disagree how well they do at that; what the margins and scope and mandate and methods and oversight etc etc etc are; but if you believe protecting the weak from the strong, preventing crime is purpose not worth serving, we may have an axiomatic difference so massive we may not be able to meaningfully proceed in discussion. (and fwiw, I've lived in Canada & USA, as well as in what some might consider police state; I've been poor and well off; I've been on the privileged and on the harassed side of class/ethnicity/nationality/religion/group; me and mine have had our share of being harassed by various police in some places, and I also had friends who are police officers in other places; but I still cannot envision a societal framework anarchic enough to say that civil protection, which is the purpose if not the implementation, is not worth serving in principle)
  - wollsmoth 4y ago
    re:1 Yeah I mean that's obviously what I meant they're stretching to make me seem bad. If someone is going around murdering, I don't have time or the gumption to try to deal with it and somebody should. Look if you can run a society without any kind of police to enforce laws, by all means. People are mostly good and maybe it'll work out. Maybe everyone will just behave.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    > The purpose of police is to "serve & protect". This is the purpose of police as stated by the police and the institutions that create and endorse them. It doesn't make it true and I don't believe it is. That's really what it comes down to I think. I'm not asking for a lawless world where all are free to commit whatever harms they wish without consequence. I'm saying an institution actually designed to protect people would bear almost no resemblance to policing as it exists now. And also that we should create that institution instead of police. There is no path that I can see from police as we have them to that other thing.
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      We may be in agreement then (it'll depend somewhat on locality, I think there is implicit assumption in this thread and HN of USA and that's fair enough). FWIW, wording can sometimes obstruct our message; to my literalist mind, "we don't need the police" and "their purpose is not worth serving", are radically different statements then "police currently is so broken, that if we wanted to fulfill their stated purpose, we need to start from scratch"
      - wollsmoth 4y ago
        Yeah I definitely agree we have a serious lack of accountability in policing.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    >The purpose of police is to "serve & protect". This has gone to the supreme court and police are not bound by this. In fact, what ARE police bound by here in the states?

giraffe_lady 4y ago

The police certainly serve their purpose well for those comfortable calling other people trash, yes. My assertion isn't that they're ineffective at their purpose, but that their purpose is not one worth serving. We almost certainly disagree on this, but you should not be making any assumptions about what my relationships to the police are or have been.

NikolaNovak 4y ago
Interesting. 1. I took a much more charitable interpretation of their post - "Somebody has to take out the trash" to mean somebody has to be the janitor / garbage disposal expert, even though it's not traditionally a desired or easy position. And therefore in the context of this discussion, to mean "Somebody (Police, or whatever we call them) has to respond to crime and danger". 2. When you say "their purpose is not one worth serving", I don't think we merely disagree; I am honestly having a hard time fathoming the framework/thought/life perspective/point/literally anything. The purpose of police is to "serve & protect". We can agree or disagree how well they do at that; what the margins and scope and mandate and methods and oversight etc etc etc are; but if you believe protecting the weak from the strong, preventing crime is purpose not worth serving, we may have an axiomatic difference so massive we may not be able to meaningfully proceed in discussion. (and fwiw, I've lived in Canada & USA, as well as in what some might consider police state; I've been poor and well off; I've been on the privileged and on the harassed side of class/ethnicity/nationality/religion/group; me and mine have had our share of being harassed by various police in some places, and I also had friends who are police officers in other places; but I still cannot envision a societal framework anarchic enough to say that civil protection, which is the purpose if not the implementation, is not worth serving in principle)
- wollsmoth 4y ago
  re:1 Yeah I mean that's obviously what I meant they're stretching to make me seem bad. If someone is going around murdering, I don't have time or the gumption to try to deal with it and somebody should. Look if you can run a society without any kind of police to enforce laws, by all means. People are mostly good and maybe it'll work out. Maybe everyone will just behave.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  > The purpose of police is to "serve & protect". This is the purpose of police as stated by the police and the institutions that create and endorse them. It doesn't make it true and I don't believe it is. That's really what it comes down to I think. I'm not asking for a lawless world where all are free to commit whatever harms they wish without consequence. I'm saying an institution actually designed to protect people would bear almost no resemblance to policing as it exists now. And also that we should create that institution instead of police. There is no path that I can see from police as we have them to that other thing.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    We may be in agreement then (it'll depend somewhat on locality, I think there is implicit assumption in this thread and HN of USA and that's fair enough). FWIW, wording can sometimes obstruct our message; to my literalist mind, "we don't need the police" and "their purpose is not worth serving", are radically different statements then "police currently is so broken, that if we wanted to fulfill their stated purpose, we need to start from scratch"
    - wollsmoth 4y ago
      Yeah I definitely agree we have a serious lack of accountability in policing.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  >The purpose of police is to "serve & protect". This has gone to the supreme court and police are not bound by this. In fact, what ARE police bound by here in the states?