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Being a police officer isn't a job that you can just take off.... if you are willing to be an agent of state violence, don't be surprised when people who have p

Being a police officer isn't a job that you can just take off.... if you are willing to be an agent of state violence, don't be surprised when people who have problems with that situation have issues with you personally.

psgibbs 14y ago
So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Just like all developers are 'evil hackers'. If people realistically want the situation to get better, they need to embrace the 'good' police officers, rather than automatically ostracizing all police officers equally. Many still really do want to improve their communities.
- shardling 14y ago
  Probably OP was using "state violence" in its sense as part of a socio/political theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence There's always been a strong connection between punk subculture and anarchist thinking (which is specifically opposed to this type of "legitimate violence"), so its actually a somewhat reasonable thing to bring up.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  >So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Yes. That's what law enforcement is by definition. Non compliance results in (eventual) violence, regardless of the severity of the crime. P.S. Nice edit. Both "hacker" and "cop" carry some negative connotations without the qualifying "evil" in front of it.
  - psgibbs 14y ago
    I added 'evil' because particularly in this community, the connotation of 'hacker' is not necessarily negative. Many here esteem hackers as people who get things done by taking cleverly manipulating the system, or, alternatively, value results over process (I'd actually really appreciate a proper neutral definition of the term).
    - pessimizer 14y ago
      You're somehow conflating developer and lawbreaker in an effort to explain how cops are something other than agents of state violence. It's a strange argument.
  - diminoten 14y ago
    Non-compliance is a provocation of violence, so naturally it results in violence. It's the price we pay to have a society.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      That depends entirely on the law being infringed. Society could do with a lot fewer of them as a whole.
    - marssaxman 14y ago
      There is nothing "natural" about it.
      - sesqu 14y ago
        It comes naturally to a lot of people.
    - _ak 14y ago
      Nowadays police will apply force regardless, and retroactively claim that you didn't comply. Just look at all these videos of people being brutalized and beaten unconscious by police men shouting at them "stop resisting!" So what you're basically saying is the price for having any policing is that we have to accept a morally and legally corrupt police force.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Yes.
  - antihero 14y ago
    Though isn't the idea of state violence a workable one because there are situations in which violence and compliance are in people's best interest - such as shooting a home invader, and secondly because (ideally, and this is where it has broken down) the state is an accountable facilitator of the people's will.
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      Possibly, yes. I'm not passing any judgement here, just pointing out that police, as agents of the State, are ultimately agents of violence, since the State is ultimately just "that entity which reserves for itself a monopoly on the lawful use of violence". Personally, I agree with Bastiat that the State should be more more than the collective extension to our own individual, inate right to self-defense, so any violence which goes beyond that, I consider improper. But I've said too much already, HN really isn't the best place for these discussions...
- mindslight 14y ago
  If the "good" police officers wish to be respected, they should start doing things like outing and arresting the corrupt cops, speaking out against victimless laws that only make everyone a criminal, routinely compensating innocents for damages caused by false arrests/raids/seizures/imprisonment, etc. Until these things are commonplace, it's only proper to consider all of them representatives of their misbehaving organizations.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    The idiom "A few bad apples..." is commonly brought up in discussions such as theses. There is something funny about that phrase though... it is not complete. The complete phrase is actually "A few bad apples will spoil the barrel". This is to say that if you do not take an aggressive stance towards weeding out all of the bad apples, the rot will spread like an infection (rotting apples will release ethylene gas which acts as a ripening agent, accelerating the rot of nearby apples) and corrupt all of the apples. So if we trust our apples:cops metaphor then what we are really saying is that if we overlook the a few bad cops for any significant amount of time, before we know it, all cops will be bad. Obviously crooked cops don't release ethylene gas in significant quantities... instead the Blue Wall is the most commonly cited mechanism of transmission. I like this idiom.
    - hfsktr 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Code_of_Silence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Code_of_Silence For anyone else who might not have heard of it (by name).
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      > The complete phrase is actually "A few bad apples will spoil the barrel". They don't even have to actually spoil the barrel. Since dramatic events stand out in the human mind, it's possible for a few bad actors to completely change people's perception of groups or their place in society. This is part of the reason why it's so hard for privileged groups to understand how minorities see things and vice-versa. What's a dramatic, salient event for one group is not so much for the other.
- coldtea 14y ago
  >So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? That's the very definition of law enforcement. >Just like all developers are 'evil hackers'. No, because that's not the very definition of developer. A cop is an agent of the state that (and is) ordered to arrest, take down, put in jail, etc people and is authorized to use force for that -- including his gun.
- pessimizer 14y ago
  If they're not, I want them fired. They are here to find the non-compliant and hit them with sticks until they submit to the judicial system, and to kill them if that's not possible (if we as a society can stomach a death over whatever we're accusing them of.)
  - Zigurd 14y ago
    Appropriate username.
    - pessimizer 14y ago
      A cop that doesn't hit people with sticks is a just social worker.
      - pessimizer 14y ago
        Or 'just a social worker,' rather.
pyre 14y ago
So if I try to break into your house, you won't be calling the cops? Wouldn't you be supporting 'agents of state violence' by relying on them to come to your aid?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- scarecrowbob 14y ago
  Huh? Well, yah, duh. It's better than me going out and acting as my own agent of violence to beat you myself... I personally think that a legitimate state has a legitimate monopoly on violence.
peterwwillis 14y ago
You can live in your own pretend society or you can deal with the one you're actually in right now - which includes things like laws and law enforcement. And you have options. But taking a negative attitude so general as "all police officers are agents of state violence" has no positive outcome. You just decided every interaction you have with cops will turn out bad (or violent), so of course you're going to have issues! The rest of us try to treat each other fairly and as a result 99% of the time don't have problems with cops (unless we're breaking the law, wherein naturally problems do arise). Also, your job isn't the only thing that may make one have personal problems with someone else. I tend to get pissed off at immature anarchopunks who think the world revolves around them. I guess it kind of goes both ways.
- scarecrowbob 14y ago
  Well, I'm not a much of a fan of angry teens, either... I'm just describing the situation. But in keeping with "act pragmatically" officers can live in their "own pretend society or [...] can deal with the one [they're] actually in right now", which includes folks who don't particularly like them solely based on the authority they represent.

psgibbs 14y ago

So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Just like all developers are 'evil hackers'. If people realistically want the situation to get better, they need to embrace the 'good' police officers, rather than automatically ostracizing all police officers equally. Many still really do want to improve their communities.

shardling 14y ago
Probably OP was using "state violence" in its sense as part of a socio/political theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence There's always been a strong connection between punk subculture and anarchist thinking (which is specifically opposed to this type of "legitimate violence"), so its actually a somewhat reasonable thing to bring up.
Karunamon 14y ago
>So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Yes. That's what law enforcement is by definition. Non compliance results in (eventual) violence, regardless of the severity of the crime. P.S. Nice edit. Both "hacker" and "cop" carry some negative connotations without the qualifying "evil" in front of it.
- psgibbs 14y ago
  I added 'evil' because particularly in this community, the connotation of 'hacker' is not necessarily negative. Many here esteem hackers as people who get things done by taking cleverly manipulating the system, or, alternatively, value results over process (I'd actually really appreciate a proper neutral definition of the term).
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    You're somehow conflating developer and lawbreaker in an effort to explain how cops are something other than agents of state violence. It's a strange argument.
- diminoten 14y ago
  Non-compliance is a provocation of violence, so naturally it results in violence. It's the price we pay to have a society.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    That depends entirely on the law being infringed. Society could do with a lot fewer of them as a whole.
  - marssaxman 14y ago
    There is nothing "natural" about it.
    - sesqu 14y ago
      It comes naturally to a lot of people.
  - _ak 14y ago
    Nowadays police will apply force regardless, and retroactively claim that you didn't comply. Just look at all these videos of people being brutalized and beaten unconscious by police men shouting at them "stop resisting!" So what you're basically saying is the price for having any policing is that we have to accept a morally and legally corrupt police force.
mindcrime 14y ago
So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? Yes.
- antihero 14y ago
  Though isn't the idea of state violence a workable one because there are situations in which violence and compliance are in people's best interest - such as shooting a home invader, and secondly because (ideally, and this is where it has broken down) the state is an accountable facilitator of the people's will.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Possibly, yes. I'm not passing any judgement here, just pointing out that police, as agents of the State, are ultimately agents of violence, since the State is ultimately just "that entity which reserves for itself a monopoly on the lawful use of violence". Personally, I agree with Bastiat that the State should be more more than the collective extension to our own individual, inate right to self-defense, so any violence which goes beyond that, I consider improper. But I've said too much already, HN really isn't the best place for these discussions...
mindslight 14y ago
If the "good" police officers wish to be respected, they should start doing things like outing and arresting the corrupt cops, speaking out against victimless laws that only make everyone a criminal, routinely compensating innocents for damages caused by false arrests/raids/seizures/imprisonment, etc. Until these things are commonplace, it's only proper to consider all of them representatives of their misbehaving organizations.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  The idiom "A few bad apples..." is commonly brought up in discussions such as theses. There is something funny about that phrase though... it is not complete. The complete phrase is actually "A few bad apples will spoil the barrel". This is to say that if you do not take an aggressive stance towards weeding out all of the bad apples, the rot will spread like an infection (rotting apples will release ethylene gas which acts as a ripening agent, accelerating the rot of nearby apples) and corrupt all of the apples. So if we trust our apples:cops metaphor then what we are really saying is that if we overlook the a few bad cops for any significant amount of time, before we know it, all cops will be bad. Obviously crooked cops don't release ethylene gas in significant quantities... instead the Blue Wall is the most commonly cited mechanism of transmission. I like this idiom.
  - hfsktr 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Code_of_Silence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Code_of_Silence For anyone else who might not have heard of it (by name).
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    > The complete phrase is actually "A few bad apples will spoil the barrel". They don't even have to actually spoil the barrel. Since dramatic events stand out in the human mind, it's possible for a few bad actors to completely change people's perception of groups or their place in society. This is part of the reason why it's so hard for privileged groups to understand how minorities see things and vice-versa. What's a dramatic, salient event for one group is not so much for the other.
coldtea 14y ago
>So all cops are 'agents of state violence'? That's the very definition of law enforcement. >Just like all developers are 'evil hackers'. No, because that's not the very definition of developer. A cop is an agent of the state that (and is) ordered to arrest, take down, put in jail, etc people and is authorized to use force for that -- including his gun.
pessimizer 14y ago
If they're not, I want them fired. They are here to find the non-compliant and hit them with sticks until they submit to the judicial system, and to kill them if that's not possible (if we as a society can stomach a death over whatever we're accusing them of.)
- Zigurd 14y ago
  Appropriate username.
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    A cop that doesn't hit people with sticks is a just social worker.
    - pessimizer 14y ago
      Or 'just a social worker,' rather.

pyre 14y ago

So if I try to break into your house, you won't be calling the cops? Wouldn't you be supporting 'agents of state violence' by relying on them to come to your aid?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
scarecrowbob 14y ago
Huh? Well, yah, duh. It's better than me going out and acting as my own agent of violence to beat you myself... I personally think that a legitimate state has a legitimate monopoly on violence.

peterwwillis 14y ago

You can live in your own pretend society or you can deal with the one you're actually in right now - which includes things like laws and law enforcement. And you have options. But taking a negative attitude so general as "all police officers are agents of state violence" has no positive outcome. You just decided every interaction you have with cops will turn out bad (or violent), so of course you're going to have issues! The rest of us try to treat each other fairly and as a result 99% of the time don't have problems with cops (unless we're breaking the law, wherein naturally problems do arise). Also, your job isn't the only thing that may make one have personal problems with someone else. I tend to get pissed off at immature anarchopunks who think the world revolves around them. I guess it kind of goes both ways.

scarecrowbob 14y ago
Well, I'm not a much of a fan of angry teens, either... I'm just describing the situation. But in keeping with "act pragmatically" officers can live in their "own pretend society or [...] can deal with the one [they're] actually in right now", which includes folks who don't particularly like them solely based on the authority they represent.