4 ms·

As long as there are police, they'll be saying things like this to justify their demands for ever more power. It's in their nature. If you don't want to hear

As long as there are police, they'll be saying things like this to justify their demands for ever more power. It's in their nature. If you don't want to hear it, you'll have to get rid of them. Otherwise there's really nothing for it, and certainly no point in offering any kind of substantive response. The viper's nature is to bite; one does not attempt to educate it into peaceful coexistence but opts instead for avoidance or extermination.

kbenson 12y ago
The police are like an aggressive guard dog. The aggressive nature is what what makes it a good guard dog, but occasionally that aggression turns back on those it's supposed to protect. It's important as the owner of this beast to keep it on a short leash, redirect it as needed, and chastise it when it's been bad. The police don't want power for power's sake, they really do want it to do their job better. Unfortunately, they lose track of the fact their job is ultimately to uphold the laws and our way of life by aggressively pursuing the short-term goal of reducing immediate threats. The police are a force for good, and we are better off for their presence, but like the guard dog above, they require attention to keep inline.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  Your analogy sort of falls apart because the 'owner of the guard dog' can easily want power for power's sake.
  - kbenson 12y ago
    We are the owners of the guard dog. Those between us and our guards are our employees, and if ever they forget this, they are just as in need of redirection and chastisement. Failure to do that is our own failure, as it is our job to manage our tools and resources. We cannot expect them to run themselves.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      To strain the analogy further, the employees have rebelled and no longer listen to the board of directors, and they've limited the hiring pool to people just like them.
      - kbenson 12y ago
        That may be true, but it also makes what needs to happen obvious. When those tasked with representing your interests no longer do so effectively, they need to be replaced. This, of course, isn't anything new or groundbreaking.
        fredkbloggs 12y ago
        The only way to "fix" this problem is to completely abolish the institution. The great majority of cops, including all upper ranks, would have to be permanently removed. A new heavily emasculated entity could be created, stripped of all military overtones, with the guiding principle that the organization has no authority and no right to question its own limits or lobby for changes to them (except to impose more limits following even the slightest whiff of potential abuses, which must be reported immediately). Only people who want to serve under those terms, and will hire others of similar disposition, could be considered for membership in the new organization. Termination of anyone demonstrating less than total subservience would have to be immediate and unappealable. Such an entity would not be recognizable as a "police force" to anyone currently living, as most are heavily militarized and populated almost exclusively by individuals with a pathological need to exercise absolute power over others. But yes, in principle such an entity could be created to replace what now exists. There are two major problems: first, the individuals making up today's police forces won't just go away, any more than piratical sailors did following the end of the War of the Spanish Succession or the Ba'athists did following the fall of their government in Iraq. They're still going to be somewhere, seeking unlimited power by whatever means they can, lawful or not. Something has to be done to prevent them from reconstituting themselves somewhere else. De-Ba'athification turned out to be harder than it looks; abolishing an institution takes more than removing its members from the public payroll. Second, as most scholars probably would accept, risk-aversion among politicians is an essential failure of representative democracy. It is usually impossible to find the political will to do anything that could lead to "headline outrage" later. This is a basic feature of this form of government; simply throwing out a particular group of bums won't address it. No rational politician would vote to reform the police in any radical manner because any subsequent "heinous crime" would be dumped on his or her doorstep (regardless of whether any police force conceivable could have prevented it), and of course the former cops would encourage this process and milk it for all it's worth. The rational politician is interested in maximizing opportunities for reelection, not the good of humanity. The two analogous historical comparisons I might make, in which public institutions were replaced wholesale with the mandate that horrific errors of the past never be repeated, are the Bundesbank and the Japanese SDF. The Bundesbank has effectively been replaced after only a few decades by the pro-inflation ECB, and the SDF's pacifist restrictions, after decades of being whittled away, are now under discussion for outright removal. So the historical track record of "never again" isn't very compelling, nor is the historical track record of firing large numbers of armed and dangerous "public servants" with limited skills and a history of supporting one another through corruption and perjury. And we know that no representative democracy's politicians are ever going to support such an act. Your ideological commitment to the ballot box is laudable, but does not provide any real solution to the problem at hand, nor does it refute my essential characterization of today's police institutions.

kbenson 12y ago

The police are like an aggressive guard dog. The aggressive nature is what what makes it a good guard dog, but occasionally that aggression turns back on those it's supposed to protect. It's important as the owner of this beast to keep it on a short leash, redirect it as needed, and chastise it when it's been bad. The police don't want power for power's sake, they really do want it to do their job better. Unfortunately, they lose track of the fact their job is ultimately to uphold the laws and our way of life by aggressively pursuing the short-term goal of reducing immediate threats. The police are a force for good, and we are better off for their presence, but like the guard dog above, they require attention to keep inline.

droopyEyelids 12y ago
Your analogy sort of falls apart because the 'owner of the guard dog' can easily want power for power's sake.
- kbenson 12y ago
  We are the owners of the guard dog. Those between us and our guards are our employees, and if ever they forget this, they are just as in need of redirection and chastisement. Failure to do that is our own failure, as it is our job to manage our tools and resources. We cannot expect them to run themselves.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    To strain the analogy further, the employees have rebelled and no longer listen to the board of directors, and they've limited the hiring pool to people just like them.
    - kbenson 12y ago
      That may be true, but it also makes what needs to happen obvious. When those tasked with representing your interests no longer do so effectively, they need to be replaced. This, of course, isn't anything new or groundbreaking.
      - fredkbloggs 12y ago
        The only way to "fix" this problem is to completely abolish the institution. The great majority of cops, including all upper ranks, would have to be permanently removed. A new heavily emasculated entity could be created, stripped of all military overtones, with the guiding principle that the organization has no authority and no right to question its own limits or lobby for changes to them (except to impose more limits following even the slightest whiff of potential abuses, which must be reported immediately). Only people who want to serve under those terms, and will hire others of similar disposition, could be considered for membership in the new organization. Termination of anyone demonstrating less than total subservience would have to be immediate and unappealable. Such an entity would not be recognizable as a "police force" to anyone currently living, as most are heavily militarized and populated almost exclusively by individuals with a pathological need to exercise absolute power over others. But yes, in principle such an entity could be created to replace what now exists. There are two major problems: first, the individuals making up today's police forces won't just go away, any more than piratical sailors did following the end of the War of the Spanish Succession or the Ba'athists did following the fall of their government in Iraq. They're still going to be somewhere, seeking unlimited power by whatever means they can, lawful or not. Something has to be done to prevent them from reconstituting themselves somewhere else. De-Ba'athification turned out to be harder than it looks; abolishing an institution takes more than removing its members from the public payroll. Second, as most scholars probably would accept, risk-aversion among politicians is an essential failure of representative democracy. It is usually impossible to find the political will to do anything that could lead to "headline outrage" later. This is a basic feature of this form of government; simply throwing out a particular group of bums won't address it. No rational politician would vote to reform the police in any radical manner because any subsequent "heinous crime" would be dumped on his or her doorstep (regardless of whether any police force conceivable could have prevented it), and of course the former cops would encourage this process and milk it for all it's worth. The rational politician is interested in maximizing opportunities for reelection, not the good of humanity. The two analogous historical comparisons I might make, in which public institutions were replaced wholesale with the mandate that horrific errors of the past never be repeated, are the Bundesbank and the Japanese SDF. The Bundesbank has effectively been replaced after only a few decades by the pro-inflation ECB, and the SDF's pacifist restrictions, after decades of being whittled away, are now under discussion for outright removal. So the historical track record of "never again" isn't very compelling, nor is the historical track record of firing large numbers of armed and dangerous "public servants" with limited skills and a history of supporting one another through corruption and perjury. And we know that no representative democracy's politicians are ever going to support such an act. Your ideological commitment to the ballot box is laudable, but does not provide any real solution to the problem at hand, nor does it refute my essential characterization of today's police institutions.