zlacker

>>sorami+(OP)
I'm interested to see what comes out of all this. I am very glad I do not live in Minneapolis. I did not see a specific damages amount in the complaint, but I am assuming it will be high, especially if granted class action status. Bankrupting state and city police forces probably "feels" good to a lot of people here. But what are the second and third order effects of underfunded police departments?

In MN the Minneapolis city council wants to disband the police department entirely. This may be all talk, and I'm not sure if it's technically possible, but what happens if there is no police department? What are the second and third order effects of that? Is having no law enforcement a better outcome for the residents? My initial reaction is "no".

When confronted with videos of people rioting, looting and vandalising most respond that "it's only a few bad apples, the vast majority are peaceful". Is it not true that most cops are OK too? I'm honestly asking. Yes there are some problem cops - Chauvin obviously having a long history of issues. But are we really saying that the majority of cops are bad actors? It feels like with emotions so hot right now, people are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I am skeptical that is the right course of action.

>>eric_b+Hl
The problem is that the "good" police are incentivised to protect the "bad" police, and do so. You're not going to find the "good" police investigating and charging their colleagues - when it does happen, they're inevitably harassed and removed from the force - and nobody else is in a position to do so, so what you get is the "bad" police operating with impunity.

And there's effects on the wider system - courts will believe a police officer's account of what happened pretty much no matter the opposing evidence. There's no accountability when a police officer goes against the reasons they were hired, and destroys people's lives.

There's the possibility of alternative systems of protection and justice, which don't create organisations which are incentivised to protect murderers, abusers, and rapists.

>>vertex+Yn
What do some of those systems look like? Have any been tried on a large scale? Are they effective? (Honestly asking, I am trying to imagine something other than a police force - or that looks like a police force - that can effectively deal with crime)

>>eric_b+So
On a large scale, not really. It's very, very hard to change a society away from being under the control of the police. On a smaller scale - yeah. There's a lot of books on the subject of transformative justice, and various methods are practiced in many many leftist spaces. I've been involved in some of it, and it's worked from my perspective.

And simply meeting people's needs deters a lot of crime - nobody's going to wind up in a position where they're robbing a gas station if they know, from an early age, that they're going to be sheltered, well fed, and have a good life, and this isn't dependent on massive amounts of luck, and if they fuck up there's another chance.