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[return to "How much do we need the police?"]
1. Burnin+uc[view] [source] 2020-06-03 23:13:41
>>js2+(OP)
Montreal once had a 16 hour police strike, creating a natural experiment in what happens without police.

Steven Pinker describes how that went:

> "As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist)."[16]

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2. markc+Hx[view] [source] 2020-06-04 01:54:16
>>Burnin+uc
It was a natural experiment in what happens without police when the city is in the midst of an extreme wave of crime and violent protest, and one of the protests turns into a riot while the police were on strike.

The idea that this incident demonstrates that any city will go up in flames immediately if the police take the day off is a misreading this specific moment in history.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot

That's not to dispute the idea that cities will generally retain order if police are absent. I imagine it varies wildly from one time and place to another.

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3. cheese+n11[view] [source] 2020-06-04 06:36:53
>>markc+Hx
But here we are in the middle of ongoing riots discussing the role of the police. Maybe the comparison is not so inappropriate after all.
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4. Netcob+pp1[view] [source] 2020-06-04 10:25:12
>>cheese+n11
Then maybe the fact that the riots have been caused by the police in the first place should be considered too.
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5. Wintam+mq1[view] [source] 2020-06-04 10:34:42
>>Netcob+pp1
Let's be more accurate. The protests are caused by the police. But the riots, violence and looting is caused by opportunists and criminals, in many cases instigated and enflamed by white revolutionary anarchists and/or white supremacist cells more than willing to sacrifice minorities and their neighbourhoods to their insane political projects, i.e. blood soaked revolution or race war.
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6. Beltir+zr1[view] [source] 2020-06-04 10:48:12
>>Wintam+mq1
There are multiple reports of agent provocateurs being police agents.
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7. pvalde+2B4[view] [source] 2020-06-05 10:37:05
>>Beltir+zr1
The problem is that here we have a totally new factor in the mix.

People is being freely dossed with tear gas, in the middle of a pandemic that kills attacking lungs. We don't know how a disease that attack lungs could interact with exposure to a lung irritant but probably will not help. We will have an answer, we want it or not, in two weeks.

They are creating a flow of air directly towards the face of people. We don't know if a virus standing in the air could be collected and dragged into the nose, but it seems possible.

Being paranoid, we don't even know with what substance are all of those people being gassed. Who controls that tear gas canisters contain only tear gas? Are those canisters refillable? Are being refilled? By who? We don't know.

The goal of racist people has been always domination of the other races. Selective killings and birth control are not new strategies. Every single racist in the planet has fantasized about killing as many as possible without consequences. In the end is the same if you kill with a bullet, a hug or provoking a mosh pit / covid party. Except that the later are, unfortunately, untraceable.

So increasing the provocation could be seen as a desirable strategy if you are a racist policeman or governor.

And of course from now on, COVID is not the Trumps fault anymore. People had choosen freely to take more risks. Is like an experiment designed carefully to create thousands of new cases in a part of the population.

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8. Wintam+MX4[view] [source] 2020-06-05 13:47:41
>>pvalde+2B4
> Every single racist in the planet has fantasized about killing as many as possible without consequences.

Disturbing. Look up psychological projection, and be more careful what you say.

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