But of course, the problem is different: what KIND of policing we need, and how do we provide accountability. Quis custodiet custodes? [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...
edit: note that the "ipsos" part of the sentence in the wikipedia link is correct, but can be largely omitted. I studied Latin at school (loved it) and this happens frequently with Latin quotations.
The former [1].
>1033 receipts are associated with both an increase in the number of observed police killings in a given year as well as the change in the number of police killings from year to year, controlling for a battery of possible confounding variables including county wealth, racial makeup, civilian drug use, and violent crime.
[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/militarization-makes-police-more-v...
My understanding is that the program has been quite successful, and other cities have begun implementing their own similar programs using it as a model.
Not necessarily. Riots can begin when bad actors take advantage of the cover of numbers provided by a peaceful protest. If there are enough bad actors, usually masquerading as peaceful protesters, to reach critical mass, then a riot can start.
All it takes is for one person to break a window to signal to the other bad actors that the riot is about to begin. This piece by Tanner Greer [1] examines the phenomenon in way more detail than I do here.
[1] https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2020/05/on-days-of-disor...
Or you lost a sports game, let's not pretend the bar for rioting is very high...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...
EDIT: Sorry, I missed "you just won a sports game" as a reason for rioting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_riot
> After the Canadiens defeated the Boston Bruins in the first round of the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs, fans began rioting in celebration.
1) Replace 90% of police with community officers (unarmed) and social workers. Have them working their 'beats' regularly, pro-actively monitoring their areas and checking in with their charges. Again, unarmed.
2) Keep 10% for old style police work, that are only escalated to when specific conditions are met: approved by a municipal authority, wear bodycams, and have the permission of the caller to appear (within reason). Make it a real pain in the neck to bring them out, so they only show up for truly dangerous situations, not like some guy reselling cigarettes that ends in death.
A lawyer recently made an observation that really stuck with me: Only call the police when you're okay with the person you're calling about possibly dying. Sounds pretty strong when you put it that way - but it's just making explicit the implicit idea that the police will show up, the police are authorized (expected, even) to use force, and if there's disobedience or even just misunderstanding, the person could end up dead. See for example this story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Justine_Damond
If peace officers did most of the work, that could be a game-changing improvement.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...
(Edit: I regret putting snark over substance in this reply. See my response below, and others’ in this subthread, for a more detailed rebuttal.)
Meanwhile on /r/all today... https://old.reddit.com/r/onguardforthee/comments/gvu8fz/cana...
"Noor was convicted of third degree murder and second degree manslaughter for killing Ms Damond Ruszczyk just minutes after she called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her Minneapolis home in July 2017."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-08/mohamed-noor-sentence...
> The risk is not to the caller
Just yesterday there was news coverage of a store owner who called police for aid against looters and was attacked and handcuffed by those same police when they arrived on the scene.
Also, incidents like this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/26/kazeem-oyen...
Any single one of these stories would provoke a national outcry here. They're unthinkable here. But it's everyday life in the US.
> But you don’t make a mental “death chance calculation” when you call the cops.
Yeah I do. When I was visiting the states my friend was instructing me to do things like turn on my interior car light and slowly put my hands on the steering wheel and do absolutely nothing that could possibly provoke the cop. That sounded fucking insane to me, coming from Australia.
US 30.4 vs Australia 1.7
So yeah, there are are issues with police in Australia, but the issues are far more extreme in the US.
They definitely still carry firearms, and (although they're not as bad as american police) they definitely do abuse their power.
Just this week we had yet another story about this: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/02/video...
https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-does-happen-here-calls-to...
> “The family of an Aboriginal man who died in custody says protests against police brutality in the US should be a wake-up call about the plight of Indigenous Australians in the justice system.
> Speaking in the wake of video footage of an Aboriginal teenager being kicked to the ground by a NSW policeman, Paul Francis-Silva, whose uncle died in a Sydney prison in 2015, said: "It does happen here in Australia - the brutality, and the injustice against the First Nations people.”
You could also agree Australians are full of racist, evil cops as well, yes? Or is picking a few extreme examples not allowed for your country?
"Montreal was once known as the bank robbery capital of North America."
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/history-through-...
NYPD went on strike in 2014, if anyone wants to research that themselves... RIP Eric Garner
I am all for reforming the US social safety net and criminal justice system, but I think you need to understand what we deal with. We have, for one reason or another, very dangerous areas of our nation and they are filled with weapons and hopeless people willing to use them. I don't think the problem we face has an easy solution. I think it helps to try to empathize with the situation black people in America face on a daily basis. Then it helps to empathize with the situation first responders have to deal with on a daily basis.
Here is a rather disturbing video which led to a firefighter and a civilian losing their life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=fR6lMfMx4O8&...
it helped me understand the issue is not so simple.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFaPooJBDSg
Imagine this situation playing out in the states. Guy would be riddled with bullets in seconds.
A peaceful protest is not a justification to issue a curfew. It is explicitly protected by the first amendment. A blanket curfew is a gross violation of it. The Lt. Governor of Washington happens to agree with me on this.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
> The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
> In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.
Here's a more contemporaneous 1984 NY Times investigative article detailing the history: "How Release of Mental Patients Began", https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-me...
EDIT: The report mentioned in the article is presumably, "The Homeless Mentally Ill: A Task Force Report of the American Psychiatric Association", https://doi.org/10.1176/ps.36.7.782 I can't find a freely available copy online, however.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police under history, look at the "modern police" section. I find this poster against police in Wales a bit amusing: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/No_Polic...
Law enforcement is not the synonymous with police.
> However, in most cities and states, police unions are treated as members in good standing of local labor councils and federations. They often work closely with other municipal unions, from firefighters to teachers, to protect labor rights and municipal budgets. Given their size and power, most other city unions are wary of alienating them.
> This is an enormous political problem. If the police are to be defunded and reined in, their unions need to be split off and isolated from the rest of organized labor. If police unions are able to maintain a common front with other city unions, they will almost certainly be able to resist any meaningful efforts to restrain them.
So basically, yea other unions are complicit and unable to reign in the abuse of police unions. It's not the way I'd try to solve it but that's how Jacobin seems to be posing the issue - other unions in the locality should be reforming neighboring unions.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/police-labor-union-organi...
If the police have an image problem then perhaps they need to promote a culture of restraint, civility, and justice by enforcing the law against their own at all times not just when the criminals behavior makes it onto television and sparks riots that threatens to burn down the nation.
> Somehow we lost all perspective and have come to expect that our officers, whose jobs regularly confront them with mortal danger and the darkest parts of human nature, will always display the same perfect virtues we carefully signal everyday on Facebook.
We can work on the them becoming paragons of virtue after they stop executing citizens in the street, attacking people peacefully protesting, planting drugs on people, and raping them.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/11/us/florida-deputy-arrested-pl...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pennsylvania-police-officer-ch...
After we get we stop raping, framing, and murdering people yes I do in fact expect those charged with serving law and order to deal with bad people without themselves becoming bad people. People in most of the developed world seem to be managing this so I don't agree that it is an impossible dream.
Many people expressed and believed that automotive fatalities were just an inevitable consequence of the the mode of transport while others insisted on pushing for systematic reforms that drastically reduced fatalities.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/automobiles/50-years-ago-...
Similarly you argue that bad behavior by some police is inevitable. I don't agree
"It would be easy to think that the police officer is a figure who has existed since the beginning of civilization. […] however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered […] on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704." - How the U.S. Got Its Police Force http://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/
"Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property." - A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-a...
While most people today believe that they are “free” and “independent” the facts are that they’re still living in enslavement. The only difference is that they’ve been indoctrinated from early childhood to accept their slavery. And in the case of the police, they’ve been conditioned to accept the enforcers of their enslavement as something good and beneficial to themselves, when in fact, the police exist to enforce whatever the masters dictate and to protect the masters and their economic interests from the slaves. This fact is proven on a daily basis worldwide; whenever and wherever the slaves rise up against the current system of enslavement, the police rush in to suppress them. And yet, very few of the slaves take note of the obvious and ask themselves the question: who do the police really serve?
Vox did an analysis of the NYPD "slowdown"[1] as it was also a useful natural experiment. They didn't enforce the low-level "broken windows" crimes, but only did the minimum required by their contract. Needless to say, the city fared far better than right now.
That said, neither of these is a good example of what life would be life without government-supplied police forces. They are very rapid, unplanned changes in policy which don't allow private parties to hire private industry replacements and don't reflect how much less tax would be paid (about 40% of local government revenues).
[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/1/6/7501953/nypd-mayor-arrests-unio...
I think these quotes are not much better. The primary purpose and responsibility of our government is to protect life and property and maintain the rule of law. What we’ve seen in the last week is peaceful protests subverted by essentially militant groups into what is perhaps best described as insurrection.
If anything the initial police response was mismanaged and totally insufficient. The lack of policing gave space and air to the riotous members hiding within the protests to spread mayhem, destruction, and death. (e.g. [1])
That much at least is my own opinion from following many hours of social media, live-streams and first person accounts.
I would also take issue with the idea that body cameras have not increased accountability at least, even though the cameras do nothing to change the baseline level of danger and violence inherent in police work. I think most police are happy for the camera as it will tell their story and protect them against false accusations.
Of the 10 cases last year where an unarmed black person was shot and killed by police, in most cases the police officer(s) involved were being violently attacked by the person they shot, and video footage was often crucial in evaluating the use of force after the fact. In the two cases that did result in charges, body camera evidence was a material factor in at least one case (Atatiana Jefferson).
[1] - https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1268176768822685696?s=2...
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends
BLM doesn't form protests when black men are killed by black cops. They are politically savvy and understand that the optics of that aren't conducive to their message. In fact, they don't appear to care at all about non black people killed by police either. The 76 percent of people killed by police that aren't black don't interest them.
The real danger to black men in USA is being murdered by a non cop. Black men are insanely overrepresented in both homicide victimization and perpetration.
It should be noted that southern whites in the USA had massive rates of homicide until the early 20th century. They have significantly higher rates of violence compared to northern whites even today.
Culture > Race
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/if-the-nypd-is-on-strike-mayb...
[0] https://theintercept.com/2020/06/03/the-rebellion-in-defense...
https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/23/us/historical-study-of-ho...
> New data presented at the conference by a Dutch scholar, Pieter Spierenburg, showed that the homicide rate in Amsterdam, for example, dropped from 47 per 100,000 people in the mid-15th century to 1 to 1.5 per 100,000 in the early 19th century.
> Professor Stone has estimated that the homicide rate in medieval England was on average 10 times that of 20th century England. A study of the university town of Oxford in the 1340's showed an extraordinarily high annual rate of about 110 per 100,000 people. Studies of London in the first half of the 14th century determined a homicide rate of 36 to 52 per 100,000 people per year.
You can thank your local police department, among other institutions, for that dramatic decline in crime rates.
It;s also worth noting that when the UK faced a similar problem with an undiverse militarized police force in northern Ireland they did this https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/police/patten/recommend.htm and launched a bunch of investigation(the Stevens enquiries) into past crimes of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
The problem in America blocking any meaningful solutions to genuine problems is the collective denial the American middle class have towards past sins and current systematic problems with the American way not that it's a new problem that have never been solved before.
I don't know if this includes deaths by things like choking or beating.
If this is correct, death by cop is actually pretty rare. Not bitten by shark rare, but maybe in the magnitude of fatally falling off a ladder rare.
Which of course isn't to say harassment or abuse by cop is also rare. Nor to say there isn't racial disparity because the chart clearly shows there is.
https://www.vancourier.com/opinion/number-of-vancouver-polic...
I'm a bit surprised by someone who's familiar with an anarchist theory to be this naive about this stuff.
Today in Rojava (society in Syria based in part on anarchist principles) they are replacing the police with alternative institutions.
You can read more about it here: http://hawzhin.press/2020/06/01/how-to-abolish-the-police-le...
http://hawzhin.press/2020/06/01/how-to-abolish-the-police-le...
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/ive... ... the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States and more than the national budget of Canada. Did you know that? That's power right there, if we know how to pool it. (Yeah) [Applause] We don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles; we don't need any Molotov cocktails. (Yes) We just need to go around to these stores (Yes sir), and to these massive industries in our country (Amen), and say, "God sent us by here (All right) to say to you that you're not treating His children right. (That's right) And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment where God's children are concerned. Now if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you."
Obviously Dr. King didn't realise that economic sanctions are a form of violence monopolised by state level actors?
This is the kind of behavior that I expect to see widely across America if we rely on random citizens to patrol instead of police. He was told by 911 to stay in his car, but instead he got out and shot Treyvon in supposed "self defense".
I'd say it's a toss-up if I absolutely had to guess.
We've had by far the greatest firearms proliferation in the Western world for centuries. In the 1920's you could buy fully automatic Thompson sub-machineguns from a mail-in catalog. ( http://www.nfatoys.com/tsmg/web/coltguns.htm ) Yet school shootings are a relatively recent (~30 years) phenomenon. Over that same 30-year period we've also had an increase in single-parent households as well as an increase in SSRI drug prescriptions. There doesn't seem to be anywhere near the willingness to attack those social issues or investigate their impacts on murderous outbursts.
Firearms proliferation seems to work well for Kennesaw, Georgia. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/06/us/kennesaw-georgia-gun-o...
But the data for everywhere else is a mixed bag: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/concealed-...
Also see Brazil with Primeiro Comando da Capital and Comando Vermelho which are violent organizations that have/had lofty goals similar to the growing movement (i.e. anti-police brutality, vengeance)[1]. Those groups now partake in degenerate drug and sex fueled parties and slaughter their enemies using advanced weapons. No need to worry though; their code of conduct proclaims that they fight for liberty, justice and peace and that rape is bad -- they're obviously the good guys.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primeiro_Comando_da_Capital#Hi...
This actually highlights the different experiences between middle class white (or Brazilian) and a black person (or someone living in the favelas). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_police_militias [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalh%C3%A3o_de_Opera%C3%A7%C... [3] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xweavd/police-are-killing...
It all indicates the problem isn't the gun, it's the person. And taking their gun away doesn't take away their problems. I find it odd that the current climate of acceptance and a desire to help others can so staunchly ignore mental health issues.
[0] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/416881/rates-of-gun-crim...
Here's video of the incident from 13 minutes prior (June 1): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36571421876...
And earlier recording of the hours beforehand (June 1, earlier): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36570100309...
You're not missing any violent context; just the bigger picture.
The protestors had umbrellas for hours; they were not "deployed" shortly before officers initiated violence. Protesters were up against the fence for hours and did not push it forward substantially. The umbrella the officer grabbed wasn't in anyone's face.
Note that 12,000 complaints were filed about SPD's overuse of force after that night.
> you can see some flashing from the crowd side - not sure what that is
Bud, that's a camera.
> But there is a clear pattern of escalation, tension, and confusion.
I totally agree with that statement. SPD repeatedly escalates peaceful situations into violent ones.
> The cops did not just say “let’s fuck up some protestors!” out of nowhere
Actually, they did, on video: https://twitter.com/Bishop_Krystal/status/126800997417045196...
At 7:00 in the video the protesters pushed the fence a couple of meters forward and almost broke the police line, that is not peaceful protesting. Pushing up a blockade against police is very aggressive, and can't be done by a single bad apple either. If protesters had been acting like this for hours then it makes sense that the police sprays them.
https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36571421876...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/george-floyd-pro...
Either they are not perceived as well as you think or these protests aren't about what they claim to be about.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/george-floyd-pro...
Either the metropolitan police are not perceived as well as you think they are or these protests aren't about what they claim to be about.
The 2010 G20 summit in Toronto must have been a walk in the park. One can see the police hand in hand with protesters singing kumbaya. Noted that this event had police officers from all over the country participating. Many conveniently forgot to wear badges and nametags, some conveniently had masks on:
https://www.google.com/search?q=g20+toronto+police+brutality...
And Vancouver, lovely city! Until they lose the Stanley Cup of course:
https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+stanley+cup+riots&...
"De Blasio, in this sense, is a remarkably unimaginative politician, like Andrew Cuomo. Police did stop doing their jobs, momentarily, after the murders of Liu and Ramos, in protest of de Blasio’s allegedly anti-police gestures. Arrests and summonses plummeted in early 2015. This, in labor and political parlance, is called a slowdown. The truth about the slowdown, as I’ve written before, is that crime remained quite low. Lack of police enforcement did not unleash the sort of disorder Lynch and his ilk always promise would come. It’s a small sample size, yes. But de Blasio has never used this data point to his advantage. Instead, he has grown only more defensive of his police department. Even in an age of COVID-19-induced catastrophe, with tax revenue evaporating by the month, de Blasio cannot bring himself to meaningfully cut funding to his police department."
Source: https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/why-is-the-nypd-so-powerfu...
