zlacker

I’m not convinced that eliminating police altogether is a good idea, but after reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot (which cites your Stephen Pinker quote), I don’t think that a situation which also involved “taxi drivers... armed with Molotov cocktails” is representative of what might happen if police departments were disbanded under other circumstances.

(Edit: I regret putting snark over substance in this reply. See my response below, and others’ in this subthread, for a more detailed rebuttal.)

>>wolfga+(OP)
" I don’t think that a situation which also involved “taxi drivers... armed with Molotov cocktails” is representative of what might happen if police departments were disbanded under other circumstances"

Why not?

>>kyleee+u9
From the sounds of it, tensions were already running high in the city (and the police felt that they weren’t getting paid enough to deal with it); on top of that the police had incentive to time their strike to happen at the worst possible moment. They were also joined in their protest by other groups inclined towards violence, and had reason to encourage those groups (in order to show that they were needed). The reason all of the quoted incidents happened at once is because a lot of different groups were handed an opportunity on a silver platter by a group who had it in their best interests to see a lot of violence break out.

This is a very different scenario from a controlled, scheduled spindown of a department by the city government.

>>wolfga+6d
Competition is always high in between businesses. And taxi drivers are particularly nasty

>>shulta+lk
But if it wasn't an instantaneous policy change, both taxi companies and limo companies would hire private security or gear up with weapons.