Abolish the Police

“Why don’t you listen to black people” is a cheap rhetorical move that doesn’t address the question. Black people believe many different things.

there is something else wrong with using restorative justice approaches in schools, which is that when it's done the kids go back to the same shit. which is also what happens when you put the kid on probation, so idk. it's like neither available remedy is the problem.

“Abolish the police,” even if you don’t think it’s actually feasible for some reason is a useful starting point for negotiation. That’s how you get to, perhaps, disarmed police.

it also is a semiotic issue in re what does "the police" represent.

Caity Johnstone:

There is not enough gold in the earth’s crust to make the number of olympic medals these people deserve for all the mental gymnastics they are performing to excuse unprovoked, completely unnecessary acts of violence from public employees whose job isn’t even statistically all that dangerous.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/police-and-their-apologists-have-already-lost-the-argument-92b62f353c58

Idk if you'll be able to see all of these, but this was a good explainer of what it might look like not to depend on police for things that they're not trained or prepared or suited for, and which they actively make worse:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_CzIZpzZ0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

“Abolish the police,” even if you don’t think it’s actually feasible for some reason is a useful starting point for negotiation. That’s how you get to, perhaps, disarmed police.

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Saturday, June 6, 2020 3:35 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

FWIW I am closer to “abolish the police” than “eight can’t wait.” I’m not all the way there though. I think you need some kind of last resort, monopoly on force system even if it needs to be dramatically reduced in size, funding and role.

“Why don’t you listen to black people” is a cheap rhetorical move that doesn’t address the question. Black people believe many different things.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, June 6, 2020 8:34 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

So first it's, "I don't want to listen to people who sit behind computers" and then it's "Black people aren't monolithic" (I never said they were though)--is there anyone you actually do trust on this subject or do you just want a potted answer that you can dismiss?

there is something else wrong with using restorative justice approaches in schools, which is that when it's done the kids go back to the same shit. which is also what happens when you put the kid on probation, so idk. it's like neither available remedy is the problem.

― contorted filbert (harbl), Saturday, June 6, 2020 8:35 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes.

oh hey a free book

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817-the-end-of-policing

re duties/responsibilities given to cops that could be better assigned -- where I live the police are in charge of issuing special event permits for parties / concerts / festivals etc. If you want a one-day alcohol license for a charitable event, you have to get permission from the local PD. This was something the City of Oakland had created a "task force" about after the Ghost Ship Fire and it never went anywhere.

Re police from within the community: I've felt VASTLY different ways about being in rooms full of police officers of different races. At my school, my principal was extremely close with the local police and they were almost uniformly white and bro-y and Blue Lives Matter-y and seemed like EXACTLY that guy that knocks ppl around and believes in "law and order" above all.

But in the majority Black neighborhood where I live, when we have meetings with the local precinct and we serve potluck dinners to a room of cops who are mostly Black or POC, it's genuinely pleasant. Totally different atmosphere.

It's still a broken system. The people sitting down together having dinner are still going to end up unfairly treated if they enter the system for any reason.

still going to end up unfairly treated if they enter the system for any reason.

The judicial/penal system is a whole 'nother level of fucked-up that needs addressing, too. But the more you expand the focus of the discussion, the more overwhelming it gets to fix and the more the current leverage generated by protest gets diffused over an enormous area of grievance.

Vitale is not really an abolitionist, he’s more of a reformer to the more radical end of reform. I am probably not that far off from him - I haven’t read his book but I have heard him speak.

xp It's all the same thing.

That’s how you get to, perhaps, disarmed police.

So the police are the only people in the US not allowed to be armed?

Clowns iirc

Idk if you'll be able to see all of these, but this was a good explainer of what it might look like not to depend on police for things that they're not trained or prepared or suited for, and which they actively make worse:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_CzIZpzZ0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Saturday, June 6, 2020 3:38 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Some of these are good but some strike me as vague and/or fantastical. For example, the idea of "neighbors who are trained in self-defense and deescalation" -- this idea of being "trained in self-defense" is a fantasy from movies and martial arts hucksters. It would take years of very intensive training to get to the level where you could confidently approach someone who might be prepared to attack you and/or might be armed, and you'd still be putting yourself at substantial risk of bodily harm. Not to mention that there's a pretty fine line between that and just vigilante justice. Or the idea that "trauma-informed crisis intervention teams" will always be sufficient to deescalate armed conflicts, for example, seems extremely naive and pie-in-the-sky. Or the idea that a "crisis intervention team" will be able to stop a fight without physically restraining people, like it nearly always takes physical restraint to get people to stop fighting, unless by "crisis intervention team" you just mean, like, municipal bouncers?

So the police are the only people in the US not allowed to be armed?

Beats the current situation.

yep

People who don’t carry guns can also physically restrain people. And there’s a lot less physical restraining that needs to happen on a regular basis than there are police wandering around looking to start shit. We can even let them use the cars with sirens!

I’m not saying I’ve got the right answers just like allow yourself to brainstorm

man alive I think you really need to take a step back and look at why you are so resistant to even discussing the thread topic as a general concept. it's really pretty weird how argumentative you're being.

here's what that those ideas io linked to look like on the ground:

https://www.registerguard.com/news/20191020/in-cahoots-how-unlikely-pairing-of-cops-and-hippies-became-national-model

also, read the Caity Johnstone link upthread

Municipal bouncers sounds way better than the police to me, nice thinking!

otm, bouncers generally know how to actually de-escalate shit

Friendlier demeanor. More likely to live near to where they work. Supportive of the scene.

Easily bribed - is that a positive or a negative?

a key failing they unfortunately share w cops

https://i.imgur.com/PCXZTBs.jpg

sorry 4 size

hmm yeah maybe I have actually backed into a good idea here. Although it seems like what that would really boil down to is just less-armed and very physically strong police? A bouncer can also throw someone out of the club. What recourse does the "municipal bouncer" have if a person just continues to be physical and dangerous?

call for backup just like the police do, each time you call you get a successively larger bouncer

Each larger bouncer envelops the smaller bouncer, like russian nesting bouncers

yup, exactly like the system Cahoots uses in that link above, send in a nonviolent trained street medic team with backup if needed, take it from there

these are harbl ideas guys

/joek

Do you or somebody you know think that #AbolishThePolice is unrealistic? It might be because you haven’t taken the time to understand what it means, the reasons for it, and why it actually makes a lot of sense. [Thread]

— Bridget Eileen (@TravelingNun) June 4, 2020

This is an interesting thread on what a major strand of ‘abolish the police’ thinking means, in line with Vitale’s suggestions, proposing that it’s not about literally getting rid of all policing / hating all cops, it’s about removing functions the police should never have been handed in the first place until policing, as it exists today, is unrecognisable.

The responses broadly break down into ‘why do u hate all cops and want to get rid of all policing?’ and ‘why do u not hate all cops and want to get rid of all policing?’.

this argument could be moot if the police abdicate: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/citizen-patrols-make-statement-in-minneapolis/2020/06/06/cc1844d4-a78c-11ea-b473-04905b1af82b_story.html

There seems to be a real split on whether abolish the police actually means abolish the police or not.

This is maybe more of a #DefundThePolice train of thought but I like it:

I always had this vague idea that we could find money to provide real social services in this country if we cared, but now that I’m looking up city and county and state budgets, it is 10,000% clear that the money was always there.

— Courtney Milan 🦖 (@courtneymilan) June 7, 2020

ppl who want to abolish the police vs ppl who want to abolish the police eventually vs ppl who don't

if the former sentiment gets more popular the latter group can easily pass as those in the middle

i know this is off topic but i think it's important people stop saying things like this

Drugs are destroying people’s lives in this country. So instead of providing access to treatment and recovery support and helping people escape addiction, we criminalize and send the police. Unless they’re white... in that case, they need treatment and recovery.

this is really, really not how it works ime

I was going to point that out as well. It’s kind of a canned woke person thing to say that just doesn’t reflect reality.

this is very much in line with the thread SV posted:

But so long as we’re talking about what the “defund the police” movement could mean in practice – in addition to cutting budgets – here are some ideas.

— David Menschel (@davidminpdx) June 7, 2020

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/06/01/police-reform-america-poll?fbclid=IwAR1zSeSHV_MpelKniX2DApwavH-iz5qMQW49qmVfg0GG0oKriHWDQCKKxG0

reducing funding for police has 15% support among republicans and 16% support among democrats. I genuinely don't know the answer to this, and it's something I struggle with: as a coms strategy, do you think a catchy hashtag with an ostensibly wildly unpopular policy idea does more good or more harm -- the good I could see is drawing people in to look into the idea more, the harm is just shutting people down entirely.

Catchy slogans is the only thing in my young life I’ve observed to be capable of (slowly) reshaping reality and public support around them.

Medicare for All certainly seems to work that way. But it also describes what it is pretty accurately, there's not much explanation needed. Give everyone access to the system we already know and mostly like known as Medicare as a means of delivering universal healthcare. Abolish ICE otoh (which I think also accurately describes what it is) seems like it kind of fizzled out.

OTOH, wonky bullshit like Eight Can't Wait is almost unquestionably dead on arrival.

my company once used "mind the gap" to explain budget cuts

that's because too many people remember Eight is Enough

reminds me of that one scene in Community

"For Green week, we're changing our name to Enviro-dale"
"We're ALREADY CALLED GREENDALE!"

Like let's devise a slogan that (1) has no inherent content or relationship to its subject matter and (2) requires people to remember eight different policy items, none of which are referred to in any way by the slogan, and also to remember the complex relationship of each of them to each other and to data.

"Campaign Zero" = same thing. Zero what? I keep hearing that and mixing it up with Vision Zero, the NYC program to end traffic deaths.