These police weren’t called, they unlawfully pulled over two people for driving while black, then assaulted and raped them.
Are you saying we ought to give them a pass on that because they are just letting off steam?
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We’re already seeing the seeds of this. It’s not gaining a lot of traction yet because it’s largely the already semi-disenfranchised (read as “melanin enriched” or “financially deprived”) that are absorbing the brunt of the ever increasing effects of police militarization and a police culture that is no longer “protect and serve”, but “protect our interests and the thin blue line”.
That can’t hold forever. Society itself is becoming more olive toned and varied. Police are entrenching themselves more and more. When those with money/power start to become the targets of the police, the social/cultural restraints on anti-police actions will start to lessen as well. Then…
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Is there an alternative to police, and policing? I have considered the fact that a surveillance network could belong to a local community.
Everything could be recorded, never leave the surveillance devices until it was encrypted, and have it stored someplace…
And split the key 5 ways or something. Make sure it could only be decrypted in the event a complaint was made, and the info went through some process
A distributed surveillance state in the hands of the people being surveilled. like… neighborhood watch programs. It would be public only.
Theres tons of problems with that too. But it would protect people… and one of the main reasons I didn’t used to like the idea was it violated people’s privacy… but that’s apparently a moot point now. We lost that.
I agree whole heatedly. A badge is not a licence to be an a$$hole, deliberately cruel, abusive, or trigger happy. I just think some become that way because they are so over their heads they don’t know any other way.
I don’t want to excuse violence (and I do include the sexual assault done by these cops violence) by anyone. I just believe most people do not resort to violence as their first option, it is what happens when a person can’t figure out any other way to meet their goals.
I sincerely doubt there is any officer out there who starts their day by saying I am going to cavity search everyone I can find make up an excuse to search and then shoot the first kid who gives me lip. I believe there has to be more to the stories we hear on the news and reducing these incidences to simple black and white narratives is not helpful.
I firmly believe giving ever more powerful guns to police will only increase the us versus them mentality between police and the public. As the saying goes “to a man who has a hammer everything looks like a nail.”
I think it is time we emphasis other tools for the police to use and give them better emotional management tools so they don’t take their frustrations out on the rest of us.
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Civilized? What makes you think we live in a civilized society? The gang rape of a citizen occurs at the hand of the police and the back pages of the internet is the only place it gets reported and even then people hop in to defend the rapists. How is that civilized?
Cops are thugs. They selectively enforce laws to the benefit of the oligarchy and sadistically abuse the rest of us for amusement. The good cop trope is a lie. There are no good cops or the bad cops would be getting arrested by them instead of getting paid vacation for committing murder.
Our society functions in spite of the police and not because of them.
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So move to Somalia.
I’m not defending cops who break the law, they are criminals. But to lump all police together as “thugs” is to imply life would be so much better if nobody enforced laws. If laws aren’t enforced then there is no law. This is like conservatives who think if we got rid of the EPA our air and water would be just fine. I’m not defending rapists, I’m defending the idea of “police”, and if police aren’t doing their jobs right it doesn’t mean the job itself is wrong, it means the individual is wrong.
You haven’t offered a solution, you’re just griping.
I’m starting to think a patrolman’s annual review list of accomplishments reads like:
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Shot 20 dogs
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Ass-raped 10 suspects
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Confiscated $20,000 from random drivers
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Lied on the stand 34 times
Yeah? No. To call our police thugs is not a call for anarchy.That’s just the spin people like to use to defend our current police force. I call them thugs because they behave like thugs are are not held accountable for their criminal activity. What we want is a police for to be held to the same standards as the people from which they derive their authority. What we want is to not be in mortal fear when we encounter police. What we want is a police force that fights crime rather than oppressing minorities and the poor.
I offer no solution because the solution is as plain as day. Arrest criminals… even the ones with badges. Hold police accountable… In other words, they should do their god damned jobs. Is that too much to ask for or am I just griping?
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Really? The US has quite a large population, and it isn’t a police state. The English Civil Wars (which were a revolution de facto) did not lead to a police state. Ireland is many things, including a corrupt kleptocracy, but a police state isn’t one of them.
Personally I’m opposed to violent revolutions for the reason given by Yeats:
“Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar on horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again
The beggars have changed places but the lash goes on.”
Russia was a police state before the Revolution, unless you believe that those boyars and barins with whips were just comic opera props. China was a mess of competing warlords. Would Cuba have been a police state without constant US attempts to destabilise and destroy its government? And Cambodia’s revolution was a response to US bombing.
Every revolution is an individual revolution with individual circumstances and outcomes.
The question is whether, with growing inequality, religious polarisation and the rise of the activist Right, the US can revert to its pre-Reaganite apparent path without a violent revolution. But the parallels with pre-revolutionary Russia are getting a little disturbing. (Trump as Rasputin?). I hope for everybody’s sakes that the middle classes wake up, and act in their own interests for once. After all, Marx argued that a bourgeois revolution was needed before socialism. (…not put forward seriously though)
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We all want the cops to do better. We want them to stop assaulting citizens, especially black citizens now. Honestly, the ball is in their court on how they want to handle these problems moving forward. So far, it’s generally been doubling down and rearming. As long as the police don’t deal with the racists in their midst, focus on their mental health, and continue to put cops who commit murder on desk duty or give them a paid vacation, this is not going to change. They need to be subject to the same laws all of us are, not to some different standards that allows them to get away with murder and abuse. They work for us and they need to remember that if they want the public’s trust and support.
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Can you go back to the part where you said we weren’t a police state and start there?
There’s a police state. We’re watched. And political police enforce political will.
It’s why 80% of the people in prisons are considered political prisoners by anyone outside the bullshitty press bubble that exists in the United States.
Drug charges.
Our police protect property and uphold the law… More for poor than the rich. If you are poor, you are a criminal waiting to be charged. If you have no means you can be picked up, ass raped, and sent a bill for the ass raping.
If you’re rich, you get a smile and a nod…
Even if you’re driving down the main Street in Seattle, piss drunk, the wrong way, in the middle of the road… Some billionaire lady told me about her run in with the police, while her friend was driving… She said they were very nice and polite. She was worried but they just told them to be safe and have a nice night.
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There was a time without cops, and there are still places where there are no cops. I’ve been there. It looked like everywhere else in the states.
Not Somalia.
Speaking as a thug. Cops are not thugs.
Cops protect property. Not people. They also harrass the shit out of people, but it’s because no one’s ran them off.
Personally I’d like to see communities work with the local criminal population. The actual thugs. Pay protection money… Not taxes. And get protection.
They do protect you, you know… When you pay your money.
They actually show up. And deal with shit. The thugs. Plus they’re nicer and more reasonable.
Thugs > cops.
Unfortunately, as John McVicar has pointed out (the armed robber who reformed and became a criminal psychologist), violent criminals tend to be so because they are unable to exercise self-restraint and are impulsive. These are exactly the same characteristics that make for bad policemen.
As a matter of fact, in London, the same families have provided both policemen and organised criminals.
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They just need a supervisor who knows how to communicate with them in a language they understand.
But you have a great point!
And in their own head and with their peers: “Saved civilization from collapse 70 times”
Brings to mind the ol’ CS Lewis quote:
I’m sure they actually think they are doing good work in the world. Which is really horrifying.
(edit: don’t know why this replied to some_guy, should have been reply to Ulysses)
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“Not raping people in public” counts as a superpower now? Justice League, here I come!
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So if we agree, then why are we arguing?
Look, I was responding to someone who was saying “shoot cops” was a valid solution, then you come in with “The good cop trope is a lie. There are no good cops…” and “society functions in spite of the police and not because of them”, so naturally it sounds like you are opposed to the very idea of police or laws, even though that was not your intent.
Furthermore, the term “civilized” isn’t an either/or choice, there are shades of “civilized” (my grandmother would say nose-picking is uncivilized, but it’s far more civilized than say, punching someone in the face), and I was arguing against randomly shooting cops because that is less civilized than trying to legislate or litigate. We may never have an ideal, perfectly civilized society, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
For the record, there are good cops, and they are just overwhelmed by a system that is more like a fraternity than a profession. Complaining about the cops in such a heated, uncompromising way is griping, asking that they be held to the same laws is more like offering a solution.
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(This is really a tangential discussion, but as I mentioned further up the thread, some historians debate whether the American Revolution was a “true revolution” since King George remained on the throne, prominent colonists remained in power, and life in the new United States was not markedly different than life in the colonies, the only difference was that wealth wasn’t being extracted and sent back to England. Compare that to the French Revolution of a few years later. Whether the US is a police state or not is debatable too-- I can’t imagine us having this discussion publicly in plenty of other countries without being arrested, but there’s no denying how much of our lives are monitored. )
The problem then just shifts to one of actual policing. What happens when you see something on the camera? Who is responsible for enforcing the rules? What next, a million little city states each with their own police force only accountable to the locals? That’s been tried before in a million places at a million different time periods. Never seems to have worked out well before.
What we have now is a system that’s ever separating from the people it’s supposed to protect. That needs to be reversed. Without that, then the previously predicted “Us vs them” war is somewhat inevitable.
Can you give me a couple of examples out of the millions of tries? I’d like to read up on how they failed.
