Real end goal of George Floyd "protests" ...

[Derec]

And even when someone is violent and dangerous, there is a responsibility of the ethical to accept the inherent value of human life, even if someone else does not.

I think it would be irresponsible for a police officer to unduly risk his/her life and the lives of other police officers in order to protect the life of somebody who is attacking them.
At the end of the day, these police officers want to come home, just like all of us. And as they say, it's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

If anything, we need to make a police force and a model for policing which abhors violence, and uses tools to make violence against officers both absolutely unnecessary and absolutely counterproductive. We have the tools in a modern society to make this a reality.

No, what you are describing is utopia. What should a police officer do if some perp pulls a gun at them? Set the phaser to "stun"?
That doesn't even work in the utopia that is the Star Trek universe all the time ...

 

[Derec]

Lawfare has an article up on it you might want to check out.

Link?
Anyway, I am not a lawyer. I just know that the left-wing politicians like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren called the justified shooting of Michael Brown a "murder". My fear is that Democrats want to prosecute police officers for shootings where the officer did nothing wrong. It is already the case that civil awards have no correlation with whether the police officer did anything wrong - we should not extent that to criminal prosecution as well.

 

[Derec]

And, of course, what is "justified" in the eyes of knee jerk law and order types or in the eyes of the law may defer from what is "justified" by decent human beings.

Well, whether a shooting is justified is a legal concept.

But I will play. What are your criteria for a justified shooting? If an unarmed perp physically attacks a police officer, is that justified for example? What about if an armed perp pulls a gun at police officer but it turns out it was a realistic replica he used to rob some people earlier?

 

[Derec]

Not having thugs on the public's payroll (and thus effectively in taxpayers' name) brutalize unarmed people who pose no threat to anyone is another hallmark of civilisation.

A question: do you think Mario Benjamin was a threat? Or Thurman Blevins? City councilor Fletcher used both of those as an example of Minneapolis police are out of control, but both of these men were a clear and present threat and both sh

If a temporary spike in garage break-ins during the transition period is the cost of replacing the current publicly paid armed gangs calling themselves "police" with a force that actually helps and protects the public that pays its wages, that really is a bargain, even from a purely utilitarian perspective.

I do not accept the premise that police are "armed gangs". And if police is abolished, even temporarily while People's Militia or whatever they want to call it is established, garage break-ins would be the least of Minneapolis citizens' problems. Do you really think murder rate would not go up as well?

Morally, when someone on your pay (as a taxpayer) commits crimes and you let them get away with it in full knowledge of what they did, it's as if you had personally committed those crimes.

I think that was Osama bin Laden's self-serving justification to murder 3,000 Americans.

That's much worse than an individual outlaw committing a crime. You may never be able to reduce the number of outlaws to zero, but what you can do (or try) is reduce the number of people who commit crimes on duty, being paid by your tax dollars, without suffering consequences, to zero.

And you are not going to do that by utopian ideas about police abolition.
All that would happen is that the number of outlaws getting away with their crimes would shoot up. As would the number of vigilantes. Sounds more like a dystopia to me!

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Hell, why not.

[youtube]TynqK1TX4zI[/youtube]

 

[Derec]

To say that radical police reform would necessarily or even likely involve more subsequent lawlessness, even temporarily, is basically just using a non-sequitur, imo.

It's not a non-sequitur, it's right there in Lisa Bender's article. She is one of Minneapolis councilors pushing police abolition.

 

[Derec]

Hell, why not.

[youtube]TynqK1TX4zI[/youtube]

"Progressive stack" fauxgressives on the horns of a dilemma ...

Who is higher on the "progressive stack" I wonder.

 

[repoman]

fairly solid presentation about qualified immunity for D-wreck




I would say that even pulling cop's impunity back halfway compared to what it is now would make a large difference. Knowing the odds of getting in legal or employment trouble.

Just hope that the pendulum does not go too far and police are not hamstrung.

BUT, that fear is not a reason to do nothing, As the pendulum is swinging too far, then address concerns of excessive reforms.

I would say that the police abolitionists are not at all going to get what they want, but coming in with an extreme negotiating position is a good idea.

 

[ruby sparks]

To say that radical police reform would necessarily or even likely involve more subsequent lawlessness, even temporarily, is basically just using a non-sequitur, imo.

It's not a non-sequitur, it's right there in Lisa Bender's article. She is one of Minneapolis councilors pushing police abolition.

I do not fully understand what she said, but assuming it meant what you think it did (which it easily might, although I can think of one nuance) it is imo still a non-sequitur. I was not necessarily talking about her proposal in particular and I said radical police reform, not disbandment. That said, in principle, even disbandment could hypothetically work, without increases in unaddressed unlawfulness, if handled in a certain way. It would not, I don’t think, necessarily imply a gap where there was no policing. If it did then yes, I’d agree there’d be a downside as regards law and order, obviously.

I live in a country where this worked, to solve a problem that was similar in some ways (different in others) so I am not as negative about it as you seem to be.

Or let me put it another way. If you object to this particular proposal, or to going as far as disbandment, then (a) do you agree that reform would be a good idea and (b) how far do you think it should go?

 

[ruby sparks]

fairly solid presentation about qualified immunity for D-wreck




I would say that even pulling cop's impunity back halfway compared to what it is now would make a large difference. Knowing the odds of getting in legal or employment trouble.

Just hope that the pendulum does not go too far and police are not hamstrung.

BUT, that fear is not a reason to do nothing, As the pendulum is swinging too far, then address concerns of excessive reforms.

I would say that the police abolitionists are not at all going to get what they want, but coming in with an extreme negotiating position is a good idea.

I would tend to agree. It might arguably be a good idea to dial back the leeway given to police (to deal with excesses and blatant unfairnesses to non-police) without eliminating the leeway altogether.

Especially in a ‘litigation culture’ such as the USA, not giving police (and other public officials) at least some reasonable leeway, may not be in the interests of society as a whole. Police are asked to do a very difficult job indeed.

And as you say, advocating abolition may merely be a starting position in negotiations.

Another alternative, mentioned in the video, would be much more effective internal auditing of police behaviour, or perhaps an independent complaints authority that has teeth. Both of those could be a useful form of accountability that could incorporate reasonable leeway for police officers.

 

[barbos]

Hell, why not.

[youtube]TynqK1TX4zI[/youtube]

Reminded me people who call 911 and complain about quality of crack they just purchased.

 

[Jokodo]

Show your work.

For a taxpayer/voter to "let them get away with it" means for her to fail to devote 100% of the half-bit-per-year communication bandwidth she is allotted for communicating her directions to her employees to making sure the criminal public servants are punished for their crimes.

Slow down with your assumptions. Members of the public have much more than half a bit of communication bandwidth per year. There's, among others, letters to editors, haggling representatives, and, yes, protests and riots. If you don't understand the protests are an attempt by part if the public to communicate their disapproval of public employees' way to carry ot their job, I don't see much use to continue the conversation.

There are a hundred other varieties of misgovernment going on that the voter would have to choose to let slide, in order to maximally prioritize not letting the employees get away with it. Maybe if we had direct democracy, or a representative system that didn't limit voters to a choice among bad options, then it would be as if she had personally committed those crimes. Back in the real world, not so much.


Much worse for whom? It's not much worse for a person murdered by a cop than it is for a person murdered by an individual outlaw. On the other hand, it is much worse for a taxpayer/voter who uses self-congratulation as a basis for social policy. This widespread feeling that the most important thing is to avoid getting one's own hands dirty appears to be the main reason public policy de facto treats an identifiable person as overwhelmingly more valuable than a statistical person.

I'm not sure I know what you mean with that, and whether (and if so why) you think it's a bad thing. Can you give examples?

You may never be able to reduce the number of outlaws to zero, but what you can do (or try) is reduce the number of people who commit crimes on duty, being paid by your tax dollars, without suffering consequences, to zero.

But there are only two ways to reduce the number of people who commit crimes on duty being paid by your tax dollars without suffering consequences to zero. (1) Unroll the last six hundred years of centralization of government, career-transition all the people being paid by your tax dollars to perform public duties, and return you to serfdom under whichever local lord can make you work his lands, or (2) abolish innocent-until-proven-guilty, right-to-counsel, right-to-remain-silent, search-warrants, and trial-by-jury, whenever the person suspected of crimes is a public servant. Which of those options should a taxpayer try to bring about, in order for it not to be morally as if she had personally committed those crimes?

Alright, not zero, there's going to be unclear cases. There is however ample room to improve accountability and prevent police from *systematically* getting away with abuse without abandoning proper procedure.

 

[Metaphor]

Other countries manage to do much better than the US:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries

Here are some graphics from the link above:

Most of those were misleading and unhelpful, mixing up populations, timescales, and counts.

I know the point The Guardian was trying to make, but they made it hard to figure it, and inexplicably also dumbed it down.

 

[Metaphor]

What some of them want is indeed the abolition of police. They don't make a secret of this. They put it on Twitter and write articles that appear in mainstream media. Many of the police abolitionists are also prison abolitionists. It beggars belief that people think this, and then, as if to test the apogee of my incredulity, they freely confess to their unhinged radicalism.

Police abolition is something that can almost be imagined--after all, organised police forces didn't exist until the 19th century. But police abolitionists don't really imagine a world without police; they imagine one where "community policing" (still funded by the State, obviously) replaces actual police. Just like prison abolitionists don't really imagine a world without prisons--they imagine a world where violent criminals are put in "custodial centres close to their families and communities" (that is, prisons).

The actual abolition of police would put untold numbers of people in new danger. If you want some non-answers to questions on what a world without police would look like, take a gander at this cringepiece on Mother Jones. I'm put in mind of the scene in The Simpsons where Lionel Hutz imagines a world without lawyers.

In any case, I would like to ask a police abolitionist, if there are any on this board, if there are any countries in the world without a police force or law enforcement officers. I googled it and I cannot discover any.

 

[bilby]

Many parts of the US have completely abandoned policing, in favour of law enforcement.

That they call themselves "police" is a joke - they adhere to none of the nine Peelian principles which define the difference between police and vigilantes, enforcers, soldiers, or just a gang with access to the resources of the state.

Abolition of the worst such organisations, and their replacement by a new organisation with a focus on avoiding bias and conflict in their dealings with the public (including its criminal elements) would be a good step in the right direction.

As Ruby Sparks hinted earlier in the thread, this was done quite effectively in Northern Ireland in 2001, when the RUC, which was perceived by both sides to have a distinctly loyalist bias (indeed each of the three words in its name imply loyalist sympathies, in descending order of obviousness), was abolished and replaced by the PSNI, whose focus was on recruiting a more diverse group of officers at all ranks, and on policing with a greatly reduced level of bias.

I doubt that everyone in Northern Ireland loves the new police; But I certainly get the impression that they are no longer seen by most as just the best equipped of the unionist gangs.

There are police, and then there are police. Sacking Judge Dredd, and replacing him with Dixon of Dock Green is futile, unless you abolish the entire structure that creates enforcers like Dredd, and replace it with one that encourages policemen like Dixon.

 

[ruby sparks]

I doubt that everyone in Northern Ireland loves the new police; But I certainly get the impression that they are no longer seen by most as just the best equipped of the unionist gangs.

You made good points bilby.

Just on the above:

In the latest figures, 51% of respondents surveyed agreed that the replacement police force here (the PSNI) were on the whole (ie aside from any issues around perceived bias) doing a good job. This compares unfavourably to an equivalent 62% for England and Wales but is an improvement over the 41% obtained here 10 years ago (also for the PSNI). I do not have comparable figures for the RUC (ie pre-2001) but on the issue of bias it is generally agreed they were partisan because they were almost entirely from one side of the community.

So there has been good progress. Plus, no apparent lowering of standards (even though AA quotas were initially used, for the first 10 years I think). I am not aware of any evidence or reports in this regard, official or otherwise. Nor am I aware of any problematical interim/transition period following the disbandment of the old police force and the introduction of the new one.

Most encouragingly and indeed most relevantly, 84% of respondents now agree that both sides of the community are treated equally by the new police force, and this percentage has been rising year on year. Given that the country is now almost 50/50 Catholic/Protestant and that in the days of the RUC, Catholic support was minimal, 84% approval is quite remarkable.

I believe I have quite good reason to be sceptical of anti-AA claims in general as a result, even though I acknowledge the two situations are not the same, though lately the American situation appears in some ways worse than or at least as bad as the situation here by the time of the late 90’s. The streets of America today look more like our streets in the 1960s, when police baton-charged civil rights protesters and were verging on being a law unto themselves.

Sometimes I truly think that those who strongly oppose AA (which of course comes in weak and strong forms and varieties and does not necessarily involve quotas at all) just don’t really, actually, want things to get better, especially when some of them deny there’s even problems to address, which there plainly still are, even if they are sometimes overstated.

I can still remember the opposition to police reform here (from what was the ‘establishment’ side) and the lack of optimism and the fear-mongering and concerns raised, including the issue of bias against Protestant applicants. The doubters and opponents have pretty much gone silent now.

 

[Jarhyn]

I doubt that everyone in Northern Ireland loves the new police; But I certainly get the impression that they are no longer seen by most as just the best equipped of the unionist gangs.

You made good points bilby.

Just on the above:

In the latest figures, 51% of respondents surveyed agreed that the replacement police force here (the PSNI) were on the whole (ie aside from any issues around perceived bias) doing a good job. This compares unfavourably to an equivalent 62% for England and Wales but is an improvement over the 41% obtained here 10 years ago (also for the PSNI). I do not have comparable figures for the RUC (ie pre-2001) but it is generally agreed they were partisan because they were almost entirely from one side of the community.

So there has been good progress. Plus, no apparent lowering of standards (even though AA quotas were initially used, for the first 10 years I think). I am not aware of any evidence or reports in this regard, official or otherwise.

Most encouragingly and indeed most relevantly, 84% of respondents now agree that both sides of the community are treated equally by the new police force, and this percentage has been rising. Given that the country is now almost 50/50 Catholic/Protestant and that in the days of the RUC, Catholic support was minimal, 84% approval is quite remarkable.

I believe I have quite good reason to be sceptical of anti-AA claims in general as a result, even though I acknowledge the two situations are not the same (though lately the American situation appears in some ways worse, and more divisive, than the situation here by the time of the late 90’s).

Sometimes I truly think that those who strongly oppose AA (which of course comes in weak and strong forms and varieties and does not necessarily involve quotas at all) just don’t really, actually, want things to get better, especially when some of them deny there’s even problems to address, which there plainly still are, even if they are sometimes overstated.

I can still remember the opposition to police reform here (from what was the ‘establishment’ side) and the lack of optimism and the fear-mongering and concerns raised, including the issue of bias against Protestant applicants. The doubters and opponents have pretty much gone silent now.

As I said before, there are two drivers to economic momentum: force and friction. AA addresses friction: reducing friction so existing force is more meaningful in building momentum. And then additional force, which comes in the form of direct monetary and educational contributions.

They are against AA.

They are against Welfare.

They are against improving education spending in disadvantaged communities.

All they offer is "hopes and prayers", which simply means, they are full of shit about wanting things to change. Real motivation entails real effort.

 

[Toni]

Other countries manage to do much better than the US:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries

Here are some graphics from the link above:

Most of those were misleading and unhelpful, mixing up populations, timescales, and counts.

I know the point The Guardian was trying to make, but they made it hard to figure it, and inexplicably also dumbed it down.

I didn't find it difficult to understand.

The fact is that the US has far too many guns and far too many are used to make some people feel as though they are not powerless sniveling cowards. Police forces are far too militarized and the go to solution for anytime anybody is scared or can claim that they are is to shoot first, ask questions later. Something that a lot of people are proud of.

 

[ruby sparks]

I doubt that everyone in Northern Ireland loves the new police; But I certainly get the impression that they are no longer seen by most as just the best equipped of the unionist gangs.

You made good points bilby.

Just on the above:

In the latest figures, 51% of respondents surveyed agreed that the replacement police force here (the PSNI) were on the whole (ie aside from any issues around perceived bias) doing a good job. This compares unfavourably to an equivalent 62% for England and Wales but is an improvement over the 41% obtained here 10 years ago (also for the PSNI). I do not have comparable figures for the RUC (ie pre-2001) but it is generally agreed they were partisan because they were almost entirely from one side of the community.

So there has been good progress. Plus, no apparent lowering of standards (even though AA quotas were initially used, for the first 10 years I think). I am not aware of any evidence or reports in this regard, official or otherwise.

Most encouragingly and indeed most relevantly, 84% of respondents now agree that both sides of the community are treated equally by the new police force, and this percentage has been rising. Given that the country is now almost 50/50 Catholic/Protestant and that in the days of the RUC, Catholic support was minimal, 84% approval is quite remarkable.

I believe I have quite good reason to be sceptical of anti-AA claims in general as a result, even though I acknowledge the two situations are not the same (though lately the American situation appears in some ways worse, and more divisive, than the situation here by the time of the late 90’s).

Sometimes I truly think that those who strongly oppose AA (which of course comes in weak and strong forms and varieties and does not necessarily involve quotas at all) just don’t really, actually, want things to get better, especially when some of them deny there’s even problems to address, which there plainly still are, even if they are sometimes overstated.

I can still remember the opposition to police reform here (from what was the ‘establishment’ side) and the lack of optimism and the fear-mongering and concerns raised, including the issue of bias against Protestant applicants. The doubters and opponents have pretty much gone silent now.

As I said before, there are two drivers to economic momentum: force and friction. AA addresses friction: reducing friction so existing force is more meaningful in building momentum. And then additional force, which comes in the form of direct monetary and educational contributions.

They are against AA.

They are against Welfare.

They are against improving education spending in disadvantaged communities.

All they offer is "hopes and prayers", which simply means, they are full of shit about wanting things to change. Real motivation entails real effort.

Yes, I read what you said about that (momentum, force and friction etc) and I thought it was a very good analysis.

I totally agree with you about there at least being a fairly large element among AA critics, for example, who are, underneath it all, simply not in favour of real, meaningful progress, for whatever reason. And yes, at least some of them are just full of shit. No question about it by any reasonable definition. We need look no further than the telltale denialism and indeed the minimising (which is a weak form of denialism) of the relevant problems.

Oh and then there’s the incessant doomsayers, the disasterists, pessimists and cynics. But maybe quite a few of those are just versions of the previously mentioned non-progressives, for whatever valid or specious reason. Boy did we have plenty of them here before things got better. I’m not sure Americans, by which I mean everyone in the country, can afford them in the current situation, which is basically yet another crossroads and indeed (yet another) gaping opportunity for change for the better.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Morally, when someone on your pay (as a taxpayer) commits crimes and you let them get away with it in full knowledge of what they did, it's as if you had personally committed those crimes.

Why do you think so? It seems clearly false to me, given reasons and counterexamples. But for example:

1. No, they are not on your pay. The government pays them, not you. And taxes are taken from you by the threat of force.

2. You do not know in most cases who are commiting the crimes. And if sometimes you do, usually you do not have the means to stop it. And if it's about protesting, there are many other things that are broken and that you can contribute your time and effort to fix instead. Why would you have an obligation involving this particular one? Some of those things involve the use of taxpayer money, whereas others do not. But you do not have the time do deal with all of them. Nor do you have an obligation to spend all of your time helping others, with no free time for yourself.

3. The police are a big net positive. Imagine the police were right now dissolved. Many, many more innocent people would be murdered. And raped. And robbed. And beaten up badly. And you name it.

4. Imagine some people actually on your payroll (not like this case, but actually) commit crimes. And you know it. And you can stop them from getting away with it, somehow. But if you do, many, many more innocents will be victims of equally serious crimes. Suppose you choose then to let them get away with it, though you find their actions despicable, because you prefer to let that happen rather than prevent it at a very high cost in terms of innocent lives, and suffering. Does that make you morally as guilty as the thugs on your payroll, who commit those crimes? Clearly not.