Maysie suggested a turn my question in another thread into a thread, thus I shall. Cueball has already responded to it in the other thread. I'll leave it to him to decide if he wants to repeat his answer here.
The question is:
So how can police officers be socialized differently and how would we as a society go about making this paradigm shift?
So how can police officers be socialized differently and how would we as a society go about making this paradigm shift?
First society has to question the need for policing at all. The institution is kind of like insurance really, for most people, it allays their fears about things they think might happen to them. When they do happen to them of course 99.9% of the time the police are there after the fact and do nothing. Most people believe that they act as a kind of deterent, but really, the most effective deterent to crime is social well being, employment and respect.
For example, the Toronto City police budget has doubled in the last 10 years, despite the fact that crime rates are not measurably different than they were 10 years ago. One billion dollars a year is blown on this particularly useless city service, when that money could be spent improving social services, and the infrastructure that makes the city a reasonable place to live.
The police services and the entire judicial system is like sucking wound on the taxpayers wallet, but if you feed people enough fear they will buy the insurance policy they will never need.
Second, once society realizes this fact, we don't have to switch paradigms at all, just shift the budget entries.
Third, the former police will be well socialized raking parks, filling pot holes, and handing out welfare cheques in their new jobs.
but really, the most effective deterent to crime is social well being, employment and respect.
I'm sure that's a deterrent to [i]some[/i] crimes, but not all. Lots of people have social well being, employment and respect. And then they stalk their ex-girlfriend anyway.
Any thoughts on how we should deal with those who don't repent their evil ways when the Utopia comes?
send them to an island and let the wraith feed on them?
If we didn't have police officers I would drive the 401 on my street bike at 250KPH and bring my handguns up to my hunting cabin to blast away paper targets. Maybe buy some automatic weapons too. I like where this no cop thing is going.
Would you really do that? Is a police force the one thing that's preventing you from going ballistic? Give yourself credit for having some sense (although I see nothing wrong with target practice) and a moral code.
That's not ballastic. I agree double time and a half on a ZXR Ninja streetbike is a little dangerous but I've been riding bikes for 24 years and I would only do it without anyone around, theres some nice open stretches of road.
As for the pistols and assault rifles, that's just for fun. I wouldn't partake in any dangerous shooting applications, just add pistols and assault rifles to the little shotgun and rifle range I have set up.
I would be concerned, without police officers or game wardens, about poaching though. Even WITH the high fines and reprecussions, people still poach, which makes me sick. I don't wanna imagine how bad it would be if they had carte a blanch.
I think this no cop thing is a great idea, actually; I don't know why no one has ever thought of it before. Please let me know when you get the little bugs worked out, then you can sign me up.
Imagine a country where the strong just take what they want? We'd be like the Sith Empire. We don't need police we could just police ourselves.
Oh please! The strong already take what they want, usually aided BY the police. We didn't always have the police. We could have a more community forcused approach to people who go off the rails. The police are not here because of us. The police are here to protect the wealthy and the elite and mainatin this structure - they are against people like us.
If the best answer you can come up with is "but what will we do without the police" you aren't thinking outside the box enough.
What's your proposal Stargazer?
What is your plan for a community based approach to policing?
And what do we feel about community based policing right now? I'll note that we generally refer to it as "vigilantism"... would that change?
I think it would be great to hear from people who are targeted by the police on a daily basis.
Then you would have a biased point of view regarding what to do with police.
Simple, get ride of them!
I'm not happy with a lot of the shit I see police doing but for those that make the remark 'just get rid of them' I'd like to hear their plan for replacing the police. Or if they just think get ride of the police and everything will run smoothly.
P4, please read Cueball's piece at post #1.
There are a LOT of sickos out there, while I understand police are not 100% effective in stopping or investigating sexual assault do you have any disagreement that it would be 100 times worse of those assholes didn't have SOME form of police to contend with?
Look at this prick.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/05/10/nl-milit...
Canadian soldier breakinginto homes assaulting women.
from another story
"Provincial police say the investigation resulted in 17 Criminal Code offences in relation to five female victims in the Petawawa and Kingston areas."
So who investigates this stuff if we get rid of the police?
Locks keep out honest theives.
While not always the case police do deter.
If people are interested in talking about alternative models, I think some of this ground got covered in the "conscripted police force" thread, which may still be open.
If the question is whether security needs to exist at all, It is a no-brainer, IMO. I don't think you even need to look at a system the size of a city to realize that there are people who need to see the stick to be persuaded to act in a way that respects others. I have personal experience with this every summer, and last month just about got my head kicked in trying to persuade a group of people that their right to play with fireworks out in the bush was not more important than the risk of burning hundreds of people to death.
Of course it is good to have a model in which the velvet glove is used first, in the form of a voice of reason from within the community. I agree that many of our police and security systems are a long way from that ideal, and that in fact to some degree one of their main functions is to oppress and keep people put down.
But as fucked up as most of our police forces are the hard fact is I don't see society working without them in some form. If anyone has any ideas for alternatives or reforms I am certainly open to them, because I am as angered and offended by the blue wall as many other people here are.
Well then, no time to bother with anything else then. The police are just dandy and we need them. case closed!
I don't think there's really such a false dichotomy in play here. Acknowledging that some criminals aren't going to be reformed by someone's Utopia isn't simultaneously a claim that the police, such as we have them right now, are perfect.
But unless you either have some ideas for how to prevent those crimes that otherwise aren't going to be prevented by way of well being, employment and respect (or you're willing to accept those crimes being committed) then proposing that we simply abolish authority is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I think everyone here is open to new ideas, notwithstanding the baby/bathwater one.
Sadly you also have to keep it out of the governance of the general populace. Otherwise you get Sheriff Arpaio types running things with the people waving flags behind him
why can there not be a middleground with some people?
Someone says - Police would not be needed if society was organized in a better way. Someone else says - Some police type presence would still be necessary.
Then someone comes in and says sarcastically - Ok no need to look at changes - police are great and we need them - thus pretty much ending the chance of a cordial debate.
In another thread - started by E Tamaran today - the moderater basically says that if you don't agree with E.T.'s false comparison you should just shut up or at best you're denying any racsim against FN by the Canandian Justice system ???
I realize nuanced gray area debates may be boring but come on ... why do people have to be so defensive and unwilling to try and understand someone else's point of view. I realize now why smart babblers like the big U steer clear of these threads.
@ Stargazer #17
I didn't say that. All I said was that I don't think a society as complex as ours can function without a police force of some sort, and I have some evidence and experience to back that up. I also said that I was open to ideas, and that includes ideas which challenge my own.
Further, I said I agree that the police at they currently stand are in many ways a force of oppression and are in great need of reform.
Now if you actually want to discuss this I am open to it.
Police are an expression of this particular social system, their necessity is not writ in stone IMHO. They come free - ok, out of the tax base - wherever wealthy neighbourhoods border slum districts, wherever the elite makes its vacations, wherever people are being underpaid or shut out from employment. Like lawyers and doctors they're an index of the dysfunctionality of a culture. Most of the tasks they perform could be accomplished with a properly trained kitchen stool.
A mature and harmonious culture - still a dream I cannot relinquish - would be made up of beings who had adequately internalized the appropriate social constraints to prevent critical damage to said culture. Petty crimes would be dealt with on a neighbourhood basis with some democratically determined agent responsible for their resolution. There are many cultures where 'crime' as we know it is rare, an anomaly.
Heirarchies too acutely pitched probably breed 'crime', so capitalism will probably always have it as companion.
Below a certain threshold I can tolerate them, but I think in much of North America 9/11 put paid to that moderate presence. I also think the apparent rise in socially tolerated state violence - hello Toronto - indicates decay, necrosis, a culture in retreat, or under stress and stupefied by it. Amazing how quickly modern societies can cover the distance from gratuituous casual brutality to criminals conspicuously hung from the lampposts.
I recently came across Derrick Jensen's 'Endgame' and I was blown away by his identification of contemporary western societies as 'death cultures'. I think he's, ahem, dead right and modern police forces, with their black clothing and conscious use of fear support this view, no?
I ALWAYS thought there was something profoundly shocking about having fellow citizens publicly displaying lethal weapons. I always thought, since i was a kid, this was some sick shit, there was nothing healthy, or cool, or ok about it. I always thought it was fucked up. Yes there are genuinely unpleasant people out there but the best way to deal with them is to STOP VOTING FOR THEM ha ha.
To make a thief, make an owner.
To create crime, create laws.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin "The Dispossessed"
@ Will, how can you possibly have "experience" with a society with no police. Care to explain?
We will always be the sick and twisted society we are, with our fake dependency on the police and police state we fool ourselves into thinking we don't have, and the fake rights we think we do have.
How about you tell me why the police are so important to our society? Better yet, how it is we won't be able to have a society without the blue coated criminals policing us for their masters?
I live in scary downtown Toronto. Surrounded by mixed housing, no less. Somehow, our garage was left open overnight. It's in an alley where I often see what I think are likely drug deals. The door was wide open. Nice bike and more just sitting there.
Nothing was touched.
The area I live in is a community that was created at one of those rare moments when housing was a political priority, and a vision of a seamless architectural approach was applied, with all of us sharing a glorious ribbon of a park. It's almost impossible to tell public housing from freehold townhouses from co-ops from condos.
No police were involved in this non-event.
Well then, no time to bother with anything else then. The police are just dandy and we need them. case closed!
So I take it you won't rise to the challange and provide an actual idea about how soceity would run without police [as you suggested?]
Are you just going to mock me the same way I mocked E.T's post? [Humm, that's Karma and well deserved I suppose!] 
That's the thing though when you think about it...
It's easy to copmplain about something but people don't seem that interested in sitting down and coming up with an actual solution. I've heard this NO POLICE!!! thing a lot but I have yet to hear a solution that would both work in the real world and avoid anarchy in the transition.
To make a thief, make an owner.
To create crime, create laws.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin "The Dispossessed"
Honestly, If I thought by saying those words I could make that reality I would do so too. It is a good reminder of how far we have to go, but we don't quite live in that world yet.
Stargazer, when you have police officers ask you how you can know you were raped if a judge doesn't decide you were raped, it kind of affects your perspective on the wonderful protectiveness of police doesn't it? Not that I bought into the myth in the first place, but that experience certainly deepened my understanding of their role to protect the status quo. Which leaves a lot of us out.
I have yet to hear a solution that would both work in the real world and avoid anarchy in the transition.
So you come to a progressive board to diss anarchists?
Police here in Toronto were successfully sued for using women as bait to catch a rapist! Hello, status quo supporters. There is a reality you don't seem to want to see while you call leftists dreamers.
There are a LOT of sickos out there, while I understand police are not 100% effective in stopping or investigating sexual assault do you have any disagreement that it would be 100 times worse of those assholes didn't have SOME form of police to contend with?
Look at this prick.
Nope. We don't agree. For example, burglars do not case the neighborhood looking to see if the police are not around -- they never are. They case the neighborhood looking for people who are not home. Compulsive sexual predators continue to assault people regardless of how much money we spend on the police, because they will always commit there crimes well away from the police. That is the way it works.
Deterence has little or no impact on "compulsive" behaviour. That is why it is called compulsive.
The number of times that the police actually aprehend someone in the commission of a criminal act is very small.Who really scares criminals? Other people scare criminals, not the police.
The drones need their teddy bears.
I live in scary downtown Toronto. Surrounded by mixed housing, no less. Somehow, our garage was left open overnight. It's in an alley where I often see what I think are likely drug deals. The door was wide open. Nice bike and more just sitting there.
Nothing was touched.
The area I live in is a community that was created at one of those rare moments when housing was a political priority, and a vision of a seamless architectural approach was applied, with all of us sharing a glorious ribbon of a park. It's almost impossible to tell public housing from freehold townhouses from co-ops from condos.
No police were involved in this non-event.
That's nice.
We live in a "transitional" area, lots of mixed housing. Our garage was left open, accidentally, one night. Not only did they remove several items we store there, but they backed up a truck and cleaned out my deep freeze.
The police assisted us in getting some stuff back - yard maintenance equipment and some well-used x-country skis we picked up second hand. The food, of course, was long gone. I save a little monthly and buy a side of beef every two years, had purchased one about two months before they cleaned us out. Anyway, no one was arrested, no charges were laid and we were grateful to get back what we could, which would not have happened without assistance.
I'm still pissed about the food. An armful would have seemed like a crime of opportunity, okay, my bad for not checking the door. But taking all our food really got to me.
The drones need their teddy bears.
Yes, I do think we need to have a police force of some sort to enforce the law. If you want to offer other options I am open to your argument.
(edit)
and FYI that night I confronted those people about letting off fireworks I didn't run crying to security or the cops either, I dealt with it by myself. I am glad they were there, though, and I am sure those people were aware of that too.
(edit)
and Timebandit. I know having anything stolen feels bad, but stolen food is not wasted food. I have had to tell myself that a few times.
There are a LOT of sickos out there, while I understand police are not 100% effective in stopping or investigating sexual assault do you have any disagreement that it would be 100 times worse of those assholes didn't have SOME form of police to contend with?
Look at this prick.
Nope. We don't agree. For example, burglars do not case the neighborhood looking to see if the police are not around -- they never are. They case the neighborhood looking for people who are not home. Compulsive sexual predators continue to assault people regardless of how much money we spend on the police, because they will always commit there crimes well away from the police. That is the way it works.
Deterence has little or no impact on "compulsive" behaviour. That is why it is called compulsive.
The number of times that the police actually aprehend someone in the commission of a criminal act is very small.Who really scares criminals? Other people scare criminals, not the police.
So in other words you still don't have a working design for how soceity will run without police. You just think we don't need them and it would be a better place?
Okay I'll agree with you and say deterence has no impact on compulsive behavior. Predators and murderers will do what they do regardless of the threat of jail.
Who catches these murders and rapists in your police-less world? Who investigates the crimes, connects the dots and figures out who exactly is breaking into peoples houses and killing them? Do you just wait until they get bored or until they come forward to write a book or something?
Case in point. That Canadian Forces colonel that was breaking into womens homes and assaulting them or killing them. Police, albeit rather slowly, connected the dots and ended up arresting him and putting him in jail.
How many MORE women would be dead right now by his sicko hands had the police not investigated and caught him?
In this policeless soceity who catches murderers and rapists? Or do people just not do those crimes?
I did. It's in post number 1 of this thread. Right at the top.
The reality is that 99.9999999% of all human activity is based in negotiated co-operation, and disputes are dealt with between the individuals themselves. But, rather than having enforcement that deals with the tiny fraction of abberant behaviours, we have enforcement to govern human behaviours far beyond those that require such interventions.
People, naturally would have to take more responsibility for each other as a community.
Case in point. You intervened. Others no doubt would have helped resolve the situation were they not a bunch of drones who have been taught to keep their head down and not get involved.
I did. It's in post number 1 of this thread. Right at the top.
Sorry, I don't see the practical application, and it's not like I am pretending that our police system isn't deeply flawed.
Even so, I remember being very grateful some years back when I ran up to stop a fellow who was beating up a woman on the street and he turned on me. I was much happier having a cop there to run up and take care of the situation than get into a fistfight with this fellow myself.
Better solution?
(edit)
Cueball#35
I am sorry, but your madeup stat doesn't jive with my personal experience. That said, I am open to discussing real options for better enforcement of the law. How about drunk driving? any ideas?
Case in point. You intervened. Others no doubt would have helped resolve the situation were they not a bunch of drones who have been taught to keep their head down and not get involved.
Yes, I think we have some common ground on the notion that there needs to be more community engagement in the law. I can still think of plenty of cases in which those cops are still necessary. And by saying that I am not supporting the status quo.
I saw a bunch of guys throwing rocks at each other on Bloor - one of the city's major streets. Big rocks. People were walking around them, right into the road, in an effort to not be hit.
I walked up to them. Stopped. Asked them to stop throwing rocks. Told them they looked silly. That, while they were throwing rocks at each other, they could hurt someone who was not involved. One of them was holding a massive rock in his hand. He tossed it meekly, just to show he was not going to be bossed around. I picked up the rock. I put it in a garbage container.
At this point, another women, who seemed to be from the neighbourhood, started to call her fellow locals on their behaviour.
The fighters dispersed.
No police were involved in this non-event.
Good. I'm glad that got fixed without the cops getting involved. I am still glad I didn't have to choose between getting the shit beat out of me and standing by and watching it happen to someone else.
I also remember having dogs stolen, almost certainly by a dogfighting ring (they don't actually use them for fighting. They use them to train their dogs, and often cut off a leg if they have to induce them to fight). The cops broke that up a few years later when one of the groups captured a litter of wolves to use for their fun and games.
I have also been face to face with a mafia thug (not in Canada), knowing that the only thing stopping him from taking the trucks I had with me was the soldiers and their machine guns that were sitting at the border post about 10 yards behind us. And sorry, it was a university-owned truck carring medical supplies. I wasn't on one of my bloodthirsty capitalist ventures.
I was born in a country where I'm sure police had a hand in stopping race riots. I am also sure they had a hand in starting race riots. And the question hangs: what drives a population into race riots? Is money for clampdowns really the best way to address the source of that problem?
This June, I saw police crawling through the streets. I know of one friend who had a gun pointed at her face. Close range. By a cop. For bringing a sweater to her friend. Who was trapped in pouring rain. By police. For doing it's-not-clear-what. I've seen convincing testimonials by women who were assaulted in a sexualized manner by police that same weekend. I've seen convincing footage of same.
The stats on domestic assault clearly show that women and children in police officers' homes are in greater danger than the national average. This despite a well-known code of silence about such cases.
Extreme argument? According to ... ?
@ writer #43
I'm not challenging abuses like that, and I think I have been pretty clear from the start that I recognize them, and the need for reform. But do you think we would be better off with absolutely no police at all?
That's the only extreme argument I am questioning.
(edit)
And, actually I have also had a weapon pointed at me - a machine gun, by a drunken border guard. So I agree they don't always live up to the standards they should.
writer, nobody is arguing that there shouldn't be change or that the status quo is fine as it is. You've got anecdotes about how bad the cops are and how harmless the general public is, I've got anecdotes that sometimes agree with that stance and sometimes give it the lie.
I once talked a guy out of stealing my wallet all by my lonesome. I once was glad the police were there to take away the neighbor who was having a psychotic break and threatening to kill me.
It's not that people are bad per se. It's just that there are and will always be a certain number who will do harm to others. Not having to have police sounds like a lovely idea, but so do rainbow unicorns who shit hershey's kisses.
I'm all for reform, but not elimination. i just don't have enough faith in human nature for that.
Extreme argument? According to ... ?
Oh come on.... according to me.
To say there should be no police whatsoever is at the extreme end of the spectrum. It's not a value judgement, in fact I have said repeatedly that I am open to hearing arguments in favour of that position, even though personally I seriously doubt it would ever fly.
Well, it's not an exteme argument according to me. Why would I engage in your distortion?
Not having to have police sounds like a lovely idea, but so do rainbow unicorns who shit hershey's kisses.
Why would I engage when this kind of bullshit is being slung around?
Consider it a colourful way of expressing that I think the position of no police an exceptionally unrealistic one.
Just an opinion.
Well, you show me no respect with that opinion, so I choose not to engage. This is a bogus discussion.
