Seize the Memes of Production
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the “ML” influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Rules:
Be a decent person.
No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, zionism/nazism, and so on.
Other Great Communities:
My friends sister literally watching someone drive away with her car: calls the cops. "Sorry, there's nothing we can do. Call your insurance company."
Me driving past Target 2 days later: 6 cop cars and a half circle of officers surrounding one dude with a backpack...
Yeah suburbanite it's totally you they're here for.
It's a double edged sword right?
Here in The Netherlands, are police hasn't really been defunded per se, but significantly underfunded for quite some time now. Police are swamped and no longer have the numbers nor resources to take back control. Every year you see their grip loosening. Look at for example what happened during New Years eve, it's become a national sport to throw illegal fireworks (which are basically bombs) at police and other public services. It gets worse every year. This is in a country where the police isn't seen as the bad guy, the cops rarely shoot anyone, and if they do they get in lots of trouble, they must justify why they took the shot.
So I'm a bit conflicted with this post. On the one hand, it's clear that the police in the US is abusing power and has probably gotten too strong, therefore defunding could be solution. At the same time, I'm seeing what defunding, or at least under funding, is doing to my country.
I do think there is a middle ground solution, at least for the US. Accountability and third party oversight would go a long way to ensuring everything stayed above board.
And are you replacing them with empowered local communities that have the means to defend themselves? Or are citizens still curtailed by the state.
The average Dutch person would see that more as vigilantes doling out 'justice' than communities defending themselves. Weapons are also not readily available here, basically you can only get a license when you are a registered sporting shooter (first year you can only use weapons of your local association) or professional hunter, which is all heavily regulated and your weapons will be accounted for on a regular basis.
But the state can dish out 'justice' all it wants, and that's somehow okay?
You literally give up your right to defend yourself and your community and in return you get policing and laws that benefit the ruling classes and industrialists.
Give me what Rojava and the Zapatista have over the state authority model any day, one of them actually benefits the people and it's not the state.
But the state can dish out 'justice' all it wants, and that's somehow okay?
Yes, but it helps I live in a society where the justice system works a lot better than in dystopian shit holes like the US.
You literally give up your right to defend yourself and your community and in return you get policing and laws that benefit the ruling classes and industrialists.
Our system might not be perfect and our government has dropped the ball here and there, but it's definitely not that bad. And definitely nothing that warrants armed rebellion by the masses.
Oh please, in just seconds of googling I've found your courts siding with Chevron, cases like Milieudefensie et al. v. Royal Dutch Shell the courts let Shell get away with no cutting emissions, and so on and so forth.
They are without a doubt enablers for corporate interests, something I'm sure most citizens would not be in agreement with if they had the means to preside over such cases.
And let's not even get started on them going easy on that athlete who raped a 12 year old kid.
This liberal bullshit where you think the system is actually an entity of good is entirely the problem for the fucked state of the world. More concerned with following laws catering for and paid for by lobbyist bribes than what's best for the people, but because it's all so abstracted and out of power for the ordinary citizen they carry on thinking everything is grand.
Wow. You need to travel more. A lot more.
And if you think any other modern nation state is blameless with the multinationals, maybe at least read a bit more?
Bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem and all, but NL is nowhere near the hellhole the States is now. It's a categorically different experience.
I’m an anarchist, I do blame all states for this and advocate for destroying all of them in favour of local, direct empowerment.
And you seem to think Im American, I’m not. You need to stop defending the status quo and start getting radical because we our planet is fucked if you people don’t start demanding real change.
What if I want Mad Max style outlaws? Who should I vote for?
Vote for the cops. That's basically the plot of the original movie
Anyone, it'll get there eventually.
i understand where its coming from, but the take of abolishing police, without replacing it with proper police seems insane.
Your problem is not the existence of the concept of police in general. The way most of your States do police is the problem.
They need checks and balances, proper education and training and ofc vetting to weed out psychopaths and extremists. none of which is happening ... instead, the vetting is likely done by people who shouldn't have been on the force to begin with.
good luck
No, my problem is police.
I want community defence, not cops.
how do you deal with criminal activity that extends beyond your community?
You work with the other community it extends into.
Counter point, ever person advocating for the complete abolishment of the police with no concept of a replacement law enforcement service seems to believe that there are zero bad guys.
Let's get real, jealousy is human, most people don't really act on it, some people will.
As long as we live in societies we will need some kind of system that upholds the rules, if not police, then some other concept.
As for how many bad guys there are, I will absolutely agree that the number of true bad guys are probably way less than the paranoid people claim.
Who calls for the abolishment of the police, that does not also call for community defence?
Just about every post I have seen about abolishing the police never mention any alternative.
Even when I asked people about it they just danced around the issue.
Talking to some inhabitants of inner city high crime areas has changed my mind on defunding the police. Those most affected by high crime in their areas, would like a better trained police that actually gets crime under control.
Defunding the police seems to me like a white college educated middle class idea.
The word "police" is not synonymous with "law enforcement." Police have only existed for the most recent 2% of civilization. All the grand historical empires you've heard of through history? They didn't have police. There weren't any cops in ancient Rome. There are ways of enforcing laws that do not involve having a clique of people that make it their entire career and develop an in-group culture hostile to everyone else.
For example, a common method of enforcing laws was through universal service. In many Medieval towns and cities, every male of a certain age and wealth had to spend a certain number of nights per year on town guard duty. It wasn't your profession; it was a duty you took on like jury duty.
Maybe you'll always need some career professionals for certain specialized tasks. I don't think we can assign crime scene investigation duties to a random person. But in terms of the people that actually show up when a crime is being committed? I would trust a randomly selected person from the population rather than your typical police officer. If drafted individuals can handle fighting literal wars, they can handle the duties of a beat cop.
The problem is that policing, as an institution, attracts really bad people. It's a relatively accessible path for people to gain a great deal of power over others; thus it attracts the worst our society has to offer. The police profession attracts people who want to hurt and violate others. Grade school bullies grow up to be cops. If instead of policing being a full time job, it's a gig that anyone can be assigned at random for a period of time, then you don't end up with law enforcement that selects for sociopathy.
Remember, police beat their spouses at twice the rate of the population as a whole. The police profession attracts society's worst people.
Barely trained conscripts as police are a terrible idea. This would get more people killed.
Maybe this works in a medieval town of 2000 people. We don’t live in that world anymore.
Why wouldn't we train them? De-escalation tactics, weapon safety, and first aid should be part of a basic education.
Your inner city high crime areas are high crime due to a host of factors that also need to be fixed. The whole system we live under is inherently flawed.
Not to mention the police are some of the biggest criminals around.
Sure the reasons for crime like poverty and lack of education and opportunities need to be addressed. That’s a long term thing though. The entrenched organizations and culture of crime need to fought as well. That’s what you need police for.
Defunding the police empowers organized crime to take even more control in affected communities.