A federal jury has decided the city of New Orleans owes $1 million to a teenage sexual assault victim who was befriended by a city police officer and further abused by him.
A lot of people who support the police and believe society could not function without them (even though it did for literally hundreds of thousands of years) imagine that when the police commit crimes like this, it is because they are failing to live up to some socially-designated objective or Platonic Ideal of policing.
What they don’t realize is that these are the objectives of policing. Policing is a protection racket, different from the mafia only in terms of scale and legitimacy. Just as the mafia might occasionally actually protect someone, the cops spend a small fraction of their effort engaged in responding to actual crime.
The rest of their time is spent like this, committing crimes, or coercively extracting rents from the public, or (re)producing the state’s authority to command us. That’s the Platonic Ideal of policing, and cops are doing a great job of that.
all police officers aren't like this, I keep telling myself, and all the people on X are not Nazis but they all hang around together and no one does the self-vetting.
I was in the other MOB, the military, not unlike a police force. An old boys club, you can't be everywhere, but you can stop what you see. I was a senior NCO. I feared no boss in my pursuit and turned in a few of them for misconduct over thirty years. I've worked with police forces, there's a culture and lack of good leadership to take affirmative action. We also have restrictions, unions and public sympathy interfering
@Reiddragon We've had bad actors in the military. Even when we suspect them, we have rules, we can't discriminate, can't pre-judge, have to wait for a crime to act, then a lawyer defends, but unlike the police, we have no union backing us up, no matter how bad we are. Maybe the unions need better leaders
tbh I don't think the police is ever going to get better as an institution, the whole culture within it is so fucked that only people who support said culture end up choosing that career path, no good apples coming in to unspoil the bunch, if you may
@Reiddragon It's hard to attract good people. Here we are with all the right answers, and not one of us is signing up. I sometimes wonder what type of person wants the job? IE: who wants to be a prison guard? Someone that enjoys power over another, perhaps a sexual interest, whatever, but it's not normal for people to want those jobs. I'm not sure I have enough patience for Scout Leader, it takes a special *breed* with interest in young developing boys
Well, we don't have good policing now, we have criminals in the ranks. That's where a good person should be. You cannot tell Trump to chasten his police for sexual misconduct? But a real leader, would remove the member immediately and the resonating ripple would start making changes. There are less testicles in the leadership, and also the biggest problem in leadership, testicles. Old boys club. It must be broken
@Reiddragon the social role is not what is written in the job description, any more than passion is the correct answer to solving it. From within the ranks, they have rules that they don't follow because those in charge were once offenders that were promoted to positions of more authority and leadership roles. Hence, they protect their kinfolks, coming up as they did. The book, hiring practices, rules and contracts remain the same, only the leaders abuse it
> “the social role is not what is written in the job description”
That’s correct. The purpose of a system is what that system does, not what the system pretends to be. Policing is a function of state power, not of protecting people or fighting crime in the abstract.
@Reiddragon What we call it doesn't matter. The job description is what matters. IMO, the first person not meeting the description is dismissed, before they misbehave. That's the role of leadership. None of my subordinates have ever gotten away with anything that came to my attention, and yet I was respected for being fair in my decision making. It's black and white. The public doesn't get to weigh in and decide what it is. They need to hold them accountable by their own rule
@Reiddragon So you mean doing what you perceive the policing to be about, or the misconduct you see, you think has a job description? I'll need to see the conditions of employment, I think we know that's not what policing is about, it's what it has become from abuse. The ones that are criminals were allowed to stay and invite friends, and no one at the top stopped it. Now it's out of control, but it's not the job they were hired for, fire them, and rehire new.
You have to understand that, at some point your personal experience breaks down when you look at the dynamics involved and the broader reality. You might be a good leader who make things work properly, but obviously it doesn't work in the grand scheme of things. There are other mechanics at play that just overwrite your impact.
Possum said it best: a system is what it does. Police violence, abuse and partiality is too widespread (across the structure of dozens of countries' police) to be something due to a few bad actors. Whether this was the intent or not, this is what police IS. And given how it was created and what it has been doing ever since, I genuinely believe this is what police has been all along.
It is what policing has become, but again, you hire police based on a culture of abuse, by those who abuse, it's a hard culture to change. Sometimes good people leave, sometimes they stay and try to fight it out. But if 100 cops on a force were good, one Captain at the top, that was *one of the boys* can end all the good work and effort, Management responsibility, only the top is derelict in duty . The rest were taught it was OK
You are not even remotely addressing my point. You keep zooming in and look at a tiny fraction of policing and insisting that the problem is there. The worst part though, is that it is still bad. I really want to communicate to you that this is not even remotely a good system. You are describing a system where one fuck up can impact the entirety of the structure. That is absolutely unforgivable when said structure has a monopoly on violence and benefit from institutional protection.
@FrenchPanda what is your solution to policing? We need it. Do you hold any position of authority over others? I have. I have the ability to stop bad behavior, and if it occurs on my watch, it is my fault. We cannot give up policing, we just have to demand it be done as paid for not according to the old boys club. There's a lot of good ideas on social media, those people should be in public office, where those ideas can be used, not debated.
The institution of police that we have now has only existed for around 200 years, but many people have been conditioned to accept it as a natural and necessary fact of life and have trouble accepting the idea of abolishing the police, even if they strongly support major (dare I say utopian) police reform. Constantly echoing around the Fediverse are debates around questions like "what would you replace police with?" or "what would you do about violent crimes?"
Let's examine the real origins and purposes of police, and the truth about what they actually do and don't do.
Origins of the police - David Whitehouse "Excellent text examining the creation of the first police forces, which took place in England and the US in just a few decades in the mid-19th century. And explaining that they were not brought into being to prevent crime or protect the public, but primarily to control crowds: the working class, white and black." https://libcom.org/article/origins-police-david-whitehouse
The Kids The Guns Are For The same police force that failed Uvalde children is arresting peaceful student protesters at UT Austin. It's not about safety. It's about order. https://www.momleft.com/p/the-kids-the-guns-are-for
The Body Camera: The Language of our Dreams (64 page pdf from the Yale Journal of Law & Liberation) Did you know that police forces were pushing to implement body cams on their own, before they were pressured to do so by activists for police reform? To understand why, I highly recommend this very well-researched and revealing article by Alec Karakatsanis penetrating the facade of police reform in the specific case of body cams. Excerpts from the introduction: Most people would prefer a society with less government surveillance, violence by employees of the state, and waste of public resources. And yet they all keep growing despite decades of “reform.” It is my uncomfortable suggestion in this article that they all keep expanding in part because of these “reforms.” ... By situating the rise of the police body camera within its actual legal, political, and economic contexts, I suggest that the body camera is one of the most important Trojan horses in contemporary U.S. history. ... All of it happened under the guise of making the police bureaucracy more “accountable” and “transparent.” https://bpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/f/4764/files/2024/07/Alec-Karakatsanis_The-Body-Camera-FINAL.pdf
Community-based alternatives to police, by city Don’t Call The Police is a website that has non-carceral/non-policing, community-based resources for domestic violence & sexual assault, mental health, housing, LGBTQ+, youth, elders, crime, substances, and voter protection. https://dontcallthepolice.com/
The End of Policing This book by Alex Vitale falls short of addressing fundamental conditions such as the state, rule of law, and capitalism, and so its proposed solutions are somewhat shallow and flimsy, and despite the title it never quite fully embraces complete abolition of police. Nevertheless it remains a valuable resource as a detailed survey of the vast landscape of death, damage and abuse caused by police (which has only gotten worse since 2017 when this book was published). Notably this book makes its argument against police from a more conventional, non-anarchist context, demonstrating that police abolition is not merely a fringe ideology of extreme radicals but an idea that makes sense even in more mainstream, pragmatic liberal terms. https://files.libcom.org/files/Vitale%20-%20The%20End%20of%20Policing%20(Police)%20(2017).pdf
The institution of police is closely associated with a belief in Rule Of Law. Here are a couple essays on that important context:
I was fascinated years ago when I learned that career criminals and career law enforcement tend to have the same psychological profiles. It's just a matter of picking a side, really.
In the US, elites have responded to all the endless, ongoing abuses by police—from a torture chamber in Chicago to murder gangs in LA to mass sexual violence by cops around the country—by increasing their budgets year after year.
It’s almost as if—hear me out—the abuse is the point and the cops are rewarded for doing such a good job with ever more resources.
HeavenlyPossum
•What they don’t realize is that these are the objectives of policing. Policing is a protection racket, different from the mafia only in terms of scale and legitimacy. Just as the mafia might occasionally actually protect someone, the cops spend a small fraction of their effort engaged in responding to actual crime.
The rest of their time is spent like this, committing crimes, or coercively extracting rents from the public, or (re)producing the state’s authority to command us. That’s the Platonic Ideal of policing, and cops are doing a great job of that.
#AbolishThePolice
RDudostępnił to.
Rasta
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: re: Child sexual abuse
HeavenlyPossum
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: re: Child sexual abuse
“All police officers aren’t like this” but a fuck load of them sure are
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2024/police-officers-child-sexual-abuse-in-america/
Rasta
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: re: Child sexual abuse
Reid :ablobcatattention:
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: re: Child sexual abuse
Rasta
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: re: Child sexual abuse
We've had bad actors in the military. Even when we suspect them, we have rules, we can't discriminate, can't pre-judge, have to wait for a crime to act, then a lawyer defends, but unlike the police, we have no union backing us up, no matter how bad we are. Maybe the unions need better leaders
HeavenlyPossum
•Why would they need better leaders? Cops are performing their social role very well.
Reid :ablobcatattention:
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: re: Child sexual abuse
Rasta
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: re: Child sexual abuse
It's hard to attract good people. Here we are with all the right answers, and not one of us is signing up. I sometimes wonder what type of person wants the job? IE: who wants to be a prison guard? Someone that enjoys power over another, perhaps a sexual interest, whatever, but it's not normal for people to want those jobs. I'm not sure I have enough patience for Scout Leader, it takes a special *breed* with interest in young developing boys
HeavenlyPossum
•The problem of policing does not hinge on having “good people” among the police.
Rasta
•Well, we don't have good policing now, we have criminals in the ranks. That's where a good person should be. You cannot tell Trump to chasten his police for sexual misconduct? But a real leader, would remove the member immediately and the resonating ripple would start making changes. There are less testicles in the leadership, and also the biggest problem in leadership, testicles. Old boys club. It must be broken
HeavenlyPossum
•The police do not commit abuses because they have “criminals in their ranks.” The police commit abuses because that is the social role of police.
HeavenlyPossumudostępnił to.
Rasta
•the social role is not what is written in the job description, any more than passion is the correct answer to solving it. From within the ranks, they have rules that they don't follow because those in charge were once offenders that were promoted to positions of more authority and leadership roles. Hence, they protect their kinfolks, coming up as they did. The book, hiring practices, rules and contracts remain the same, only the leaders abuse it
HeavenlyPossum
•> “the social role is not what is written in the job description”
That’s correct. The purpose of a system is what that system does, not what the system pretends to be. Policing is a function of state power, not of protecting people or fighting crime in the abstract.
Rasta
•What we call it doesn't matter. The job description is what matters. IMO, the first person not meeting the description is dismissed, before they misbehave. That's the role of leadership. None of my subordinates have ever gotten away with anything that came to my attention, and yet I was respected for being fair in my decision making. It's black and white. The public doesn't get to weigh in and decide what it is.
They need to hold them accountable by their own rule
HeavenlyPossum
•Why would they dismiss them, if they’re not misbehaving but rather doing exactly what policing is about?
Rasta
•So you mean doing what you perceive the policing to be about, or the misconduct you see, you think has a job description? I'll need to see the conditions of employment, I think we know that's not what policing is about, it's what it has become from abuse. The ones that are criminals were allowed to stay and invite friends, and no one at the top stopped it. Now it's out of control, but it's not the job they were hired for, fire them, and rehire new.
HeavenlyPossum
•> “I think we know that's not what policing is about, it's what it has become from abuse”
When was policing not abusive? When did it become abusive?
Rasta
•HeavenlyPossum
•When was that, specifically?
Rasta
•HeavenlyPossum
•When you’re rested, please come back and answer this one simple question.
Panda Cab
•You have to understand that, at some point your personal experience breaks down when you look at the dynamics involved and the broader reality. You might be a good leader who make things work properly, but obviously it doesn't work in the grand scheme of things. There are other mechanics at play that just overwrite your impact.
Possum said it best: a system is what it does. Police violence, abuse and partiality is too widespread (across the structure of dozens of countries' police) to be something due to a few bad actors. Whether this was the intent or not, this is what police IS. And given how it was created and what it has been doing ever since, I genuinely believe this is what police has been all along.
@HeavenlyPossum @Reiddragon
Rasta
•It is what policing has become, but again, you hire police based on a culture of abuse, by those who abuse, it's a hard culture to change. Sometimes good people leave, sometimes they stay and try to fight it out. But if 100 cops on a force were good, one Captain at the top, that was *one of the boys* can end all the good work and effort, Management responsibility, only the top is derelict in duty . The rest were taught it was OK
HeavenlyPossum
•When would you say policing was good but then became bad? When was the time, historically, when policing was not abusive?
Panda Cab
•You are not even remotely addressing my point. You keep zooming in and look at a tiny fraction of policing and insisting that the problem is there. The worst part though, is that it is still bad. I really want to communicate to you that this is not even remotely a good system. You are describing a system where one fuck up can impact the entirety of the structure. That is absolutely unforgivable when said structure has a monopoly on violence and benefit from institutional protection.
@HeavenlyPossum @Reiddragon
Rasta
•HeavenlyPossum
•Abolish it
RD
•>>It is what policing has become...<<
No, it has been this way from the start. I urge you to take a look at the origins of police:
https://libcom.org/article/origins-police-david-whitehouse
I compiled more helpful links about police here:
https://kolektiva.social/@RD4Anarchy/112989821147363456
RD
2024-08-19 17:17:27
Thunderstrike
•I was fascinated years ago when I learned that career criminals and career law enforcement tend to have the same psychological profiles. It's just a matter of picking a side, really.
HeavenlyPossum
•Yup, rival teams competing to rob you
HeavenlyPossum
•In the US, elites have responded to all the endless, ongoing abuses by police—from a torture chamber in Chicago to murder gangs in LA to mass sexual violence by cops around the country—by increasing their budgets year after year.
It’s almost as if—hear me out—the abuse is the point and the cops are rewarded for doing such a good job with ever more resources.
HeavenlyPossumudostępnił to.