There's maybe one real answer here so far. Is the goal just to high five each other about how much cops suck? That's not going to get anyone anywhere.
Serious crimes do happen, and police do investigate them. They suck at this and waste a bunch of time and resources on other shit, but it's silly to pretend they do literally nothing good. Similarly, there is real deterrent value that police provide just by existing. If I plan to burglarize a home but I arrive and see cops in the neighborhood, I might call it off. If I know there's a good chance that the police will arrest me for beating someone up, I might not beat them up even if I badly want to. And of course there's all sorts of "neutral public official"-type stuff like taking statements from people at the scene of car accidents.
If we're serious about building some sort of mass support for big changes to policing, this is the shit real people (not other terminally-online leftists) will bring up when you talk about any sort of restrictions on police. We need answers for how these things will be handled under whatever alternative we're proposing, and those answers need to be convincing to a big percentage of people who don't spend all day on a niche leftist forum. Let's talk about that stuff instead of "lol fuck 12, amirite?"
We probably should have a "serious" tag for posts. It'd help keep struggle sessions from getting out of hand, too.
These are good points.
I recall not so long ago I had a conversation with someone who said that nobody should ever call the police. I asked them about a real life circumstance I once experienced where I called the police (a bunch of drunk fucks kicking a homeless man in the head) and what I could have done except call the cops.
Their response: "Just never call the cops."
And if we don't have a good answer to those types of very basic questions, no one's going to buy into whatever else we're saying.
As a business owner, I like how they protect my capital and threaten "undesirables" who wander near my businesses. I couldn't otherwise sue these people because they haven't broken any laws or done anything wrong, so it's important that we have police to scare them off and do an occasional extrajudicial violence for me.
Oh, and I almost forgot! They help keep my workers in line and safely ignore their demands.
I called the non-emergency police line one night, a few years ago so they could do a welfare check on my elderly neighbor. We hadn't seen her and her dog was barking.
The next morning my other neighbor told me they stopped by but left before they could do anything because someone was driving recklessly in another part of town.
Three days later, officers finally got around to check on the neighbor, who had passed at some point.
I still wonder if she'd still be around if they did their job when I called them.
Welfare checks are a great example of "you shouldn't have someone with a gun or arrest powers doing that."
Probably the perfect example. There is zero reason to bring a gun to a welfare check.
That's a good point, and I better understand that now, having moved left since then.
Learning more about the way cops can make those situations worse, I realize that the poor woman would've likely suffered regardless of how the police responded.
Things cops should do: root out counterrevolutionaries
Things cops should not do: other things
If I have to give an answer... only in cases where they are walking into a situation where violence is already happening. Maybe?
People fighting.
Domestic violence calls.
Fighting involving weapons.
I'm sure there's other things that might fall into this category.
I could imagine either a dedicated group who ONLY exist for those types of calls OR a rotating duty schedule where the people don't have to constantly be "on" for those types of calls with a completely different set of equipment.
Everything else... probably doesn't need a responder who is armed or expected to suffer/inflict violence.
