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?"
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.
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?"
deleted by creator
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.