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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPolicing is a Dirty Job, But Nobody's Gotta Do It: 6 Ideas for a Cop-Free World
from Rolling Stone:
By José Martín | December 16, 2014
After months of escalating protests and grassroots organizing in response to the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, police reformers have issued many demands. The moderates in this debate typically qualify their rhetoric with "We all know we need police, but..." It's a familiar refrain to those of us who've spent years in the streets and the barrios organizing around police violence, only to be confronted by officers who snarl, "But who'll help you if you get robbed?" We can put a man on the moon, but we're still lacking creativity down here on Earth.
But police are not a permanent fixture in society. While law enforcers have existed in one form or another for centuries, the modern police have their roots in the relatively recent rise of modern property relations 200 years ago, and the "disorderly conduct" of the urban poor. Like every structure we've known all our lives, it seems that the policing paradigm is inescapable and everlasting, and the only thing keeping us from the precipice of a dystopic Wild West scenario. It's not. Rather than be scared of our impending Road Warrior future, check out just a few of the practicable, real-world alternatives to the modern system known as policing:
Unarmed mediation and intervention teams
Unarmed but trained people, often formerly violent offenders themselves, patrolling their neighborhoods to curb violence right where it starts. This is real and it exists in cities from Detroit to Los Angeles. Stop believing that police are heroes because they are the only ones willing to get in the way of knives or guns so are the members of groups like Cure Violence, who were the subject of the 2012 documentary The Interrupters. There are also feminist models that specifically organize patrols of local women, who reduce everything from cat-calling and partner violence to gang murders in places like Brooklyn. While police forces have benefited from military-grade weapons and equipment, some of the most violent neighborhoods have found success through peace rather than war.
The decriminalization of almost every crime
What is considered criminal is something too often debated only in critical criminology seminars, and too rarely in the mainstream. Violent offenses count for a fraction of the 11 to 14 million arrests every year, and yet there is no real conversation about what constitutes a crime and what permits society to put a person in chains and a cage. Decriminalization doesn't work on its own: The cannabis trade that used to employ poor Blacks, Latinos, indigenous and poor whites in its distribution is now starting to be monopolized by already-rich landowners. That means that wide-scale decriminalization will need to come with economic programs and community projects. To quote investigative journalist Christian Parenti's remarks on criminal justice reform in his book Lockdown America, what we really need most of all is "less." ...................(more)
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/policing-is-a-dirty-job-but-nobodys-gotta-do-it-6-ideas-for-a-cop-free-world-20141216#ixzz3M7DFfSGZ
name not needed
(11,660 posts)is gonna listen to the unarmed feminist mediation team.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)do a bang-up (npi) job at Columbine.
name not needed
(11,660 posts)If only the overeducated barista squad was there to scream at Harris and Klebold to check their privilege until they turned the guns on themselves.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)own asses than the lives of the students. Klebold and Harris killed themselves at their leisure, under no pressure at the time from any constabulary forces.
So tell me how the police at Columbine did one whit better than the groups you so mockingly disparage. Answer: you can't because the police at Columbine were a bunch of f*cking chickensh*ts. Everybody knows it, even if no one will dare say it.
True Blue Door
(2,969 posts)But let's keep designing our entire nationwide police culture around those 0.000....1% of incidents.
pipoman
(16,038 posts)Convicts patrolling neighborhoods "curbing violence"...ffs...unbelievable...what could possibly go wrong?
I have been in over 10 prisons interviewing inmates....sorry, we do need police and prisons. I've sat through docket calls in criminal court...no reasonable person could decide that more than maybe 5% of non petty drug crimes charged shouldn't be on the books.
most crimes with prison time are either violent crimes, victim crimes or crimes against society. Certainly some drug laws need to be revisited and laws repealed...
951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)Isnt this what we already have?
True Blue Door
(2,969 posts)Historic NY
(37,449 posts)maybe a small navy or military tattoo. Makes them look like gang bangers. They complain its their right, well then the boss's should make them wear long sleeve shirts.
True Blue Door
(2,969 posts)That's prison ink.
And that's the least problematic meaning. (It's also used by a number of white supremacist gangs)
Response to 951-Riverside (Reply #6)
pipoman This message was self-deleted by its author.
pipoman
(16,038 posts)99Forever
(14,524 posts)... when your fellow badge holders cover up your crimes for you, do you?
Apparently some people ARE above the law.
pipoman
(16,038 posts)99Forever
(14,524 posts)Have a wonderful day.
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)this country has had police since its founding in some shape or form. Even the Continental Army had to have police to control the army and the populous in the army vicinity.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)Honestly.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)They pushed and shoved protesters, they were screaming in protesters faces with bullhorns and one actually grabbed a woman and kissed her as she was trying to push away. It was shameful and they had ZERO respect for people's first amendment rights or personal space.
I don't want some power tripping neighborhood loser/thug pushing me around just like I don't want some police thug pushing me around.
Get the hell out of my face and let me be.
Response to marmar (Original post)
Post removed
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)Maybe we should stop listening to terrified authoritarians. They're so frightened of their own shadow, they want to make us all the same way. Because for them, there is NO other choice quite obviously. Because every first world country has figured it out, but somehow we can't. USA!
xchrom
(108,903 posts)LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)It sounds eerily like Vendetta Law of the early Normans.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)There's a reason America is the world's leading jailer, and it ain't because we're so much worse than everybody else.
steve2470
(37,457 posts)HappyMe
(20,277 posts)We need a good housecleaning in the pd's. I don't think any of that is workable.
Community patrols? Isn't that what Zimmerman thought he was?
daredtowork
(3,732 posts)Last night, at the Oakland "Solutions" Town Hall, the San Francisco interlopers who cut in front of me, claiming to be the "black youth" (I stepped back because I believed them to be from Oakland) were delivering propaganda for this "No Police Necessary!" message!
Perhaps some police were necessary to check IDs to keep people like them out of building, because their actions prevented members of the community from being able to speak to their political representatives - a very rare chance, since these particular political representatives have been utterly non-responsive to their constituents in the past!!!