I'll throw in that I've had my home robbed twice, and police did absolutely nothing either time. I've met many others who have been through the same, including police neglecting to do anything even when they had solid evidence as to who it was that robbed them. I don't think I've ever met someone in person who has a single positive story about police interaction/aid.
On the other hand, I've been subject to some minor harassment by police a couple times. And I've known several people who have been subject to severe harassment/violence/negligence by police, including permanent injury, gross mishandling of rape/domestic abuse, and a co-worker losing family to negligence of a medical condition.
I disagree with this notion that humanity's default state is this violent barbarism that will wash over everything as soon as the police aren't around to deter it. In fact, one prevalent source of violence in the USA, right-wing terrorism, would probably go on the decline without the active support of law enforcement. That's a far more serious threat, **which the police are well known at this point to actively enable**, than random street gang violence or the mafia or a pandemic of home invasions or cannibals in facepaint and loincloths or whatever else we're imagining lurking in dark corners all around us just waiting for police to go away so they can emerge into the light and terrorize us. I just don't see the world that way, and we're likely not going to agree on this point.
Counterpoint: if there is no police force whatsoever the gap would be filled by private security (for the wealthy) and gangs (for everyone else) and things would jump from little accountability to no accountability
And it would still be better, because those groups would be much smaller and less powerful. I would rather face a hostile encounter with a gang that only has its membership and some guns than with the police that represents the full force of the state. If you find yourself in a hostile situation with police, you are just fucked. Just fucked. Period. The force of the state is against you. If you successfully defend yourself in one encounter with police, there will be another encounter soon after and you will be guaranteed not to survive it.
The wealthy and businesses already do private security. Nothing's different there.
And if the other alternative I'd be looking at is gangs, then yes. Absolutely. Give me the gangs that don't have the force of the state behind them instead of the gangs that do have the support of the state behind them. Please. Yes. As a lower middle-class white person, I might be a little worse off, I admit. But far more people would be much, much better off, including many that I care about.
I don't recall saying anything about complete abolition
I dont know if you said it in particular.You certainly seemed to be arguing in that direction but I'm not going to quote hunt. There were people here arguing for complete abolition.
Nobody has said it is their ideal. Not me or Max or MSH or Frumple, who seem to be the 4 most outspokenly anti-police posters here.
The point we have been making is that complete police abolition would be better than having police anything like they are now. Radical structural reforms and reduction in size and power are our ideal. We seem to be in agreement on that. But if that's not achievable, then complete police abolition would be the next best thing, and in some respects seems more easily achievable in the near term. To achieve the ideal, the whole force probably just need to be completely dismantled and rebuilt. As it is it's so deeply rotten that there is likely not much salvageable from it, and abolition is politically and procedurally probably the most likely means of achieving the dismantling step before rebuilding.