In his defense, so does overly purple and high-speaking paragraphs that talk around the point rather than to it.
shoosh shoosh pap pap
Nietzsche is better thought about than taken at face value, but I am impressed that you not only recognized my sig but had a relevant thing to add to the discussion based on it.
I don't disagree with your thoughts on the law. Certainly there is value there. However, we were discussing the "thin blue line" and if it is a synonym for "us vs them" so I did not want to engage in muddying that water, because a traditional interpretation of the word is no doubt going to be more useful there.
*shakes hand*
I haven't been here for the past 200 pages, let alone the last 3, so I'm going to comment from that perspective to clarify my actual point:
-> The police are authorized to use lethal force, but we know a few things from experience. First of all, the actual use of that lethal force seems to devolve disproportionately on the mentally ill (50% of the deaths, according to a statistic I keep seeing floating around). And second, stop and frisk policies result in men of color being disproportionately targeted for, say, drug arrests, when we also know that the "average" drug user is white.
-> For this reason, two things seem very clear to me. 1. Police force is being misapplied to situations where social workers or the like would be better deployed. A gun is not an adequate response to people in crisis. 2. The police are being directed, through policies such as stop and frisk, to take actions that are based on
ideology rather than
facts. This ideology manifests itself through the written law in this country.
-> The maintenance of "law" and order is an acceptable grounds for the use of lethal force only as that law has legitimacy through the consent of those governed. The order currently defended by the police through occasional and, as of recently, highly visible applications of lethal force has a white supremacist, misogynistic, homophobic, and extractive capitalist bent, because those are the grounds through which this country was founded.
(This is a good place to mention the wavering between "life, liberty, and property" vs. "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in one of our famous documents. Most of the founding fathers owned slaves.)
-> We also know that police departments in this country were founded originally as escaped slave patrols. This does not mean that they must currently have that form, but it's a historical note that we need to keep in mind, because it partially informs how educated citizens are going to conceive of those charged with policing their behavior. And, also, it might have something to do with how many police offers currently act. One of the assumptions in this structure is that
the police officer is of a different kind of human being than the prospective criminal, which encourages "wolves and sheep" thinking. Policing would be very different if all police officers understood themselves to be fundamentally like the criminals they are tasked with thwarting.
-> We should assume as a premise that most of our law enforcement officers, lawmakers,
and members of the public are fully steeped in the ideology of manifest destiny, white supremacy, ends-justify-the-means thinking that is pro-capital (in other words, I have the right to kill in order to defend or acquire property), and the necessity to use force to "resolve" situations, because teaching these four things is one of the central aims of the education system, along with obedience to authority whether legitimate or otherwise in the case of the public schools, and assumption of that authority in the case of the more privileged students of the private schools. This is a generalization, but I believe it is generally true, and should inform the policies chosen as we try to adjust the situation.
OK, so those are the premises of my argument, which make it clear that we have a problem which is larger than the police. Setting that larger problem aside for a moment, let's talk about the smaller problem of policing.
-> We know that crime, broadly, is
often caused by one of two things. 1. Brain not yet fully developed + opportunities available. 2. Desperation.
-> If the true purpose of policing is to
reduce crime, then we can call policing anything that a. changes the kinds of opportunities available or b. changes the desperation that is present.
-> We also know that a criminal record acquired in youth can cause desperation in middle age. Therefore there should be special care that all trials of young people -- say, below the age of 25 -- be treated with as much humanity, care, and thoughtfulness as possible, advocating for the person that that young person might become, and protecting their future. I claim that a young person should not be charged criminally based on the circumstances of their birth.
-> Similarly, all children must receive an excellent moral, political, and scientific education which teaches social responsibility, cultural competence, and problem-solving skills, including resilient responses to difference/conflict and, yes, de-escalation. Trade school must be available after 8th grade (which of course requires that the fundamentals of citizenship be taught before then).
-> All children must be offered two healthy meals a day through the public schools. This will require an increase in school budgets and a willingness to redistribute funds which are currently allocated on the basis of the property tax base. It is not acceptable that children receive education of variable quality based on their zip code. This is a crime against the child as a future member of the community.
-> In many countries, e.g. Finland, teaching is considered an honored profession requiring the equivalent of a masters' degree and the academic potential of a PhD-holder. Japanese riot police take months-long courses in martial arts, which do not just teach about force, but the proper attitude to it. As an experiment: if we are going to give human beings the authority to kill others, a right which we do
confer, then maybe the people with that right should be required to demonstrate excellence first. Note that "excellence" is a different thing in this case than aristocratic and political power, in fact, the opposite.
-> The victims of juvenile crimes, who will often be juveniles themselves, must still receive adequate care and restitution. It is not Brett Kavanaugh's fault that he was a young man in a misogynistic society, but we need a way to recognize that crimes were committed so that amends can be made without destroying the life of the perpetrator. Community service hours might teach someone the virtue of toil, but they will not heal a person who was raped. Public recognition of crimes committed by the wealthy and privileged is critical for a democratic society.
-> Whatever is going on with doctors inappropriately prescribing painkillers has got to stop. This is a case where the law hasn't been nearly active enough in pursuing criminal behavior.
-> Similarly, worker exploitation a la Jeff Bezos. Why is there not a strong anti-trust suit against this guy? He is committing crimes?
-> We need to put an end to
overpolicing policies a la stop and frisk in black and brown neighborhoods, three strikes laws, and broken window policing. All of these policies, along with a lack of de-escalation training, increase unnecessary arrests of young people; and through them, desperation. Those black and brown neighborhoods were often created through redlining, which, as an illegitimate law/practice, results in illegitimate and targeted results. If debtor's prisons are illegal, then why is targeting poor neighborhoods for increased police activity and then placing the target into prison an acceptable response to the crimes of poverty?
There will always be scenarios in which it seems appropriate to meet force with force, but I think that the problems we use police departments to "solve" are mostly caused by a system which legitimizes and prioritizes the use of violence. Delegitimize and deprioritize the use of violence in other parts of the system and policing looks like both a symptom and a cause of the disease.
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Topic: The Abusive Policing Thread: Beyond Brown, No Justice (Read 445384 times)