*** The Official MAGAposting thread ***

[MadMojoMonkey]

It's difficult to imagine someone committing a crime just because police exist. How does police increase crime? It might increase detection and prosecution of crime, but being a direct cause of an increase in crime? I don't see how this happens. I don't see how a police force acts as an incentive.

The Rayshard Brooks case is a clear example.
A black man was drunk and passed out in the driver's seat of his car in a Wendy's drive through lane in Atlanta. The police showed up and interrogated this man for an hour - an hour interrogating a drunk man - not arresting, not technically in custody, but detained for an hour. To what end?
Rayshard eventually had a fight or flight response, and he chose both. He wrestled a tazer from one of the cops and disengaged himself from their wrestling holds. While running away, he flung his arm behind him and randomly fired the tazer at a range and direction that was in no way a threat to the police. The police gunned him down on the spot. Then walked over and kicked his body.

That tazer was a single-shot weapon, and the police use them because they are considered non-lethal. Everything about that situation was police causing a crime, and using that caused crime as a reason to kill a man.

Should Rayshard have been drunk in the driver's seat of a car in a drive-though? No absolutely not.
Should he have resisted arrest? No.
Should he have taken the tazer? No.
Should he have run? No.
Should he have fired the tazer? No.

A drunk guy made a whole host of bad decisions.
Should that have resulted in his death? No.

Should we, the citizens of this society, be outraged that the police response to a benign situation (the guy was literally asleep when they arrived) resulted in death? Yes.

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The communities that are persecuted by police are in fear of their lives with every police interaction. That puts them in the psychological position to assume they have the choice to die in police custody or to maybe live if they can get away from that situation.
The presence of police is creating crimes because the police are a threat in and of themselves, and people will commit crimes to extricate themselves of that threat.

The police don't make the laws, they enforce them. If law is giving us more criminals, that's not the police's fault.

Exactly my greater point.

The police need reform, as the function we think they serve is demonstrably not a function they serve. We need to explore the actual functions they serve and reorganize our funding and expectations to suit.

But the greater problem - the root of the problem - is the systematic criminalization of black culture and other counter cultures by the legislature. This is where we can achieve the greatest progress with the least effort. Simply repealing the laws that we know for a fact are designed to persecute Americans will go a long way.

This is no reason to abolish the police. This is reason to reform the police. Why are communities persecuted? Why is it allowed to happen? It doesn't happen here in the UK, as much as that might come as a shock to some people. We of course have dickhead policemen who are just bullies, the job attracts that kind of person, but in nearly every case of a copper being a dickhead, it's a response to the citizen being a dickhead.

If you insist on reading my questions and explorations as though I'm trying to trick you into saying abolish the police, then you're going to fail to see my actual point.

I'm trying to get to the heart of what the police want and what we as a society want from the police. I am inherently assuming that we do want police and that we should be listening to them tell us what we can do to help them police better.

This seems like a USA problem to me. Why is this part of your culture?

Because the police are viewed as antithetical to justice in persecuted communities, and superfluous to justice in non-persecuted communities.
There's a divide of respect.

(as though my answer is even remotely likely to be correct)

If police are upholding unfair laws, it's not the police doing the persecuting. It's the state, the body that makes laws. The police are doing their job. I think it's important to make this distinction. I don't think we can have individual police officers deciding which laws to uphold.

It's not easy to accidentally persecute someone.

That's one of the most astoundingly incorrect things you've ever said.

I don't disagree, but I don't think it's an easy thing to fix. I most certainly do not want to see private agents enforcing law. The police must be civil servants, they must be under the direct employment and authority of the state.

Agreed. It's not easy to fix. IMO, the first step is to get on the same page as far as the history and data we have collected. Let's let go of our assumptions of what the world "should" be and look at what it is and think of ways to make it better.

Better for everyone, police, too.

For me, it's making sure police officers are sufficiently trained and competent, holding police officers accountable for the behaviour, and making sure law is fair. That's the solution.

Exactly.