Rethinking the police

[Az]

A thread the other day started by a new member and police office got me thinking. Many see the police as tools of the opposition or corrupt pawns of corporate policies. But this is not what they are. They are citizens just like us who dedicate themself to serving as guardians of the people. They each have their own politics and beliefs. But when they are on duty they serve the law.

A question regarding activism was raised. The goal of activism is to raise awareness of a problem. To do this attention must be drawn. Standing around on a corner won't suffice. The media does not react to reasoned commentary. Instead numbers must mass and create incidents. And when this happens it is natural for the police to be called to make sure matters do not get out of hand. But out of hand is exactly the intent of the activists. They wish the current power to be taken out of hand of those that have it.

This places the police in a very precarious position. Whether they support the cause or not their roll (it is more than a job) is to act on the laws of this land. While there may be some that go too far the vast majority neither enjoy or shrink from their duty.

In a nutshell they are not the enemy. They may be in between us and the enemy (whomever it may be). But they themselves are not the enemy. We need to focus on means of activism that attract attention but do not place us at odds with the police. Barring that if it does come to conflict we must do what we can to stand firm for our cause but not make it a clash between us and the police. Acknowledge that they are performing their roll dutifully and keep the attention focused on those we truly object to.

[imenja]

1. I agree AZ

I actually do research on the police in nineteenth-century Brazil and their role in maintaining and contesting slavery. Their position is far more precarious, both historically and currently, than most acknowledge. The often represent the same class they police.
How have you been?

[atreides1]

2. But When do they become the enemy???

"But when they are duty they serve the law". This is true, but what if the law is adjusted or changed, so that in order for them to do their duty they would be required to enforce curfews, arrest those who dissent from the government line, break up protests using force.

Are they still not to be considered the "enemy" even then? Suppose in the course of "serving the law" the police use deadly force to disperse a crowd who are protesting against the government, a crowd
that is not violent, but peacefully protesting, are the police still not the "enemy"?

When do the police become the "enemy"?

[imenja]

3. Can you imagine if we had no police?

Would you really want to live in a society with no law enforcement?
Why do we need to consider the police as a whole the enemy at all? Some officers and some departments carry out reprehensible actions, but all, perhaps even most, do not. They do perform a crucial service. It is a dangerous job you could not pay me enough to do.

[el_gato]

6. I have been to places in this planet where police do not exist

and they were actually very peaceful

[Az]

5. Striking back at the police serves no purpose

They do not arbitrarially decide to strike back. They are governed by rules and commanders. If you strike those on the front line you are not striking the ones initiating the attack. If a confrontation between activists and police the police are going to win unless the activists are planning a full fledged revolution. And in that case it escalated beyond the police.

The police act based on the rules and regulations that we in part set down. If we object to a particular code of conduct the proper and only effective means of redressing it is to legislate it. Petitions and elections serve that purpose.

Confrontation is chaotic. In such times an individual police officer relies on organisation and command to discern what is necissary. A crowd of activists is not similarly structured. If they become a threat to the police they will defend themselves.

There may be times where confrontation with police may be the only means of raising the issue high enough for people to take notice. But this path should only be taken with the utmost consideration as it endangers both the activists and the police(who are not the real enemy).

[el_gato]

8. recent abuse of protestors was not a case of police defending themselves

the citizenry for the most part have no voice so your statement "If we object to a particular code of conduct the proper and only effective means of redressing it is to legislate it" is naive.

[mongo]

4. Thanks for saying this

I don't post very often, but have been reading those threads too.

There are some bad cops out there, and sometimes entire departments have a bad culture about them (I was a long-hair in Chicago in the late 70's - early 80's)

But for the most part, they are just people doing the best they can. Law enforcement is a hard job. My store is in a bad neighborhood in a small city, and I am very thankful to see the cops around. I talk to them all the time and they have always been very helpfull to me when I have had problems here at the store. They know when I close (midnight) and several time a week there just happens to be a cop in my lot or nextdoor when I close).

God I hope that they never have to "raid" the store for some bogus obscenity charge, 'cause I will have to ask them at what point does enforcing laws that you don't agree with become too much to handle.

[el_gato]

7. let me just make a few points

We live in a very complex and energy intesive society or system. The amount of force necessary to keep this society running is incredible and ulitimately it is an uphill battle. I am not just talking about force applied on the citizenry to conform to the overall parameters of behavior that is accepted (who sets these parameters, by the way?) but also the forces necessary to physically keep all of the machines humming. Part of this societal structure that is necessary for the global capitalist (communism too) system is massively concentrated populations, i.e. workers. When the ideas of mass commodity production and proto-capitalism was in it's infancy many people rejected this effort to push people into cities. It wasn't long after that that we saw the genesis of patrolling forces. In other words, we live in a manufactured world that makes the police necessary if we are going to continue to live this way. But make no mistake, the police are there to make sure the "system" continues. If the police were moved from the equation there would be upheaval but eventually things would settle down and a restructuration would occur.

There is no point in pretending that the police are there to ensure anything other than the maintenance of the status quo.

[sweetheart]

9. Police exist to enforce property rights

The entire body of law being enforced is not based on the citizen as
the root of our society, but kapital in the marxist sense. In this
regard, protesting for civil rights, inevitably is opposed by kapital
as it is threatened ... and frankly... must be threatened in order
for them to listen.

This makes the police agents of the man, military pawns of an evil
machine, grinding people in to submission to the plutocratic consensus.

The drugs war is a classic example, a body of laws to protect the
big pharma industry from some plant extracts... and a series of agents
using this body of law to imprison and strip voting rights from those
who see "liberty and freedom" as the right to experiment with various
things in their bodies.

So it is a domestic military force, von clausewitz's "politics by
another means", and is infact political repression... hence why the
police are on the ground zero of political dissent in the streets.
This won't change, until the body of law changes that makes property
more valuable than human life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[Az]

11. Murder, rape, assault, abuse

There are many things besides property rights that the police defend us against. They serve the rules we set down. If you object to antidrug laws then don't blame the police. Get on the phone and call your congressional representitive. Start a petition. Change the laws.

The police can only do what the rules and regulations tell them to do. We create the rules and regulations. We have let our control of them atrophy and yes corporate interests and big money have stepped in. They are not just going to hand them back over to us. They are ours to take back. And the police are not the problem.

[sweetheart]

good to hear

I'll write to change drugs laws right soon... i'm sure they'll listen...
(irony suspended!)
:-) ha! (irony reinstated)

I'm sure you want a clear picture with the police on the good side, but
face it, good soldiers die defending evil empires... (see any history
book) The police persons know when they take the job, that the real
underlying job, is to enforce a racist imerialist society of wealth
against its disenfranchised and disaffected. If they have to die on
their mission, then they have chosen their fate.

[Az]

15. You said it yourself

Good people live within evil empires. And not everyone examines their surroundings to the degree that we do. To many they truly believe they are serving the public good. They do not look to corporations like obedient lap dogs waiting for praise and table scraps. I suspect you have overthought the issue.

The police are not the problem. They serve the public. Do not be upset at them because corporate interests have been able to better manipulate the laws than we have. They serve the state. We The People are supposed to be the state. But we have grown complacent and those that never sleep have been busy. We need to take our infrastructure back. Not pick fights with the police that will gain us nothing and we can never win.

[sweetheart]

10. how about no guns and pretty costumes

so we can all herald and respect our community support officers?

Its a bit far from black costumes and paramilitary weaponry to kill
civlians... but one can always be hopeful with a.. "kick". :-)

[K-W]

12. Then who exactly arrests WAY more black people than white people.

I know some great people who are police officers, but you cannot, just to be fair to them, brush past the constant abuses of power by police officers and through police officers.

[Az]

17. This is a symptom of a larger problem

Police are drawn from the public. That they exhibit prejudice and social bias merely indicates that our society still has problems and we must work on them. Again it is not the institution of the police that are structurally at fault here. It is intolerance and economic oppression that still exist within our society.

[K-W]

19. That doesnt make them innocent, it just puts thier actions in context.

just because something isnt genetic doesnt mean it isnt wrong.

[K-W]

21. To clear up my point.

Power corrupts. our society gives police officers alot of power and it does corrupt some, that is all I am saying, there are planty of good cops

[Az]

22. Agreed

I understood that to be your meaning. I guess what it boils down to is we should not look at the uniform as the enemy. Even in situations where they are set against us. The individual inside the uniform may be an entirely different matter. But that is true of any situation and any person.

[msmcghee]

13. The rw is on such a self righteous jag right now . .

. . it is very easy to put them into situations where the police will come down on them. We should be smart about it.

Instead of being disruptive to bring the cops down on us . . we should organize protests in such a way that it is easy for the freepers to outnumber us. Defiance in the face of greater strength really pisses off the bullies.

We should goad them in a smart way like Mohamed Ali did his opponents. Make them mad enough to step over the line so when the batons come out it is to defend the legal protesters (us) from the angry crowd that gets out of hand.

For example, if churches can send protesters to abortion clinics. . why don't we send protesters to churches. How would they feel to see a dozen pickets in front of their church calling them hypocrites when service let's out next Sunday - doing nothing illegal, just upholding our first Amendment rights. Make sure both the cops and the papers are advised a little while ahead of time so the church doesn't know what's happening.

Lots of ways to create publicity for our cause that gets them on the shit list instead of us. AZ is right, there's no reason we should see the cops as our enemies when we can make them our protectors.

But, you get the idea.

[sweetheart]

16. manipulating the police

As much as i appreciate your strategic seeing, the police are paid by
the property owners to defend any potentail assault on their property
be it by loitering protestors or disenfranchised homeless.

Your proposeal suggests they suspend their rational basis for the myth
of public service... which we all know is bollocks. How do you get them
to reconsider their basis. Cossacks will be cossacks.

[msmcghee]

20. By being smarter than our enemies . .

... I don't see it as manipulating the police as much as manipulating the RW. Although in cities where the police are outright enemies of anything liberal we'd have to outsmart them too.

I know cops who are real assholes. I have one in my family. But they will react in predictable ways. If we understand the forces that they respond to we can always use them to our advantage.

It is an advantage for us that the RW is so full of anti-liberal hatred. We can depend on their irrationality. Small protest groups acting on their own intiative can generate a lot of awareness using that force against them if we think about it.

[H2O Man]

14. There are good and bad,

which seems fairly obvious. One of my (many) uncles who was a senior investigator solved many of the cases involving the murder of children in the northeast. He was the subject of a book, dealing with his sometimes lonely battle against police corruption. He did trainings for the FBI and CIA. I've kept newspaper clippings from when he was recognized as the best cop in the country.

I have relatives who have been state police, BCI Investigators, FBI, and ONI. I may not have agreed with them one politics or economics, but they were/are all honorable men.

Before I retired, I did trainings for police agencies for dealing with mentally ill people in a community setting. I also did community crisis response, including frequently working with police agencies.

Most of the men and women police officers were pretty decent people. A couple were shitheads, but they were a minority. And obviously, my uncle couldn't have played a major role in exposing police corruption if there had not been corruption.

[Padraig18]

18. Well said!

:thumbsup:

[NNN0LHI]

23. The paintbrush method doesn't apply

There are some truly bad cops (Google "Chicago police commander Jon Burge"). On the other hand there are some really good, honest, and decent cops. (You usually don't hear about them) I know some personally, and I consider them my friends. But just like in everything there are always a certain percentage who are not fit to wear the uniform. This is no knock against police in general. Because every vocation has its scum. Just can't get away from it. I worked at an automobile stamping plant where over 4000 employees worked. I would say there is a good chance we had at least one of everything there. From the extreme good, to the extreme bad.

Don