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Comment by wireprotocol | Hacker News Reader

If your city had a ballot initiative to defund and disband the police department, would you vote for it?

EDIT: I'm a little confused about the downvotes. If the answer is "no", then what's the problem with police using slack? Isn't it just a basic tool for communication? Is selling them radios also bad? I should also say that my answer in my city would be "no".

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As someone that lives in Oakland, I don't see much of a difference in terms of quality of life between when the police were beating people or killing people at BART stations compared to the extended amount of time we've lacked a police chief and the police as a whole basically disappeared.

I'm white, so the interaction with society during the completely corrupt OPD wasn't really ever a concern for me. I expect plenty of black residents are much happier now than they were then. I don't see MORE crime now than before, and I don't expect the police to ever show up if I call.

So, disbanding the police force isn't necessarily going to equate to complete and total anarchy. Most people don't break the law because we want to exist within the social contract that's established. Police can help enforce that contract, but they're not strictly required.

I agree that police are the last line of defense rather than the first. Many places would be quite peaceful without police, though it might depend on the timeframe. Bad actors can do an awful lot of damage, and you really don't want Hobbesian traps to develop[1]. Once they do, you'll start to have very fond memories of the police.

If disbanding police forces makes it very far in the political discourse, then gun control will be dead as a concept in the U.S. Even felons (who have served their time) have some rights, and without police to protect them, it would be inhumane to deny them self-defense. It's arguably inhumane even with police.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbesian_trap

It's pretty disingenuous to suggest that there's only a binary choice about how to deal with this problem. If you look at the policies of a site like Campaign Zero [1] you'll see that there's a lot of options that can help.

1 - https://www.joincampaignzero.org/

All of those measures are in place in Oakland. Still corralled protestors into a confined space and tear gassed them for over ten minutes while preventing them from running. I guess that's not on the list though.

I'm just trying to figure out why it's bad that police use slack. If we don't want police to be able to communicate, why not just disband them?

Note that I'm not suggesting we disband them. I am just trying to follow the logic.

Sure. We disband the existing police and make a new force based on Peelian principles. After all, maintaining societal peace is valuable.

This is pretty common in lots of things so it's pretty easy to understand. You have an aim you want to achieve (peace), you have a tool that does not achieve that (current police), so you discard the tool and get a new tool.

I really hope you don’t actually think the real world works this way. Police are not a ’tool’ in a vacuum, but rather a massively complex interconnected system influenced by thousands of different external forces. Changing the ’rules’ for them would do nothing.

So you say, but you have no evidence reform is impossible. Whereas nations with police forces not built like authoritarian staatspolizei have lower uses of force, violence, and abuse.

According to HN, everything is impossible. In reality? Going to space didn't have to cost a billion a launch, electric cars weren't impossible, and we can have fibre internet.

For every one of these things, the HN gestalt is that "they're a complex interconnected system influenced by thousands of different external forces". Welp, guess what. Alexander's cut the Gordian Knot. It's clear now that everything is possible and y'all are just hyper risk averse.

You're the one who needs to prove that literally the only change needed in turning America into a peaceful nation is reforming the police code. I thought you guys had - just as examples off the top of my head - nationwide gun, drug and mental health "epidemics", but I guess those are completely moot now.

> So you say, but you have no evidence reform is impossible. Whereas nations with police forces not built like authoritarian staatspolizei have lower uses of force, violence, and abuse.

> According to HN, everything is impossible. In reality? Going to space didn't have to cost a billion a launch, electric cars weren't impossible, and we can have fibre internet.

Not exactly. It's more like the status quo that serves them is impossible to change because they don't want it changed.

Stereotypical HN likes space and electric cars and hates anything that may disrupt their comfortable sociopolitical station.

> If your city had a ballot initiative to defund and disband the police department, would you vote for it?

It would depend on the specifics. I can definitely imagine a situation where the "company culture" of a department is so corrupt that replacement would be preferable to a destined-to-fail reform attempt.

Some kind of law enforcement is necessary, but no specific police organization is.

I'm not sure I've seen a single person suggesting that. People want change not an abolishment of policing as a concept.

Minneapolis city Council has a current measure to disband the police department, and do new departments to carry the duties of the police - social workers for health and wellness checks, security for events, animal handling... And to only use the armed response units when life or property is at risk and deadly force may be required.

I would.

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