I keep encountering Americans saying that their police should be abolished altogether. I honestly can't see how that's supposed to work.

To be more exact, I can't see how they think it's supposed to work. It doesn't seem to make any sense.

Am I missing something?

My understanding is that people using the slogan do not constitute a homogenous group with a single vision on what that would entail. It is probable many of them do not actually even want to abolish the police but rather use it as a rhetorical device to shift the Overton window towards other radical reform solutions.

But there are also groups that want to, eg. abolish the extant police structures and then found something else in their place.

For them, "Abolish the police" refers to a particular "police", not a law enforcement organization in general.

The wish for such a radical re-structuring arises from perfectly legitimate concerns that whatever internal reform the police services across the country are going through are not sufficient to prevent law enforcement from causing undue damage.

Makes sense. Thanks.

No prob! However, I am not an American either so I can't claim particular expertise :)

yeah this sums it up pretty well

although not everyone who says "defund the police" means exactly the same thing, this is kinda what a lot of people mean at least in a general sense

Yeah, "defund the police" still leaves the existing core institution, it's about redistributing goverment investment into other services which are better suited to particular tasks that the police currently oversee.

Abolishing the police begins there, but goes a step further and proposes that an entirely different institution is needed for the core police tasks as well, and that those core tasks need to be re-examined: "keep the peace" begs the question whose peace is being kept, and "law enforcement" is unjust so long as the laws are unjust.

Defunding is a more immediately achievable goal that can be step on the road toward more radical changes to the country's policing and carceral systems.

(Abolishing the police tends to go hand in hand with abolishing the carceral system as we it, as well.)

"as we it"? Is there a typo? I'm confused

*as we know it

ah, makes more sense

Though TBH I'm currently more up to date with New Zealand's anti-carceral movements than America's.

I've been keeping up with news less in favor of more studying for the AP tests soon, so you probably know more than me.

That's fair.

I follow a number of Indigenous activists on social media, mostly.

And of course I read E-Tangata.

(Their kōrero section is really great, and just a dramatically different kind of thing compared to Western interviews.)

Yeah I'm not against abolish the police per second, but I hold 5o the idea that doing that too quickly without an intermediate step like defunding first could cause more harm than good

I'm confused about how "mental health services" is a police job currently. Unless things are run very differently in America than they are here.

That also shouldn't be an excuse to do nothing at all though

I suspect it is

Honestly it's kinda complicated

And I don't want to try to pass myself off as an expert

I'd say that the expressions "defund the police" and "abolish the police" are putting the cart before the horse. Get your alternatives working. Then cut the police when you know you don't in fact need as many to keep order. But there's no budging a phrase once it's got started.

Well

(by the way, are you from the US or elsewhere yourself, so we're not talking at cross-purposes?)

The thing really is, there are changes that have been needed practically from the founding of the country

(UK here)

Guam, technically part of the US

Ah, right.

In paper an independent territory, in reality basically a colony

The problem is, having the police respond to things like domestic disturbances and mental health emergencies, is actively causing harm to the extent that there's a decent argument it would be better to have nothing than to have what we've got now. And in many places in America, especially the big cities, there ARE alternatives which could take over those services but they aren't getting the funding they need.

Yeah

I mean, imagine two people are having an argument

Explain that again. Is that an official thing, the police responding to mental health emergencies?

The police get called and arrest one or both of them

When my dad was having a dementia episode and threatening violence against his family because he was confused and scared, we called emergency services. There were medical professionals who could have come, but policy said that because my dad was threatening violence, the dispatcher could only send police to "help" us.

That and much worse happens

But police aren't trained in de-escalating a situation where somebody with dementia is scared and confused; they're trained to forcefully subdue criminals.

I am sorry about that. I'm pretty sure that is not a thing here.

Yes, exactly. Two different sets of expertise entirely.

That's what "defund the police" is about.

Not every instance is a horrible misunderstanding but even the best case scenarios are usually a waste of everyone's time

There are many MANY cases where someone with mental health issues is disturbing people, and the police come and kill the person with the mental health problem.

Here it happens sometimes in recent years, but that's an emergency thing, because the actual mental health services were cut to the bone during "austerity" so sometimes there's not enough of them to respond to calls so the police do it. Which has caused quite enough complaints.

I've heard.

We also have a very large problem with police just shooting or otherwise killing people who didn't in any form deserve to be subdued with violence

We have a huge problem in the US with that happening over and over

From what I've read, the American police system seems to have got profoundly weird.

And "abolish the police" is based on recognizing that there's structural issues at play.

They seem to be run as a sort of military, with the enemy army being "people passing by that look as if they might be criminals".

And it seems largely skewed in a very,... racially based direction

It's not exactly a new phenomenon

Like I said, we have had this issue basically from the founding of the country

For example, every year in the UK the police get hundreds of complaints about racist behavior by their officers. And every year every single one of those complaints is investigated and they say "We couldn't find any evidence of racial bias in this action."

Heck in a sense technically since before it

It's just statistically impossible that out of hundreds of complaints every year, they're ALL spurious.

Depending who you ask you could say police brutality was part of what caused the founding of the US as a split away from being a colony of the British empire at the time

It's like doctors. They all stick together.

Peel's principles were a very good start, but modern policing doesn't follow them at all.

However widespread or not the problem is anywhere, any time, if it's investigated nobody will tell anybody anything.

I really don't know how you solve that.

And then you also have a problem that being in the police, having that kind of power, draws people who might be inclined to mis-use that power.

It seemed as if things were getting better in that respect over here, but I'm frankly a bit alarmed by these new protest laws.

Hence "abolish the police," divest community-building responsibilities to more qualified groups, and build alternative systems for those needs which remain.

Why in the name of any kind of anything did the government think this was a good time to do that?

Fear.

Fear of losing power.

Hah, could be. But of all the how did they ever think they'd get away with it.

Fear. The use of fear of punishment to quell unrest, and the use of fear of outsiders as a distraction from their own corruption.

The whole thing is crazy.

I've lost track of where that law's up to, actually.

Sustainable, lasting solutions like this don't come from governments down to the people. They come from changing the hearts of people, which in turn changes the government. I'm having a lot of conversations about justice lately, and how it's not the same as punishment; it's a principle that makes us unable to rest if another is hurting, a standard by which the deserving are rewarded.