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Here’s the thing:
We need public safety.
The police don’t keep the public safe. They don’t provide public safety.
“Replace things that fail with different things that might actually work” simply should not be such a difficult thought.
From @gkatz: https://mastodon.social/@gkatz/110554294778067036
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It’s not just that the police chronically harass, injure, and murder people. They also •fail to provide public safety•.
There’s this sort of unstated white person contract that says, “Yes, the police may be violent, but we will tolerate it because we need public safety.”
But the police simply fail to provide that.
Call it “reform” or “defund” or “abolish.” I don’t care. Are we •replacing things that fail•, or are we •embracing continued failure•? That’s it. That’s the question.
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Or maybe the police •are• succeeding. Maybe the unsolved crimes, the neglect, the harassment and injury and murder of marginalized people are exactly the purpose our society wants them to serve.
But fellow white people, you need to choose: either admit that this violence is what you think success looks like, or stop embracing failure. One or the other. Either this system is working or it’s not. You tell me where you stand.
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@inthehands do the police solve more crimes than they commit?
Prevention is an illusion, the only thing the police can provide is after-the-fact accountability
@RandomDamage @inthehands well trained police can help prevent crimes. But very very few places have police trained sufficiently or funded sufficiently to actually achieve this goal.
The UK used to but hasn't had for decades
@Dasy2k1 @RandomDamage
Training can help, but if there’s any lesson from the US, it’s that training is only as good as the systems in which it’s embedded. Training here in the US is in fact a large part of the problem: programs are geared to a “warrior” mentality that leaves a trail of destruction in its wake.
@Dasy2k1 @inthehands if the rewards are aligned with the right goals, you'll get the results you want
Training helps get there more efficiently, but it is literally a case of getting the result you pay for
In the US we buy military armored infantry vehicles and body armor for our police departments, what results are we paying for?
@RandomDamage @inthehands exactly. We don't even buy firearms for any but the most highly trained specialists.
I remember that @mekkaokereke had a fantastic thread about how the incentives that are baked into the structure of policing create the discriminatory, violent results we observe. Mekka, do you happen to have a link? That was some good stuff. (Mastodon search grrrr etc)
@mekkaokereke @RandomDamage @Dasy2k1
That’s the one!
Such good stuff. On a related note, I’m hoping one day you might compile that whole month of “white history” posts into a site / blog / book / something. Just one day of truth bombs after another.
@inthehands I'm living on POSIWID lately so I'm totally on team "the system is working as designed but it's messed up that people designed a system to do that"
@misterdave
I mean, I think I kind of tipped my POSIWID hand with the last post
@inthehands Well I guess I'm going to need to start following you...
@inthehands sorry for following.
@michaelcoyote I’m sure we both ought to go to our rooms and think about what we’ve done