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Yeah yeah I know, ACAB and everything.
Police don’t just show up, they walk around. At least in non-police states like the US.
And wherever they walk around, crime is prevented. Because a robber isn’t going to snatch a purse when a police is looking right at them. A drug dealer isn’t going to sell drugs in front of the police station. And people drive slower and don’t go into a road rage when the police is riding close by.
So no, police does prevent crimes.
The threat of violence from police and incarceration by police are also associated with the presence you mention. These also prevent crime from happening.
The “problem” is that it’s physically impossible to have police everywhere, all the time, for that prevention to be meaningful. It’s diminishing returns and exponential cost. So programs to prevent people from turning to crime, like jobs programs, pay so they aren’t suffering in poverty, affordable and accessible mental health and regular health care, addiction treatment, decent housing, etc. are the logical next steps.
But no. We just hire more cops, give them more guns, and the equivalent of military armored vehicles. They choose violence.
If they are only preventing opportunity, the crime will just take place at a different place or time when an officer is not present. The program’s mentioned are aimed at reducing the motive for crime, which applies at all places and times.
It creates marginalized and crime hubs too. Police chooses to be present somewhere (where there’s a perceived interest) and chooses not to somewhere else. Also crime is not viewed equally among the different spheres of society and police just creates its own type of systemic violence in relation to that.
Crime prevention does indeed start with social programs. But it doesn’t end there. I’m all for defunding the police and I do agree that in the US police is really out of hand, but let’s not be naive here. Social programs aren’t going to address organized crime, or crimes of passion, crimes of immaturity (tenagers are both immature hormone soups and capable of causing harm) or political extremism. Antisocial behaviours can appear even in the socialistest of the welfarest of the welfare states.
Not to mention that cops have at the very least also the role of maintaining order, which is different from preventing crime. Think traffic cops, or rowdy crowd marshalling, or stopping disorderly conduct in public, or (extreme example) breaking up the mob that wants to lynch the alleged pedophile, to make sure he gets due process.
I’m all for a profound overhaul of policing, and for deep changes to what first responders are called for what emergency, but, honestly there exist functions for which police is useful.
Yep just look at Japan. Very safe and orderly country because of the cultural and societal upbringing of people and the pressure to behave. Still has organized crime, still idiots who break traffic laws, still has financial crimes, etc.
Honestly, culture is only part of the reason.
The majority of people having enough and making enough to live on, and having actually safety nets and access to affordable Healthcare means you don’t need to commit crimes to survive. As always it’s not perfect and things can always change, but having less wealth inequality really does wonders for a society
For sure! But people don’t only commit crimes to survive.
When people’s needs are met, they tend to not do illegal things.
Here’s what I wrote above:
Crime prevention does indeed start with social programs. But it doesn’t end there. I’m all for defunding the police and I do agree that in the US police is really out of hand, but let’s not be naive here. Social programs aren’t going to address organized crime, or crimes of passion, crimes of immaturity (tenagers are both immature hormone soups and capable of causing harm) or political extremism. Antisocial behaviours can appear even in the socialistest of the welfarest of the welfare states.
Not to mention that cops have at the very least also the role of maintaining order, which is different from preventing crime. Think traffic cops, or rowdy crowd marshalling, or stopping disorderly conduct in public, or (extreme example) breaking up the mob that wants to lynch the alleged pedophile, to make sure he gets due process.
Stop!!! You are making Blahaj Lemmy have a brain melt from all of that logic. They can’t comprehend anything but the thought of a lawless shitshow ruled by a ruthless “communist” dictator, where they somehow still have rights for queer people.
Fear of getting caught in progress or after criminal behaviour is literally THE factor for not doing crime. Everyone is capable of crime regardless of how well socialised we are. We either have no good reason to do crime, restrain our criminal “urge” or are at least unconsciously scared of getting caught. The intensity of punishment is not helping to deter crime. The chance of getting caught however is by far the largest deterrent.
Police somewhat deter crime, sometimes. Sometimes they prevent a crime from being worse. For example, they race to a crime in progress and try to stop it if it is still going on.
I don’t think you could have a successful society without laws, and you need someone to enforce those laws. But, the modern US police force is so far from what you’d want if you were designing things from the ground up.
Cops do not like confronting actual criminals - criminals are dangerous. But they love to intimidate and force total acquiescence from regular people and excuse it by saying ‘its what we have to do ‘in case’ they are a criminal’.
Once criminals figure out that cops don’t want to confront them, those criminals learn to accommodate that. So they get worse. They figure out who they can rob and intimidate with impunity - and it’s mostly the poor. But also, they can break into middle class people’s cars, porch pirate, even B&E into homes, and cops don’t want to deal with that. So many people post on reddit bc cops won’t do a thing if, for example, a disabled person has their motorized wheelchair stollen, so people try to play detective on their own. Have a stalker or an ex who has credibly threatened your life? That might only help them catch that person if you are actually murdered.
Cops deter crime in wealthy areas, but the rest of us are on our own.
Fear of being caught might deter the naive from testing if they can get away with shit, but in reality, there is essentially a truce between cops and criminals, and if you know how to be too much work and risk to bother catching, a lot of what we consider ‘criminals’ don’t have a lot to worry about.
They also escalate crime. By a lot.
Welfare checks. Minor incidents. Petty theft.
Suddenly it’s a dead guy.
Agreed but that does not at all relate to “they show up after the crime happens,” which is a brain-dead take.
This is saying police aren’t the answer to solving all crime and that the need for them would be greatly reduced if a society were to look after it’s people instead of leaving them to wallow in misery and strife. It’s not anti police to say that at all. Police are misused in many societies as a tool for all situations and then teach them only how to be a hammer.
Those kinds of crimes are exceedingly rare, and many (such as rampage killings) are the result of systemic issues that could be addressed in other ways (not merely just regulating firearm access).
I don’t think you could have a successful society without laws, and you need someone to enforce those laws
This is a very post Renaissance take.
Is it?
i think the cover it in here but it’s been a while… Behind the police
I’m not going to listen to a podcast that just might have an explanation for what you mean on the off chance you remembered the right one.
Yeah sure. Good podcast/series tho. It pulls a lot from The End of Policing by Alex Vitale. Robert Evans is also an incredible journalist/narrator.
Law enforcement in some form has existed far prior to the Renaissance.
Yeah sure, palace guards, militaries, mercenaries, and so on.
The “police man” is a concept from the last few hundred years.
E: don’t lemmy half asleep folks…
It’s a bit disingenuous to pretend police and punishment in general are not a deterrent. Yes, reducing police has shown to reduce crime for some time in certain case studies, but not removing them.
however, just like the severity of punishment, after a point the more police you have see diminishing returns, and in serious over policing cases you start to get more crime because they start looking for reasons to hand out fines and smaller charges to justify/fund their job. However, prosperity reduces the amount of crime more than anything, in a given population.
"Mom, I know your intentions are good, but aren’t the Police the protective force that maintains the status quo for the wealthy elite? Don’t you think we ought to attack the roots of social problems instead of jamming people into overcrowded prisons?”
“Look, Lisa! It’s McGriff the Crime Dog! Hello Lisa! Help me bite crime! Ruff ruff!”
The Simpsons
They don’t care AFTER a crime has been committed either. Every time I tried to report my bike stolen (happened a lot, unfortunately) they just laughed at me for wasting their time.
The one time I needed them for an intervention they showed up very late, obviously against their will and were downright belligerent (I was the victim of a crime, they barely registered it).
ACAB, no exceptions.
In all fairness, this one time whilst living in London (UK) the police did recover my stolen bicycle.
Frankly I totally didn’t expect it and had only reported the theft to make sure it ended up in the theft statistics.
I’ve been commuting by bicycle on and off for over 2 decades and got maybe 5 or 6 bicycles stollen in the meanwhile and this was the only one I ever got back.
A bike? I had the same reaction trying to report my car stolen. Not worth their time. They couldn’t even cross reference their own data - a couple weeks later I was ticketed for abandoning my stripped car and charged for towing and storage fees. Reporting my car stolen was just an income source to them and I had to keep paying so it wouldn’t keep adding up
The guy we work with told us that there’s a pusher living on the floor below his apartment. It’s really sad because the police do nothing about it, even though there have been so many complaints from the neighbors. Narcotics are forbidden here, except for CBD-only products.
My friend had his bike stolen. He insisted on filing a police report even though the cops were clearly annoyed and straight up told him it was pointless. A couple months later he saw his bike chained up on the main street in his neighborhood. There were 2 cops out on the street so he approached them and explained the situation. One laughed at him and said, “What do you want us to do about it?” The other told him he would have to provide proof that that specific bike was his and that it wasn’t just the same brand which is basically impossible.
Then he said, “We won’t be here much longer. Just go buy some bolt cutters and steal it back.”
Fuck the cops but ngl that last bit of advice kinda slaps
Sometimes they invent crimes that didn’t happen. You could say they’re creating crime.
I’m pretty sure that they’re frequently creating crime.
Whether making it up on the fly, or accusing perfectly innocent people of wrongdoing, or… There’s a long list…
I just read Framed by John Grisham and Jim McCloskey…and it’s insane how far the police and prosecution will go to “save face”.
There’s one story in that book where the actual murderer came in to the police station AND CONFESSED with details that only he could have known, because he felt guilty about the wrong person being tried for the murder…and prosecution continued on the innocent person, while the actual murderer was ignored.
It’s an enraging read. I actually had to put it down a few times, because I was so frustrated.
And, of course, as bad as it is that these innocent people are being prosecuted (and some even executed), another problem is that the actual murderer is still roaming free…and many of these crimes are now unsolved, because the police were so focused on the innocent person that they ignored everything else.
They create a scenario in their mind that they think happened, then look for evidence and suspects that fit the story.
Happens far too often.
If there’s a fight, they arrest the victim and let the assailant go free. Then charge the victim with “assault with a deadly weapon”.
Source: Happened to me. I was thinking Motherfucker, I don’t got no weapon, fuck off. Charges were all dropped.
I used to roll my eyes when Redditors posted anti-police sentiment, I thought they were just being edgy. Turn out they were right.
Some people don’t understand until they’ve been victimized.
I used to roll my eyes when Redditors posted anti-police sentiment, I thought they were just being edgy. Turn out they were right.
Glad you recognize the problem.
I was pretty “cops are kinda okay” to full blown ACAB after this story, where a my neighbor, a man in a wheelchair, was shot 9 times in the back of the head because Ryan Remington has a trigger finger.
9 times. In the back. 60 yo man in a wheelchair. And Ryan Remington is still Scott free.
Thanks for sharing this experience.
People think I’m being dramatic when I say a police officer can choose to ruin your whole life, and the lives of your friends and family, just because they feel like it.
Nobody should have that kind of power.
My ex husband called the police on me two years ago because he wanted to kick me out and move in his new concubine.
When they showed up, they told me I could either go to jail or a mental institution, that I had to leave the house I was currently paying bills on.
They have denied that they did this, and refused to provide me a police report. I had zero protections in my divorce. The fact that I was evicted from my house meant that I did not have the documentation of the physical and mental abuse that I needed for court. Not that it mattered anyway, because my ex drained my bank account a few weeks later and made it impossible to get a lawyer.
Supporting male dominance is part of their real job.
That’s a pig’s job. I’ve watched those motherfuckers forge documents. They show up, shit on people, then cover up their misconduct and idiocy.
Mentally ill, non-violent, habitual drug user here. I can attest that, regardless of my moral condemnation of policing, a good 60 percent of my encounters with police have contained abuse, incompetence, or gross misconduct.
Oh, and I’m a white man with blue eyes, and 5’1".
I have seen the way people drive if there are no consequences for driving terribly and dangerously. I assure you it cannot be fixed with just speed/red light cameras, speed bumps, and social programs. (And honestly, cameras and especially speed bumps just make the road worse for everyone)
It’s not about preventing crime
The rich break laws constantly, with no consequences
The police are there to make sure that those who aren’t wealthy enough to be insulated from the consequences of their actions know their place
Take it a step back…the root cause of most crime (or at least non-white-collar property crime) is social and economic inequality, which is now and has forever been driven by the wealthy ruling class.
Rich people cause all the crime.
The police are worse than useless. They exist to generate revenue for themselves, and they occasionally murder people.
I’ve been saying it for forever, happy people don’t do crime.
