Minneapolis wants to abolish police

[Lamb]

Minneapolis City Council vows to 'dismantle' police department: report

Members of the Minneapolis City Council pledged to “dismantle” the city’s police department in the wake of worldwide protests over the killing of George Floyd.

www.foxnews.com

Would you want to live in an area where there was no police? LA is talking about doing that too.

 

[hedrick]

The actual quote from a council member seems to say that they want to abolish the current department and create a new one, which will be substantially different. Not that they want to have no police. there might be fewer police, if many calls they currently handle are dealt with by other types of people.

 

[Josiah]

Well.... the liberal thinking would be that if we just eliminate all laws and all police, we would have no crime and no police brutality. Problem solved. Life is simple for liberals.



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[JRT]

Perhaps the council feels that the best way to deal with a corrupt police department is to dismantle it and start fresh. That happened in my town about 25 years ago. They fired every last one and brought in the Ontario Provincial Police.

 

[JRT]

Well.... the liberal thinking would be that if we just eliminate all laws and all police, we would have no crime and no police brutality. Problem solved. Life is simple for liberals.

That is not liberal thinking at all. If you actually believe that then you are sadly mistaken. I'll take your comment as a failed attempt at humour.

 

[Lamb]

The actual quote from a council member seems to say that they want to abolish the current department and create a new one, which will be substantially different. Not that they want to have no police. there might be fewer police, if many calls they currently handle are dealt with by other types of people.

For any major change to take place it's almost always done in baby steps for people to begin accepting their way of thinking.

This isn't a new topic because there are news articles from last year and the beginning of this year about totally abolishing police in cities:

Abolish the Police?

The latest call to action from some criminal-justice activists: “Abolish the police.” From the streets of Chicago to the city council of Seattle, and in the pages of academic journals ranging from the Cardozo Law Review to the Harvard Law Review and of mainstream publications from the Boston...

www.city-journal.org

Police departments are broken. Is it time to abolish them all together? | Pro/Con

Philadelphia starts the new year with a new police commissioner and the promise of long-overdue reform. But is reform the solution?

www.inquirer.com

 

[tango]

Well.... the liberal thinking would be that if we just eliminate all laws and all police, we would have no crime and no police brutality. Problem solved. Life is simple for liberals.



.

In fairness if you got rid of the police then by definition you'd get rid of police brutality.

 

[Albion]

That is not liberal thinking at all. If you actually believe that then you are sadly mistaken. I'll take your comment as a failed attempt at humour.

"Take it" anyway you want, but he's correct about his.

Anyway, I hope it goes through because it will result in transferring one more state into Trump's win column in November.

 

[Albion]

In fairness if you got rid of the police then by definition you'd get rid of police brutality.

True enough, I suppose. But what would we call the brutality occurring at the hands of the government appointed "facilitators" or "mental health professionals" who will take over from police?

 

[tango]

True enough, I suppose. But what would we call the brutality occurring at the hands of the government appointed "facilitators" or "mental health professionals" who will take over from police?

That would be "guardian brutality", a very different thing from "police brutality". This should be obvious - "guardian brutailty" is nothing to do with the police so it's OK.

 

[Albion]

That would be "guardian brutality", a very different thing from "police brutality". This should be obvious - "guardian brutailty" is nothing to do with the police so it's OK.

Aha! Yes. I didn't realize that they'd selected a name for it already.

 

[tango]

Aha! Yes. I didn't realize that they'd selected a name for it already.

It's like when the Federal Reserve introduced a new thing called something like Permanent Open Market Operations (I forget the exact name, and honestly cba to look it up). It looked a lot like quantitative easing but wasn't, because it had a shiny new name. Do the same thing but call it something else and hope nobody notices.

 

[Lamb]

Minneapolis City Council president aspires to have a 'police free society'

The president of the Minneapolis City Council, who went viral for saying that calling the police when your home is broken into “comes from a place of privilege”, has said she wants a “police free society”.

www.foxnews.com

She replied: "We've looked at every reason that folks call 911. Why are people in Minneapolis calling for help? And we're starting to pair what's the right response to those calls. In the short term that helps our police officers focus on the work that they're trained to do, while we have a better response to people who have a mental health crisis or a physical health crisis.”

She added: "The system of policing isn't working for a lot of victims of crime. We have thousands of rape kits that have gone untested. We need to improve our response to all kinds of different violations of public safety, because again that trust in the system is so eroded that our community is across the board."

On tv I was listening to a police officer respond to what she was saying and he said that calls that come in for some of what she says can easily turn deadly which is why the police handle them. A case worker wouldn't have a chance to save lives according to how he described some of the situations.

 

[Andrew]

I seriously cant wrap my head around any American town actually enforcing full on anarchy, they just divorced themselves from America

 

[tango]

Minneapolis City Council president aspires to have a 'police free society'

The president of the Minneapolis City Council, who went viral for saying that calling the police when your home is broken into “comes from a place of privilege”, has said she wants a “police free society”.

www.foxnews.com

She replied: "We've looked at every reason that folks call 911. Why are people in Minneapolis calling for help? And we're starting to pair what's the right response to those calls. In the short term that helps our police officers focus on the work that they're trained to do, while we have a better response to people who have a mental health crisis or a physical health crisis.”

She added: "The system of policing isn't working for a lot of victims of crime. We have thousands of rape kits that have gone untested. We need to improve our response to all kinds of different violations of public safety, because again that trust in the system is so eroded that our community is across the board."

On tv I was listening to a police officer respond to what she was saying and he said that calls that come in for some of what she says can easily turn deadly which is why the police handle them. A case worker wouldn't have a chance to save lives according to how he described some of the situations.

Calling the police during a home invasion comes from a place of privilege? What planet is this person living on? Although I guess it certainly comes with a lot more privilege for the intruder than the alternatives. Let's face it, if calling the police ceases to be an option about all that remains is to introduce the intruder to your friends Mr Smith and Mr Wesson.

I don't think very many people dispute the idea we don't need quite such a militarised response to the serious crime of Walking While Black, Driving While Black or Breathing While Black, and it probably is true to say many things that trigger a 911 call don't need a rapid response from an armed police unit. To conclude from these observations that the police department is redundant is absurd.

 

[tango]

I've got an idea. Since tens of thousands of people each year are injured or killed because of medical malpractise let's get rid of doctors and hospitals. Think of the number of lives it would save, not to mention there would be no more medical bills. And, let's face it, only the privileged can get medical treatment these days so it would increase the equality in our society.

 

[NewCreation435]

abolishing the police or defunding them is a bad idea. Reform is what is needed not getting rid of the police

 

[Albion]

Well.... the liberal thinking would be that if we just eliminate all laws and all police, we would have no crime and no police brutality. Problem solved. Life is simple for liberals..

That's very true. Liberals live in a conceptualized world, while Conservatives live in the world we have.

Put another way, Liberalism posits that human nature is all good, so if there are any social ills, Liberals think that tinkering with the social order will make that goodness operate. Conservatism posits that we humans have both good and bad qualities and impulses. That's what Christianity teaches.

As a result, Conservatives have no doubt that the evil in the world is not just a function of some mistaken government policy. And it has to be consciously restrained or else the good cannot flourish.

 

[tango]

Technically if you do away with all the laws then by definition you can have no crime, since it would be impossible for anyone to break a law. What's not to like about a world with no crime?

(cue Twilight Zone music.....)

 

[Lamb]

That's very true. Liberals live in a conceptualized world, while Conservatives live in the world we have.

Put another way, Liberalism posits that human nature is all good, so if there are any social ills, Liberals think that tinkering with the social order will make that goodness operate. Conservatism posits that we humans have both good and bad qualities and impulses. That's what Christianity teaches.

As a result, Conservatives have no doubt that the evil in the world is not just a function of some mistaken government policy. And it has to be consciously restrained or else the good cannot flourish.

I used to fit that description in my 20s and 30s when I didn't know the difference between liberal and conservative but with the exception of abortion I had very liberal beliefs. Since then those beliefs have changed as the world hits me in the face and I can see how it is in reality instead of my closed off little world I had created in my head.