• merc@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours ago

      If you don’t have someone authorized by the state to enforce laws, you’re still going to get people enforcing “laws”, it’s just going to be vigilantes, people with grudges, etc. Just look how frequently you see incidents of road rage. Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.

      Take all those incidents of people calling the cops on black men having a picnic or taking their dogs for a walk. If there were no cops, do you think these white “Karens” would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they’d get together and lynch them?

      I think the US needs to scale its policing way back. It needs mental health specialists to respond to certain kinds of calls. The person who responds to a report of a stolen bike probably shouldn’t have a gun. But, at some point you are going to need people who will use physical force to enforce the law. Those people should be heavily supervised by a truly independent body. But, they still need to exist in some form.

      • 7101334@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Cops basically exist to prevent people from taking revenge into their own hands.

        No, cops exist to protect capital.

        This is just one example too, they’ve issued multiple similar rulings. Also, uh, see: Uvalde.

        If there were no cops, do you think these white “Karens” would just leave the black men alone? Or do you think they’d get together and lynch them?

        …you think cops keep black people safe? Are you being remotely serious here?

      • binux@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        Yeah, this is what a lot of people fail to take into account when it comes to the purpose of policing in society. There’s obviously a lot of inherent problems with the way the police are structured in many countries as a whole, but to believe that we can just make do without something like them altogether is pretty shortsighted to say the least. I think that prevents a lot of otherwise sympathetic people from taking the backlash against police institutions seriously.