[in front of a protesting crowd, two characters are talking]
[blue, serious] Violence is never the solution
[purple, smug] Agreed, let’s disarm the police

[blue is now shown angrily gesticulating, sweating bullets]
NO,
NOT
LIKE
THIS

https://thebad.website/comic/my_little_state_violence

  • Big Baby Thor@sopuli.xyz
    11·
    6 hours ago

    Is this some American joke I’m too Norwegian to get? Yes, because our police don’t escalate, they don’t serve as some political tool to harass people for political gains, but they are highly qualified since you only make it to police school if you have high marks in most subjects…

    In the US, you could be ruled out of a position as sheriff if you score too high on a damn IQ test.

    See a pattern here, yanks? The more intelligent, the higher their chances are of being stable and capable of having empathy.

    But then again, you do live in a country where the police used an attack helicopter to bomb a housing complex…

    So maybe try community policing for a while?

    “How about no police”

    Yes, yes, and no laws, right? And no military… surely all these things are great ideas.

    • SalamenceFury@piefed.socialEnglish
      8·
      5 hours ago

      “Abolish the police” is essentially shorthand for ending the current institution. Community policing IS the ideal goal.

      • guitarfosec@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago
        1. This movement does need a better slogan. “Defund the police” doesn’t convey the idea properly.
        2. This cartoon says “Disarm the police”, which is also terrible messaging and a straight up stupid idea. I wouldn’t work as a cop in this country without a gun.
        3. Police of some kind will always be necessary. Violence and physical power trump everything else, which is why we need people who are allowed to use force on our behalf so that we can run our societies based on rules and not who is the best at violence. Our system allows the people to get together and collectively hire and fire the people that hire and fire the cops we interact with on the streets. I don’t know exactly how that got corrupted or how to fix it.
        4. We need specific police reforms and the folks leading the groups pushing for these reforms need to work on their messaging so they don’t have people yelling and tweeting things out that make them look like idiots and turning people off. You’ll never win over the boot-lickers, but better messaging could be a game change overall.
        • SalamenceFury@piefed.socialEnglish
          3·
          4 hours ago

          I wouldn’t work as a cop in this country without a gun.

          99% of police work does not require a gun. You don’t need a gun to sit on an overpass radaring cars, to show up 8 hours late to a burglary to take a note about what items were stolen to then immediately lose it, to harass homeowners about their lawn or the volume knob position in their stereo, to write a ticket and leave it on someone’s parked car… Nothing of that vein requires a gun, and every time guns are added to that mix, someone fucking dies. The cops responded to a kid having an autistic meltdown with a small knife on his hands on his family’s lawn, and the cops literally dumped 3 mags into him FROM OVER A FENCE HE COULDN’T JUMP CAUSE HE WAS SITTING ON THE FLOOR. European countries DO have a subsect of police that is heavily armed AND HEAVILY TRAINED to deal with actual shooting incidents, but they’re only called when absolutely necessary.

          Violence and physical power trump everything else, which is why we need people who are allowed to use force on our behalf so that we can run our societies based on rules and not who is the best at violence.

          No. You build a better society through cooperation. This is literally about making the state the best at violence so everyone complies. Hard fucking pass, lib.

    • Tippy@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      3 hours ago

      “How about no police”

      Literally no one of any consequence is saying to do this, and this is in fact a right wing strawman regularly used to justify increased militarization of police and to smear anyone left of center calling for police reform. You should check your sources for bias, because you’re being manipulated to believe something about a nation you do not understand the judicial nuances of to make you engage with ragebait content

      What people are calling for is to disarm all police except special response units (like civilized nations), abolish qualified immunity, require malpractice insurance and personal financial penalties for police, codify laws that force harsh punishments on police who knowingly violate the law and basic rights, disband police “unions”, standardize and increase training and licensure requirement across the nation, and move tax dollars away from turning the police into special forces operators and instead put it into community resources that prevent crime in the first place. No one needs to rob the gas station at gunpoint for a few hundred dollars and then get mag-dumped by a feral pig if they’re getting UBI and universal healthcare, make sense?

      Oh, and before you tell me I don’t understand police or the criminal justice system and all of its flaws in my own nation because I’m a “dumb yank” or whatever, I was in the CJ field for over a decade. I am very aware of how fucked up it all is and what the solutions are.

      Again, no one other than right wing grifters are saying “eliminate all law enforcement”. People understand the solutions a lot better than you think, but getting rid of over 200 years of entrenched racism and corruption when the powers that be actively love the racism and corruption isn’t an afternoon of work.

    • ILoveUnions@lemmy.world
      5·
      5 hours ago

      In the US, you could be ruled out of a position as sheriff if you score too high on a damn IQ test.

      The sheriff is an elected position for the record. You mean police officer. Not sheriff.