how do you know that?

Because it's impossible to have a society without crime. Someone has to fight crime, to keep it in check. Who's gonna do that, if there's no police? Whoever wants to, right? And what would we call them? Doesn't matter what you call them, they're just the new police.

You can fantasize about abolishing the police as we know them, but they'll just come up again in a new form. It's like Pete T said: "Meet the new boss; same as the old boss."

That's why I don't get anarchist/disestablishment types. If you listen to what they say about what would happen in a post-establishment world, it's just a re-iteration of what we've already been through. So why do they want to tear **** down at all? (because they're not patient enough to fix it)

crime does and will continue to happen whether there are police or not actually

Common sense. There are plenty of places in the world where there is no such thing as a real police force, and for the most part they all suck. Sooner or later it becomes clear that a group of guys with AK-47s can take what they like without fear.

And for all the wannabe anarchists, we do protect our communities ourselves. By maintaining a police force that answers to locally elected government. If you are having systematic problems with your cops, the problem lies in the city government that you voted in. But that's not really the case. The overwhelming majority of people in this nation don't have consistently negative interactions with cops. And the ones that do are usually dicks.

True, but the scale of crime and its prevalence changes drastically.

um, there is something else that sucks besides music and bikes. Your posts.

when did this thing start? I lived in tucson for 14 months and never heard of it (I moved away in January)...

Take that up with your city government, which passed the ordinance that the cops have to enforce. Think of a police force as a miniature army. The army goes where the civilian leadership tells it to, even if soldiers don't want to go. When this doesn't happen you have a situation known as a military dictatorship. Most cops don't care about pot, but still have to confiscate and give out tickets. Because otherwise they're bad cops. And if I had to deal with the kinds of people cops deal with day in and day out I'd be condescending and defensive too.

Hear hear folks, vigilante justice and lynchings are the key to peaceful civic life.

Vigilante justice has a long history, and you know, it usually sucks. Mob justice is anathema to fairness, and I would've thought that habeus corpus would be valued by bike people, who are on the whole fairly liberal.

And our communities are protected through cooperation. We elect the city government, and pay them taxes to give them tools to run our cities - that way we can go on with our busy lives without serving on a militia or fire departments. Our city government handles details like fire protection, sanitation, police, road maintenance. The people monitor the actions of the government, and vote accordingly. Representative democracy really isn't that complicated.

Buying a bigger gun does not a better soldier make.

Who's this We that you speak of? I can't recall one official that I voted for ever being elected. Representative democracy isn't that complicated, and it's also a ****ty system.

give me a break, you're defending mindlessly following orders? **** that ****.

The Tuesday Night Ride has been going on for a couple of months now. It's fairly new.


Funny sidenote: Tucson had a watered down Critical Mass ride yesterday and almost 50 cops were there, compared to the 100 or so riders. Nice.

Following an illegal order is illegal. Following a legal order is mandatory. If the president tells you to execute civilians you have a legal duty to refuse that order. If the president gives you an order to launch an invasion of Iraq you're bound by law to obey. This is a cornerstone of democracy - the military is absolutely and utterly subordinated to civilian (elected) authority, it doesn't get to make decisions except in regards to how it's going to execute the orders. That's called having a chain of command, and this is why the president you vote for is the commander in chief of the armed forces.

I don't understand why I have to explain this.

Same with cops - they don't make the laws and don't choose what they have to enforce. They take their orders directly from the local authority. That's why Cali cops won't bust marijuana clubs, while the feds will.

All of this is done to make sure that the power remains in the hands of elected officials, and ultimately with the people who vote for them.

Based on your posts you would not fare well with direct democracy either. Chances are the anarchic utopia you dream of would also not suit you very well. You're too far out of step with the community around you, and will always be something of an outcast. Either you should enter politics yourself or join a movement and drum up support for your ideas, move somewhere with a like-minded constituents, or just put up with the fact that very few people think like you or want the same things.

That said, I think the two party system that US has is not as democratic as a typical parliamentary government with multi-party representation, but local politics (which has the most impact on your local law enforcement) is less constrained by it.

But hiring a pack of mercenaries has always been a shortcut to power in an environment where the state doesn't have a monopoly on force.

I lived in an "anarchic utopia" without a police presence. West Oakland. And I can promise you that whenever a cop did roll by people felt a lot less safe.

I have a feeling that many of you that feel all warm and fuzzy when you think of the police watched too much Andy Griffith Show as a kid. Or maybe you really do live in Mayberry?

In Oakland the murder rate for 2006 was 8.5 the national average. I'm sure less cops is exactly what that city needs.

Sources:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country/...ates/cri-crime
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/06prelim/t4al_ca.htm

I'm not going to say that more cops = less crime (for example, in East Palo Alto the police department was able to achieve a huge murder drop without increasing the size of the police force through improving leadership), but I kind of doubt that cops are making that city less safe.

wow. what an as$hole comment. get off your high horse.

Anarchists are so cute.

I like to see how they turn out once they stop loathing their parents for their stultifying bourgeois ways.

That said, we're definitely more fascist and police-state than when I was a kid, by a long shot. It worries the hell out of me, because the people pushing it that way are driven by fear, faith that 'someone else' will figure this all out, and have nothing but the best intentions. It's the most dangerous mix I can think of.

That is very true, and is the fault of the politicians, not the cops. Patriot act, zero tolerance laws, mandatory drug sentences, etc - all those things erode our freedoms and put more power into the hands of the few.

The worst thing is that since we keep voting the politicians into power we have nobody but ourselves to blame for the current state of personal liberty, the war in Iraq, and all the other stupid bull**** that is going on. In a nation with almost complete freedom of press we coddle ourselves by staying uninformed and compliant. It's sickening.
How so? Most people get an occasional traffic ticket, and call cops when they need their help. There are problematic departments *cough*Chicago*cough*LAPD and they could probably use a restructuring, but clearly the local constituency doesn't seem to give a ****. The average person, most likely being older and more law abiding than most on this forum, is very unlikely to experience a negative encounter with the police.

As for saying that most people consistently getting hassled by cops are dicks, that's more personal experience than anything. The people I've known to complain about that the most were the ones most likely to be publicly intoxicated, belligerent, and eager to let 'the man' know what they thought about them.

!?!?!?
 

aka NJS stamped pork

i was going to simply put up a pic of batman, because he would be fighting crime.. but i found this and decided it was funnier and quite fitting in this particular situation. :D

http://cache.defamer.com/assets/reso...man-busted.jpg

Somalia: no central gov't, no law, no cops, functional society. Not likely to make the 11pm news...

i wouldn't say Mogadishu is a totally functioning society...

Or try any tribal society. The society as a whole is responsible for enforcing their moores. There is no concept of leaving that responsiblity to a small sub-group, much less paying someone else off to deal with the problem members of society.

But I'll be the first to say, it's unfortunate this doesn't scale up. Soon as you get a group 200+ and every person doesn't feel responsible too and for every other person, people take advantage.


I still think there's better ways than paying our alcoholic former quarterbacks to harrass the population.