God damnit I still remember this, and I’m in my late 40’s
Scruff, McGruff, Chicago Illinois, 60652
🎵Write to me, Stick Stickly, PO box 963, New York City, New York State, 10108!🎵
Rattle rattle thunder clatter boom boom boom…
There one area where they can actually prevent/decrease crime. Let’s say of all the crimes the police currently commit, they decided (hypothetically) to hold themselves accountable and stop doing those crimes. That would have a direct effect on the police crime rate.
I actually disagree, because they’re a deterrant. “They show up after it happens” is an argument that could be applied to any deterrant, so it’s obviously a bad argument. Police are a problem for other reasons than that they literally don’t prevent any crime.
It’s probably accurate to say that police create more crime than they prevent
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In addition to that, I’m thinking about all the crimes that can’t happen if police aren’t around
All kinds of police misconduct isn’t happening without police:
Types of Police Misconduct:
Excessive Force: Using more force than necessary to subdue a suspect or make an arrest.
Discriminatory Harassment: Targeting individuals based on race, ethnicity, religion, or other protected characteristics.
False Arrests: Arresting someone without probable cause or legal justification.
Coercive Sexual Conduct: Engaging in sexual acts with an individual under duress or without their consent.
Unlawful Stops, Searches, or Arrests: Conducting searches or making arrests without proper warrants or legal grounds.
Police Brutality: Using excessive force, beatings, or other forms of violence against individuals.
Police Corruption: Engaging in illegal activities like bribery, extortion, or theft for personal gain.
Falsification of Evidence: Tampering with or fabricating evidence to support a false case.
Police Perjury: Lying under oath in court proceedings.
Witness Tampering: Trying to influence or intimidate witnesses.
Racial Profiling: Targeting individuals based on their race or ethnicity for law enforcement actions.
Unwarranted Surveillance: Conducting surveillance without proper legal authorization.
Assault: Physically attacking or harming a person.
Battery: Unlawful touching or striking of another person.
Murder or Manslaughter: Taking a human life, whether intentional or unintentional.
Rape: Non-consensual sexual activity.
I’d upvote that meme.
Postponed, supressed or relocated potentially but not prevented and when crimes are postponed or supressed as such the desperation increases resulting in more violent and destructive crimes.
The only way to prevent crime is to deal with the conditions that cause it.
They’re not a very good one considering how they have a very poor case closure rate for serious violent crimes, and the state and federal justice systems of the US are disturbingly okay with false convictions and excessive retribution.
sure, I don’t disagree with you. The police are a moronic institution and ACAB, but this meme’s dead stupid in order to farm worthless lemmy upvotes.
c/politicalmemes has a quality standard for memes? Besides which the argument was they might still be useful, and the versions we’ve seen in the US so far have shown to cost way more than their value (and that’s before we get to asset forfeiture).
At this chapter it’s long time to start implementing programs with the goal of completely replacing law enforcement in the US with other systems, including enough benefits to assure people aren’t driven to crime by desperation.
both are true?
It is both true that police show up after it happens and they don’t prevent crime? No – there exist crimes that are prevented by the police. I’m sorry but even if this meme is batting for my team it’s in my best interest to shoot it down because it just makes us all look stupid. I agree with the conclusion this meme makes, but the first half is so obviously wrong it is worth negative points in my opinion.
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.
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.
Supporting male dominance is part of their real job.
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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.
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.
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…
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.
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).
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.
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.
"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
I agree with the post but not the title.___
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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.
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
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.
CBD being classed as a narcotic is wild.
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 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.
I realise I may be pissing into the wind here, but people don’t typically stop at one crime. If you catch the person who did it, that stops them from carrying on doing crimes.
Of course, social programs also help.
Is this fact or feeling?
People I know that work with criminals attest that the vast majority of crimes are opportunistic encounters by ordinary people and “career criminality” is rare.
Of course “I know people who say” isn’t much fact either but it’s more then nothing.
It’s definitely not fact. In fact, the Prison Industrial Complex causes MORE crime than doing literally nothing would, let alone actually investing in amelioration of the root causes.
This has to be the most Lemmy comment I’ve ever seen.
Agreed, it doesn’t address that putting someone in jail did or didn’t prevent them from committing more crimes. Then a study is linked that focuses almost entirely on the economic aspect of jails, again not the topic. But this crowd isn’t open to an honest convo, they’re the hyperbolic “all people in group X are Y” kind folks. Not a lot of room for nuance in these convos when they can’t even stay in topic then come at you for calling out a nothing response.
High quality and accurate?
Tangentially related material to garner favor from other fake, emotionally dependent, reactionary, hyper online, social rejects.
explain (you won’t)
If you don’t already understand what I’m saying, I don’t think me explaining it further will help.
(he didn’t)
The Mafia has entered the chat…
Are these people working with repeat offenders though? Or those going through the system for the very first time?
I mean you can also say that that threat of jail does prevent people from committing crimes. But this seems like a pretty hyperbolic group, not really a lot of room for nuance. A lot of these ACAB people could see a cop sacrificing his life to save an orphanage full of children and still call him evil for being part of a broken system with bad people in it.
It really is. I also think a lot of the power users here just aren’t that bright, to be honest.
It seems pointless to argue this. Clearly it is true some of the time and not true others. Even some of the opportunistic petty stuff could have been prevented by timely interventions, especially social welfare programs
However There is evidence that “broken windows” policing doesn’t work, and “stop and frisk” just breeds resentment
But imagine if police had a good reputation for helping people, lived up to “protect and serve”, actually were a thin blue line keeping civilization civil, cared about preventing crime, investigating crime, seeing justice done. Imagine if they spent their time on issues that matter. Imagine if they were able to handle substance abuse and mental illness for the good of the victims, connect the desperate up with social welfare programs. Just by slogans alone we could have a much better world while preventing a huge portion of crime.
I’ve been saying it for forever, happy people don’t do crime.
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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.
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.










