1w ago

Who needs cops anyway?

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Couldn't those community patrols be considered a type of police
- Normally theyre called gangs. The thing that made the black panthers special is that as a cause it was killed before it deteriorated. A lot of gangs form to protect from other gangs, police corruption, and general sense of community.
  Usually most folks aren't willing to do things free, so it devolves as it grows. Loses the original basis for formation. It's why christians is a confusing term, you have atheists, catholics, buddhists, etc. All lumped in while all can and are christian, there is degrees of severity.
  
  Oh so like first it starts out protecting the community from issues but then it turns into "the crips have to pay" and now heroin to pay for a turf war...
  That's interesting
  
  You start protecting the community but who is paying you, your rent, or your food? You have to start charging and now you're another tax. Tensions rise. And yes this would impact drug trafficking which is usually lethal. Note, junkies are relatively safe, dont get between their drugs or stare and you are good.
  Trying to do good is difficult because by definition, the only good thing you can do is retain the status quo. Any change will have negative repercursions.
  A good goal quickly deteriorates when the power structure forces you to deal with the devil. And where does he reside?
  
  Atheists and Buddhists aren’t christians? I was gonna say do you mean religious, but atheists aren’t religious either
  
  Atheists can be christians by believing in the structure provided through it, atheism is just not believing in god.
  I do not believe in a greater being, I believe in man. Even Jesus himself did not claim to be of god but of man, and that he was purely a messenger.
  Buddhist's can be primarily Christians as well, however they adhere not to just one guide of knowledge. That's the weakness with my experience in western life, I was born christian. I saw buddhism as a differing way of life, while it really is more structural and philosophical to me than spiritual.
  Dramatization and symbolism is lost when talking about something as complex as religion.
  The bible itself is a collection of texts, your spiritualism and religion doesn't end there. It is something you live, endure, question, and eventually absolve yourself of through determination. It's more just a guise for talking about our mortality, consequences, acknowledgements, and the thereafter.
  So in the wake of death, your own or any you love, you have to imagine them. You will miss them and wish it were true, in it you will find your spark. You will awaken the ability to see the suffering, phantoms and demons everyone carries. However in such suffering you will savor the most delicate of kindness, appreciate the little passing moments.
  In that you awaken the ~~sharingan~~ royalty free eyeball to see something you couldn't before. I don't think it is god, rather passion for the nectar of life. Regardless of hardships.
  For context. Catholic raised. Buddhist by 11. Sikh by 18. Eventually found Sri Ramakrishna's teachings in a little free library this year. All while atheist - and now I question that, as this book allowed me to believe something I never could.
- I agree with you. What would be the use of those patrols if not to police behaviour?
  Maybe someone with more historical knowledge could expand on the meaning of "Black Panther style community patrols".
  
  I think the difference is the idea of people from the community, with the consent of the community, policing said community. From the community, for the community. I think it's a nice idea, but it really depends on the actual community what that would look like. More peaceful and inclusive in some places, horribly authoritarian and racist (even worse than US cops now) in others.
  But yeah it'd just be different form of policing and those doing it could be just called police.
- I think this requires us to look into what the definition of that word is, as a verb.
  To "police" is to dominate and enforce conformity, often with the threat of overwhelming consequence. A lot of people don't realize that the origin of the modern police department was crowd control. They were invented in cities in the early twentieth century to suppress riots and protests. The day-to-day patrol work is just an extension of that core mandate.
  I think that if you trained folks up the way we do for volunteer fire brigades that'd be a lot more like working as an EMT than a soldier. Sometimes you might have to lay some hands. But, imo that is not policing if you only respond when someone calls for help as opposed to showing up uninvited to enforce the state's prerogatives.
  Showing up to assist and protect someone who is crying out for help isn't actually "policing", imo. That's rendering aid. You aren't acting to disincentivize non-compliance with state directives. So I would not consider such a group to qualify as police, semantically.

110 comments