Reddit reviews The End of Policing

The 40% claim is based on a study from the early 90s so it does need to be taken with a pinch of salt in light of probable attitude (and indeed police demographic) shifts since that period.

This said, while the statistic shouldn't be taken as ironclad fact it does serve a possibly useful rhetorical function when cited (in good faith, of course) in public discourse. IE, citing it to claim that 40% police today are indisputably domestic abusers is wrong, but using it to point to a clear issue with how the police encourages certain relationships to violence is legitimate. Used right it can problematise the police as an institution and question the legitimacy of their monopoly on violence. This gives the 40% meme some polemical use outside of the merely factual insofar as the questions it raises are being examined in serious scholarly works and deserve further attention. (For example Alex S. Vitale's [the end of policing] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Policing-Alex-Vitale/dp/1784782890) is an excellent book I'm reading right now which touches on these topics.)

In terms of better statistics, there are qualitative studies ones which look at police organisational culture and how it breeds attitudes which can normalise violent behaviours amongst police officers such as police brutality, discriminatory attitudes and violent tendencies. Claire Renzetti's feminist criminology reader examines this from an external crime-management perspective (IE police attitudes causing problems in how domestic violence is policed etc.), but there's also [this] (https://www.law.virginia.edu/system/files/faculty/hein/armacost/72geo_wash_l_rev453_2004.pdf) comprehensive article by Barbara Armacoast that examines the relation between organisational culture and deviant/violent police behaviours.

You have just made one of the most obviously not in good faith arguments I think I've ever seen. Systemic criticism of police the institution is not the same as hating individuals, moreover those who are negatively affected by police unjustly have every right to be upset, and these days that is an ever-growing number of folks. I challenge you to find any post here advocating attacks on police... a desire to be safe from police violence and reduce it is not the same as seeking to harm them.

You think we hate everyone who doesn't follow our ideology? Good grief. Your bias is showing, buddy.

I'm going to recommend you read The End of Policing, not that you'll do it, but as an example of what you seem to think doesn't exist: a clear, heavily researched and supported, critique of the institution without personal antagonism. Check your library. Maybe you'll learn something.

>I'm interested in this subject. Direct me to some good reads about it if you don't mind.

Sure, the historical beginnings of this are with the Lippmann Colloquium that met before WWII broke out, where a new kind of liberalism, and political strategy was discussed. For a good overview over the meeting this is the work to consult.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-65885-8

After the War these groups got together and organized the Mont Pelerin society, and begin implementing neoliberal political projects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Pelerin_Society

Philip Mirowski is the scholar to go to in order to get a good account of how this functions.

A book on Mont Pelerin society:

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674033184

An overview of this movement and ideology, again from Mirowski (PDF)

"The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its own Name:
The Neoliberal Thought Collective Under Erasure"

https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP23-Mirowski.pdf

Here you will find how regular people were transformed from rational agents in neoclassical economic theory, to irrational agents that are ultimately epistemically flawed subjects, and the market is transformed from an allocation device to an epistemic agent.

>Same with all this. Fascinating.

Well Bassner's work was already referenced, but this is a good book, that provides an overview.

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140104396220

On the CIA, OSS and its connection to Wall-Street, I suppose the best entry would be David Talbot's work on the Dulles brothers.

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062276162/the-devils-chessboard

On the real history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Weiner.

Domhoff is a sociologist that has been working on this type of stuff for a long time, and has a website. He is a great resource to untangle modern corporate power. Check out his work on business think-thanks like Council on Foreign Relations.

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/postwar_foreign_policy.html

On state repression of democratic movements, start with the first red scare. Howard Zinn's book on history is still the best all around account of this subject.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767.A_People_s_History_of_the_United_States

To see what I am arguing, it can be done through a particular state function, like policing. This is a good book that provides a history and function of policing, (it might surprise you) and advocates for its end.

https://www.amazon.com/End-Policing-Alex-S-Vitale/dp/1784782890

>I can't deny that these are things the state does, but I still don't agree that this is a necessary function of the state, but rather the manner in which it is used, by corporations which make use of it for their own gain.

The state does not have a necessary function, other than to mitigate the problems of class relations, and to expand the processes of capital accumulation. I am in total agreement that it can be used and political victories won. Obviously, for example, a limit on the working day is political victory, and the state was used to achieve it. But it was the underlying struggle, and militancy that translated into a state victory. As soon as that militancy dissipated, the working day was under attack. If the state was a neutral instrument, this would not matter.

>I'd maintain the actions of Capitalists, sure, but I'd argue these are not necessary consequences of Capitalism, but rather what people have chosen to do with Capitalism historically.

It is a consequence of pursuing most profit, and engineering a landscape where most profit is generated. This is an internal drive to capital accumulation. So if the object is maximum economic growth, then the object is going to be individual purchasing units, purchasing the most stuff. This has been well documented by sociologists, and commented on by philosophers and political theorists. It entails an apparatus that cultivates desire, instead rational contemplation, or spiritual and ethical values. If you don't have this type of subjectivity... then people buy just what they need in a very narrow sense, and you end up with a crisis of overproduction. Obviously a population entertained by commodity consumption in the form of the base generates more profits, this is an empirical matter.

> Fundamentally these are consequences of human actions and decisions, which have occured within a Capitalist system, merely because Capitalism allows for these behaviors, and yes, perhaps in some sense, in the absence of certain roles of the state, rewards these behaviors, but it is the human that is perceiving reward and value from the material gains permitted by Capitalism.

I fundamentally agree, that ultimately capitalism is just a generalized system of human relations. It is just that those relations don't appear to us as such, they appear as things and forces outside of our control... and they are. They push us to exist in a certain manner, independent of our will. It structures our lives, and we fill those structures.

>Operative word there being power. The most fundamental power is capacity for violence.

In a way we all have a capacity for violence, but that does not bend another will to your own. Power does that, even with absence of violence.

>It's an important distinction that implies something entirely other than "the military". Who has controlling interest in those military contractors?

That is the military in the concrete. I don't know what you mean by controlling interest. If the contractor is private corporation, then it would be the board of directors, that is attempting to keep shareholders happy.

>Be safe out there, the world is fucked XD

Same to you. Cheers!

This isn't 1640. Communities aren't as small or tight knit as they were. People don't just commit crimes against their community or the the people in them.

I read Vitale's book - The End of Policing and he does a great job of explaining how terrible polices forces are, how they are used I correctly, and their history of being used incorrectly. What he does not explain very well is how to actually end policing, and what that looks like in a modern society. A society with multiple communities whose problems spill over to the next.

The whole time a read that book, I found myself agreeing with him until getting to the end of his point and thinking about how we could legitimately apply that in real life. The answer is not very well, if at all.

The whole time, repeating in my head: "That's a great point, but I'm not sure his suggested solution would work because reasons. How could we make it work... Oh yeah we solved that problem already... That's how we got here."

I did like spending a portion of the money you would have used to incarcerate a population back into the community they come from. I am eager, though skeptical, to see that happen more often.

I would like to see a reduction in "active policing" where police are looking for people to arrest. I would rather move to more if not exclusively reactive - It's not a problem until someone else has a problem. Let the community attempt to handle it if they can.

The overriding theme is that we should have the police force we want. Unfortunately we get what we deserve. We deserve it because we do get to determine policing policy by the politicians we elect (and sheriffs are directly elected). People don't though. They start change.org petitions and at best get out and protest. I would bet my last dollar that half the people protesting don't vote even if they could.

As a snarky aside - I do not trust a community of any sort to truly police itself. We could go through the ages finding hundreds of instances where this did not go well. Just ask Salem how it worked out.

4 books to read about police:

Policing a Field guide

The End of Policing

Our Enemies in Blue

Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government