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[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
Some countries do have unarmed police (though usually there are special armed units).
It works really well!
What's the definition of armed in this case? Firearms only, or does pepper spray also count?
Let's get some stats, shall we?
Since 1982, in the US, about 1130 people have died from mass shootings.
American police in that same amount of time has killed over 38000 people.
The problem has never been AR-15s, or the lack of background checks, or anything of the sort. It's always been the pigs. But liberal suburbans enjoy the benefits of the pigs protecting their property while they kill poorer people, so telling them this makes them stare blankly, or they double down and continue to whine about weapons of war, to which I say: If you're so concerned with weapons of war being in the streets, why does every law banning AR-15s add exemptions to the police?
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.
What does community policing look like?
"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.
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.
"Abolish the police" is essentially shorthand for ending the current institution. Community policing IS the ideal goal.
Don't police in Norway also have their guns locked?
Violence seems to usually be the solution. Waiting for the protests to no longer be peaceful.
I think the final straw will be midterms. It’s, IMO, a fool’s hope that a blue wave would do anything more than those in office already aren’t doing, but I get that most people don’t seek violence. If the elections are called off, winners not recognized, or the fraud/voter suppression is egregious, maybe then. Protests alone do nothing, the rich are rich enough they can survive a general strike longer than any of us can, so voting them out is our last chance to change course peacefully. After that it’s accept the New America or invoke the Amendment of No Return. And seriously, that’s going to suck.
Violence is always a solution. It's just usually the wrong one being applied by incompetent jackasses against the wrong people.