this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Good.
I've never seen a crime deterred or solved by the cops. You know what prevents crime? Improved standards of living. Secure housing. Gainful employment. Future prospects.
There will always be inequalities, there will always be unhappiness/unrest, there will always be crime to some degree, and thus there will always be the need of some responsibility to deal with it. The important thing is that this group is selected and actively monitored according to strict requirements. The current situation is bad, especially in the US, something needs to change. But saying we don't need cops is just as stupid as the right-winger's "I don't dial 911 ๐ซ๐ซ" door sign...
Not everything is about absolutes, everything has nuance, and to say what you've just said is to miss the wood for the trees.
You believe that there would be no crime if just everybody had a home and a job? Are you for real?
Crimes of poverty, deprivation, desperation? Significantly less than currently.
But yes, there would still be plenty of white collar crime that we don't currently tackle either, and in some cases encourage by policy.
If heavy handed policing worked, it would have worked by now.
I'd go farther: home and job are optional, there would barely be any crime if just everybody had future prospects they were worried of losing for not following the law.
You live in a very different world than I do, apparently. What about domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, infringement on personality rights, etc.?
How much of that is the police stopping? By the time you see it in the news, it's already happened, committed mostly by people who thought they had nothing to lose, and a few mentally ill.
Domestic violence in particular, is much easier to solve when people can just get up and leave, instead of being tied down by a lack of an alternative.
Police actually intervene a lot, all the time, day and night. Not even a fraction of this ends up in the news. People seek help from police all the time as well: car crashes, fires, protecting paramedics, protecting protestors from counter-demonstrators, protecting mosques and churches, protecting asylum housing, etc. etc. etc.
It seems like you have no idea what police is actually doing and think because you don't see it it's not happening. But a lot of completely normal people, with jobs and housing and everything, get in trouble for various reasons and it happens all the time. Just for Berlin for example (that's 4.7 Million people), you have about 4000 emergency calls a day. Only for the calls that go directly to the police, not even reroutes. And that's not counting all the regular stuff going on like observations, protection programs, people who come directly to the station, patrols, ....
It's irrational to believe all this will suddenly evaporates just by giving people alternatives. That's not how people work.
You'd be surprised, I actually briefly considered joining some 20-odd years ago, got as far as reading the training materials (then decided there was no chance in hell I'd pass the physical).
What you describe, are one part "first responder" jobs, and another part tasks that wouldn't be there if people had something better to do. I'm not saying the "first responder" tasks would be gone, or even the religious or political conflicts. I'm saying that actual crime would be a fraction of what it is now, if all people had some guaranteed future prospects. Not jobs, not housing, just the knowledge that as long as they don't get violent, they'll have a way to pursue whatever life they want.
People work like pressure cookers; the more pressure you put them under, the more violently they'll explode when they get past their limit. Some will hit the purge valve and get drunk, beat their family to a pulp, or maybe just verbally abuse them every day (guess how I know that). Some just get piss drunk and do all kinds of drugs on weekends to "relieve the stress"... stress they wouldn't have in the first place if they had alternatives in their daily life.
Even in Europe, we have an anxiolytic and antidepressant epidemic. That should make us realize where the problems are coming from.
I guess than this is just a matter of different worldviews. I believe without someone enforcing laws "stronger" people will simply abuse and take from "weaker" people. Even when they do not need it, simply because they can.