leqert.blogg.se - Defund the police infographic

See infographic for imprisonment statistics.is the world’s leading country in incarceration.

Black people are 3x more likely to be killed by police than white people.

99% of killings by police between 20 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime.

Every time police default to violence, they are publicly measuring out what our society will tolerate and let slide,”even if it’s to our shame.” Here’s what society has been tolerating throughout the past few years: The violence then becomes a way to solve any kind of social deadlock. How does police violence differ from other forms of violence that don’t have a visible presence? The police add violence to any situation, inserting something that Greif calls “testing violence” in a public way. We keep hearing phrases like ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) and Fuck12, but these words have no meaning unless we take action. The Washington Post has named “police killing black people” as a public health crisis “a pandemic, too.” In the midst of the peaceful protests and marches honoring the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many others who were unjustly murdered by the police, all eyes are glued to our law enforcement. Now, more than ever, the conversation about defunding the police has made it the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement. What is all the talk behind defunding the police? Police “are empowered and required to impose, or… coerce a provisional solution upon emergent problems without having to brook or defer to opposition of any kind, and that further, their competence to intervene extends to every kind of emergency, without any exceptions whatsoever.” Recent events have highlighted the disgusting reality that Greif, Bittner, and a mass of others have correctly described. Greif cites Egon Bittner when he explains the true purpose of the police. But, Greif points out that police can’t take stock of the Constitution if our Constitution doesn’t conceive of them. Their duties have evolved, making police responsible for preventing and cleaning up “messes,” targeting anything that is out of the ordinary (think anything from parking violations to arson).

Technically, police fulfill their jobs by adhering to the tenets of the Constitution, existing to create and maintain order.

Though purpose of police lies in our Constitution. They did not conceptualize such an agency back then. Our contemporary definition of the police was merely an afterthought to the founding fathers. Thus, the judicial branch is the group that actually represents and is responsible for knowing the law, while the police are a “supplementary force or additional locus of authority and violence, for mediation or interruption.” So what does this mean for police officers? Essentially, this makes our police force as a sort of people “picker-upper,” collecting the “criminals” that the courts will later prosecute. This is the representation of penal law that Greif envisions. There is no room for an agency “ alongside or outside the citizens and their contract.” And, to drive Greif’s point home, social contract does indeed allow for the rectification of error, but this can only be done through the proper agency–criminal court proceedings. In an ideal world, the social contract dictates that a democratic agreement is self-enforcing, as each person upheld their part of the deal. What is the purpose of our police and did we make space for them in the first place? Greif argues that there’s really none and that our founding fathers didn’t really consider the police during the birth of democracy.Ĭonsider Thomas Hobbes’s social contract. But, the former was as much a mystery to our founding fathers as it is now. We know what the latter represents, because courtroom proceedings were made for practicing law. They are consistently split into halves, where the first portion is dedicated to policing and the second is dedicated to courtroom proceedings. Greif uses an incredible metaphor to simplify this seemingly paradoxical theory. But Greif reminds us that the law has never been a resource for the police. When we think of police, we think of the law. Greif’s Essays Against Everything devotes an entire section to exploring the functions and the outcomes of a police force. Let’s turn to renowned thinker, author, and Stanford University professor Mark Greif to flesh this out a bit further. Theoretically, the police should not exist.