You said something good then immediately contradicted yourself afterward. So close...

Of course not.



There has been a need for police, firefighters, and ambulance services for millennia, and there've been a number of small steps historically towards introducing them (see: Urban Cohort). It's a function of developing a complex, urban society. Gangs, crime, and riots are a serious problem.

Now, can they be biased, or influenced by local elites? Sure, as the Soviet police no doubt were. Once they exist, they become a power center and bureaucracy in their own right, and all bureaucracies are inherently political.

It's more complex than that. Take your average office, the managers and employees are bought and paid for to enforce the will of the company owner, right? But of course, in reality, they're not. Competing individual and group priorities play out. Managers often don't want to lose staff, employees don't want to be made redundant, and everyone is trying hard to maximize their individual situation.

Police are employed because people demand the existence of police. Can they side with the powers that be? Yes. As can the military. But look at the 1917 Russian revolution and you'll see that these relationships aren't set in stone. It's a complex interplay of individual and group dynamics.



For every egregious example that gets us all mad, how many frivolous lawsuits would the state be subjected to? We all have an interest in not bankrupting the state, I don't see a clean way out.

This post was edited by bogie160 on May 27 2022 10:50pm

To enforce the policies of the wealthiest.

I doubt people want to allegedly fund the police in order to be ticketed, ignored, and saved from the boogyman. You're over thinking it.

The clean way out is for the tax payers to collectlvely demand for financial accountability of big brother and the cops.
The world wars were designed to segregate the people, the family and their ability to form meaningful social bonds that could keep big brother honest or at bay.

Are the wealthiest getting robbed in San Fran, Minneapolis, and NYC? Dollar for dollar, there isn't a better investment for public safety than one spent on police.



Police serve as the enforcement arm of the justice system. Do you not want murderers, thieves, and thugs arrested?

and the ones who have the power to influence bureaucracies are those with capital who are most impacted by property crimes. Corporations steal many times more from workers than is stolen in any form every year. Yet shoplifting gets politicians attention, but wage theft is rarely talked about. It's because the systems are there to preserve the interests of those with capital, and that's how western justice systems were built at the advent of capitalism.

Western justice systems developed out of legal codes from the pre-industrialization era. In the UK, for example, it goes back until way into the Middle Ages. And while you are certainly right that crimes against the interests of the ruling class (heresy or coin forging in the Middle Ages, property crime in the capitalist era) are prosecuted and punished disproportionately, this does not mean that "protecting the capital owners" is the sole raison d'être of our law or our police.


Polls on ideas like "defund the police" pretty consistently show that a majority of the residents in the poorest, most marginalized communities want more police presence on their streets, not less. Because they, rather than the white collar gentry from upscale suburbs, are the ones most impacted by crime.



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Regarding the actual topic: the inaction of the cops can be excused if and only if there is evidence that the kids in the classroom were already dead by the time the local cops arrived and also that they knew that the kids were already dead. In any other case, they committed a severe dereliction of duty and have proven unfit to serve. In that case (which seems more likely), they deserve the civilian equivalent of a dishonorable discharge.

I never said sole reason. I said primary reason.

The police only came into existence in London, for example, to prosecute property crime. Until then they used the Hew and Cry system, and then a bounty system for stolen items. These were insufficient to protect property which precipitated the creation of the police and a more formal justice system.

remember when the lefties were about "defund the police"
then the cops at the capital totally sold out and lied about everything.
then the fraud lefties started waving around blue stripe flags.
what a croc of chit

then roe v wade leak
wow what a freak out that was
REEEEEEEEEEEE its our right to murder kids. REEEEEEEEEEEE
womans right to choose REEEEEEEEEE dudes get pregnant to. REEEEEEEEEEEEE

now we have all these kids getting killed
lefties out REEEEEEEEEEEE save the kids REEEEEEEEEEEEE
grab the guns REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE want cops swarming around every where REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

HONK HONK