Society/Culture Don't talk to the Police - On Philosophical Grounds

[Gethelred]

Okay.

There have been countless police threads on this forum. We have threads on how the criminal justice system in Victoria is soft on criminals; we have threads on police brutality in America and Australia, we have threads on crime waves and whatnot.

We have across multiple threads and topics the acronym ACAB - All Cops Are Bad - and it brought to full focus for me - in conjunction with the video below - that we don't really have a thread to discuss the police philosophically.

From time to time, I'm going to update this thread with a variety of sources, and I encourage others to do the same. The thread title will be altered around the most recent source provided, regardless of whether it's me or others providing that source.

When I do I'll do my best to acknowledge their limitations when I do. For example, the video below is solely concerning an American sociopolitical context and - to an extent - lacks application elsewhere as the US state prison system has its roots in a history of slavery which might not be present elsewhere. There is also the fact that it is definitively a biased argument, biased against police and policing.

None the less, I give you where we will begin:

 

[Spieldory]

Sooo. Turned on the video and its some rap crap that I couldn't understand what they were saying. So I turned it straight off and went and listened to Jason Aldean to cleanse myself.

 

[Episode IV]

I'm only about half way through the video so far, but it's fairly apparent that any issues people have with police and the prison systems in Australia and in the USA are based on two disparate situations.
I'm not really relating to that video much at all, but I believe more than a few here will, being even more saturated with American attitudes and premises than they are with our own.
I think that your use of that video as an opener and the premises it presents is going to bog this thread down fairly quickly.

Many of the issues have much to do with a theme that cropped up fairly early in your video, and that is respect for police. In Australia, that is very definitely decreasing, and with it, occasionally and more likely in times of prolonged stress, the quality of police responses.
I'm old enough to remember when police (in WA) didn't routinely carry guns, wore light blue uniforms of a very non-military nature, and were a lot taller and more imposing.

I'm still occasionally jolted by the difference between now and then. Being pulled over in 2023 is a lot different to being pulled over in 1985, by way of example.

 

[Gethelred]

I'm only about half way through the video so far, but it's fairly apparent that any issues people have with police and the prison systems in Australia and in the USA are based on two disparate situations.
I'm not really relating to that video much at all, but I believe more than a few here will, being even more saturated with American attitudes and premises than they are with our own.
I think that your use of that video as an opener and the premises it presents is going to bog this thread down fairly quickly.

Many of the issues have much to do with a theme that cropped up fairly early in your video, and that is respect for police. In Australia, that is very definitely decreasing, and with it, occasionally and more likely in times of prolonged stress, the quality of police responses.
I'm old enough to remember when police (in WA) didn't routinely carry guns, wore light blue uniforms of a very non-military nature, and were a lot taller and more imposing.

I'm still occasionally jolted by the difference between now and then. Being pulled over in 2023 is a lot different to being pulled over in 1985, by way of example.

The idea with starting the thread off with that particular video is that it's as thought-provoking as it is provocative. It positions prisons in a modern context as tools of capitalism to take care of surplus population and a means of economic repression of lower classes and racial minorities in quite specific ways.

I'm working on finding my next source, which will hopefully be something approaching things from the other angle.

 

[ShanDog]

I find it amusing how political movements can be grounded in deep thought, complex ideas and seek to address systemic problems that appear almost too large to ever be changed, but then get boiled down to a bumper-sticker slogan which immediately turns the majority of people - even those who are most affected by the problem - totally and forever against the movement. It's like how Ted Kaczynski had some really interesting and thoughtful critiques of modern society, and decided the solution to that was to send mail bombs. Like, WTF? How did you manage that logical leap?

 

[Engimal v3]

**** cops. The only good pig...

 

[Geelong_Sicko]

It's like how Ted Kaczynski had some really interesting and thoughtful critiques of modern society, and decided the solution to that was to send mail bombs. Like, WTF? How did you manage that logical leap?

Ted got utterly mind-f*cked through secret US government experimentation;

U.S. Government Mind Control Experiments

Hypnosis, LSD, and the Unabomber.

www.psychologytoday.com

April 26, 2020

..Another ethically problematic study was conducted by Henry A. Murray. Murray was a professor at Harvard University and had worked for the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor to the CIA) during World War II. He wrote “Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler,” which was the psychological analysis of Hitler that was used by the military. During this time, he also helped develop tests to screen soldiers, conducted tests on brainwashing, and determined how well soldiers could withstand interrogations. The interrogation studies included intense mock interrogations on soldiers as part of assessing the limits of their psychological breaking points (Chase, 2000).

From 1959-1962, Murray conducted such interrogation studies on Harvard undergraduates (Chase, 2000). Theodore Kaczynski, who later became known as The Unabomber, was one of the 22 participants in Murray’s study, subjected to several years of interrogations designed to psychologically break the young man...

 

[Gethelred]

I find it amusing how political movements can be grounded in deep thought, complex ideas and seek to address systemic problems that appear almost too large to ever be changed, but then get boiled down to a bumper-sticker slogan which immediately turns the majority of people - even those who are most affected by the problem - totally and forever against the movement. It's like how Ted Kaczynski had some really interesting and thoughtful critiques of modern society, and decided the solution to that was to send mail bombs. Like, WTF? How did you manage that logical leap?

The thread's named for the video, which was named for the song by NWA.

The idea for this thread - if you read the OP - is that I or others can share resources that justify, criticize or discuss police and policing (including prisons and society) from purely a philosophical basis.

If you'd like to contribute a source, I can rename the thread (which was the idea from the get go).

 

[ShanDog]

The thread's named for the video, which was named for the song by NWA.

The idea for this thread - if you read the OP - is that I or others can share resources that justify, criticize or discuss police and policing (including prisons and society) from purely a philosophical basis.

If you'd like to contribute a source, I can rename the thread (which was the idea from the get go).

I guess my comment was more about how the underlying philosophy is communicated or turned into action, particularly in the context of the resource you posted.

 

[barreness]

I find it amusing how political movements can be grounded in deep thought, complex ideas and seek to address systemic problems that appear almost too large to ever be changed, but then get boiled down to a bumper-sticker slogan which immediately turns the majority of people - even those who are most affected by the problem - totally and forever against the movement. It's like how Ted Kaczynski had some really interesting and thoughtful critiques of modern society, and decided the solution to that was to send mail bombs. Like, WTF? How did you manage that logical leap?

Did his dissertation on boundary functions, he just arrived at the logical conclusions a lot quicker than others and took some rather brash actions.

Derail though,

Do like J.D vids, its interesting going back and looking at the origins of policing.
Back to australia's roots as a prison colony is food for thought, maybe it wasn't the convicts that were the problem

 

[Gethelred]

Our next resource...

Our first entry into this topic was F.D Signifier's F&%$ the Police, in which FD discussed at length - through interviews, analyses, and historical review - that policing has always been a tool of state repression, and that repression has changed over time. Where once it was a tool of direct repression, now policing and jails are tools by which capitalism regulates the job market; if you have a job that cannot or only barely pays for you family's rent, transportation, your children's schooling and food on one hand and crime on the other which can absolutely pay for all of those things, you're probably going to make the criminal choice. Through this lens, crime is a consequence of excess population, with all desirable positions filled and the underclass needing to be controlled to prevent anything changing.

One wonders if there's any connection between black men being the main peoples imprisoned and that idea.

The next thread starter is "Don't talk to the Police", which is quite an old video. Again, it is limited to an American jurisdiction; don't try this over here, and thus some to all of the conclusions cannot be drawn equally over Australia. But it is a worthwhile discussion point for quite a few reasons: the first speaker was a law professor who has planned out a lecture on the subject and is fairly knowledgeable (and entertaining) for it, but the second speaker was a serving police at the time of recording whose task it was to extract confessions. To have him come to the precise same conclusion for entirely... darker reasons is an interesting thing to behold.

Without any further ado...

 

[evolved2]

For those who oppose police and prisons philosophically, what's your alternative?

 

[Gethelred]

For those who oppose police and prisons philosophically, what's your alternative?

Not what this thread is for.

We have ****ing countless threads on the SRP to discuss policing, alternatives and misbehaviour. What this thread is for is to provide a philosophical and contextual position for poster's stance on policing; resources and underpinnings.

What this is for - why it is useful - is because instead of moving forward without a demonstration or justification - whether we're talking an ACAB position or pro-policing position - this thread serves to provide demonstration, allowing those threads to base their positions on something more concrete.

Should you want to provide a resource for consideration, feel free to post it in here and I'll change the thread title.