The root of the problem is that government police are funded by coercion. In a free market setting, in order to stay in business the police would have an incentive to actually provide a service valued by the community paying them. Government police are monopolized and guaranteed to be funded no matter what they do because payment is extracted by force. Nobody on earth can accurately tell you what the value of a government police officer job is worth. Nobody can accurately tell you what their wage should be, nobody can accurately tell you how many police officers should be employed, nobody can tell you whether or not the job should even exist in the first place. It's all done by central planners instead of the market. We all agree that most police aren't corrupt, but we all recognize that they are capable of being corrupted because they have a monopoly on force. The monopolization of force is the whole problem with police. Everybody agrees that it's morally wrong to initiate force on another person. So why should police be able to initiate force on me if I didn't first initiate force on anybody else? The only time force is ever justified is when it's done in self-defense, which by definition isn't initiating force at all. 50% of inmates are in jail for victimless crimes. This means that they never initiated force on another person nor their property. So that means that 50% of arrests (probably more because most victimless crimes don't require jailing) are done immorally. So what is the job of a police officer if not to immorally initiate force on peaceful people? If the job of a police officer was to "protect and serve", why would they need a monopoly on force to do so? Wouldn't everybody adore police and admire them for their service to the community if they in fact did "protect and serve" said community? The reality is that the job of a government police officer is to be the enforcer to a central authority. To enforce the "laws" of such a central authorities. These laws enforced by police are opinions of individuals in such a central authority and are completely arbitrary. These opinions are not only arbitrary, but are bias towards special interest groups that benefit only said special interest group at the behest of the common individual. Ask yourself, why should your individual opinion be overshadowed by the powers that be opinion? The answer to this question is simply that your individual opinion doesn't matter because a group of other individuals have arbitrarily granted themselves a monopoly on force against you.
Revenue for the state. Getting to beat and murder innocent people with impunity is just a perk of the job.
The police are not here to protect YOU. They dont even have to show up when you call them. They can pretty much stand by and watch someone stabbing you and do nothing because they are not here to protect YOU the individual. There job is to protect the public at large so crime affecting a one or a few people dont have to be stopped by them. Sure there captain might fire them but they are not legally culpable for not helping you. Now if they start helping you and do a crappy job then you MAY have case to sue but if not you cant do shit. Cops protect and serve themselves.
It's so easy to understand how disinsentivized police become when you understand the rules of a free market and how well it functions. A service that is monopolized will always produce a poor service and on top of that, will even cost more to the consumer. The ideal job of a police officer (to protect and serve) is a very valuable service. But for some reason whenever i talk to people about how the service needs to be privatized they just end up talking about how corrupt those police would be. It makes no sense because for one, these police wouldn't have a monopoly on force and two, these police are liable to their customers. If they were corrupt there would be no reason why they would still have that job, and they would be handled like any other thug that initiates violence on people. Unlike what you see today when police initiate force on a peaceful person, it's called "good police work"
Yeah when police blindly take away the basic human rights of peaceful individuals based on opinions of bureaucrats influenced by corporatists just for a pay check, it makes me mad too.
It depends. Some have hurt me, ticketed me, photographed me at demonstrations, fingerprinted me, stole my weed and poured out my likker and even put me in jail, but others have helped at certain times. It's a mixed bag, I guess.
When I was young, the cops were mostly like Andy of Mayberry. Their main job was to apprehend criminals. Today they are living up to the definition (which can vary widely) of a police state: Their main function is to keep the political establishment in power. I don't often agree with Communists, but I do agree with what Mao Zedong said: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." EDIT: @ blazer above me: I didn't read your post first, but you are right.
Trust me, the cops were very involved in maintaining bigotted racial relations back in the good ole days. In many parts of the South, they were even active members of the KKK.
theory; police...law enforcement and safety of the people sheriff...tax collection. reality; oppress and protect uh...I really doubt that stopped...they just stopped wearing the hoods
I don't think it's as prevalent now than it was in the good old days of Mayberry USA. I could be wrong, tho.
Maybe down there, but when I grew up in the '50s and '60s here in the northeast they were Andy-ish, and your sphincter muscle didn't tighten up if you saw them in your rear-view mirror. EDIT: The recent absolute brutality has mostly just happened since 9/11, although it started ramping up with the development of SWAT teams thirty or so years ago with the genesis of the drug war. The line between law enforcement and the military is now completely blurred: Law enforcement is about apprehending criminals and the job of the soldier is to kill the enemy. American citizens are now viewed as the enemy by the so-called law enforcers. Also, during the '60s police brutality was mostly directed at blacks and Vietnam war protesters of any color. Today, everybody is fair game: black, white, women, kids, the elderly, the mentally handicapped, essentially anybody. It's all about the projection of power over the entire populace.