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Merrick 2148 posts |
Jul 20, 2004, 00:17
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Just about to respond to your post when I read the next one that pre-empted me! The problem is wider than just the existance of police; indeed their invention - and much of their work - is due to an increase in people fucking each other over. As we became more of a mass society so we became disconnected from the people around us, and thus more able to fuck each other over. We don't know the people around us, and in fact there's so many of them that they stop being real. Once they're dehumanised, they're easier to dismiss/rob/whatever. Abolishing the police tomorrow would be utterly disatrous. As a wee sniff of what'd happen, consider the inner city police 'no-go zones' of the 80s that Class War used to celebrate so much, havens for rampant robbing, gang wars and domestic violence. But still, they certainly generate a shitload of problems of their own, and the solution is to work towards a society where people take responsibility for what goes on in their community, where people don't want to ignore those around them, much less fuck them over. A society where power is dissipated as far as possible, rather than the centralised in hierarchies so beloved of those who sit at the top of them. No coppers, no gods, no masters, the abolition of work and the destruction of power. In a nutshell. I don't pretend to hold any Master Plan of how to achieve this, but I believe that holding fast to your key issuesand keeping your eye on what you want you want rather than merely what you want rid of is the only way to get on the road to that place.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Jul 20, 2004, 11:52
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Well. Not exactly. I'm not going to disagree with any of the anti-police stuff that's been said here. I too have had my own run-ins with the uniformed mafia on demos... and had them hassle me for a variety of - often undisclosed - reasons on the street, in airports, at festies, and in my own home. All over the world I've witnessed men and women in uniform (though mostly men, in my experience) do truly horrendous things under the shield of "upholding the law". However, the messages on this thread have brought to mind that old fable of the four blind men and the elephant. One man reaches out and grabs the trunk. "It's a snake" he exclaims. Another grasps a leg; "Fool! It's an oak tree". etc etc. Well, we've had the snake. Let's hear the oak tree... Not too many weeks ago, a young man drove his first car to the edge of a cliff, left a note on the dashboard, walked to the edge and threw himself off. Next morning a local woman out walking noticed the car and - seeing nobody nearby - made a phone call. She called this guy I know, Joe. It was then Joe's job (along with some of his colleagues) to drive to the clifftop, climb down the cliff face and recover the body. After that, it was his job to drive to the 19-year-old's mother and tell her that her son has just commit suicide. Then, with what I have no doubt was extreme sensitivity, he kept the woman company whilst her husband drove back home from work. Only a few days before that, Joe was called when a bunch of boy-racers wrapped their car round a lamp-post. He arrived before the ambulance and probably saved a life, because he is also a skilled medic. The other two in the car were already dead. What made this all the more difficult was the fact that he knew these guys. Everyone in the area knew that these guys tore around the narrow country lanes at phenomenal speeds after dark. In fact Joe had often spent long nights trying to catch them in the act, but had found only the burnt tyre marks of hand-brake turns. He'd been round to their parents' houses to try to plead with them to rein in their children. That they'd end up dead... and probably take another carload of people with them. But Joe was told, in no uncertain terms, to "mind his own business". A couple of months ago Joe had a *really* far out situation to deal with. A man who had just lost a custody battle for his child strode into his ex-wife's lawyers office, doused himself with petrol, and set himself alight. Along with firemen and paramedics, Joe was one of the people who had to deal with that situation and its aftermath.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Jul 20, 2004, 11:52
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Of course, it's only once a week or so that Joe has to treat serious wounds, or fish bodies from the sea. Most nights it's the more mundane stuff... at pub kicking-out time, it's his job to get between the two drunks with the broken bottles. When Mrs. X's neighbour phones in *another* report that Mr. X is beating her up, it's Joe's job to restrain himself from beating the crap out of Mr. X whilst a counsellor once again fails to make Mrs. X understand that protecting her husband may not be in her best interests. And whilst I don't want to sound like a recruitment advert for the Gardaí, with the single exception of the name "Joe", all of the above is just as factually true as the brutality I have witnessed at demos. I've sat across the dinner-table from "Joe" and I know he's not lying when he tells me what the daily routine is like. And y'know, the point of the fable is *not* that the man crying "snake" was actually the one who got it right. And I think we often fail to acknowledge that for a *great* many people, their entire experience of the police is "oak tree". The man holding the trunk is *never* going to convince the man holding the leg that he's touching a snake. The very notion is absurd. We all need to recognise that, like it or not, we've got an elephant on our hands.
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 21, 2004, 00:02
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Well I'm certainly in agreement with all that, Paul, and also with the things that you say below, Merrick. Blair said the other day that "60s liberalism" was to blame for "lawlessness" in Britain, turning a blind eye to what what Thatcher spawned in the 80s.
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 21, 2004, 00:18
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It's not a black and white issue, I guess - it's both a snake and an oak tree. People are complicated things, neither wholly one thing or the other. I agree with what you say, and when I was being terrorised by violent and agressive neighbours in Glasgow I was more than happy to see the police, I can tell you. They do necessary and sometimes heroic things that I am glad that I don't have to do myself, and for that I thank them, I guess. Feeling that way and feeling disgust and hatred at police brutality and corruption are not mutually exclusive. though. Looking at the police force as a whole I have to say that in the world we live in they are a necessary evil, which is to say: a necessity that we should try to make unneccessary. To say that the police force as a whole is, on balance, brutal and corrupt, is not a denial of the good motives of certain individuals within it.
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TomBo 1629 posts |
Jul 21, 2004, 00:23
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A person I used to know was applying to become a police officer when I last saw him. I'm sad to say that as far as I could tell it was because the power would feed his bloated ego. On the other hand, my neighbour is a police officer, and although we're hardly close friends I wouldn't describe him as a bad person by any stretch of the imagination. Perhaps I'd feel differently if he was arresting me, though.
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Littlestone 5386 posts |
Jul 25, 2004, 21:47
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Think you'll find it's the Tao Te Ching.
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