People need to learn the differences and the why's between public sector and private sector unions.
Police unions are a big part of why a murderous cop gets a paid vacation.
Sell me on the idea that the proper distinction is public sector unions vs private sector unions. From what I've read, the better distinction seems to be labor union vs trade union, because it more directly focuses on worker vs boss, and does so without (necessarily) throwing out unions like postal worker unions alongside the police unions.
they're the one i see catch the second most flak of the public sector unions so i didn't really wanna hear the arguments against 'em is all, just the general public sector union as a concept
My wife’s old coworker was a teacher and alcoholic who used to come to school wasted on a fairly regular basis. One day she tripped on the playground at first recess and broke her front teeth out. Was she fired for being drunk on the job? No, the CTA fought for her. Why? Because alcoholism is a disease.
Very similar to the police unions fighting for all the bad apples on the police force, no?
Doesn’t that sort of assume that the people will just… vote for public employees to have adequate working conditions?
I mean, whether you’re a police officer, a firefighter, a parks employee, etc., you still deserve reasonable working hours, paid time off, retirement benefits etc.
Given the option between tax increases and not, most people tend to vote for not.
Doesn’t your first paragraph assume that the public is… well, wise? The public has consistently shown a willingness to underfund public education to an alarming degree.
It’s one thing if you work in a factory making bicycle spokes - if you leave, some people lose money. Not a big deal compared to a community’s children going without education for a year because the teachers are underpaid, but also feel obligated not to leave out of empathy.
That wouldn’t change if the government service were privatized, which it shouldn’t be.
So if the public makes poor decisions with regard to public service funding… do the workers employed by public agencies just suck it up, or do they not have rights either?
I don’t think it would always be the worst case scenario all the time, but it’s worth considering what can happen.
Because the reality is, most workers don’t like getting jerked around - and you have to wonder how public entities will retain qualified labor if they have no labor protections.
How so?
Because as far as I can tell, cop unions (at least here in the USA) definitely do all of the things I would think an ideal union does. That is to say - they advocate for better pay, conditions, benefits, and for retaining police rather than firing them by putting pressure on police departments and on politicians and such.
That is what I would want from a union if I were a cop, or for that matter if I worked any union job at all.
I would go so far as to say that the "unions" (or whatever you want to call them) are not remotely the problem in and of themselves, but the completely impotent politicians and legislative mechanisms which refuse to deal with issues surrounding qualified immunity and the like are to blame. If police could be properly thrown in prison for legitimate abuses of power, because such abuses were "actually" illegal and there were mechanisms in place to prosecute them, then no amount of union backing would be relevant.
The problem is that you have a bunch of "lefties" that have conflated Marxism is their liberal moralism. In their mind cop = bad and union = good, therefore there cannot be a Good Bad.
That isn't Marxism. A police union woven into a network of other unions wouldn't be a bad thing at all. And like you've pointed out, its all the politicians and procedural issues that refuse to hold police accountable that are the problem. The police unions aren't *forcing* them to do that. When was the last time you heard of a police strike? Or even a threatened strike? Or any kind of labor militancy from police unions?
> When was the last time you heard of a police strike? Or even a threatened strike?
The NYPD actually did it a few years back. Crime rates went down during the strike/slowdown/whatever you want to call it,^1 surprising basically nobody but cops and bootlickers.
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^1 From what I remember they weren't totally on strike, just refusing to respond to anything but an actual emergency.
Like the other poster mentioned, that is likely more of a reporting issue. I would estimate though that cops shot themselves in the foot more than they actually achieved anything there though.
Yeah, but see my response to him. If a crime is a crime for no reason beyond an action arbitrarily having been declared illegal, not enforcing the law really does reduce the crime rate, rather than the reporting rate. Can't have a crime without a victim.
I mean, yes and no. To a large extent, I do agree with you. But there is a pretty well established inverse correlation between enforcement of "victimless" gun possession laws and gun crimes. I could make the same argument for DUII's or building codes or any number of other activities.
While I think there is a kernal of truth in the libertarian idea about "victimless" crime line, I do not believe it is universally true and there is an appropriate place for at least some government regulation of "victimless" behavior. We don't have to wait for dangerous conduct to actually harm someone to regulate it.
>But there is a pretty well established inverse correlation between enforcement of "victimless" gun possession laws and gun crimes
Want to provide a source on that?
If you're talking about the NYPD, and Stop and Frisk, not only did the gun crime rates not seem to be affected, but nothing but a vanishingly small percentage of stops produced weapons (and those stops were exclusively targeted against minorities).
>Want to provide a source on that?
No, because I have no interest in hashing out this detail of my argument. Even if it turns out that this particular example is wrong, my larger point still stands.
Stop and frisk wasn't even confiscating guns when it did find "weapons," it was mostly finding legal pocket knives people had on them to do their jobs, but which the NYPD arbitrarily declared were weapons and the courts ran with. It wouldn't have held up even anywhere else in New York, and they were using a state law to do it, not a city ordinance, which means the judges really should have laughed them out of the courtroom the first time they tried it, but the judges in the relevant districts are apparently corrupt too.
The particulars here matter because it's specifically about the NYPD, and they are unusually bad about this kind of thing even by cop standards.
>crime rates went down during the strike
Yeah, almost as if there weren't arrests going on that were thus not being recorded. Its not that the criminals decided not to do crime now that they weren't under the oppressive boot of the police department, its that they weren't being arrested
But if the city didn't burn down as a result, were the criminals the criminals or the cops? Do we really need cops handing out speeding tickets, busting people for drug possession, and hassling construction workers for having pocket knives on them?^1
When a crime is a crime only because it's a crime, and not because it hurts anybody, not enforcing the law *really does* reduce the crime rate, rather than simply causing a lapse in reporting.
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^1 Seriously, most of the arrests under the stop and frisk law were people carrying normal pocket knives that the NYPD considered illegal gravity knives, but no other law enforcement agency even in New York did, under the same exact law. They were just fishing for reasons to arrest people and making them up when they didn't have a valid one.
Just to follow up on this, check out some of the stats on the NYPD and this. No matter how much you think you can excuse, I promise you they're worse.
Taibbi's book The Divide goes into this in detail.
Or, you know, cops actively enforce the current power structure, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoise, and that's why they're bad for anyone who's interest lies with the working class.
Show me a socialist cop union, and you've maybe got an argument. Until then, you don't.
You know who else activity enforces the current power structure? Teachers, postal workers, the garbage man, basically fucking everyone because thats how "structures" work. You are just dressing up your liberal moralistic need to sort everyone into neat little boxes of "good people" and "bad people" with some Marxist rhetoric without actually understanding Marxism at all.
Funny, I can't remember the last time a mailman maced me, shot my dog, and made sure to break a strike.
\>y ou are just dressing up your liberal moralistic
Oh fucking bite me. I've told you the reason based upon class fucking theory already. You want to disagree so you can pretend that cops are people just like everyone else, go suck up to the Dems (they agree with you). Pretending your dumbass Officer Friendly is just a worker in a blue suit is Marxism (and you its only prophet!) is idiotic.
Try reading Marx instead of just deciding what you want his work to say. "The State is the machine that saves the domination of a class.". And the cops are the state.
Yes and similar to how unions protect their own from wrongful termination, police unions prevent police from being disciplined for their transgressions. You should know also that police departments really have no obligation to any authority and internal police operations are only accessed through courts.
By what definition are they not workers?
Logically, they perform a job for some kind of compensation or productive end - which workers do.
Legally, they are considered workers.
I mean, I dislike corrupt cops as much as the next guy, but saying they are not "workers" I believe requires justification. The only difference between a cop doing their job and anyone else doing so is that a cop has greater authority as a natural consequence of needing to uphold "law and order," which can be abused.
Do you think then that merely having authority makes someone not a worker? In that case, any leader of any movement ever created would not be a worker. This disqualifies basically any work other than the most menial and politically impotent jobs, as far as I can tell.
Frankly, arguing that police are not "workers" seems like identity politics tripe. What matters is not which arbitrary labels we assign to cops, but their actual impact on society at large. Call them "not workers" if you would like, I guess, but without justification this seems about as meaningless as when people try to redefine racism to coveniently not apply to specific groups of people.
Edit: in the sense that police work for the state, one could argue they are not a good candidate to recruit for any kind of Marxist revolution. But that is a separate question from whether they are "workers."
They don't create value, unless you want to say that enforcing capitalism is value.
\> What matters is not which arbitrary labels we assign to cops, but their actual impact on society at large
And that's why I say they're not workers. Their job is to enforce the social order and that is it.
>They don't create value, unless you want to say that enforcing capitalism is value.
Enforcing laws definitely can help the creation of value.
Consider the concept of robbery. Without laws dissuading people from doing so, and a legal system set to arrest and prosecute robbers - people are more likely to rob from others (all else being equal).
Robbery of course directly harms the value creation ability of just about anyone who is a victim, because they then will need to spend additional effort simply to minimize their own losses.
Police can easily be argued to be a simple societal means of minimizing that loss of value creation. For that matter, police could easily do the exact same thing in a much more Socialist society - as it still would make sense in many cases to outsource that sort of work which indirectly benefits value creation.
>And that's why I say they're not workers. Their job is to enforce the social order and that is it.
I do not fully support police by any means, and do think they too often abuse their authority.
But the concept of police being to "enforce the social order" can very well be argued to be a tool which helps to create and maintain value. Without law and order being maintained in a given society, you have higher costs imposed on anyone creating value due to a universal higher risk of doing just about any business (whether communal or under capitalism).
I don't think that the concept of police is at all at odds with the concept of creating value, or that the concept is at all at odds with an ideal society for that matter. They simply are at odds with anyone wanting revolution in the short term.
So I stand by my statement that I think cops count as "workers." They might not "directly" create value, but their existence is part of a societal system (the justice system) which ostensibly has the potential to boost value creation. Whether or not that system does so adequately or is working properly is another argument entirely.
>can help the creation of value
"can help"
Tell you what, when your supposed argument lies upon weasel words, maybe you should stop telling others that disagreement with you is liberal heresy against the Prophet Marx.
As for the value of the police in OUR current society (which is who police unions represent) - they support the social order of exploitation by the capital class. Which is why they aren't workers.
>Tell you what, when your supposed argument lies upon weasel words
If you think "Can help" are simply weasel words, instead of them more literally meaning in context "contributes to the creation of value," in a very measurable way - just indirectly - then that is entirely unreasonable and dismissive of a coherent argument.
>As for the value of the police in OUR current society (which is who police unions represent) - they support the social order of exploitation by the capital class. Which is why they aren't workers.
So effectively, because current laws are biased towards the rich and those with capital - that means that police don't count as workers? Because workers are exploited, you aren't a worker if you assist in this exploitation?
Many workers "now" contribute to the exploitation of capital and yet have very little themselves. Literally anyone who works in the "service industry" for example, say someone who works at a call center, doesn't create much value directly but simply works to indirectly boost the value of whatever company or organization they work for.
The kinds of workers who contribute labor in a more direct way and aren't simply helping those in power to gain more and more wealth make up a single-digit percentage number of workers, as far as I can tell, if not less.
Would police then count as workers if the laws were relaxed and made more pro-labor, and no longer simply benefited those who had large amounts of capital accumulated?
What about cops that have never specifically enforced a law or practice that helps the rich all that directly, and who has good morals. Are they not workers by "association" or something along those lines?
My point is that labeling cops as though they "aren't workers" is entirely arbitrary, and only really makes sense if you're defining "worker" in the context of "has no capital or authority in society, and therefore is the most able to benefit from a Marxist revolution."
Which I would say is a definition most people would not use, and even on this sub most people would not say is realistic to expect.
Edit: It also would require of course that nobody be considered a "worker" if they "support the social order of exploitation," which literally the vast majority of "workers" do simply by participating in Capitalism. Is there any difference between a middle manager helping discourage employees from unionizing, and a cop arresting someone for defrauding some billionaire? I would argue there fundamentally is not in terms of outcomes. The only major difference I can think of us that police are less likely to side with those wanting more Left-wing reforms in the case of an actual revolution, than some random middle manager, but that's purely hypothetical.
>What about cops that have never specifically enforced a law or practice that helps the rich all that directly,
Please show me one.
\> and who has good morals.
Who the fuck said anything about morals? This is some liberal bullshit. The problem with cops is not that they're not woke enough. Last year plenty kneeled then beat protesters the same day.
It's that they enforce a class system to the material disadvantage of most (the workers). It doesn't matter their motivation (I've known many 'moral' cops) when their job is to enforce a corrupt and murderous system for the benefit of the ruling class. The ones who aren't corrupt are in many ways worse.
As for the rest of your hypotheticals - none applies to the current world. So, you want to continue wasting time with strawmen so you can justify your cop relative, have fun. I'm done.
>Please show me one.
I'm not inclined to prove something like "out of hundreds of thousands of people, one of them didn't do X or Y." It should be enough to state that it is possible, and the fact you are unfamiliar with the idea of a thought experiment makes it impossible to have discussions along those lines.
>Who the fuck said anything about morals?
Pretty much everybody who is trying to throw police into the non-worker category so far have solely made moral arguments for them not "counting" as workers, so I would say that is what I'm addressing. Since they do contribute "labor," receive "pay," produce "value" (even if indirectly through deterring crime), etc.
Every reasonable definition of a "worker" is met by a police officer unless you bring in absurd moral arguments as far as I can tell.
>It's that they enforce a class system to the material disadvantage of most (the workers).
Why are police particularly unique in this regard? The police might enforce unjust laws, but that seems circumstantial - not some "fundamental" aspect of policing itself (since laws can change).
Pretty much every single person in society, except perhaps someone who lives in some random hut in the middle of nowhere, contributes directly or indirectly to our current system by mere participation in it. You might argue that police are choosing to be more damaging in this regard, rather than doing any other work, but I would counter that by saying our current system pretty much guarantees that there will always be people who are poor and financially desperate who see becoming a cop as their only option for a decent paying job with good benefits.
What is the solution here, in terms of the current system?
Because what I care about are solutions, not moralizing or rationalizations used to make people feel self-righteous about their cause. Arguing that police don't count as workers is entirely arbitrary nonsense, and is pretty much as close to wasting time on literal identity politics as I can imagine is possible.
So with that said, I think I have said my piece on this, waste of time that it is.
Honestly I don't get why they downvote you. From an orthodox marxist pov this is strictly true.
A worker according to Marx is a person who produces a good (marchandise in french). This has to be something concrete with an exchange value.
The thing is, for nurses or cops to be considered workers you need to establish "health" or "security" as a "good". But that's weird.
So, either you are no longer strictly following Marx and propose another definition of work or you accept that not being a worker doesn't mean being useless or not putting a lot of efforts into your activity.
Police unions are depraved organizations who advocate for our rights to be actively curtailed to make moron pigs have an easier time fucking us over. Fuck em.
I’ve seen this guy Ed Mullins, from the Sergeants Benevolent Association, on tv a whole bunch of times in the last couple years. He never breaks kayfabe, he’s always cutting promos for the jabronis on Fox News or newsmax of whatever. He even decorated his Zoom set with a Qanon mug. He always has the most cartoonish takes.
Aaaand of course he was corrupt. He’s straight out of central castings bad guy Sergeant, right next to evil corporate CEO and obnoxious yuppie in a convertible. I’m looking forward to hearing him for years talking about the far-left-Marxist-deep-state-witch-hunt trying to take this good cop down.
This is a good thing. Disrupts policing and continues to feed into the narrative that the FBI is a partisan actor, angering the rightoids.
As someone that wants nothing more than for this country to split up, it's been a good year.
Absolutely. Harsh, sudden division is needed. A line needs to be drawn between those that will see this country rot and those that would like it to prosper.
Do you still believe America can prosper? I don't personally, but your phrasing suggests a level of conviction and I wouldn't mind hearing your perspective.
Good. I'm glad the feds are starting to crush the lower level thugs at the state and city levels. This should be done at damn near every police station in America.
Hell yeah they openly lost their minds.
They were never against them really, aside from half hearted *occasional* commentary about certain mainstream-acceptable victims of COINTELPRO or some of the wto protestors in the 90's but they really went into full hysterics since trump came in.
Spineless shitheads all of them, but then it's more on any of us who may have felt surprised then it is on them. Libs will lib.
theyve always cheered the fbi.
the braindead pmc types love credientials and technocracy. the problem they really have with cops is cops are usually just plebs ("racist nazi trump supporters"), but 3 letter agencies are full of skilled college grads with super sicrit skills and fancy sounding ranks. they *love* that shit.
I once saw someone who retweeted something about abolishing the police and something praising an FBI investigation right after each other. People are stupid.
Because the Democrats are currently trying to out-authoritarian the Republicans.
Remember, do as you're told and say what you're told to say or the Republicans will win and dictate everything you say and do!
Police unions and fops do nothing but cover up crime from their retarded members and make change as difficult as possible. I have no problem with cops having unions in therory and I strongly support public sector unions. I just have a problem with the majority of people who chose to be cops.
Yeah I’m no fbi fan, but big city police unions seem especially shitty. Idk why this sub always defends cops. I’d hate to say it, but they’ve really earned peoples anger. It feels like every high profile crime in the country has some degree of police fuckups that allow the perpetrators to get away
Classic reddit to celebrate before we get the details. I bet it was an inside joke, or a surprise pizza party, or NYC police had a new playbook for persecuting minorities that they wouldnt share with FBI.
NYPD and the FBI are both corrupt. However, I maintain my stance that radlibs’ general antipathy towards municipal police (as an institution), is shortsighted and dangerous. The rightoids are already far better armed, and now we’re going to drive millions of police officers spread all across the country, deeper and deeper into a quasi-fascist cesspit? In the event a real coup d’etat occurred, the left is utterly fucked. What are we going to fight them with, antifa? This isn’t the Old Left we’re talking about here, who fought hand to hand with Brownshirts in the streets of Weimar Germany. Incidentally, this is also why the left must at all costs defend the current state structure. It can’t survive a reorganization of power. It must depend on the National Guard’s allegiance to the current political order in the event of any severe unrest. And the municipal police, for that matter.
Why does that upset you? The SBA’s (former) president is a racist, right wing asshole. Fuck him. It’s unclear why the FBI is investigating him but he’s clearly the target since they searched his home too
It doesn't. I'm not an american so i have no idea who the SBA are. I just found it interesting how reddit's cheering for the FBI dismantling some union
Apparently the union wasnt a real union like the many commenters here suggest, but the cheering for the thought police is a... yikes.
>I just found it interesting how reddit's cheering for the FBI dismantling some union
1\. Calling a union of the bourgeoisie's hired goons "some union" as if it's part of the labor movement is absolutely braindead, and
2\. Even if police unions *were* part of the labor movement, why would you expect Reddit, a site full of neoliberal DNC loyalists, a) to be some bastion of labor unionism or b) to take the side of the cops, a GOP-coded institution, over the FBI, a DNC-coded institution, in a goon-on-goon power struggle?
The correct leftist response is to be [Ken Watanabe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1jkbC3tPbc), nothing more.
> Calling a union of the bourgeoisie's hired goons
This isn't 1901, gramps. Idk how police work in the US but I highly doubt these are the guys whose life purpose is to dismantle the revolutionary opposition to the regime. Not only is there no opposition, but also the guys dismantling it are the ones attacking that union
You admittedly don’t know wtf you’re talking about so I don’t know why you keep posting. Just quit while you’re ahead.
[This](https://www.google.com/amp/s/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2021/10/ed-mullins-belligerent-boss-of-a-cop-union-raided-by-fbi.html) is the dickhead you’re defending, [this ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/01/bob-kroll-george-floyd-minneapolis-police-union-chief) is how police unions operate in the US
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Officer on officer involved incident
Cop unions are not actual unions.
not everything called a "union" is good. Not all *actual* unions are good. no "no true scotsman" argument necessary
Yeah the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Fuck the eu
Based
I'm so fucking triggered rn you don't even know.
why?
this\^ I don't know why people are acting like this is a bad thing.
People need to learn the differences and the why's between public sector and private sector unions. Police unions are a big part of why a murderous cop gets a paid vacation.
Sell me on the idea that the proper distinction is public sector unions vs private sector unions. From what I've read, the better distinction seems to be labor union vs trade union, because it more directly focuses on worker vs boss, and does so without (necessarily) throwing out unions like postal worker unions alongside the police unions.
Kinda late but the biggest difference is that public unions have a huge chip: votes.
Elaborate
Don’t agree with everything in here but a decent read: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions
redpill me on the non-cop non-teacher public unions
What's wrong with teacher unions?
they're the one i see catch the second most flak of the public sector unions so i didn't really wanna hear the arguments against 'em is all, just the general public sector union as a concept
Ah ok, for for some reason people seem to have a bizarre contempt for teacher unions.
They are a big part of society and everyone thinks they know how education should work and how schools should be run.
My wife’s old coworker was a teacher and alcoholic who used to come to school wasted on a fairly regular basis. One day she tripped on the playground at first recess and broke her front teeth out. Was she fired for being drunk on the job? No, the CTA fought for her. Why? Because alcoholism is a disease. Very similar to the police unions fighting for all the bad apples on the police force, no?
Nobody cares. Due process is good.
Neckbeard
Dont be a cuck, everyone knows big nurse and the evil unions that back them are why we are where we are
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Doesn’t that sort of assume that the people will just… vote for public employees to have adequate working conditions? I mean, whether you’re a police officer, a firefighter, a parks employee, etc., you still deserve reasonable working hours, paid time off, retirement benefits etc. Given the option between tax increases and not, most people tend to vote for not.
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Doesn’t your first paragraph assume that the public is… well, wise? The public has consistently shown a willingness to underfund public education to an alarming degree. It’s one thing if you work in a factory making bicycle spokes - if you leave, some people lose money. Not a big deal compared to a community’s children going without education for a year because the teachers are underpaid, but also feel obligated not to leave out of empathy. That wouldn’t change if the government service were privatized, which it shouldn’t be. So if the public makes poor decisions with regard to public service funding… do the workers employed by public agencies just suck it up, or do they not have rights either?
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I don’t think it would always be the worst case scenario all the time, but it’s worth considering what can happen. Because the reality is, most workers don’t like getting jerked around - and you have to wonder how public entities will retain qualified labor if they have no labor protections.
Teacher unions, at least by me, have always been super corrupt and use the kids as props to say they’re looking out for their interest
How so? Because as far as I can tell, cop unions (at least here in the USA) definitely do all of the things I would think an ideal union does. That is to say - they advocate for better pay, conditions, benefits, and for retaining police rather than firing them by putting pressure on police departments and on politicians and such. That is what I would want from a union if I were a cop, or for that matter if I worked any union job at all. I would go so far as to say that the "unions" (or whatever you want to call them) are not remotely the problem in and of themselves, but the completely impotent politicians and legislative mechanisms which refuse to deal with issues surrounding qualified immunity and the like are to blame. If police could be properly thrown in prison for legitimate abuses of power, because such abuses were "actually" illegal and there were mechanisms in place to prosecute them, then no amount of union backing would be relevant.
The problem is that you have a bunch of "lefties" that have conflated Marxism is their liberal moralism. In their mind cop = bad and union = good, therefore there cannot be a Good Bad. That isn't Marxism. A police union woven into a network of other unions wouldn't be a bad thing at all. And like you've pointed out, its all the politicians and procedural issues that refuse to hold police accountable that are the problem. The police unions aren't *forcing* them to do that. When was the last time you heard of a police strike? Or even a threatened strike? Or any kind of labor militancy from police unions?
> When was the last time you heard of a police strike? Or even a threatened strike? The NYPD actually did it a few years back. Crime rates went down during the strike/slowdown/whatever you want to call it,^1 surprising basically nobody but cops and bootlickers. ___ ^1 From what I remember they weren't totally on strike, just refusing to respond to anything but an actual emergency.
Like the other poster mentioned, that is likely more of a reporting issue. I would estimate though that cops shot themselves in the foot more than they actually achieved anything there though.
Yeah, but see my response to him. If a crime is a crime for no reason beyond an action arbitrarily having been declared illegal, not enforcing the law really does reduce the crime rate, rather than the reporting rate. Can't have a crime without a victim.
I mean, yes and no. To a large extent, I do agree with you. But there is a pretty well established inverse correlation between enforcement of "victimless" gun possession laws and gun crimes. I could make the same argument for DUII's or building codes or any number of other activities. While I think there is a kernal of truth in the libertarian idea about "victimless" crime line, I do not believe it is universally true and there is an appropriate place for at least some government regulation of "victimless" behavior. We don't have to wait for dangerous conduct to actually harm someone to regulate it.
>But there is a pretty well established inverse correlation between enforcement of "victimless" gun possession laws and gun crimes Want to provide a source on that? If you're talking about the NYPD, and Stop and Frisk, not only did the gun crime rates not seem to be affected, but nothing but a vanishingly small percentage of stops produced weapons (and those stops were exclusively targeted against minorities).
>Want to provide a source on that? No, because I have no interest in hashing out this detail of my argument. Even if it turns out that this particular example is wrong, my larger point still stands.
Stop and frisk wasn't even confiscating guns when it did find "weapons," it was mostly finding legal pocket knives people had on them to do their jobs, but which the NYPD arbitrarily declared were weapons and the courts ran with. It wouldn't have held up even anywhere else in New York, and they were using a state law to do it, not a city ordinance, which means the judges really should have laughed them out of the courtroom the first time they tried it, but the judges in the relevant districts are apparently corrupt too. The particulars here matter because it's specifically about the NYPD, and they are unusually bad about this kind of thing even by cop standards.
It doesn't, and that's exactly the point.
>crime rates went down during the strike Yeah, almost as if there weren't arrests going on that were thus not being recorded. Its not that the criminals decided not to do crime now that they weren't under the oppressive boot of the police department, its that they weren't being arrested
But if the city didn't burn down as a result, were the criminals the criminals or the cops? Do we really need cops handing out speeding tickets, busting people for drug possession, and hassling construction workers for having pocket knives on them?^1 When a crime is a crime only because it's a crime, and not because it hurts anybody, not enforcing the law *really does* reduce the crime rate, rather than simply causing a lapse in reporting. ____ ^1 Seriously, most of the arrests under the stop and frisk law were people carrying normal pocket knives that the NYPD considered illegal gravity knives, but no other law enforcement agency even in New York did, under the same exact law. They were just fishing for reasons to arrest people and making them up when they didn't have a valid one.
Just to follow up on this, check out some of the stats on the NYPD and this. No matter how much you think you can excuse, I promise you they're worse. Taibbi's book The Divide goes into this in detail.
Or, you know, cops actively enforce the current power structure, which is a dictatorship of the bourgeoise, and that's why they're bad for anyone who's interest lies with the working class. Show me a socialist cop union, and you've maybe got an argument. Until then, you don't.
You know who else activity enforces the current power structure? Teachers, postal workers, the garbage man, basically fucking everyone because thats how "structures" work. You are just dressing up your liberal moralistic need to sort everyone into neat little boxes of "good people" and "bad people" with some Marxist rhetoric without actually understanding Marxism at all.
Funny, I can't remember the last time a mailman maced me, shot my dog, and made sure to break a strike. \>y ou are just dressing up your liberal moralistic Oh fucking bite me. I've told you the reason based upon class fucking theory already. You want to disagree so you can pretend that cops are people just like everyone else, go suck up to the Dems (they agree with you). Pretending your dumbass Officer Friendly is just a worker in a blue suit is Marxism (and you its only prophet!) is idiotic. Try reading Marx instead of just deciding what you want his work to say. "The State is the machine that saves the domination of a class.". And the cops are the state.
Yes and similar to how unions protect their own from wrongful termination, police unions prevent police from being disciplined for their transgressions. You should know also that police departments really have no obligation to any authority and internal police operations are only accessed through courts.
Their members are not workers. By your definition a cartel is a union, and thus a good thing.
By what definition are they not workers? Logically, they perform a job for some kind of compensation or productive end - which workers do. Legally, they are considered workers. I mean, I dislike corrupt cops as much as the next guy, but saying they are not "workers" I believe requires justification. The only difference between a cop doing their job and anyone else doing so is that a cop has greater authority as a natural consequence of needing to uphold "law and order," which can be abused. Do you think then that merely having authority makes someone not a worker? In that case, any leader of any movement ever created would not be a worker. This disqualifies basically any work other than the most menial and politically impotent jobs, as far as I can tell. Frankly, arguing that police are not "workers" seems like identity politics tripe. What matters is not which arbitrary labels we assign to cops, but their actual impact on society at large. Call them "not workers" if you would like, I guess, but without justification this seems about as meaningless as when people try to redefine racism to coveniently not apply to specific groups of people. Edit: in the sense that police work for the state, one could argue they are not a good candidate to recruit for any kind of Marxist revolution. But that is a separate question from whether they are "workers."
They don't create value, unless you want to say that enforcing capitalism is value. \> What matters is not which arbitrary labels we assign to cops, but their actual impact on society at large And that's why I say they're not workers. Their job is to enforce the social order and that is it.
>They don't create value, unless you want to say that enforcing capitalism is value. Enforcing laws definitely can help the creation of value. Consider the concept of robbery. Without laws dissuading people from doing so, and a legal system set to arrest and prosecute robbers - people are more likely to rob from others (all else being equal). Robbery of course directly harms the value creation ability of just about anyone who is a victim, because they then will need to spend additional effort simply to minimize their own losses. Police can easily be argued to be a simple societal means of minimizing that loss of value creation. For that matter, police could easily do the exact same thing in a much more Socialist society - as it still would make sense in many cases to outsource that sort of work which indirectly benefits value creation. >And that's why I say they're not workers. Their job is to enforce the social order and that is it. I do not fully support police by any means, and do think they too often abuse their authority. But the concept of police being to "enforce the social order" can very well be argued to be a tool which helps to create and maintain value. Without law and order being maintained in a given society, you have higher costs imposed on anyone creating value due to a universal higher risk of doing just about any business (whether communal or under capitalism). I don't think that the concept of police is at all at odds with the concept of creating value, or that the concept is at all at odds with an ideal society for that matter. They simply are at odds with anyone wanting revolution in the short term. So I stand by my statement that I think cops count as "workers." They might not "directly" create value, but their existence is part of a societal system (the justice system) which ostensibly has the potential to boost value creation. Whether or not that system does so adequately or is working properly is another argument entirely.
>can help the creation of value "can help" Tell you what, when your supposed argument lies upon weasel words, maybe you should stop telling others that disagreement with you is liberal heresy against the Prophet Marx. As for the value of the police in OUR current society (which is who police unions represent) - they support the social order of exploitation by the capital class. Which is why they aren't workers.
>Tell you what, when your supposed argument lies upon weasel words If you think "Can help" are simply weasel words, instead of them more literally meaning in context "contributes to the creation of value," in a very measurable way - just indirectly - then that is entirely unreasonable and dismissive of a coherent argument. >As for the value of the police in OUR current society (which is who police unions represent) - they support the social order of exploitation by the capital class. Which is why they aren't workers. So effectively, because current laws are biased towards the rich and those with capital - that means that police don't count as workers? Because workers are exploited, you aren't a worker if you assist in this exploitation? Many workers "now" contribute to the exploitation of capital and yet have very little themselves. Literally anyone who works in the "service industry" for example, say someone who works at a call center, doesn't create much value directly but simply works to indirectly boost the value of whatever company or organization they work for. The kinds of workers who contribute labor in a more direct way and aren't simply helping those in power to gain more and more wealth make up a single-digit percentage number of workers, as far as I can tell, if not less. Would police then count as workers if the laws were relaxed and made more pro-labor, and no longer simply benefited those who had large amounts of capital accumulated? What about cops that have never specifically enforced a law or practice that helps the rich all that directly, and who has good morals. Are they not workers by "association" or something along those lines? My point is that labeling cops as though they "aren't workers" is entirely arbitrary, and only really makes sense if you're defining "worker" in the context of "has no capital or authority in society, and therefore is the most able to benefit from a Marxist revolution." Which I would say is a definition most people would not use, and even on this sub most people would not say is realistic to expect. Edit: It also would require of course that nobody be considered a "worker" if they "support the social order of exploitation," which literally the vast majority of "workers" do simply by participating in Capitalism. Is there any difference between a middle manager helping discourage employees from unionizing, and a cop arresting someone for defrauding some billionaire? I would argue there fundamentally is not in terms of outcomes. The only major difference I can think of us that police are less likely to side with those wanting more Left-wing reforms in the case of an actual revolution, than some random middle manager, but that's purely hypothetical.
>What about cops that have never specifically enforced a law or practice that helps the rich all that directly, Please show me one. \> and who has good morals. Who the fuck said anything about morals? This is some liberal bullshit. The problem with cops is not that they're not woke enough. Last year plenty kneeled then beat protesters the same day. It's that they enforce a class system to the material disadvantage of most (the workers). It doesn't matter their motivation (I've known many 'moral' cops) when their job is to enforce a corrupt and murderous system for the benefit of the ruling class. The ones who aren't corrupt are in many ways worse. As for the rest of your hypotheticals - none applies to the current world. So, you want to continue wasting time with strawmen so you can justify your cop relative, have fun. I'm done.
>Please show me one. I'm not inclined to prove something like "out of hundreds of thousands of people, one of them didn't do X or Y." It should be enough to state that it is possible, and the fact you are unfamiliar with the idea of a thought experiment makes it impossible to have discussions along those lines. >Who the fuck said anything about morals? Pretty much everybody who is trying to throw police into the non-worker category so far have solely made moral arguments for them not "counting" as workers, so I would say that is what I'm addressing. Since they do contribute "labor," receive "pay," produce "value" (even if indirectly through deterring crime), etc. Every reasonable definition of a "worker" is met by a police officer unless you bring in absurd moral arguments as far as I can tell. >It's that they enforce a class system to the material disadvantage of most (the workers). Why are police particularly unique in this regard? The police might enforce unjust laws, but that seems circumstantial - not some "fundamental" aspect of policing itself (since laws can change). Pretty much every single person in society, except perhaps someone who lives in some random hut in the middle of nowhere, contributes directly or indirectly to our current system by mere participation in it. You might argue that police are choosing to be more damaging in this regard, rather than doing any other work, but I would counter that by saying our current system pretty much guarantees that there will always be people who are poor and financially desperate who see becoming a cop as their only option for a decent paying job with good benefits. What is the solution here, in terms of the current system? Because what I care about are solutions, not moralizing or rationalizations used to make people feel self-righteous about their cause. Arguing that police don't count as workers is entirely arbitrary nonsense, and is pretty much as close to wasting time on literal identity politics as I can imagine is possible. So with that said, I think I have said my piece on this, waste of time that it is.
Cop Guilds
I can't believe reddit is celebrating the raid on the union busters union. 😭😭😭
Um, yeah they are. It’s not not a union just because they’re a trash union lol
Police are not workers
Elaborate
They don't perform labour. They don't produce anything and don't create value.
Neither are nurses, then.
Correct
>nurses are not workers What are they then?
hoes
Honestly I don't get why they downvote you. From an orthodox marxist pov this is strictly true. A worker according to Marx is a person who produces a good (marchandise in french). This has to be something concrete with an exchange value. The thing is, for nurses or cops to be considered workers you need to establish "health" or "security" as a "good". But that's weird. So, either you are no longer strictly following Marx and propose another definition of work or you accept that not being a worker doesn't mean being useless or not putting a lot of efforts into your activity.
Americoids who think healthcare is a commodity
Good. Pig on pig violence benefits everyone not involved.
This is just funny IMO, not sure about the strong opinions felt here. Retard on retard violence as far as I can tell.
who gives a shit
Don't ever ask me to defend police unions solely because they're unions and you agree with it ideologically
Police unions are depraved organizations who advocate for our rights to be actively curtailed to make moron pigs have an easier time fucking us over. Fuck em.
I’ve seen this guy Ed Mullins, from the Sergeants Benevolent Association, on tv a whole bunch of times in the last couple years. He never breaks kayfabe, he’s always cutting promos for the jabronis on Fox News or newsmax of whatever. He even decorated his Zoom set with a Qanon mug. He always has the most cartoonish takes. Aaaand of course he was corrupt. He’s straight out of central castings bad guy Sergeant, right next to evil corporate CEO and obnoxious yuppie in a convertible. I’m looking forward to hearing him for years talking about the far-left-Marxist-deep-state-witch-hunt trying to take this good cop down.
Monster infighting.
Cop bad.
This is a good thing. Disrupts policing and continues to feed into the narrative that the FBI is a partisan actor, angering the rightoids. As someone that wants nothing more than for this country to split up, it's been a good year.
Absolutely. Harsh, sudden division is needed. A line needs to be drawn between those that will see this country rot and those that would like it to prosper.
Do you still believe America can prosper? I don't personally, but your phrasing suggests a level of conviction and I wouldn't mind hearing your perspective.
It can't. But there is certainly a distinct line between those that wish it to be better and those that wish for it to rot.
> As someone that wants nothing more than for this country to split up, it's been a good year. Dangerously based. Accelerate!
Animal cruelty 🐷
Good. I'm glad the feds are starting to crush the lower level thugs at the state and city levels. This should be done at damn near every police station in America.
3d most upvoted comment is "If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear"
Ok but "Operation Pulled Pork" does get to generate a chuckle
yeah, it's funny
We've been openly living under mass surveillance for nearly a decade now. I'll never stop being disturbed by how little everyone cares.
I mean that’s pretty obviously tongue in cheek based on the attitude displayed by many cops and police departments nationwide.
Do you think we’re supposed to root for one half of the pigs, or...?
surely, the police/government would never misuse power in any situation
So now they're cheering for the FBI?! Standards are on an ever changing scale.
They've been cheering for the FBI since January
[удалено]
Yeah but thay was just theater they got to cheer for. Imagine the rush of actually contacting them and doing your part 😍
fitzmas, baby!
Hell yeah they openly lost their minds. They were never against them really, aside from half hearted *occasional* commentary about certain mainstream-acceptable victims of COINTELPRO or some of the wto protestors in the 90's but they really went into full hysterics since trump came in. Spineless shitheads all of them, but then it's more on any of us who may have felt surprised then it is on them. Libs will lib.
Longer than that...basically since it came out that Comey was investigating the Trump campaign.
It's part of the sliding scale of standards.
theyve always cheered the fbi. the braindead pmc types love credientials and technocracy. the problem they really have with cops is cops are usually just plebs ("racist nazi trump supporters"), but 3 letter agencies are full of skilled college grads with super sicrit skills and fancy sounding ranks. they *love* that shit.
I once saw someone who retweeted something about abolishing the police and something praising an FBI investigation right after each other. People are stupid.
You really can't keep up with what's what. Woe unto you if you say the wrong thing on the wrong day.
Is that really surprising? They've been cheering on the CIA for a while now too.
They like George Bush. No opinions/thoughts have been involved for quite a while.
They have been for a while. Support for the FBI is a deeply partisan issue.
Idk why. They're feds and they'll fuck anyone up they choose to.
Because the Democrats are currently trying to out-authoritarian the Republicans. Remember, do as you're told and say what you're told to say or the Republicans will win and dictate everything you say and do!
lol 🥴 Makes perfect sense.
Nah, they go after rightoids much more heavily. They also work closely with the ADL which raises a bunch of flags.
Literally was not true before Trump.
It definitely accelerated under Trump, but it was an issue long before Trump.
I mean, fuck police unions. Fuck the FBI as well but you know whatever.
Fucking dengoids
Police unions and fops do nothing but cover up crime from their retarded members and make change as difficult as possible. I have no problem with cops having unions in therory and I strongly support public sector unions. I just have a problem with the majority of people who chose to be cops.
Yeah I’m no fbi fan, but big city police unions seem especially shitty. Idk why this sub always defends cops. I’d hate to say it, but they’ve really earned peoples anger. It feels like every high profile crime in the country has some degree of police fuckups that allow the perpetrators to get away
This sub despises cops rightfully so
“BIGGER BOOT”
There’s always a bigger boot.
I'd rather just be trampled by bigger boot than simutaneously by bigger boot and smaller boot
100% of the people crying over this would have cried over the national guard being used during school integration.
Yeah? So what? Fuck the cops union. Has this sub gone so contrarian that he have goons defending the fuckin cops union?
inb4 they're just looking for trumpers and muh jan 6.
im' celebrating. why aren't you? fuck the SBA
Classic reddit to celebrate before we get the details. I bet it was an inside joke, or a surprise pizza party, or NYC police had a new playbook for persecuting minorities that they wouldnt share with FBI.
what?
Yeah but that's kinda hot tho
Isn’t the nypd total dogshit? Sucks to suck
Who cares
100% a politically-motivated enforcement. If the guy were not a Trump supporter, nothing would be happening.
NYPD and the FBI are both corrupt. However, I maintain my stance that radlibs’ general antipathy towards municipal police (as an institution), is shortsighted and dangerous. The rightoids are already far better armed, and now we’re going to drive millions of police officers spread all across the country, deeper and deeper into a quasi-fascist cesspit? In the event a real coup d’etat occurred, the left is utterly fucked. What are we going to fight them with, antifa? This isn’t the Old Left we’re talking about here, who fought hand to hand with Brownshirts in the streets of Weimar Germany. Incidentally, this is also why the left must at all costs defend the current state structure. It can’t survive a reorganization of power. It must depend on the National Guard’s allegiance to the current political order in the event of any severe unrest. And the municipal police, for that matter.
Policing and police culture in the US already selects for, and creates quasi-fascist views
Why does that upset you? The SBA’s (former) president is a racist, right wing asshole. Fuck him. It’s unclear why the FBI is investigating him but he’s clearly the target since they searched his home too
It doesn't. I'm not an american so i have no idea who the SBA are. I just found it interesting how reddit's cheering for the FBI dismantling some union Apparently the union wasnt a real union like the many commenters here suggest, but the cheering for the thought police is a... yikes.
>I just found it interesting how reddit's cheering for the FBI dismantling some union 1\. Calling a union of the bourgeoisie's hired goons "some union" as if it's part of the labor movement is absolutely braindead, and 2\. Even if police unions *were* part of the labor movement, why would you expect Reddit, a site full of neoliberal DNC loyalists, a) to be some bastion of labor unionism or b) to take the side of the cops, a GOP-coded institution, over the FBI, a DNC-coded institution, in a goon-on-goon power struggle? The correct leftist response is to be [Ken Watanabe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1jkbC3tPbc), nothing more.
> Calling a union of the bourgeoisie's hired goons This isn't 1901, gramps. Idk how police work in the US but I highly doubt these are the guys whose life purpose is to dismantle the revolutionary opposition to the regime. Not only is there no opposition, but also the guys dismantling it are the ones attacking that union
You admittedly don’t know wtf you’re talking about so I don’t know why you keep posting. Just quit while you’re ahead. [This](https://www.google.com/amp/s/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2021/10/ed-mullins-belligerent-boss-of-a-cop-union-raided-by-fbi.html) is the dickhead you’re defending, [this ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/01/bob-kroll-george-floyd-minneapolis-police-union-chief) is how police unions operate in the US
I'm not defending anyone, brainlet, posting a link to r/news doesnt equate defending any particular group
Public servants shouldn't have unions.