I say abolish the cops and prisons. Support the Anarchist Black Cross.
My anti-cop kiosk: http://www.infoshop.org/cops.html
The only good cop is an unemployed cop,
Chuck0
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> At 09:01 AM 2/15/00 -0600, Carrol wrote:
> > What do lbo list members think should be the attitude
> >of leftists in respect to cops, prison guards, National
> >Guard commissioned officers, etc. Should unions allow
> >prison guards in their ranks? AFSCME includes prison
> >guards, including those at the infamous Pontiac Prison
> >in Illinois.
> >
>
> Carrol, what is the difference between a cop who uses tear gas on crowd of
> protesters, and a unionized worker who produced that tear gas? Aren't they
> both in a same position - alienated from the product of their labor that is
> being used to defend the capitalist system that oppresses them?
>
> Let's face it - police work is no more or less unethical than the work of
> people who manufacture weapons, surveillance equipment, automobiles that
> destroy aour social fabric and natural environment, computers that allow
> capital owners to maximize their profits etc. etc. Every society, even a
> socialist one, needs law enforcement - the problem is not the law
> enforcement per se, but its abuses.
>
> These abuses fall into two broad categories. The first category comprises
> systematic efforts of policy makers to subvert the public mission of the
> law enforcement system to benefit special interests groups. The most often
> discussed case is the harassment of political enemies of the ruling class
> or unpopular minority groups - but ironically, this form of abuse is very
> rare in this country (the only vase I can think of is Manuel Noriega). A
> much more common form of this systematic abuse is selective
> non-enforcement, that is, a failure to enforce certain laws and prosecute
> their violators (cf. corporate and white collar crime).
>
> The second category of abuses are latent malfunctions that result from the
> organizational structure of law enforcement and the type of social
> interaction involved in police work. Most cases of police brutality fall
> into this category - they result from the combination of organizational
> factors, such as poorly formulated or misguided policies and procedures of
> their implementation, inadequate supervision, or inadequate personnel
> selection (e.g. cops unfit to do police work professionally), and
> situational factors i.e. the nature of the police work that is highly
> complex, confrontational, and requiring non-routine decisions.
>
> A blatant example of abuses in this category is LAPD corruption (cf.
> posting by Carl Remick) - misguided "war on crime" policies of Darryl
> Gates, lax supervision, and ulterior motives of some officers lead to a
> situation in which cops used their positions for their own personal
> benefit. Another example, more widely spread but less visible is the
> "satisficing" behavior of cops and prosecutors - going after less serious
> but easier to detect and prosecute offences (such as recreational drug use
> or minor traffic violations) while neglecting more serious but difficult to
> investigate and prosecute cases (white collar crime, environmental
> pollution, burglary, homicide).
>
> Very few people, other than the most zealous law-and-order types, would
> deny the fact that US law enforcement sufferes from latent malfunctions due
> to its organizational structure and the nature of police work (yes, the US
> is a very violent society!). Moreover, no respectable politcal forces
> would condone this sort of malfunction, and as the mainstream media report,
> police departments are in fact investigated for this type of abuse. So the
> system does work to police itself - although we may wish that it worked
> more effectively.
>
> I do not see any special benefits the Left may get from jumping on that
> bandwagon already full of the liberal forces. Adding a voice to that
> chorus without spending much energy on that cause might be OK, but it will
> not uniquely define the Left in public eyes. The strategy of distinction
> by notoriety, being more catholic than the pope, and zealous cop bashing
> (as some leftish cults do) will almost certainly lead to a loss of
> credibility.
>
> On the other hand, systematic abuses of law enforcement in the form of
> turning a blind eye on white collar and corporate behavior can be a
> legitmate "law enforcement" issue for the Left. Since not too many
> mainstream political forces (especially liberals who are very soft on white
> collar crime) are willing to espouse that cause - that Left can gain public
> salience and credibility here. Moreover, this issue has a clear affinity
> to workinbg class interests, as most white collar/corporate abuses are
> directed against the intersts of the workers.
>
> To summarize, stop cop bashing and whining about police brutality - the
> liberals are already doing it. Focus instead on what the law enforcement
> does NOT do, or does very poorly, control of the upper class behavior. In
> fact, my main complaint against the prison system in this country is not
> that it houses 2 million of lowlife - but that there is virtually no
> highlife among those 2 million.
>
> wojtek
-- << Chuck0 >> Homepage: http://flag.blackened.net/chuck0/home/ Mid-Atlantic Infoshop: http://www.infoshop.org/ Alternative Press Review: http://flag.blackened.net/apr/
Free Leonard Peltier! http://www.freepeltier.org/
"A society is a healthy society only to the degree that it exhibits anarchistic traits."
- Jens Bjørneboe