sparky wrote:I could not find it, but the link to the bit at the start of "Goodfellas" where Robert DeNiro congratulates the young Henry Hill would be appropriate:

The fictionalised Jimmy Conway said not wrote:You took your first pinch like a man, and learned the two greatest things in life.

Look at me.

Never rat on your friends...

...and always keep your mouth shut.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atsijRdLovo&feature=related

At 4:40.

sparky wrote:

Heeby Jeeby wrote:

Piasek wrote:don't do it. i have bad experience.

Oh yeah, I remember that. You were downloading kiddy porn. How'd you get on?

You're being mischievous with the poor chap, Heeby Jeeby. Here's a link to the original thread.

Oh I remember the thread alright. I just choose to remember the unfounded allegations thrown around.

With regards not needing cops around, I think some people are highly delusional about the nature of the world around them. I've had no positive experiences with cops, many negative but still cannot understand people who think that society would be better off without them. Vigilante groups would be formed almost instantly and they are just a fucking joy to deal with. Way worse than the cops.

I understand that I've had minimal dealings with the Chicago cops but from the interactions I have had with them they seem no worse and no better than the Gardaí here/the Met/the Gendarmerie etc.

Marsupialized wrote:Panic, you are saying everyone who's currently not a bloodthirsty lunatic...everyone who is a kind and decent person would just turn into a violent thug overnight because there was no police force?

The people who are violent are already being violent, right now. The police do not stop violence, they come afterward and fill out paperwork.

90% of the people in this world just wanna go about their day and have a nice life and not fuck with anyone.

The police, it's their job to fuck with everyone and make money for crooks running this city. That's it. It is impossible for the police to stop crime and violence, as they have to wait for someone to commit a crime or act of violence before acting. It's their job to deal with crime and violence after the fact, something people can do on their own.

I don't believe this. In the face of crime and violence, even normally law-abiding people quickly break down and give in to their own worse impulses, mostly because they believe they have no other choice. Without a system of law in place, there is nothing to prevent people from indulging in their own worse excesses when it comes to punishing others, and if there is no formal method for meting out criminal justice, there is also no method to keep people from performing street justice on those who don't actually deserve it. Trusting justice to the mob is not a good idea. Also, where are "the people" supposed to get the resources to investigate anything other than the most simple types of crimes? Often times, what seems obvious is actually anything but obvious once you look into it. It's amazing, if you really look into it, how someone can be accused of a crime, and seem to be guilty, but in the end it becomes clear that they are in fact not guilty and may only have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the victim of a vendetta, or a victim of mistaken identity. I, myself, have been questioned by the police about something I had nothing to do with, solely based on the fact that I looked somewhat like the person they were looking for. In fact, this has happened to me twice, once when I was about 18, for an attack I had nothing to do with and no knowledge of; and once about 12 or so years ago, when someone was committing a series of bank robberies in the suburbs, and my clothing and general appearance at the time resembled the description of the bank robber. If a mob or street justice thing had been the prevailing method for justice, in either of those two instances, what do you really think the possibility is that I would have been falsely punished? The mob is very good at jumping to conclusions, and not very good at making reasoned judgments in the heat of the moment.

Fuck that anarchic, we can work it out without the need of the police attitude; as far as I can tell, it would only, maybe, work in small closed communities where every one knew every one else, and even then, outsiders would almost immediately be looked upon with suspicion.

It's bad enough when somebody is wrongfully convicted of a crime in the system we have now. Do you really think it wouldn't be much worse in a system with no real checks and balances?

Heeby Jeeby wrote:Oh I remember the thread alright. I just choose to remember the unfounded allegations thrown around.

I am sure that this is not the case! My interjection was merely for anyone who might miss the humour and get perhaps the wrong idea.

On cops: I've heard stories each way, some good, some bad. The institutionalised racism inherent in stop and search in the UK is disgusting, which is my biggest problem with the British lot. I don't just mean the current emphasis on anyone who looks remotely brown, but the continual targeting of Afro-Caribbean men, which has been going on for years. Plenty of anecdotal. The Macpherson Report did not go far enough. The psychological effect of being continual stopped by police on a population is terrible (most relevant parts in the "The African-Caribbean experience in Britain" section, but the whole article is interesting). More here on this.

Socialist Worker wrote:In 2004-5 there were 839,977 stop and searches recorded by the police under Section 1 of Pace. Overall African-Caribbean people are six times more likely to be searched than white people and Asians twice as likely.

Frustratingly, I don't see the back-up for these statistics. However, it sounds about right. Reaching back to anecdotal evidence, back at Christmas I was sitting in a cafe with four friends. Of the five of us, only one had not been stopped and searched; the one who hadn't was the only white guy in the group.

However, I would still prefer having a police force with a significant minority of idiots and bigots to a vigilante system. At least cops are meant to follow rules.

tmidgett wrote:I can understand thinking, "Someone's gotta be a cop, and I'm a reasonable guy, so I am going to do it."

I just couldn't commit my efforts to the state that way. I'd feel like the government was pitting me against my neighbor.

I guess that I am not imaginative or empathetic enough to understand how another person could take the "reasonable guy" position.

fidelista wrote:Communities are perfectly capable of organizing and protecting themselves, and most jobs that need doing regarding punishing criminals, like assault or tracking down thefts, can be done by groups without the excessive power the police currently have. The existing organization we call the police by and large doesn't need to exist, at the very least not with the ridiculous amount of power we grant to them because we are scared of bad people. If you want to reduce crime, giving a bunch of guys the power to shoot you if you give them the stinkeye outside a strip club will not help.

I don't live in a community, I live in Chicago. I would not recognize 99% of my neighbors if I sat next to them at the movies. I would not recognize any attempt to wield authority by them, and I don't think they would allow me to either.

Believe me, I am not fond of the concept of the police, but I don't see a way around the need for them. Improvement is possible (I hope) and necessary (I know). I am not so interested in forming a posse with the mouth breathers on my street who litter like it gave them orgasms.

Tribalism. How quaint.

Anyone remember Pol Pot? For fuck sake.

jimmy spako wrote:Yes a vendetta-justice society, also my utopia. we could all just move to corsica now & get this transition you speak of over with. i look forward to being killed for something my dad or brother did.

actually corsica is not half bad otherwise. i'd move there with all of you for other reasons.

Isn't Corsica a territory of France?

What kind of training or tests do police have to complete in order to be considered for the job?

I imagine that there have got to be enough intelligent, agile, and wise people without explosive tempers in the US to fill the police force. I'm sure that they haven't considered it b/c it's a dirty job. Well, maybe it's partly a dirty job b/c of them.

Mark Hansen wrote:Fuck that anarchic, we can work it out without the need of the police attitude; as far as I can tell, it would only, maybe, work in small closed communities where every one knew every one else, and even then, outsiders would almost immediately be looked upon with suspicion.

It's bad enough when somebody is wrongfully convicted of a crime in the system we have now. Do you really think it wouldn't be much worse in a system with no real checks and balances?

Lots of Anarchists like to point up the Kowloon Walled City of Hong Kong and certain rural areas of Spain during the reign of Franco, as examples of societies which existed for years without governmental control.

However, the situation in Spain was really one of armed insurgency against an unpopular Fascist dictatorship, and was therefore a form of mob rule. It took place in rural areas of relatively sparse population where everybody pretty much knew one another (imagine a small Midwest farming community like, say, Wilmington, IL) and the Anarchists were an armed guerilla force, locked in constant battles and skirmishes with Franco's army.

The Kowloon Walled City is a more compelling example, but that was more of a huge shanty-town run amok, with tens of thousands of people living in crude hovels with no building codes, sanitation or city planning of any sort. Having no municipal resources of its own, the Walled City drew its water from the City of Kowloon. Look at these pictures:











A large fire in that place would have killed hundreds, if not thousands. From the very beginning the Walled City was a haven for drug addicts and crooks. The place was ruled over by a Chinese Triad mob which used it as a base and storage place for weapons and contraband. Eventually, Chinese police began raiding the city and the crime rate dropped, but living conditions were still deplorable. Nobody in the USA would ever want to live in conditions like that, I can tell you right now. Hardly a utopia by any standards.

So if these are the two best examples of serviceable Anarchic societies, I'd much rather put up with the police situation we have here in Chicago.