You often say “Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever”, but what’s the alternative when I’ve been burgled, robbed, or assaulted? Vigilantism? I’m sincerely asking.
The cops do not exist to “help” you. That is not their purpose, and the great majority of crimes are never “solved”; most of the time the cops don’t even investigate them. On top of that, there are thousands and thousands of cases of cops showing up and either inflicting violence on the caller or their family, or accusing THEM of a crime, or both. We hear a lot about how rape cases often result in the victim being treated like a criminal, but in reality that’s true for all crimes. If a cop takes a dislike to a complainant, he may decide that it would be both easier and better for him to accuse the complainant of a “crime” (usually a criminalized consensual act) instead. In the US, most prostitution charges result not from “stings”, but from cops charging victims of some crime (rape, robbery, assault, etc) with “prostitution”; in this recent example, cops ignored a violent serial killer to try to charge his intended victim. Examples of cops hurling drug or DV charges at crime victims abound. You honestly think it’s worth it to risk all that so you can have the faint hope that the state will inflict vicarious revenge on the one who harmed you? “Closure” is bullshit; people who expect to gain it by seeing the one who harmed them imprisoned often fall into depression when they realize it does nothing of the kind. Nor is it a valid argument to claim that in seeking vicarious vengeance through state-sponsored violence, you are helping other potential victims; cops generally charge whoever is handy and pressure the victim to agree with their choice instead of actually seeking the true malefactor. More simply put, when cops act to “solve” a crime at all, they generally do so by picking someone to frame for it and torturing the “evidence” to support their choice; your misfortune may be used to feed an innocent person into the carceral machine. In short, there are very few good possible outcomes to calling the cops, and lots of extremely bad, even life-destroying, ones; before dialing “9-1-1” or its equivalent, you might at least consider asking yourself whether you’re feeling lucky that day.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
Understand your viewpoint, but that still doesn’t answer the question. Police or not, crime will still occur. If the police aren’t involved, victims will have to either “accept” the loss and move on or seek retribution via their own means. There simply aren’t many other options.
Your not liking my answer is not remotely the same thing as my not answering the question, no matter what politicians and pop culture have taught you.
Disliking an answer isn’t the issue. If I thought a statement was BS, I’d say so.
I’m asking your view on what steps victims of crime should take if calling the police isn’t an option. Unless your position is that a society without police would have a lot less (or no) crime.
And I’m telling you that if you want more than I gave for free, you can pay for my time spoon-feeding you.
What you’ve said is absolutely true and contrary to everything the great middle class is brainwashed to believe about law enforcement.
The idea that anyone in law enforcement cares about victims is so embedded in the general middle class psyche that without personal experience it’s almost impossible for people to believe just how crass and uncaring law enforcement is towards actual victims of a crime. Most of us see others as we see ourselves. Since most of us would be personally offended by things like assault and rape we think that police and prosecutors as humans must share the same general aversion to these crimes we do. Nothing could be further from the truth whatever they have been trained to say on television seems to suggest.
Some people get that “some” law enforcement can be uncaring and lazy and even less get that “almost all” law enforcement as a culture is uncaring and laziness towards actual victims, but it’s only through personal experience that you learn law enforcement will actively ignore a known rapist or violent offender even when they have a name, address, picture and a women actually identifying the assailant in favor for someone tangentially related who is easier to frame, more likely to take a plea, and/or offers more money in asset forfeiture. Why else do you think conflation is such a central part of their war on whatever cultural flavor of the month lifestyle crime they are enforcing at the time? They say “all drug users are evil” or “all sex worker customers are evil” so they can get away with arresting the most convenient over the most dangerous. They can then rely on the sycophant media to pretend the person they arrested is the same as the violent criminals they regularly give a free pass to.
This is almost impossible to understand without personal experience, but law enforcement can only be correctly understood as a criminal organization inhabited by psychopaths designed to increase pain and suffering for victims that operates with little to no oversight and faces little repercussions that would land anyone else in jail.
When it comes to calling the cops, don’t just do something, sit there. Or, think of it as drinking hemlock. If something really bad happens to you and drinking hemlock is your only option, does that make it a good option?
Drug charges must be a particular favorite because asset forfeiture means baseless drug charges get the cops free stuff.
People still wonder why I oppose gun control and law enforcement. Given that the former has not only failed to stop violent crime, but also has emboldened criminals; and the latter is practically an out-of-control criminal cult, why would any sane person want to?
The police are bureaucrats. Having myself been a bureaucrat for 35 years, the only thing that matters is getting results in order to justify the budget. No results, and the budget gets cut.
In addition, because we used off-duty police as guards, I got to know a few. Most were arrogant and power hungry. Some were quite nice. If you were their friend, they’d go the extra mile for you. If not, well…
At the end of the day, they are people. And most people, when given a bit of power, are corrupted by it.
Correction: ALL people are corrupted by power; the only thing that varies is the amount of power it takes to corrupt any given individual. If one seems incorruptible, it merely means he hasn’t yet gained sufficient power to be corrupted by it.
I would argue that a bureaucrat such as a police officer (a bureaucrat with a monopoly on violence) gets their budget specifically by never solving the very crimes people hired them to solve.
How much money was given to New Orleans to fix the retaining wall in the decades leading up to Katrina? If they had used the money to actually fix the retaining wall they would have only received the money once rather than the continuous cash cow it became by promising apocalypse without more money that was never used for the purpose.
How does it serve the police to solve the murders, rapes, theft, and other crimes the public cares about? No prosecutor or police chief ever argued that hey are doing such a good job that they need less resources.
Fear raises money and allows for greater power. What is there incentive to stop any of the people who contribute to their power grab and money raising? I mean, it’s not like the media is ever going to report on the fact that they aren’t doing their jobs.
As for “some [cops] were quite nice,” Hitler loved small children and dogs (and was a vegetarian tea totaler to boot). It’s an unfortunate fact of life that some guys can kiss their wife, pat their dog on the head, hug their children goodbye, then go to work where they take pleasure in either participating in murder and rape.
I’m sure all of The Golden State killers neighbours thought he was a swell guy. One has nothing to do with the other.
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