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by grasshopperpurp
3061 days ago
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>The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid- to late-19th century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class. Really not that different. http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17505/police_and_poor_... |
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Nonsense, the police were not created with that goal in mind. The Romans had police, plenty of European cities had police forces prior to the 18th century (see Rembrandt's painting 'the Nightwatch' for some proof of that) and so does every other normal society today, even the ones that are not dictatorships. Also, you've just made the leap from 'secret police' to 'plainclothes detectives' to 'any police'.
The linked article is clearly pushing an agenda and in the process does a lot of historical revision.
Police is a normal and useful component of society, the kind of excesses that Americans have to contend with are a direct result of a society that is broken in many ways and for which there are no easy fixes.
If you let the regular police get away with enough bad stuff over time the good guys will leave the force and more bad elements will enter. Keep this going for a couple of decades and you get Baltimore. But it need not be that way. Fixing this will be hard though, they are pretty strongly entrenched now and it will take major force to get rid of them, similar to how hard it is to get rid of the Mafia in Italy.