Police Militarization and Civil Rights Act (Passed)

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What agency are we going to task this with? A general mandate from the Department of Justice seems like it would work best, quite frankly. We don't have a national police force (thank god) and so to make something like this happen, we'll probably need to attach some funding measures toward it to coax Regions that might otherwise not support such a measure into doing so. Perhaps we could make federal subsidies for law enforcement training and research contingent upon adopting the measures described in the bill?

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Part of the problem with this debate being engaged in by those who don't believe in an underlying social conflict between classes is the utter lack of understanding why police brutality exists in the first place. I support this bill because it will undoubtedly have some impact, but I really think that if we want to hold the police accountable and make them more, not less, likely to coerce the public, we really have to look into reconstituting the entire social system in which we live. We have not always had police. The development of groups of armed men, separate from the rest of society, is a development springing directly from the division of society into classes that occurred with the transition away from hunter-gathering thousands of years ago. We should not ignore the class nature of policing in addressing these problems.

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I don't want to turn this into an issue of class conflict. It already is an issue of class conflict. The police exist to protect private property, and thus, to protect the holders of private property, i.e. the capitalist class. They do not exist to keep our streets safe or protect working class citizens. They're hired thugs of the rich and powerful.

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So the police force are thugs?

I've been fairly candid about that in recent campaign speeches, yes. I am opposed to the institution of the police and regard police as little more than scabs wearing blue uniforms. I believe that we should abolish this separate body of armed men and replace it with community-controlled safety patrols that don't worry about victimless crimes (like whether or not you're texting someone when you're driving, or going a few miles over the speed limit) and that focus on actual criminality. We should arm the public and disarm the police as a stopgap measure until we can fully rid ourselves of the police, in my opinion.

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I object.

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Nay

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Aye