- Systemic racism or Monopoly of force?
- Ethnic disparity is a problem created by incorrect governance (the “Cultural issue”)
- ∙Is there a systemic racism? a “scientific” reading of the data
- The Police violence problem: towards a solution
In the previous documents of this series it was said:
– in «Ethnic disparity is a” cultural matter “(a Government issue)» <see> has highlighted how the serious hardships experienced by some ethnic minorities derive from a wrong setting of government institutions.
– in “Is there a systemic racism? a scientific reading of the data “<see> illustrates how behaviors are due to the culture transmitted by the social community in which the individual grew up. And how the loss of the traditional culture of the community turns out to be a serious problem with respect to the proper functioning of the community.
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This document analyzes the problem that emerged in the early months of 2020: the exercise by the police of a force often not justified by the situation. A careful analysis of the information we have available relating to these forms of violence shows that
● the problem of the violence of some police interventions does not derive from a racial bias (this is neglected by the facts)
● but it stems from an incorrect setting of the Police, which has lost its function of “social service”, and has become an organ in the service of Institutions that have little to do with Democracy.
●. to solve the problem it is necessary to operate on two fronts (1) upstream of everything, with a recovery of democracy in the institutions that produce the laws; (2) with the recovery of the Public Service function by the law enforcement bodies.
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The problem of Police violence exists,
but it’s a general problem,
not specific violence towards a race.
What emerges from the facts that are heatedly discussed in the early months of 2020 is a negative aspect of the Police: it acts too often in a brutal way (with a force not justified by the situation).
And although this behavior of the police is independent of a racial bias – as illustrated in the previous documents – there is a problem in the way of the Police that must actually be solved.
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The bias to be eliminated in this case is not so much on the part of the Policemen, but it is a bias on the part of those who set up the current Police system:
today it does not take into account how Law enforcement institutions should be functional to the proper functioning of the democracy system.
That is, the problem is that
today the Police have powers
that are contrary to the constitution.
In other words, the police have been endowed with an authority towards citizens not foreseen by the Constitution.
the problem of setting up the police
So let’s see what the problem is in its essence.
The problem of the often inappropriate use of force (even brutal) by the police derives from a degeneration of the concept of democratic institutions:
democratic Institutions
must always and in any case serve the Citizen.
So the police must be basically a public service, and not – as it is now – of an “armed wing” at the service of government institutions.
It is a question, above all, of an error in the concept of democratic government.
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To understand the essence of the problem, it is first necessary to evaluate what the misunderstanding is in applying the concept of Government and Law eforcement.
The correct function of government and law enforcement
The conception of Government in Democracy
Government was created so that
it offers a service to citizens.
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Taking a step back we must remember the fundamental concepts of Democracy:
● President Abraham Lincoln: “Democracy is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. »
● “Democracy is government in which power and civic responsibility are exercised by all adult citizens, directly, or through their freely elected representatives.” [The US Embassy in Seoul <see>]
The case of the US Embassy in Seoul is significant, as it seems to forget the cardinal concepts of the Constitution since on the facade of that Embassy it was exposed, during the riots of 2020. a huge banner with the text “Black Livers Matter”. <see>
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Given the premises on which Democracy is based, the Police today holds a position of “exception” compared to the standards of Democracy.
Police today are in fact “independent”
of the institutional power of Democracy:
the Citizens.
And exceptions are a problem in complex man-made community management systems: exceptions to the rules end up generating abuse.
Democracy, like any man-made governance system (whether public or private) is based on “operating principles”.
And if these Principles are not respected, chaos is created in governance since the original Principles are combined with “subjective” ideas (ideological concepts that ignore the real needs of the Citizens, for whom Democracy must operate) that prevent the system from operating in the ways for which it was conceived.
∙Law enforcement functions, and the conception of Law and Order (order as authoritarianism)
1. the function of Law enforcement
The concepts of Law Enfocement, and even before that of Law and Order, are also taken on with a degenerate meaning compared to that originally existing in Democracy.
Therefore, before asking what are the rules that a Law enforcement agent must follow, it is necessary to clarify the concept of Law.
In Democracy:
● Laws must be developed by the People, for the benefit of the People themselves.
Democracy works because Citizens who recognize a problem created by a Law in subsequent elections elect representatives (Town, County, State, Federal Congress) to repeal or change that law according to their will.
This conception has been lost over time: today
Laws are created by the institutions
in a process over which
Citizens have no control.
These Laws are therefore often inspired by an ideological vision of the Society, in which the real interests of citizens are sacrificed to privilege the vision of a “social order” dictated by “idealistic” political doctrines.
Bear in mind that Law enforcement agents often have to enforce “rules” that are not created by the citizens’ representatives, but by bureaucrats (which have become an important tool in the service of ideologized politics)).
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● Law enforcement actions must always be aimed at solving the Citizen’s problems that the agents are facing (as it is, for example, for the paramedics of the ambulances).
Today instead
we have moved to a repressive concept of Policing,
which derives from the utopian ideological conception of a Society which must be governed in an authoritarian way.
It is the vision Vision of the Utopias of the enlightenment then adopted by Socialism.
The fact is that while for founders of Democracy the Man is naturally good, Social Democratic ideology is based on the idea that Man is by his nature unable to manage himself in a functional way for the community.
That is, according to this conception without the imposition of authoritarian measures, social Darwinism would develop in the Company, a dimension in which the strongest commit abuses against other Citizens.
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The use of force therefore, although justified in some cases, must take place only in extreme cases, in which there is really a violence to neutralize
And of course, the conception of the Law enformcement must be such that the actions of the Policemen must not provoke violent reactions from the Citizens as happened in 2020 in the parking lot of the Wendy’s in Atlanta.
With a truly democratic law enforcement approach, the Policeman would have been primarily interested in the welfare of the stopped Citizen, and not in arresting him because he slept in a drunk car. By seizing his car keys, and calling an acquaintance by taxi, he would have obtained the citizen’s gratitude and not his rebellion.
2. the conception of the Law and Order
And as far as the conception of Law and Order is concerned, it too has degenerated compared to the original conception.
Due to the degeneration of the concept of Democracy,
the Order we are talking about
is no longer the one required by Citizens:
that is, today there is no longer an order as a condition of peace; and freedom to express and act (until objective damage is created to other citizens).
But the new conception of Order is very close to the “ideal” order of Utopias, and the authoritarianism of National-socialism (Fascism): a dimension in which repressive rules are imposed top-down on citizens..
In fact, it should be noted that the cities in which the forms of violence by the Police occurred have all been governed for many years by a strong majority of Democrats.
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It is therefore good to remember that the conception of (social) Order is subjective:
different Cultures have different (conflicting)
conceptions of Social Order.
In some cultures, this sense of social security comes from the existence of a strongly authoritarian order, as was the case, for example, for Italian Fascism (which recorded an almost unanimous consensus and elections). In other cultures, such as that of the hippies, on the other hand, the sense of social peace stemmed from a total absence of authoritarianism.
Even among Christians there are conceptions under some decidedly different points of view (such as between Amish and current Catholics).
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▫the question of freedom and top-down laws
Let us remember one of the fundamental points of the democratic society: the concept of freedom.
The original meaning of freedom was lost, in its essence, with the loss of traditional culture:
Freedom means not that the individual is “free to do what he wants”,
but that he is “free from constraints from above”.
That is, in Democracy individuals are free to act until the community judges their action contrary to the interests of the community (this concept is at the basis of the legal system of the Common Law: the People, through the popular juries, decide what this is right and what’s wrong).
But in a Democracy Citizens cannot be forced to limit their actions based on top-down imposed laws (which are now very often created by the institutions on the basis of ideological interests that do not correspond to the real interests of Citizens).
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So the condition of Law and Order works when it is functional to the culture of the social community to which it is applied. Since it corresponds to a vision of the Society which must be shared by Citizens (and by those who hold functions of Law enformcement).
For this reason, the communities in which America developed were all culturally homogeneous (the inhabitants of a community shared culture and moral principles – basically they were ethnic groups that shared the same religion).
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It is therefore very important not to take it for granted that when we talk about Law and Order we are based on a correct basic idea of this concept (correct with respect to the principles of Democracy).
In fact, a careful analysis of what is happening today shows how
most talk about the need to make Democracy work,
but do not realize they are talking about
a conception of Order (and Law)
that has little to do with Democracy.
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In summary, a truly Democratic solution for the restoration of the condition of Law and Order (which respects Culture, and more generally the real needs of Citizens) must be a solution that respects the specific local ethnic qualities.
TOWARDS A SOLUTION
A police reform involves areas that are upstream of the action of this institution, and must be done:
► firstly at the level of creation of laws: Laws must be created by Citizens, for Citizens. And, as happens today, not by institutions whose citizens have no awareness, and therefore over which they have virtually no control.
Note that only in a dimension in which laws are created “by the peple, for the People”, do citizens care to see “their” laws respected.
For these reasons, in the USA it was Citizens who created Sheriff’s offices locally where there were no other law enforcement institutions.
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► and therefore at law enforcement level. Only after a correct form of democratic governance has been restored, it will be possible to create forms of Law vigorously in line with the principles of Democracy: Law enforcement as a service managed directly by the community.
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The changes to be made at these levels, in order to return to a proper functioning of Democracy, must be accompanied by changes from other areas of the government that today operate in a way that does not comply with the principles of Democracy.
One of these areas is that of Justice (the problems in the cases of George Floyd and the shooting of the Wendy’s in Atlanta are partly due to this problem).
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Note that the School must also follow a reform in this direction, so that it can recover the role of tool for passing of traditional (therefore democratic) Culture to future adults: the School must be managed by the parents of the pupils, and not, as it is now managed by political forces aiming for a cultural revolution within the Company.
Defense of Citizens as a Public Service
Due to the underlying flaws mentioned above,
democratic institutions such as the police have lost the role of public service.
That is, the Police, losing the original quality of support tool for the well-being of citizens, has become an executive tool of the will of an authority that produces rules that have little to do with the interests of Citizens.
In this case the police instead of being the tool that defends citizens from abuse, ends up being an institution that practices abuse against Citizens.
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In other words, the Police must be conceived as one of the other democratic Public Service Institutions: Firefighter, Paramedics, etc …
(although the Police also have the function of using force, this is by no means its primary function: force must be used only when there is no other way to guarantee the safety of other citizens).
Until the Citizen actually develops violence, the Law enforcement agent must try to help the Citizen in front of him.
(this means that, for example, the Police must not create a situation like that of the shooting of the Wendy’s in Atlanta, where the anger of a citizen who was totally collaborative in the early stages was provoked)
Some specific elements for a police reform
The failure of the Police in its current conception (which today has lost the conception of Democratic Institution, being instead managed by Authorities not directly controlled by Citizens) was revealed in the 2020 facts in the following ways:
● excesses of violence.
● refusal to carry out its citizens protection functions (of people and property): during the riots, the moment in which the Police would have had a determined role in limiting the damage (there were many deaths caused by the “protesters”, and hundreds of properties destroyed) 911 did not respond to Citizens’ calls in grave danger <see>.
the current problem of law enforcement
So, to summarize, the task of the Police is to defend Citizens from social security problems whose solution is particularly urgent.
But in the case of the Wendy’s shooting in Atlanta, it has shown how a repressive intervention by the Policemen can transform a situation without violent connotations into a drama.
In this case the victim, sleeping in the car aware of being a danger to others driving the car, was behaving like a model Citizen. But the Policemen decided to adopt a repressive approach, creating the reaction of the Citizen who saw in that way the ruin for his life (he already had a precedent).
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Some of the problems encountered are, by the Policemen:
– lack of a “democratic approach” (which should be in every form of Public Service of the “assistance service”): the Policemen should work for the benefit of the individual they face( instead the “repressive approach” is used today).
– lack of Psychology skills: the Policemen to work for the well-being of Citizens, should have greater skills that allow them to face people with a “human approach” (as do Policemen specialized in interventions for people who threaten to commit suicide ).
the meaning of institution of Public service
The quality that the Police lack today is therefore a Democratic approach (an institution created and managed “by the People”).
The fact is that Policemen in cases such as the Atlanta shooting probably do nothing but apply the rules of approach imposed on them (a repressive approach developed by the social-democratic government).
And therefore the problem is that without carrying out, upstream of everything, a Police reform is useless to intervene on specific problems such as the rules of engagement.
That is, it is necessary to intervene by applying again the Principles of democratic institutions to the police:
■ citizens must be able to revoke, or transform (promptly) laws that produce negative consequences.
■ citizens must be able to directly control Law enforcement operators (for example, by expressing their “vote” regarding the interventions carried out by the Police).
Bear in mind that in any case, in a truly “local” dimension of Government (and therefore of Law enforcement) the following qualities are obtained:
– the culture of people (thanks to the schools run by citizens) allows Community to intervene with preventive actions that significantly lower the level of violence in the community.
– the fact that it is the Citizens who directly manage the function of creating the Laws puts them in a position of being particularly interested in their application (improving the level of “social order” in the community).
– continuous direct contact with the Law enforcement operators makes the action of the latter “softer”.
– Direct policing: a further improvement of social peace derives from the support of institutions of voluntary citizens (the contribution of volunteering is a determining factor for the proper functioning of the democratic system).
By integrating the police with voluntary associations, you get not only a significant reduction in the costs of law enforcement, but also a better social security condition.
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Today in the USA different forms of collaboration of Citizens with Law enforcement are foreseen:
● The Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) (a parto part of the Citizen Corps partner program). That offers Citizens training aimed at the ability to implement disaster mitigation measures, and participating in crime prevention and reporting.
● Neighborhood Watch programs which not only help local law enforcement forces, but also generally increase the sense of collaboration between the inhabitants of a community.
“In the United Kingdom is the largest voluntary crime prevention movement covering England and Wales with upwards of 2.3 million household members. The charity brings neighbors together to create strong, friendly and active communities in which crime can be tackled.» Wikipedia.
