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I have to again point out that we have long historical precedent of not having police, including in the contemporary world, and order doesn't spontaneously emerge in those contexts. Instead, warlords rule everything, take what they want, and ordinary people are fucked.

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That's fair. But, also, you're talking about a time where 90 percent of your kids died of something before age two and millions of other horrors that are unimaginable to us now if we're lucky to never live in a warzone. So I don't think you can isolate police as the sole factor leading to relative civilization over barbarity. I will add though that my proposal for defund isn't "We don't need any state power to prevent violence and property crime" it's "Fire the bad cops and consider how to relocate the public savings from not having to pay billions in police misconduct lawsuits and salaries of bad cops and see what happens when that money goes toward creating more green spaces and after school programs."

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“Yes I know I’m a stupid journalist and don’t have any idea how hard police work is, but there’s literally no other institution that gets a pass with results like this.” Awesome metrics Journalist, you got 18 likes!

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May 2, 2023·edited May 2, 2023

The Times has never been liberal. Anti-government sometimes, but never liberal.

I would add - weatherpersons have a better "clearance rate" than cops

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