Don’t abolish the police. Police the police.

So far I have not seen any answers to the obvious question of “Without police, how are you going to protect people from theft, murder, and rape?”. The nearest thing I could find to an answer is this admission that the author has no answer.

“From where we are now, sometimes we can’t really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn’t just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It’s also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. “

I think dreaming big is absolutely essential for social reform, and I would love to live in a society where government did not maintain oppression and inequalities. If we ever achieve such a society, it’s possible that, if there were no crimes committed for a decade or so, people might say “hey, let’s abolish the police, they’re not doing that much anyway.” But there are people being abused and killed by police right now, and I don’t think we should wait until that Utopia arises to protect them from this abuse. At this point in time, we need a police force that protects innocent people from crimes, and we also need to assure that those police don’t kill innocent people. And we need it as soon as possible. The only way to achieve that is to reform the police we have, and/or create a new institution that performs the proper function of the police.