But people riot for different reasons. There are riots for white supremacy as there are for justice. The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville had riot police push them to separate area, where they could control their ‘protest’ better. Were the cops in that situation bastards then? Should we have let the Unite the Right rally to continue unabated? Should we have allowed the counter protestors to clash in the streets with them?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for punching Nazis, but I go into that belief with the understanding that if I am caught and get arrested for punching a Nazi, I’d still be charged with assault on a American citizen. I do believe that standard has to be kept.
I guess I just wonder what a no-police state looks like, because it sounds like a Libertarian hellhole to me.
I stand more on large reform of the police. I like what David Simon says about them, which he basically says that the police should stand for the public well being. I don’t think the police in America really stand for that. They act more as applying force to equal force instead of trying to deescalate. We need more training, civilian oversight, deescalation classes, better pay, a reduction in firearms in use, and a number of other reforms.
But I really don’t see how getting rid of the police helps anything.
In most of those scenarios the police defended the Nazis “right to free speech” and you never see them attempt to deplatform them. Further, you will see police arrest and harass antifa at these same rallies.
Police reform under capitalism isn’t a thing that is going to be easy and I’d go so far as to call it impossible.
I’m a criminologist finishing up my masters so I read a lot about the state of policing and corrections and a common trend that I see is discussion in police literature about “trust and legitimacy.” However when they say this they’re talking about the public simply trusting their legitimacy and not earning it. Simply being the police means they are to be trusted.
Meanwhile, over in community corrections, you have officers starting to realize that using social services to help the probationers and parolees they supervise is more effective at reducing recidivism than sending them back to prison. So, you might think… what if we just made the cops more like community corrections officers with a focus on social work?
I’d go further and say that we get rid of the police entirely and train social workers in deescalation tactics and increase their funding. The primary function of the police is violence. Their tertiary jobs are done better by others elsewhere.
Coinciding with that would, ideally, be a change in tax structures that evens the playing field between the rich and poor and reduces opportunities for environments to become criminogenic in a way that leads people to crime.
Police have only existed as they do in recent history. We can do better.
If you want to see fewer riots, create a world in which there are fewer reasons TO riot. Even some of the Nazis, who believe now that the condition of the world is because of the other, would benefit from and perhaps cease in some of their beliefs and activities if certain strains in their life were alleviated. Not all of them, obviously, but perhaps a few. We could even train social workers in de radicalization.
All I want is for people to imagine and believe that we can do better. I know we can.
I feel like we agree on the same thing, actually. I agree with a lot of your sentiments, but I just think it’s going to be a long road to get there. Reform takes time, especially under our current capitalist society that profits on policing and imprisonment. But I feel like this sentiment:
So, you might think… what if we just made the cops more like community corrections officers with a focus on social work?
Is what I want to get to as well. That’s the long term.
I really like reading about Las Vegas started to reform its police force, and how a few simple changes drastically reduced the amount of deaths in that city:
Mind you, this isn’t perfect, but I feel like all police around the country could start with these very easy and helpful reforms, and then work towards community policing that you would like instead of the tyrannical style we see now.
I live in Georgia, and soon our officers are going to have to start judging whether a miscarriage is actually an abortion, and I raised this point to a facebook ‘friend’ from high school who became a cop, and his response was basically, ‘lol’
So I fully agree with the ACAB sentiment, but I really want to push for change rather than abolition.
That’s fine. It does seem like we have similar ideas/goals, but as long as police are out there actively killing hundreds of people a year, many of whom could use legitimate aid for various problems, I will be for their abolition. Not their reform. I want them gone and replaced. We can work towards both your goals and mine.
What’s wildest to me is that they chose a RIOT COP. D.Va’s skin at the very least the vibe of a traffic cop, the riot gear is straight up is SCREAMING “we are a militarized group here to silence the populace” and they didn’t even try to cover it up
Haha, yeah, no. (Source: am Korean.) Admittedly, there is less fear of immediate death because there are fewer guns in society overall, but the police are corrupt, incompetent, and not your friend unless you are a rich dude. Also, the most enduring image of the riot police in Korea is police/military gunning down protesters in Gwangju under martial law (Gwangju Uprising - Wikipedia), which was a long time ago, yes, but violence continues to be the norm under any conservative admin as recently as four years ago just before then president Park Geunhye was impeached. So. Yeah.
like have we forgotten the short where soldier 76 goes to mexico to shoot a bunch of guys and it ends up inspiring a tiny girl
This whole episode feels to me like Overwatch just being the thing it always already was, a goofy shoot-em-up with the cultural sensitivity level of a Halloween costume aisle and a concept of “superhero” that draws more from GI Joe than any leftish ideal. It does interest me how the fandom responds to all of this, though. Given the weird ways the story has been parceled out, my perception of how the characters are owes more to popular fan reinterpretations than anything the actual Blizzard writers have put down. People just like 76 more as a corny gay dad than a Punisher clone with a burning American flag backdrop.
Overwatch has always been an international military organization, and the basis of their establishment and dismantlement has always been pretty bad. They were established to clean up a capitalism-bred mess when a major corporation started creating new lifeforms on a massive scale and essentially condemning them to a life of servitude, then dipped as soon as things stopped going to way they planned and said lifeforms revolted.
They went from that already bad start, to an international quasi-military force with so little oversight they had a black ops division that no one knew about until fucked up in such a massive way that it was impossible to keep a secret. Even before that, they were disregarding the desires of the countries they dealt with to do “the right thing” according to their morals. The biggest difference with regard to Overwatch is that they actually end up disbanded after their catastrophic fuck-ups and extrajudicial murders. So yeah, Overwatch has always been cops, even if not necessarily all the character in Overwatch are cops.
Even if I were willing to set that premise aside–and I’m not.–Blizzard has never given any indication that they actually understand the political ramifications of anything they do. A lot of people let it slide because even though they made fantasy racial caricatures (Tauren, anyone?), they kept their bullshit to the realm of fantasy and seem to have patently ignored the issues people have with some of their races in their Warcraft franchise (Highmountain Tauren, anyone?). In an interview with Polygon, Kaplan is even noted to have said that “When you’re representing Night Elves or Terrans no one gets horrifically offended at you unless you do something terribly ignorant, or you misrepresent them in some way [according to canon]”.
With Overwatch, they made their foray into the realm of “reality” and are putting on display their vision for a future. They’ve talked endlessly about how they pride themselves on striding for diversity in their game, but they don’t appear to understand that wanting to sincerely bring diversity into their game requires more knowledge about the world, its politics, and the attitudes of its people. However, the premise of the game isn’t a good one, and they’ve been making almost constant missteps. There are two police skins in this game, they revealed Pharah to have First Nations ancestry after public outcry about one of her skins, and plenty of people have pointed out that there are still no black women on their roster.
They want to pay lip service to diversity and collect their Good Corporation Points and go home. None of the stuff they do for Overwatch feels like it’s remotely in good faith, and continuing fuck-ups–like giving a character a riot police skin–really do solidify their complete ignorance about how the world outside their bubble of privilege works.
Really don’t think Blizzard or most game companies think this heavily into the details of making skins like people here seem to be thinking of them. They sit in a meeting room and go “What would be some cool new skins” and think some up “Oh yeah a cop skin would look cool on this character they have a shield, a riot shield would make sense” and then they make it. There’s no in universe canon reasons for every skin in every game they’re often just cool looking like I don’t know the OW lore inside and out but I don’t think they all turned into zombies and Winston into a gargoyle at any point?
You are probably right that this was as far as the thought process at Blizzard went, but that doesn’t absolve them. All it means that they are a non-diverse group that couldn’t think through what a riot cop skin would look like to people outside their bubble. Like, if they actually had substantial numbers of black and brown folks on the dev team, would this skin have gone through without at least some objection? @augmentalize’s summary of Overwatch’s lore is a prime example of how little Blizzard has thought through the implications of their universes, and that sucks so much for me as a person of color who loves the mechanics and art of their games.
I know that it is impossible that this is true because I have managed to hear about the terrific clashes between Overwatch fans and Blizzard which occur seemingly every single time Blizzard releases some tidbit of new lore or a new skin, and I’ve literally never played the game. Blizzard is absolutely discussing every decision they make because they receive loud public backlash every single time they make (what are surely to them) seemingly innocuous mistakes, which, as an outsider, seems to happen an awful lot.
Overwatch is successful in large (huge) part because fans enjoy projecting onto their characters. When Blizzard does something with the characters that the fans don’t like, it’s potentially worse than rebalancing the game mechanics. Asserting that they flippantly say “I dont know make the hamster a dairy queen employee” and everyone just shrugs and does it would, at this point, make them the stupidest people in the industry, which they are clearly not.
I feel like I should chime in with my tiny and really strange corner of the world, Australia, this really doesn’t contribute to the debate but it’s wild to hear people talk about being scared or distrustful of the police. I just wanted to say we have a fairly milder view of police here. Overwatch is an international game and a lot of countries aren’t affected with the issues that this might be bringing up. Everyone I interact with has a positive reaction to this skin, because we have a positive reaction to policing in our lives. It’s cool and not a skin where a female character is sex’d up (looking at you League of Legends).
I don’t mean to be flippant, but would you also consider yourself speaking on behalf of the aboriginal people of Australia? A cursory search reveals increased violence and heavy handedness vs aboriginees.
I’m also curious how the police’s role in regards to immigrants is perceived.
I don’t think you need to be of low intelligence to not think skins through. You just need to have blind spots. Like, maybe they didn’t think about what a cop skin would look like to marginalized folks, but that hardly makes them stupid.
While I agree Overwatch “technically is a military” and that it might feel weird to object to an obvious policification of that, but like, is it? Overwatch has spent years with barely a story, and a game mode where you’ll have multiple of the same people shooting at each other. Sometimes, you push a limo with a very loud film executive in it? Like, diagetically this game doesn’t make sense. It’s TF2 nonsense, only with cute girls.
At least it is until you model one of the characters like organizations that actively murder people, that suppress leftist speech, that attack LGBT communities around the world, who are actively colonialist forces in setter states STILL. Like if Overwatch came out with everyone dressed like US Infantrymen, you’d have a point, but there’s a big difference between “oh they’re soldiers I guess, here’s a hamster” and “we’re going to dress this person up as a literal riot officer, have fun”/
