like I don't wanna be mr cracker callin cops but say you hear your neighbor bang on his front door so loud it shakes your apartment 3 rooms away, you hear him inside yelling with a woman, hard to tell what they say, but you clearly hear "get out of my face" from her, and either "give me my keys" or "give me my kids" (but wtf???) from her, shouting, and then pounding like someone is being flung around the room

is this cop time? do cops make things worse? is this "just talk to your neighbors" time even though the clear and present threat of violence is there?? I literally do not know what to do. I panicked, I called the cops, I think they literally just talked to the guy and then left.. idk what the alternative would be, I can't just get the woman alone to ask if she's okay when the dude's almost always there, guy is like 7 foot fuck,

e: I don't know how to reconcile "all cops suck they make everything worse" with not wanting to be a fucking bystander when someone is potentially (from all the sensory information I can gather) getting beaten by their partner

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
      ·
      2 years ago

      i mean that literally is the worry. people here who don't have a commitment to abolition still don't get that cops aren't an imperfect solution to antisocial behavior, they're no solution at all. they may resolve a problem by accident, just like a monkey with a gun would, but that's not what they're there to do.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Agreed. My rule for calling the cops is “Is this situation so bad that throwing in an armed racist maniac is more likely going to improve the situation” which so far has meant never.

        I don’t know what I would do in this situation, most likely I’d do nothing and feel incredibly guilty and constantly questioning if I made the right choice.

        • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          If your only option is to call them then it is infinitely better than sitting around and doing nothing. We don’t currently live in a communist project where this contradiction is solved, and the average individual person doesn’t have the means to solve this themselves. Yeah they’re just going to show up and most likely do nothing, but at least youve taken the most amount of action afforded to you by the state. Not to say that this is the correct course of action in all scenarios though.

          • cozy [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            this is really the crux of the issue isn't it? it's the same argument that globe emojis use to defend neocon actions. "it's not ideal but america couldn't just stand by and do nothing!" no matter how much context you provide for how hideously harmful the action was, it all circles back to their personal need to do something to absolve themselves of the guilt of inaction.

            • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              weird example because the "guilt of inaction" is purely ideological for the neocons, as opposed to actual guilt over community violence

          • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
            ·
            2 years ago

            if your only standard is "well it might result in deadly harm coming to one or more innocent people, but at least it's not nothing" then a better option is to get a gun and barge in there yourself