What Would Happen If the Police Just Went Away?

by Warren Tilson

What would happen if the police just went away?

Lets say that on some future day you have woken up to news reports that every single police officer at the local level, that is highway patrol, school, park, transit and city police county deputies and whatever miscellaneous cops there are has failed to show up for work. Perhaps a massive case of the blue flu or a sudden onset of conscience, whatever the reason, they are not at work.

There are no officers on patrol, no officers to respond to 911 calls, no officers to issue traffic citations, no officers to arrest drug dealers, no cops to provide any kind of security for anyone.

What would be the likely result of this occurrence?

This failure to serve and protect?

Crime would go up, way up.

Speeders and others who show indifference to their fellow road users would be unconstrained and unpunished for their behavior.

Drug dealers will take to the streets openly to sell their wares, clogging up streets and causing traffic problems and having a spillover effect on nearby properties.

Scumbags of all sorts will see this as an opportunity to inflict themselves on others, as there are no police to respond to a citizen’s complaint of a beggar spitting on people who refuse to give a handout. The idiots who insist on riding their bikes or skating on crowded sidewalks will have free reign. In a short time all those people whose behavior now is only barely constrained by the threat of police intervention will be free to run riot on the rest of us.

Sounds bad, eh?

Total anarchy right? No. The above is total chaos.

Get a dictionary, look up some definitions. How long would this state of affairs last? How long would the criminals and the recklessly inconsiderate rule through terror and disregard for others? How long would the streets be a hellzone for any person who was not a thug?

Oh, about an hour.

That’s right, one hour.

An hour is how long it will take the culture shock to wear off. We will have gone from a culture where you are forced to rely on others, to be "protected" by an inefficient tax-funded monopoly that you are forced to pay for, to protect you from having to rely on yourself and family and friends.

Now it is true that, really, you have to rely on yourself and your kin today, but the difference would be that there would be no police to second guess you, arrest you for carrying the means of your defense, or to protect the criminal from righteous retribution by his victim or kin.

As criminals realized that the police were gone and that there was no fear of being arrested they would mug and rob at will until their potential victims also realized that there were no cops.

In today’s government-infected world you are advised to not resist, give the thug whatever he wants, call 911 as soon as you are able and report the crime to the authorities. They may, or as is more likely, may not arrest anyone. The thug will be free to strike again. Even if they arrest him the odds are he will be back on the streets in a day or so after having his little "time out" for his bad behavior. Depending on where you live, if you had dared to resist you may very well have been arrested or investigated for your use of force against the thug. If you used a "forbidden" means of defense you certainly will be charged with that "crime". If you killed the thug, you might even be brought up on murder charges. In some areas, the punk or his kin could sue you.

In my little fantasy world of Sanspigsia, there is no one to prevent you from carrying a weapon. The little cowards that currently have the upper hand would find themselves unable to control you. The little cowards are the ones who believe in gun control and when seeing an armed person, immediately call the police. The call 911 and whisper hysterically into the phone as not to be noticed by the "guy with a gun". The little cowards will still be there but no one will answer their cries for salvation from the evil gun man. They will be so afraid they might just have to stay in their homes under the covers with the lights out.

Therefore, with no cops to hassle you, you could strap whatever weapons you wanted to your side, and, if attacked, fend off your attacker without worry of being arrested. With no cops around there would be no one to take the thug away, the punishment would have to be immediate. Beatings, maimings and summary executions of scumbags would be the norm.

Some people would decry this reality and would try to remedy it but even if there were still district attorneys and the government courts were extant, there would be no beaters (cops) to drive citizens into the mandibles of the beast. The cowards could pontificate all they wanted but I doubt if any of them would risk themselves in making arrests.

Eventually the criminally minded would realize that without the cops, via the taxpayers, around to absorb most of the cost of the criminal’s protection (yes, I am saying that the money taxpayers spend on the police acts as a subsidy for criminals) there would be no way of making criminal acts pay.

The odds of being killed or maimed would be way too high and since the police would not be there to enforce the laws that make it harder for good people to defend themselves every potential victim would have access to effective weapons. In addition, all the people who now refuse to be responsible for their own defense, if there was any capacity for reason in their skull cases, would also start taking up arms.

These factors would make the criminal’s life a lot harder. Soon the smarter ones would find a new way of providing for themselves, the dumb ones and the bold ones would die off and then there would hardly be any crime at all. Drug and other contraband dealers would be free to sell whatever they wanted wherever they wanted, until the locals organized against them. Since there are no cops, the dealers cannot be arrested, but neither can the citizens for brandishing weapons and requesting that the dealers set up somewhere else.

Smart dealers will take their trade to someplace quiet and private. Why risk angering people when you do not have to and with the police gone a dealer could set up a public stall somewhere with proper parking and with little if any spillover on the surroundings. Eventually this would grow into an actual store and the dealer and his competitors will have joined the above ground retail market. The usual tactics seen in retail will be seen here. Advertising, quality control, sales, customer relations, warrantees, increased product choices and a comfortable place to shop will all be in evidence.

All of this will take contraband from the outré to the mundane.

The violence that surrounds the merchants that trade in contraband will cease, the prices will go down which means the customers no longer have to cause harm to get the money that they buy their fix with. Therefore with no prohibited substances and an armed populace all the problems with them will disappear.

Let’s take a few examples from recent events to see how they would turn out in Sanspigsia.

Real world: In New York City, there was an incident where a group of women were assaulted and stripped of their clothes by a mob of thugs. There was a group of police officers about a 100 feet away watching who did nothing. There was a media outcry, the devastated and humiliated women were interviewed, reform was promised by the higher ups, etc., ad nauseam.

Sanspigsia: Drunken group of punks surrounds and tries to assault a group of women, the women pull their guns. If the punks insist, the punks, or some of them, die. Even if the punks have guns and are willing to kill to grab a cheap feel, none of them are likely to risk death to do so. Therefore, the women being outnumbered and outgunned makes little difference.

Real world: NYC A man walks up to Patrick Dorismond and asks to buy drugs, Dorismond refuses, there is a scuffle and Dorismond falls dead with multiple gunshot wounds. The killer is an undercover police officer who claims that Dorismond attacked him. Later the mayor releases confidential information about Dorismond that shows that Dorismond was no angel in the past – as if that justified the shooting.

Sanspigsia: Nobody asks Dorismond if he has any drugs for sale. That would be as ridiculous as an alcoholic walking up to a complete stranger and asking if the person has any beer for sale. The places that sold drugs would be well known and easily found. If it was a simple street mugging Dorismond would have the means to defend himself, while that is not a guarantee he would come out on top in the struggle he would have had a better chance than just being executed in the street by a morals-free drug warrior. What about the quality of life disturbers? The punks that ride on sidewalks pushing people out of the way or the nasty beggars? The tailgaters and the dangerous, inconsiderate drivers?

In the real world you have to risk a fistfight in order to show them the errors of their ways, even if you won you could be up on assault charges or be facing a lawsuit. In Sanspigsia if a beggar spits on you, you draw your gun place it on his forehead and tell him calmly that if he does it again it will be the last thing he does. The same with the sidewalk riders, if they persist in endangering people then their lives are forfeit. It will not come to that as these low life cretins will moderate their behavior in order to spare their useless little cowardly lives. Bad drivers of the malicious sort will be at risk of being followed to their destination and then confronted. Sure the bad driver will also have a gun but is it worth dying in a shootout just to remain an asshole driver? No.

The above examples are where the phrase (it is not a cliché) "An armed society is a polite society" comes in. If you persist in being a jerk, asshole, moron, cur, cretin, punk, thug, or control freak someone will shoot you.

People will learn how to behave themselves, the level of crime and viciousness will decrease to the point where an incident becomes a major news story, and everyone will be better off.

The police get in the way of all this; they inhibit the proper functioning of society in regards to eliminating evil.

Local police also act as backup for all the tax collectors and regulators that crawl all over honest working folk. Without cops around to protect them they would have a much harder time of doing their "jobs". The sudden lack of taxation and regulation would cause an economic boom leading to more and better jobs, a higher quality of life, more leisure time, and more freedom!

As a special bonus at no extra cost, control freaks of the Rob Reiner or Sarah Brady mold ( I mean mold as in fungus, not casting) would find it impossible to force their views on others. Without the police to do the hands-on dirty work of oppressing people, jerk-offs like those two would find it too expensive in terms of money and blood to make people march to their cadence. (See what I mean about subsidies?) All over the country control fools will find their days empty and meaningless, they will turn to drink and slowly waste away.

The police are the problem. The cause all of our woes, on the local level, can be traced to the existence of professional policing. It is time to end this failed experiment and increase our freedom a hundred fold.

September 20, 2002

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