Abolishing violence itself will never be popular, because too many of us hope to hold the whip next time.
Wow, that came out more bitterly cynical than I expected. It has been an ugly few weeks.
Still disagree. It is a terrible slogan because the first response is always, "what if someone is robbing a bank?" You don't get a chance to explain yourself to an open minded, low-information voter who sees your sign at a rally. In a different forum you can explain what you really mean, but your audience is initially against you. Why handicap yourself?
Since "abolish ICE" has been mentioned here, note that several of the democratic candidates endorsed the slogan, but the guy who won the primaries didn't. d
Also we usually talk about "abolish" in reference to actual evil, like "abolish slavery." It's never used in reference to a class of people, not even those who are really evil ("abolish slave owners"?). And certainly not in reference to people who are not entirely evil. There is a well known tendency to like people you know personally, and a whole lot of people have some personal contact with a police officer and like that individual. For them it sounds like "abolish my kid's little league coach" or "abolish the guy I called to get my neighbor to turn down the stereo after midnight." As a slogan, it's just not a winner.
On the merits, maybe a much smaller force of "violence workers" who do only the dangerous parts of policing while a larger, unarmed force does more of the other stuff might work. It is completely the opposite of community policing. Violence workers themselves will probably be more hated than current police, and will be more hateful to the people they come in contact with, because all of their contacts with the local citizens will in the high probability violent situations.
It's hard to argue about what slogans are obviously going to be off-putting to people unfamiliar with them -- the people we're talking about aren't here, and who knows for sure how they're going to react either initially or in the longer term. I don't think there's much of anywhere for an argument like that to go beyond "is not" "is too."
Completely the opposite of community policing is also something I'm not sure of how to engage with, given that I'm not sure how you mean "community policing." In practice, it's often used el mean things like stop and frisk, or the sort of aggressive enforcement against minor violations of law that led to a cop murdering Eric Garner, so "completely the opposite" sounds good to me. But you almost certainly mean something else.
2,3,4: unimaginative seems to be commenting from another reality than the one that we've seen on the news and youtube videos in the last few weeks. In that reality, polls showed that police were rated fairly high for honesty and ethics -- way higher than politicians, attorneys, and journalists. Most likely a fair number of people still feel that way.
Completely the opposite of community policing is also something I'm not sure of how to engage with, given that I'm not sure how you mean "community policing." In practice, it's often used el mean things like stop and frisk, or the sort of aggressive enforcement against minor violations of law that led to a cop murdering Eric Garner, so "completely the opposite" sounds good to me. But you almost certainly mean something else.
I think I know what unimaginative is talking about, but I did a quick search to see if I could find anything official, and found this (pdf) which is a long series of bland good wishes, but it's amusing how much those bland good wishes point in the same direction that LB is talking about, just calling it "community policing"
Community Policing Defined Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.
Community policing comprises three key components:
Community Partnerships Collaborative partnerships between the law enforcement agency and the individuals and organizations they serve to develop solutions to problems and increase trust in police
Organizational Transformation The alignment of organizational management, structure, personnel, and information systems to support community partnerships and proactive problem solving
Problem Solving The process of engaging in the proactive and systematic examination of identified problems to develop and evaluate effective responses
I don't think Unimaginative is being thoughtlessly supportive of policing as it currently exists. I'm just not quite successfully connecting with his arguments yet.
FWIW, I think what unimaginative is describing as community policing is the idea that cops should come from the community that they police and should be integrated as a presence in the community -- to make the police more familiar and approachable rather than distant and specialized.
At that point, my sense of the ideal outcome is that non-violent first responders would be integrated into the community and all that. They just wouldn't be police because they wouldn't be authorized to use violence to compel obedience.
Also we usually talk about "abolish" in reference to actual evil, like "abolish slavery." It's never used in reference to a class of people, not even those who are really evil ("abolish slave owners"?)
Then, how about, "End policing as we know it"? Or maybe "End law enforcement as we know it"?
On workshopping the slogan -- there's a movement out there which we're not in charge of, which means the productiveness of our tweaking the slogan for maximum voter appeal is limited. I mean, no reason not to talk about the slogan that would appeal to you, personally, best, but it's probably not going to move the larger dialogue.
One hallmark of a dumb slogan is the amount of energy one has to put into arguing with ostensible allies that it's not actually a dumb slogan.
On the actual point, I was just wondering if it makes sense to separate the violent and non-violent parts not just functionally, but also jurisdictionally. Your municipal police don't have guns: they'll be a step up from mall cops. If they are in a situation that needs armed back-up, they call the county or state police. The trade-off there is going to be between higher standards and better training for the violence cops, and in return less connection to the community. You'd want the violent part to be adequately funded, so you don't get a situation like Indian reservations, where tribal police can only do some things, and the FBI has a different incentive structure.
We're having a lot of local to-do from police inaction at our BLM protests. A week ago, a gang of armed white guys (here to "protect" demonstrators from out-of-state antifa gangs) somehow determined that a young masked black man was suspicious. He got nervous, and left, they followed, and cornering him in an alley a block away. He escaped, and was running across the courthouse lawn, goons in hot pursuit (yelling that he had a gun?). Man trips, and the goons pile on. Police arrive, take the black man away in handcuffs, only to release him shortly thereafter when it becomes clear that he lives here, isn't a danger, and didn't have a gun. No arrests, or even questioning, of the armed white guys.
Roving out-of-state antifa gangs seem to be less common than sasquatches, but this masn't stopped a bunch of folks from acting like they actually believe there's some kind of danger.
A slogan that must be explained and defended at length defeats the purpose of having a slogan.
I'm trying not to think of the violence specialists as the "real police". They wouldn't be doing community engagement, they wouldn't be doing criminal investigation -- they'd be around only minimally as on call responders to support community workers in situations determined to be actively violent right now.
On workshopping the slogan -- there's a movement out there which we're not in charge of, which means the productiveness of our tweaking the slogan for maximum voter appeal is limited.
This is true, and there's still value in talking about some combination of (a) what does the slogan mean to us, (b) what is the simplest way to explain / capture that and, (c) do we support it.
Coincidentally, I just sent a guest post to Heebie this morning trying to think through questions of what counts as successful police reform coming at it from the opposite direction (as somebody who is temperamentally an incrementalist and not immediately drawn to to "abolish the police slogan" I find myself struggling to envision what an incremental reform that would actually solve the issues would look like).
I think your description is appealing*, and I would likely support any real-world policies which were intended to implement the vision you're describing. But just saying that doesn't resolve the tension of whether an incremental approach can work or whether the only actions which could fulfill the goals of the slogan "abolish the police" are radical and transformative (and, if so, how would they happen).
Sure, firearms units, like they have in the UK.
* The other questions are: if these thoughts can be described as "extremely obvious" what are the reasons why these things don't happen? Is the currently system purely a product of corruption and path-dependency or are their significant goals which the current system accomplishes which would be more difficult in LB-world (and, the related question of, "if we're comparing a deeply flawed status quo to an idealized alternative the alternative will always look better, how would the alternative look when implemented imperfectly and piecemeal?")
Do any of those capture the conversation you were hoping to prompt with this post?
I like your front page post, LB.
In response to 2, it shouldn't matter if the reserve that does use violence is hated. They wouldn't be detecting, nor patrolling, nor interacting with the public until they are called in for the purpose of violence, by a first responder who doesn't use violence. (Which makes me wonder how often the firefighters have to call the cops as backup. Firefighters get the EMT calls around here; we could plausibly look to their statistics to see how often they think they need a violence worker to back them up.) If they are hated because all they do is violence, well, better that than dilute the violence and the hatred throughout the entire force.
I also think they might not be all that hated. What creates resentment is the perception that violence is being used or threatened without justification. If you've got competent non-violent first responders making a judgment that they're in a situation where violence is necessary, and only then do the people with guns show up, they might not end up in as many situations that make people resentful.
I like "demilitarize" more than "defund", but respect "abolition" as a callback to the abolition we didn't finish last time.
I was thinking of community policing as having police in the neighborhood who know the people in the neighborhood, and possibly who grew up in and maybe even live in the neighborhood. It may encompass having police who speak the same language as the immigrants in the neighborhood. Ideally they know the repeat customers so they can distinguish between different kinds of police situations, like who is a harmless drunk wand who tends to get violent against their spouse, and can exercise discretion accordingly. Ideally they become known, so if someone is having a problem they can go to a friendly police officer.
If you have many fewer armed police, who spend all of their time handling arrests, they won't know or become known in the neighborhood. Might be for the best.
.
I don't know why people aren't just calling for a western European standard of policing. A white person is 15 times more likely to be killed by police here than in Germany. Rape and robbery aren't running rampant there.
(apparently, the armed assholes have been identified, and an investigation is underway. I think everyone assumes there's plenty of video.)
like who is a harmless drunk wand
Magicians have the best euphemisms for impotence.
23: The idea I'm trying to sell here is that there wouldn't be armed police at all. There would be non-violent community responders, who could build all the relationships and local knowledge you're talking about, they just wouldn't have guns. But they'd still be available to help people. And then in the rare situation that was actually immediately violent, they'd be able to call in armed backup. But the armed backup wouldn't be the law enforcement authority on the scene, it would be purely to ensure the immediate safety of people involved until the violence resolved.
24: As a slogan, "a western European standard of policing" takes at least twice as much space on a cardboard sign as "abolish the police". As a detailed policy proposal, it's not that either.
And now the newspaper has caught up to activist FB: https://missoulian.com/news/local/teen-armed-group-wanted-reason-to-hunt-me-down/article_f7873b68-f32b-50c3-8078-3008ae94ee1e.html
Would Sen. Fielder believe it if someone told her they saw a sasquatch? Probably.
Somebody is going to get killed by these militias. Which isn't new, but still.
I *think*, from memory, that German police are armed, even the ordinary ones. It's just that they never use their guns. And it is impossible to imagine that they could get away with the kind of homicide rates achieved by some American police forces. There are of course good historical reasons for this.
Short of the US cities being bombed to shit, and the whole country partitioned between Canada and Mexico for 40 years, while occupied by the Canadian. Mexican, and European armies; the constitution and the education system forcibly deTrumpified and a few dozen of his henchpeople are hanged it is hard to imagine the kind of cultural change needed to produce a West German police force from that operating in 1938.
Smaller changes are not of course impossible.
Beyond that, I really think that people here are underestimating the necessary role of force in detection. I don't of course mean that you need to beat confessions out of people or else no crime is solved. That's simply not true.
The real role is much more subtle. "Detection", like community policing, depends on people talking to you. Essentially, you need snitches. The criminals, therefore, need to stop snitches. The way they do this is to make potential snitches more frightened of them than they are of law, or at least by making clear that the law cannot protect snitches. Organised criminals acquire and defend a local monopoly of violence, which the state has to break if it is to function in these areas, to detect and punish crime, and so uphold the law. Otherwise the law becomes whatever the local gangsters say it is.
Two examples show this. Only one is fictional: the Wire -- but everyone agrees that it is based closely on the real conditions of Baltimore. The other is Northern Ireland after unarmed police withdrew from the Catholic
ghettos, and indeed from the working class Protestant ones. The "law" then consisted of Gerry Adams deciding who should get murdered and who merely crippled.
Southern Italy provides other examples. Some parts of Sweden are clearly going that way.
TL/DR; Any functioning police force needs to be able to exert enough force to protect its informants, and I'm not sure that any of the nice white UMC people here can imagine what it would be like to be afraid to have it known that you had talked to the police about anything, however innocent.
Obviously that's an end state; obviously there are police reforms in the US that would make it less likely. But unless people believe that the police are the most powerful force in their neighbourhood they will take direction from whoever is and this power is ultimately based on the credible threat of physical violence to anyone who challenges it.
Speaking of slogans and abolishing police, what's the meaning and origin of "fuck 12"? I'm seeing it graffitied all over the BLM protests.
It means fuck the police. Apparently Fuck 12 is an old Migos track, and 12 means DEA or narcs, not police in general, but pretty sure people doing the tags mean all cops.
Armed men holding hostages? You probably need violence workers to respond to that.
You need unarmed de-escalators first, unless you discount the lives of the hostages.
As somebody upthread points out, cops are armed in many if not most European countries; only, to a first approximation, they never use their guns. So the difference between them and US cops is not just cultural, it comes down to training. I have no idea what American police training is like, but from watching the news I would infer that it is close to non-existent.
If you don't get the training right, then your community based anti-cops will be no fucking use in many situations either: you aren't born knowing how to de-escalate a minor street rumble. Splitting your policing duties between a proper civilian constabulary and a CRS-like riot squad achieves nothing if the former are incompetent, because they'll end up calling in the riot squad every time.
"I'll call the brute squad!"
"I'm on the brute squad."
"You are the brute squad."
cops are armed in many if not most European countries; only, to a first approximation, they never use their guns. So the difference between them and US cops is not just cultural, it comes down to training.
32 is very good. Training is part of it, and domestic police forces would love to have much, much more, but no one has been willing to pay for it. Another huge part is the level of violence you're sending U.S. police to deal with. Germany is a much more culturally and ethnically homogeneous country and is sitting on a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100K. The U.S. runs at least 4x higher. In cities like Baltimore it's north of 50 per 100K. Over 100K people get shot in the U.S. a year. And that's just the people who get hit. Actual attempts number is way higher.
34: I assumed the reference was to this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam-12
Smaller changes are not of course impossible.
Change and improvement have been happening. Police shootings are down 90 percent from the 70's. LA last year had the lowest number of homicides in like 50 years and simultaneously the lowest number of police shootings in 30. None of that is going to matter though. Some unlucky cities are about to get a dose of "reform" brought by people who will suffer none of the consequences.
37.last That's got to be it. I should have figured that out. In my defense I definitely would have gotten it if it'd been "fuck 5-0"
32 Another difference has to be that European cops aren't expecting anyone they may interact with to be armed. American cops otoh... Still doesn't explain the racial disparity in police shootings/brutality.
My friend and former paralegal -- recently elected a delegate to the Democratic National Convention! -- has as strong a moral compass as anyone I know, but gets followed and watched walking around in the Walmart because her Indigenous heritage is obvious in her appearance. I don't think we have to pretend that we're not still pretty well marinated in racism.
That's even without looking at the venn diagram of people defending worship of the Confederacy and people blaming the victims of police shootings.
What we have here -- feel free to hear those words in the voice of Strother Martin -- is a culture of impunity. That especially applies when race in involved.
39: It's pretty old. I'm not old enough to have watched it during it's original run. But if you're a kid growing up in the 80's with a dad who steadfastly refuses to buy cable then you end watching a lot of re-runs of the classics. Adam-12, Bonanza, Kung Fu, CHIPS, The Rifleman. Good times.
The internet does not seem to have video of the 1980 SNL French language camp skit with Strother Martin. Not for free, anyway.
"Training is part of it, and domestic police forces would love to have much, much more, but no one has been willing to pay for it."
There are some terrifying comparisons going round of the length of police training in other countries compared to the US. Presumably it's a budget issue, especially since police is such a local function and local governments are always strapped for cash.
My impression is that US police on average have higher wages and more expensive equipment than at least some western european countries. The US spend more on "public order" and safety than other OECD counties according to one stat I found, but I imagine there's all kinds of methodological issues there.
I was mulling over this post last night, and I think I want to disagree -- depending on what claims the OP is making.
I agree that's a reasonable interpretation of what "defund/abolish the police" could mean. I would be sympathetic to somebody arguing for that visions, and I believe that if I lived in a world that organized policing along the lines described in the OP it would make sense and have many advantages over the status quo.
I'm not convinced, however, that the lines can be drawn, between violence workers and non-violent first responders as cleanly as the OP would suggest; that I, personally, would embrace "defund/abolish the police" based on that description; that I have a clear sense of how to get there from here; or that I think those are the best focus for energies to transform the police.
I'm not convinced that those are incorrect, either, but the more I thought about, the more questions I have.
First, I was remembering the movie Peace Officer which argues that the development and expansion of SWAT teams has been done badly and lead to more violence. In the current system, SWAT teams seem like the closest thing to a group that isn't a normal first responder but are called in when "violence workers" are necessary, and that has created a bunch of problems. I might say this -- if we as a society think there's a time and place for having law enforcement break into houses in the middle of the night, I'm not sure it's good to delegate that task to a specific "violence worker" unit. Perhaps the conclusion is that law enforcement should not be breaking into houses in the middle of the night, but that's an argument which has to be won, we can't just assume that once the police are reorganized that there will no longer be pressure for those sorts of activities.
Second, I assume that the non-violent responders (who deal with traffic stops, street crime, theft, etc . . . ) would still need both (a) arresting powers and (b) sufficient knowledge and training in the law to determine what is or isn't legal and who should be punished for violating the law. I'm not sure how to have that without giving them a significant portion of the current responsibility, authority, and training of the police, and without the potential for some of the same problems.
Third, I'm not sure how to move towards this vision. In a previous conversation LB referenced "salami tactics" of gradually slicing off responsibilities from the police and assigning them to other agencies. I'm not sure if that's the path towards the OP. Would this be a gradual, nation-wide shift over a generation? What if Minneapolis said, "in 2021 we're disbanding the police force. We would like to create a new department drawn up along the lines of what LB envisions." Would that be possible? Could it be done on a municipality by municipality basis? Or does it require an infrastructure of training, licensing, legal precedent, etc . . . before a city could just hire people for those jobs.
Fourth, what happens to the current police officers, (and academies, and unions, etc . . .)? Is the goal to start up a brand new system without staffing it with the current police officers (which is a big project) or is the goal to say to current police officers, "you need to decide if you want to go into the violence track, or the non-violence track, do some coursework, get a certification and then join the new department"? If so how is that going to work . . . either path seems like it will create a whole bunch of battles.
These sorts of questions are why I describe myself as an incrementalist at heart. I like being able to have a sense of how the pieces would actually fit together (though, as I said, in this particular case I also have concerns about what an incrementalist approach looks like).
The Columbus, Ohio police are actively manufacturing false anti-antifa propaganda. And right on the same block as my old office.
Are you admitting that you're an antifa cell leader? Or claiming that you were but are no longer affiliated with the organization? You're gonna wanna get your story straight.
In Ohio, I'm like a fish in the water, if fish were really only 'meh' about being in water.
I will endorse everything in 46 about not knowing how you get there from here and that that's a problem -- the OP wasn't meant to do more than say that I think there's a viable "there" that could be reasonably described as abolishing the police.
On the specifics, something that might not have come across clearly is that there wouldn't necessarily be a single job title of 'non-violent first responder.' You could have domestic violence specialists who were trained in assessing and descalating family violence situations, and offering help and support to victims, who were different people than the people who were responsible for carrying out arrests if an arrest was necessary. People responsible for investigating major crimes could be another, entirely different job title.
You could also just have a lot less law enforcement. If Eric Garner was actually breaking the law by selling loose cigarettes, a Parks employee could have handed him a ticket for it, as a civil violation. That kind of thing, extremely minor non-violent violations of law, could avoid the possibility of bad policing turning into deadly abuse of force, by taking it outside the realm of policing entirely.
And of course, any system working at all depends on good training. There, we're starting at a low enough baseline that expecting non-violent responders to be better trained for the functions they serve than current police are seems very achievable.
51.2 But DV situations often involve the abuser having firearms.
Fully endorse 51.3
Also here speeding violations are handled by automatic cameras/radar, no need to have police involved at all.
A few years ago, sitting beneath shade trees in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., I had a two-hour discussion with Bob Dylan that touched on Malcolm X, the French Revolution, Franklin Roosevelt and World War II. At one juncture, he asked me what I knew about the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864. When I answered, "Not enough," he got up from his folding chair, climbed into his tour bus, and came back five minutes later with photocopies describing how U.S. troops had butchered hundreds of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapahoe in southeastern Colorado.
Has the Nobel laureate read Von Wafer's book? If not, consider this my recommendation, Bob!
The most prominent prison/police abolitionist got an op-ed in the NYT!
The most prominent prison/police abolitionist got an op-ed in the NYT!
52.1: Yes. After his scared mother called the police on him, a white supremacist with lots and lots of gun is responsible for nearly all the on-duty police officer deaths in Pittsburgh since I've been here.
At this point, some departments are just beating people to highly that they can get away with.
55 Who? Not gonna click on the link and use up my last free article and not gonna subscribe till they kick Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss to the curb.
51.3 is OK; 51.2 not so much.
How many different agencies are you envisaging? Day to day "policing" or policing, as we know it this side of the pond, involves responding to, and initiating dozens of widely different activities. If you have six or eight agencies, including actual police, people will be confused as to which one they need to call. Also, interagency cooperation will become a bureaucrratic nightmare, I promise you.
On the specifics, something that might not have come across clearly is that there wouldn't necessarily be a single job title of 'non-violent first responder.' You could have domestic violence specialists who were trained in assessing and descalating family violence situations . . .
I don't think that works. There's a role for specialists, but I think the majority of people would still need to be generalists. I saw a comment from a police officer recently to the effect of, "I've never gotten a 9-1-1 call which was correct in all of the details." There's always going to be an element of arriving at a situation expecting one thing but being prepared to have it go in a different direction. Additionally, there's the practical element that the domestic violence specialist still needs to be trained in, for example, the laws around search & seizure (and probably also know know how to properly handle a crime scene, etc . . .). What happens if they show up and see drugs visible (or what if they are curious and open something and find drugs in a previously closed container?). I have no idea how much training that actually requires. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think there is a broad base of knowledge / procedure which everybody would need to be trained on, and that pushes away from specialists.
You could also just have a lot less law enforcement. If Eric Garner was actually breaking the law by selling loose cigarettes, a Parks employee could have handed him a ticket for it, as a civil violation.
I approve of that idea as both more humane and better from the standpoint of Mark Kleiman's argument that it's better for violations to be punished more frequently and less severely. But there's still the question of what do you do after the people who are given tickets never show up to pay them. I suspect the outcome of that will be either overly severe (showing up in the database of unpaid tickets prevents them from getting a job) or haphazard.
It is still true that there's plenty of room to improve on the status quo.
There's a role for specialists, but I think the majority of people would still need to be generalists.
We are chickens destined to be patrolled by foxes.
I approve of that idea as both more humane and better from the standpoint of Mark Kleiman's argument that it's better for violations to be punished more frequently and less severely. But there's still the question of what do you do after the people who are given tickets never show up to pay them.
Well you get them in a chokehold and fucking kill them. What else is possible?
How are fines enforced in other countries? Through the tax system?
Other countries have this all figured out. American exceptionalism, ain't it fucking grand?
Additionally, there's the practical element that the domestic violence specialist still needs to be trained in, for example, the laws around search & seizure (and probably also know know how to properly handle a crime scene, etc . . .). What happens if they show up and see drugs visible (or what if they are curious and open something and find drugs in a previously closed container?).
Why on earth would you want someone you called to keep people safe in a domestic violence situation start doing random enforcement for minor drug crimes? That seems like it would be counterproductive.
On the specialist/generalist point. You need generalists, but "defusing a tense situation and getting people to safety" can still be separated from "arresting and imprisoning criminals".
65 Exactly. Who gives a shit about the drugs and drug enforcement in such a situation? I mean if there's a dead body visible that's something entirely different...
62: I think you're responding to something other than what I'm saying.
65.1: Okay, I'm still thinking this one over. I was starting from the point of view that the first person on the scene would still be, in a meaningful way, an agent of the law. But I'm getting a better sense of what you're imagining, and I'm not sure how that would work (the concerns in 60 seem important) but worth thinking about.
FWIW, my point wasn't that the DV specialist needs to arrest people if they see drugs. My point is that the DV specialist needs very clear training about what to do and what not to do in a variety of fuzzy situations -- they need to know how not to violate people's rights against improper searches.
I'm open to the argument that I'm overestimating the complexity involved in that.
Decriminalizing drugs and sexwork is a large component of police abolition. How about no one ever enforces criminal laws about drugs and sexwork and that money goes to medical treatment and harm reduction? Then you don't need your DV responder to know drug seizure law.
I saw a comment from a police officer recently to the effect of, "I've never gotten a 9-1-1 call which was correct in all of the details."
Patrick Skinner, very active on Twitter, is a current cop who thinks the profession has gone wrong. He mentioned that nearly uniquely amongst his peers, on his way to a 911, he calls the number back and talks to the person. Says that is always extremely helpful and prevents a lot of fuck-ups.
63: Every country will have their own rules. In Sweden you get an invoice, and if you fail to pay, the Crown Bailiff Authority will try to collect, they're like a public debt collection agency. The police will only become involved after like a year and probably not at all if it's a small sum.
A fotb posted this at the other place. Worth reading IMO.
70. Is a very good point. To go further, the only point at which criminal law should become involved in sex work is in cases of violence against the worker involved; the worker involved should be confident that if they call 911, they will be helped, not arrested. In the case of drugs, I can think if situations where civil legal action might be appropriate, but not criminal.
Sometimes I think that you guys didn't even click on this poster.
I saw a complaint this morning that police abolition is an affirmative program, of building better quality of life. It isn't just 'subtract the police'. (Which is actually the first argument I've heard that makes me think 'abolish the police' is a bad slogan, because 'abolish' is a take-away, not an add-more. Also, not my concern, 'cause, better thinkers than me have thought for longer on this and now it is time to hop on their train, which already has a name.)
68: It just can't be that hard. The prevalence of guns is a peculiarly US problem, but Europe has petty crime and drugs and survives without devolving into chaos. Shit, drugs are de facto legal here in the Netherlands, and the main consequence is a high rate of bike theft, and not total chaos.
Police here get so much money through overtime; it's absurd. Detail work too. That's just directing traffic around construction sites, something other states manage to accomplish without cops. The. Ayor of Boston just de lared racism a public health crisis which will allow him to diver5 money from the
O,iceovertime budget. So far, it's an extra 3 million.
Sometimes I think that you guys didn't even click on this poster.
Different question. Do you think the politics of trying to achieve this are (primarily) local or national? One of the things I've been wresting with is the combination of the current national energy and conversation about policing and how hyper-local many decisions about policing are.
I also know that there's a lot more energy for radical change in Minneapolis than in Seattle, for example (I think things will change in Seattle, but it's going to be a different process), and I think there's something good about having proposals that can be implemented locally.
I'm in favor of decriminalizing sex work and drugs; I suspect that's more likely to happen at the local level, but I realize that federal law is an impediment. But when I look at "universal health care" or "revamp education systems" I suspect those require national action to fully happen.
I don't want to be quarrelsome with people who are trying to believe a better world is possible. I believe a better world is possible! I am curious about the questions of "which institutions will be forced to change" and "which institutions are likely to be drivers of change?"
I'm completely torn about whether a better world is possible.
On the one hand, I'm hoping for a huge backlash to Trump, enough to see a rapid pendulum swing come next January. Similarly, eventually it has to matter that there's been a blue wave in local elections, hopefully with more to come. For a trivial example, the Fresno City Council got one more good guy elected, so he got the position on a parkway board that flipped the board so a new river access in the rich neighborhood that rich NIMBYs had opposed got put in. Surely that must accumulate.
On the other hand, I'm trying to do stuff at the local level and it all feels so creeping and incremental and pointless. Now I understand how people are all "Victory! In my ten years of activism, I got two-stroke motors banned from the third parking lot of the lake!" Now I get how that was so hard and took so long.
My conclusion is that 'believing that a better world is possible' IS the hard part and the work of activism. It is so easy to be discouraged and give up during the boring grinding, no-results stage. Believing that a text or doorknock or postcard or public comment or protest sign will matter is the emotional work of the resistance (for those of us who aren't directly persecuted).
From what I can tell, county supervisors have disproportionate leverage. Maybe also being a chief of staff for an elected. I'm still looking for other positions of power. Seems like everyone who achieves a position doesn't think it has much power either.
The RCMP has shot and killed two indigenous people in New Brunswick (pop. 776,827) in separate incidents in the past week. So, you're not that exceptional!
71 sounds like what the US does, except it's called a Sheriff's department, instead of a Crown Bailiff Authority. In both cases they also do evictions. I was curious whether using "day fines" instead of fixed monetary fines meant that enforcement happens in a different way since the tax authority is involved in figuring out the amount you owe. I'd guess that the Crown Bailiff Authority is unarmed though?
I think people are smart enough to be both a generalist and a specialist. It's like an ER situation. You can be trained to assess a wide variety of incoming situations and respond to the immediate crisis, and connect the individuals with longterm specialists.
I'm still very nervous about the situations where the responders are called in and it's superficially nonviolent but there are guns readily available.
Also unpaid tickets - can't we just roll these into a driver's license renewal or something?
If we had a UBI (that was somewhat more than the cost of basic subsistence), more frequent/predictable fine levying would be a lot easier to implement - just deduct it from the weekly transfer, but down to no more than subsistence level.
I'm still very nervous about the situations where the responders are called in and it's superficially nonviolent but there are guns readily available.
This made me curious what types of calls are most common. This, from the Santa Cruz police department, was the first thing I could find. I don't draw any significant conclusions, but it's interesting.
1. Proactive Policing (proactive enforcement, extra checks, foot patrols, park checks, etc)
2. Suspicious Person and Activity
3. Traffic (collisions, hit & run, traffic control)
4. Disturbances (fights or pending fights, arguments)
5. Trespassing
6. Medical Call Requiring Police Presence
7. Noise Disturbances (loud music, parties)
8. Illegal Camping
9. Public Intoxication
10. Drug Activity
Also this (pdf) survey of police public contact is interesting.
The portion of U.S. residents age 16 or older who had contact with the police in the preceding 12 months declined from 26% in 2011 to 21% in 2015, a drop of more than 9 million people (from 62.9 million to 53.5 million). Te number of persons experiencing police-initiated contact fell by 8 million (down 23%), the number of persons who initiated contact with the police fell by 6 million (down 19%), and the number experiencing contact from trafc accidents did not change signifcantly.
81 Yes, they're not part of the police or considered law enforcement.
82: I think the "both a generalist and specialist" approach only works when the are complementary. It's entirely possible that the specialist training makes you worse as a generalist.
To stick with the policing theme, I strongly suspect that approximately all police members who have received SWAT or other paramilitary training are in fact worse at their general policing job because of it.
80: This is when I wish we had a better PM. He's good at saying the right thing but not in a timely fashion and not backed up with anything. I mean, maybe there's a chance we'll get some federal movement on the RCMP but I'm not holding my breath. They still haven't announced the inquiry into the RCMP actions in NS and that involved one of their own dying.
"Saying the right thing" would be such a huge improvement in a leader from where I sit.
Is anybody else googling "How long does it take to die of Parkinson's?"? Because the answer isn't helpful.
I mean, it's not a bad answer if you or a loved one has Parkinson's, but it's not going to solve any political problems.
I just read enough to see that "by November" isn't a thing that's happening.
91: It's kind of a bad answer if you or a loved one has Parkinson's. Quality of life goes way, way down well before the end. I've been afraid of it my whole life and I don't wish it on Trump or his family. (Given the symptoms people are pointing to, though, it could really be anything or nothing, no?)
They could be symptoms of lots of things, but I'm not aware that they could be symptoms of nothing or nothing serious. Unless he's just stoned.
Are there recent symptoms? Or just his usual state of degradation?
Twitter has diagnosed him with Parkinson's or something worse. He couldn't drink a small glass of water without holding it with two hands and shuffled down a small ramp so poorly that it looks like he needs a walker.
Honestly, the ramp thing looks more like somebody who can't see the ground because he's too vain to wear his glasses. The needing a second hand to lift the cup of water looks like the kind of thing that if your kids saw you do and they cared about you, they'd get you a full evaluation as soon as possible.
So frail looking that a Buffalo police officer wouldn't push him over even if he were non-violent activist.
David Simon on over and under policing https://twitter.com/AoDespair/status/1271936493507022849
Jp2 kept going for at least a decade with terrible Parkinsons
To be clear, I don't actually think it would be better if Parkinson's killed people faster. Given that it is deadly, though, "as drawn out as humanly possible" is not an unmixed blessing.
I am hitting another wall with the lockdown experience. The monotony is really hard to bear. Maybe the fact that I'm not reaching for entertaining hyperbole here is a bad sign.
I thought the common theory is not Parkinson's but a stroke, when he made that mysterious emergency trip to the hospital for "part 1 of his annual physical".
Damn! just lost a comment, but my loss is your gain, as it means you've just been spared an account of my argument with one of my sisters, who wants to tear down all public statues and monuments dedicated to the memory of Sir John A Macdonald (Canada's first PM).
Shorter version: my sister wants to tear it all down, but I do not; or at least, I do not want to do so without some kind of public debate and discussion.
(Also: Jesus Christ! Sir John A is one of the main reasons why you and I don't have to pledge allegiance to the American flag, fer f*ck's sake).
Not entirey on topic, but not entirely off either--this is something I've been thinking about a lot in the past couple of years, doubly so in the past couple of weeks:
Some years ago, gswift told us about a joke they would make with the rookie cops that would join their precinct.
"Are you racist?" They would ask the new guy.
"No!" The rookie would reply, shocked and horrified.
"Don't worry, you will be soon." Say the rest of the force. ;)
And it's all in a "Haha, j/k" tone, but also "It's funny b/c it's true". I wish that I could find it in the archives, but my goggle-fu is weak. Does anyone else remember this?
On things German:
Yes, ordinary German police carry firearms. And yes, they use them rarely compared with their American peers. They do on occasion, and there is some controversy about whether Germany's lack of a death penalty means that one is sometimes imposed on the spot by police. It will probably not surprise anyone here that what police violence there is disproportionately affects immigrant and marginalized communities. Again, not at the rates that the US sees, but the problem is far from solved.
What may surprise people here is the extent to which actual Nazis and actual Nazi methods and language persisted in law enforcement, the legal profession and especially the judiciary in West Germany. Actual Nazis well into the 1960s and 1970s. Nazi approaches and language and training into the 1980s and possibly beyond, I just don't quite recall.
Scandals linking police bodies to far-right ideologies and groups are a regular feature of German politics. It's good that this is scandalous! But some significant share of people who are drawn to police work are also drawn to fascist ideas and practices, even in a country that has done a lot to reject fascism.
37 is quite wrong about ethnic homogeneity. In Germany as a whole, about 1/4 of the population has "migration background," which is typically defined as first- or second-generation immigrant. In cities with populations larger than 500,000, that share rises to more than 1/3.
Source for 107.last, which I forgot to include before hitting "Post."
What was Sir John A Macdonald's egregious wrongdoing that he should be de-statued? Or does your sister simply object to civic memorials on principle?
107: Haven't there been recent studies that show close ties/overlap between American (and Canadian) police and white nationalists? Linked to why right wing groups are unlikely to be labeled terrorists? I guess I could google.
105: Meh. Tear them all down. I'm sure we could find better people to memorialize than Sir John A. https://m.thecoast.ca/halifax/thirteen-people-more-deserving-of-a-statue-in-halifax-than-cornwallis/Content?oid=24214644
106 I don't have many proud moments here but provoking that statement is my proudest. I said something like: "It must be difficult in the role of a police officer to avoid becoming racist."
I'm glad somebody else remembers that and it wasn't just my imagination! Do you happen to remember which thread it was in? I'm trying to get the exact wording.
37 is quite wrong about ethnic homogeneity.
I mean, I've never been to Germany but the numbers I've seen put Germans + other EU origin countries as 89 percent. That seems fundamentally different from the U.S.
112: That wording's probably pretty close. The joke isn't so about everyone on the job ends up racist but being cognizant of the fact that the job involves a LOT of encounters with people who embody the worst possible stereotypes and having the awareness that you're not dealing with a representative sample of that community.
I dunno. If I had to guess I'd say one of the Micheal Brown threads, but there were a bunch.
107.2:
Something that was impressed on me while watching The Baader Meinhof Complex* some years ago (which I hadn't really thought about but should have been obvious) was the fact that in continental Europe the older generation that the 60s kids were rebelling against was the generation of Nazism (in Germany) or Vichy/collaborationism or Fascism (France or Italy). So the "generation gap" had a much sharper edge there than in many other places.
*dramatization of the rise and fall of the early Red Army Faction in West Germany.
104: It would be irresponsible not to speculate. I'm thinking syphilitic neuropathy.
That was me. I'm changing my vote.
If I ever become a billionaire, I'm going to build a pod of apartment towers in Berlin and call it the Baader Meinhof Complex.
Good enough then. Thanks for helping me make sure I haven't been dwelling on a partially or completely misremembered conversation.
113) well, I'd respectfully submit that the interpretation of jokes cannot be fully controlled by their teller
109: Sir John A. was Canada's first Prime Minister, and a pretty good candidate for national hero/Great Man of History status by local standards but also/except for being unabashedly genocidal towards indigenous people. The discussion so far has been ... surprisingly muted.
In re you know who, I haven't watched the video, but the descriptions keep reminding me of the way Hitler was feeble and shaking uncontrollably towards the end -- mainly iirc because his dodgy personal doctor was giving him injections of completely bonkers combinations of stuff. And Trump loves a dodgy doctor, right?
In re you know who, I haven't watched the video, but the descriptions keep reminding me of the way Hitler was feeble and shaking uncontrollably towards the end -- mainly iirc because his dodgy personal doctor was giving him injections of completely bonkers combinations of stuff. And Trump loves a dodgy doctor, right?
In re you know who, I haven't watched the video, but the descriptions keep reminding me of the way Hitler was feeble and shaking uncontrollably towards the end -- mainly iirc because his dodgy personal doctor was giving him injections of completely bonkers combinations of stuff. And Trump loves a dodgy doctor, right?
He only got knighted? Shouldn't starting Canada get you something up from the bottom rung of the nobility? Duke/Duc of Toronto?
Aaaaaack sorry everybody! I don't even feel that strongly about it, just mildly optimistic.
For that you have to own a British newspaper-- Beaverbrook, Conrad Black....
At least one of those went to prison.
113 I mean, I've never been to Germany but the numbers I've seen put Germans + other EU origin
Nice attempt to move the goalposts. If you want to say "white," why not just come out and say it?
118 would be worth it just for the addresses, which would be Baader Meinhof Complex Numbers.
In Germany as a whole, about 1/4 of the population has "migration background," which is typically defined as first- or second-generation immigrant.
Which is the same as in the US - 25.5% of the population first- or second-generation immigrants in 2017 - but rather higher than in Utah (8.2% immigrants and another 8.5% natives with at least one immigrant parent).
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2019/06/03/facts-on-u-s-immigrants/
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/immigrants-in-utah
What may surprise people here is the extent to which actual Nazis and actual Nazi methods and language persisted in law enforcement, the legal profession and especially the judiciary in West Germany.
And for that matter in East Germany.
I was very struck, for example, by "The Great Escape"'s last chapter, which describes British efforts to find the Germans who had murdered Allied POWs after the escape; the ones in the West were pretty much all tracked down eventually, but the ones who made it to the East were protected and given good jobs in the security forces, because they had highly marketable skill sets.
Shouldn't starting Canada get you something up from the bottom rung of the nobility?
Interestingly, his wife Edna was ennobled as Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe, but only after he died.
134 And for that matter in East Germany.
Yeah, I kinda figured, but I had not ready any sources on the subject. By contrast, I remember a Sunday FAZ article spread across two broadsheet pages naming names and printing pictures of police people, some in high leadership positions, who were police in Nazi Germany and continued in the Federal Republic.
Doug- The Germans definitely don't consider middle eastern migrants to be white. They thought Turks were a big social problem when I was stationed there 30 years ago. Many have been pretty upset with Merkel letting in IIRC over a million refugees. At over 5% the middle eastern/ north African contingent is almost half the US black population.
136: The start of the discussion was gswift's statement at 37 that "Germany is a much more culturally and ethnically homogeneous country" than the US. That's wrong. As far as cultural homogeneity goes, Ostfriesisch and Bavarian are not really mutually intelligible dialects, and there are some pretty hefty cultural gaps just in the former West Germany.
That's quite without counting, say, Transylvanian "Saxons" who came to Germany after the fall of Communism. Those people are counted in the "migration background" figures that I cited above.
Germany has changed a lot in 30 years; it's changed a lot in the 20 that I have been mostly living in one part of it or another. There's racism, there's plenty of problems, and they find their way into police work, too. Not arguing with any of that. I am arguing with the contention that Germany is far more homogeneous than the US. It isn't.
As for the popular consequences of Merkel's decision to allow large numbers of refugees into the country in 2015, it's good that I wrote about that subject right after the national election in September 2017.
http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/reds-got-the-blues-no/
tl;dr: The CDU remained the largest party. Gains they made from the center-left and from previous non-voters far outweighed their losses to the further-right, 2.8M to 1M, so nearly three to one. Can't say that looks like a loss for Merkel.
137.1 is intriguing... so for people who speak these dialects, would they also be able to communicate in "standard German" of some kind, just as Doric speakers in Britain can also speak and understand standard British English? I was in Germany for a weekend eight years ago but, inexplicably, this has failed to confer upon me any kind of deep anthropological understanding of the country.
re: 138
I've met people who speak some variety of north Eastern teuchter-Scots (Doric or Doric-adjacent) who I'm fairly sure couldn't speak standard British English.
They could certainly understand it, and they could somewhat moderate just how much pure Doric vocabulary they used, but I'm fairly sure that the average Londoner would not have been able to understand them. For some of them, _I_ couldn't understand them, and I'm from a part of Scotland where people use quite a lot of Scots -- albeit a different flavour -- in every day speech.
I'm not disagreeing with the general point. Most people can code shift. But you can certainly come across people who are basically monolingual speakers of a dialect that's not very easily intelligible by standard English speakers.
138: Yes, and this extends to Austria and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland. There's what's called "high German" based on the pronunciation around Hanover, and that is the language of national media, educated discourse, and more general communication. Swiss, Bavarian and Austrian media all have presenters who have kept their accents, but speak an understandable high German.
In Georgia, I was friends with a married couple from Switzerland. One day we were hanging out, and the guy said to his wife, "Speaking 'school German' all day sure is exhausting." I was like, yeah, for me too.
Right now I'm reading a book set in WWI Bavaria, and while the description is all in high German, the dialog is transcribed dialect, and I would probably be better off reading those parts out loud to try to get the content. (I sometimes get compliments on my spoken German. Depending on the audience, I will sometimes say "And that's despite ten years in Bavaria." People in Berlin seldom laugh at the joke. Sigh.)
139.1: yikes. But, yes, I suppose I can believe that. I remember visiting Glasgow with a Czech friend and asking a passerby for directions, which he delivered in (to me) a thick but intelligible Glaswegian accent, and after he'd walked on my friend said "...was that man speaking English? Did he have some neurological problem?"
Interesting that Hanover is Where Officially Good German Is Spoken. Not Berlin?
There's something about heavy Scottish accents -- they flip to unintelligible for me faster than anything else. It goes abruptly from pleasantly interesting sounding to "I can't pick out individual words any more."
You can expect pretty much anyone to speak hochdeutsch, but getting to that point (of realizing you both need to be using it) can be challenging. I remember asking directions in the backwoods of Waldhessen when I was 16 and honestly I couldn't identify the reply I got as even being German, let alone understand or translate it. Eventually I reframed the question so the answer had to be "ja" or "nein".
There's less of a class element than there is in the UK; it's true that, say, construction workers are more likely to speak dialect, and heavier dialect, on the job than, say, Siemens managers, but on the other hand, the Siemensianer will also enthusiastically speak Bavarian dialect with each other in an even slightly informal setting, and sometimes in the most formal and public settings possible depending on what they want to signal.
141: Berlin has its own distinct urban cockney but nobody in the 19th century wanted to institutionalise *that*.
146: oh god, the thing where "ge?" as an adverbial particle gets more and more elaborate going up the Rheintal, gelle?
Oh look, Twitter is listening to me comment:
Trends for you Trending in Germany Religionsunterricht 1,504 Tweets Trending in Germany Migrationshintergrund 1,993 Tweets Trending in Germany Kant 8,550 Tweets
Nobody in England ever institutionalised the London dialect either. My understanding is that RP originated from the East Midlands, though you don't hear it a lot in Worksop these days.
148: true of the pronunciation, perhaps, but of the dialect?
re: 142
Yes, and here we aren't just talking about an accent (although it's a very strong accent), but also a distinctive and different vocabulary, and a different grammar. Glaswegian, on the other hand, is an accent and some slang, but is actually (contrary to what some people believe) basically standard English.
the dialog is transcribed dialect, and I would probably be better off reading those parts out loud to try to get the content
Apropos of this: after 5 years here, I only learned last night that "Oida", the word that can mean anything in Viennese, is actually just transliterated dialect "Alter", which I would never have guessed but makes sense in hindsight.
yes. When I lived in Biggar it was linguistically much more Glasgow than Edinburgh, I thought. My fried/landlord was from near Peebles, which is a little far south for Doric. So we had words that are not standard English ("brew" is the only one that comes to mind, meaning not tea, but the social Security office) but much less dialect than you'd find even in Stevenson and nothing like real Scots.
So, this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGzw31bo-po
at about 4 minutes 10 he transitions from speaking English (with a Scottish accent) to reading a poem in NE Scots.
I'd imagine no American will understand it. FWIW, I can only understand bits, although I can understand more if reading it:
https://www.thedoric.scot/flora-garry.html
or someone reading:
http://tobarandualchais.co.uk/en/fullrecord/49165?backURL=/en/search%3Fpage%3D1%23track_49165
"brew" is the only one that comes to mind, meaning not tea, but the social Security office
Also spelled "buroo", derived from "Bureau" as in Employment Bureau; with a Scots rhotic R there's not much difference in pronunciation between "brew" and "buroo" with the stress on the second syllable.
153 is great - I can follow it almost completely with the text in front of me, but much less without.
And I didn't even get to the poem -- at a couple of minutes in I was understanding only about half of what he was saying.
re: 155
He has an educated accent, albeit from quite a different part of the country from ajay or myself.
I can sort of read the poem in text -- missing a lot of the words, but I get enough to be clear on what she's talking about.
I think what's going on for me is the combination of the phonetic qualities of the accent with the amount of non-standard-English vocabulary. There's a breakpoint where the chance that after I've gone through the process of working through the accent, what he's actually saying is a word I don't know, gets too high and I can't work things out from context any more, and for me that point is inside what's still mostly English.
From police abolition to German and Scots dialects in 140 or so comments. This blog still has it.
Where by 'it' you mean 'untreated ADHD'?
I travel to Scotland roughly once a year and have had really varying emotional experiences to adjusting to the dialect. The first time I was coming from the US and expected it'd take some adjustment and so it was fine even though I struggled the first few days. But the second time I was coming directly from a month in Germany and was so excited to be going somewhere I spoke the language and was devastated to remember understanding English is harder for me in Edinburgh than in Bonn. More recently I had a weird trip where I had no adjustment for the first week and a half in the Highlands and Islands and then an adjustment when getting to Edinburgh. Because I was only in traditionally Gaelic speaking areas, so they're not speaking broad Scots because they've only been speaking Scots/English for 100 years and not 600 years.
I hadn't quite put the Gaelic thing together previously, because my previous Highland/Island type trip had been Speyside to Ullapool to Thurso to Orkney to Shetland, and other than the portion around Ullapool and Durness, that's all traditionally Scots speaking (well, post-Norn at least) despite most of it being Highlands and Islands. Shetland Scots is quite a thing.
They must have toned it down for the series "Shetland."
Maybe they filmed that in Toronto?
Haven't spent any significant time in Scotland (a few days in Edinburgh decades ago) - I could understand the presenters fine, but only maybe sixty percent of the farmer (the bit in the middle was unintelligible) and then almost none of the poem (though some lines did snap in to focus looking at the text).
The other fun recent Scots language thing, was we had a conference whisky tasting which came with a Haggis dinner. Naturally at the end of the dinner our Scots host announced that we were reading Burns's "Address to a Haggis" in Scots. He did the first and last stanzas as they're meant to be read, but recruited everyone at the dinner who had lived in Scotland to read the remaining verses. This being academia, this meant we then got one verse each of an Italian, a Frenchman, an American, a Russian, and a Romanian each giving us attempts at Scots through their own accents. It was quite charming.
I thought I caught a few words here and there in the poem (Granfadder, muckle), but the word I was most confident on was wrong (furth vs. firth). The announcer was totally fine after a minute or so of getting my bearings. The farmer's accent is fine, but sometimes I totally lose a sentence, I think it's when a sentence has more than one vocabulary word I don't know.
Where by 'it' you mean 'untreated ADHD'?
Is that what was meant by "mental whateverness"?
Ted Cruz is using Twitter to goad Ron Perlman (aged 70) to fight Jim Jordan.
I'm often surprised how much aberdeenshire dialect I can understand, at least after a few minutes adjusting. My father was raised there, and I spend a few visits when I was young but not much time - mostly from him and friends regaling me with it as a child, I expect.
Which isn't to say that lots of it isn't baffling, too.
Is maybe what's going on for me that some of the unfamiliar words are high-frequency enough that missing them really screws up sentences? I think I caught dreicht, or something like that, for right, which is the sort of word that comes up all the time but is hard to get from context. A couple of substitutions of words in that class would go a long way toward incomprehensibility, but would also be something I'd probably get past in a week or two as I learned the twenty or so commonest different words.