[nonstickcoating]

Police brutality is the direct effect of a state trying to uphold it's monopoly for violence. This monopoly in turn is (in the current situation) neccessary to uphold the expolitation of labour and the functioning of the state itself. Of course this is not exlusive to the capitalist system. The expropriation of serfs in feudalist societies through the armed forces of nobility serves a similiar purpose under a different economic and political system. Just the same as capitalism has a tangible effect on how the pandemic is dealt with. Where I live for example there were multiple cases of industrial workers (often migrants working for a few month and then returning to their home country) contracting the virus en masse, which in turn had a lot to do with overcrowded houses and flats where they were forced to live.

[zozbot234]

> Police brutality is the direct effect of a state trying to uphold it's monopoly for violence.

The only alternative to a monopoly on violence is an open turf war among crime gangs, quite probably involving far more brutality. There are plenty of nation states outside the U.S. with better run police and no gang wars, implying that they do manage to successfully regulate (i.e. "monopolize") the initiation of force. These things have basically nothing to do with each other.

[nonstickcoating]

The prevailance of gang violence has it's root in social and economic imbalance, too. I do not disagree, police violence is different and not as "brutal" (can't find a better word) where I live, but of course I look onto the US as an outsider. I also do not think that letting society splinter into rackets would be preferable to the status quo, but I do think the status quo leaves a lot do be desired for the majority of people. EDIT: This shows itself e.g. in the organisation of precarised people in gangs. That police brutality and the state upholding it's monopoly for violence have nothing to do with each other seems far-fetched though. The police is the instution that guarantees this monopoly within the borders of every Nation state, it's quite literally their raison d'etre.

[drewcoo]

Whenever someone only offers me one alternative, I get suspicious.

Street gangs as they currently exist in the US were created by the prison system, an arm of the state violence apparatus. Conveniently, they're also an excuse to increase police budgets. More policing, in turn, puts more people into prison.

I don't think that alternative is actually even an alternative.