NewsBreak Original

It is public knowledge to many Americans that they can be under surveillance at places like airports, federal buildings, banks, or even private properties. In some jurisdictions depending on the city you live, the government could be keeping tabs on your movements all throughout the day.

Tufts' Public Safety Office in Dowling Hall is pictured on Nov. 1.(Lauren Aliotta / The Tufts Daily) The Tufts Department of Public Safety announced recent changes made to meet recommendations from the Tufts as an Anti-Racist Institution initiative in an Oct. 19 email to the Tufts community. In addition to an updated mission statement and core values, changes include an expansion of training for all Tufts University Police Department officers, the addition of more unarmed campus security officers and a new position to support communication.

I have previously written about FEJUVE: a mutualist anarchist society that allows people to live in a community without a monopoly on violence & have a direct say in their community while still enjoying the luxury of owning local businesses & property they occupy/use. I also talked about the problem with policing under statism: that police are given certain powers that can put them and their friends/immediate family above the law without offering any greater protection for their community. Now, people are probably wondering how police would operate in a society without a strong vertical hierarchy or monopoly on violence. To explain any of this, we first need to look at the Aymara: a native group that exists in Bolivia.

The thing people seem to forget is that anarchists do not hate police... as a concept. Here when I say police, I mean the dictionary definition: an organized civil force for dealing with crime and regulating the community. The problem becomes, under states, with a monopoly on violence, there are various problems with policing: