The idea that the police is necessary to maintain order is hilarious. The police is not actively supervising virtually any of the areas that remain as peaceful as the next one, and policing is actually linked with increased violence and conflict, but that's not all.
If people were in fact inclined towards serious criminality and violence, the police would not, by any stretch of the imagination, be able to do anything about it. They are massively outnumbered. Order is maintained because people are conflict averse. Not because of any sheepdogs
That's why the tired trope of all social order collapsing into generalised outbursts of destructive violence when the police disappears is a reactionary delusion, and a pretty bad mark even on otherwise good films or literature.
It presupposes a very unrealistic picture of moral and empirical psychology, apparently for the purposes of retroactively justifying policing, and it can't even do that. If that picture was correct, policing would be the equivalent of trying to drill a hole in water. Impotent.
Just imagine every single one of your neighbours fitting these parameters, being strongly predisposed to create conflict and resolve it with violence. Not just one or two problem people. Now imagine every neighborhood being like that.
And the conservative fantasy tells you that this enormous tide of violence is somehow almost entirely mitigated by a few hundred people inviting themselves in, accosting them and acting like jerks. This is not only thoroughly detached from reality but also plainly incoherent.
If people were like that, policing would be useless, if not counter-productive (cops are people too), and so should be ended. If people aren't like that, policing is useless if not counter-productive (since cops are less conflict-averse than normal people) and so should be ended.
