Defund the Police U.S or anywhere?

[Forogil]

And a fact does not mean very much by itself. As I've pointed out to the pedant in chief before, what matters is the story you're trying to tell and the agenda you're trying to promote with those facts.

Repeating "defunding the police is politically unpopular at the present" is not an ethical stance regarding law enforcement

You haven't been listening.

The points are that it is unpopular (and pushing through unpopular issues is problematic - and has failed in multiple cities), but also that it is based on a bad analysis - the US police force is actually smaller per capita than in many other countries, the military equipment is free of charge so not a sign of overfunding, and alternatives will take time to take effect so redirecting police funds to them will in the short run create a worse situation - which will backfire, and then those programs will be terminated creating a bigger mess.

The alternatives also need to be fleshed out - focusing on police funding is just a distraction from actually solving the issues.

Basically it is not a matter of selecting ethical stances for LARP-slogans, but about finding pragmatic ways of solving the problem.

[Elegiac]

You haven't been listening.

The points are that it is unpopular (and pushing through unpopular issues is problematic - and has failed in multiple cities), but also that it is based on a bad analysis - the US police force is actually smaller per capita than in many other countries

You do realise that the law enforcement budget per capita and the number of officers per capita are separate things, right?

the military equipment is free of charge so not a sign of overfunding, and alternatives will take time to take effect so redirecting police funds to them will in the short run create a worse situation - which will backfire, and then those programs will be terminated creating a bigger mess.

The alternatives also need to be fleshed out - focusing on police funding is just a distraction from actually solving the issues.

It's funny that you think you have any clout to be berating people for not listening when you clearly aren't listening to any of the arguments of the people pushing for police reform beyond complaining that a surface level slogan is distasteful. The reason funding is an issue at all is because of the context of the lack of funding for other things such as social support services, not "defund the police for shits and giggles."

I'll note you've also failed to actually provide any evidence that "redirecting police funds will create a worse situation" since that's based on the assumption that police as they exist actually do anything.

Basically it is not a matter of selecting ethical stances for LARP-slogans, but about finding pragmatic ways of solving the problem.

Cool, I'll amend my statement then:

And a fact does not mean very much by itself. As I've pointed out to the pedant in chief before, what matters is the story you're trying to tell and the agenda you're trying to promote with those facts.

Repeating "defunding the police is politically unpopular at the present" is not an ethical stance regarding law enforcement, nor an argument on the merits of policing as it exists, nor a means of finding pragmatic ways to solve a given problem. It's essentially kiddie level 'neener neener' taunting.

Same point still applies, stop being a pedant.

[Forogil]

You do realise that the law enforcement budget per capita and the number of officers per capita are separate things, right?

Yes, but I haven't seen clear proof that the US spends excessive amount on law enforcement per capita. Note that many figures combine 'law enforcement' and 'correction' - and the US does spend a lot of 'correction', due to the large number of prisoners.

So, do you have any real arguments or is it just hypocritical pedantry and rolleyes?

I'll note you've also failed to actually provide any evidence that "redirecting police funds will create a worse situation" since that's based on the assumption that police as they exist actually do anything.

The police do some things, and some of that is good. If you cannot understand that you really fail. (And the idea with police reform is that police reform should do more good, and less bad.) And reading up more I realized that your analysis is even more lacking.

The underlying assumption for funding is that the police gets money from the city, and if you reduce that the police will have less money - and for some reason they would then do less of the bad stuff.

Most people would say 'no shit, sherlock' for the first part; but in reality it's not that simple.

The reason is that the police have found other sources of income. Ferguson PD to name a bad apply, did rely a lot on fines and fees (traffic violations, badly cut grass, etc), and others have relied on civil forfeitures. Reducing funding without any other changes may cause the police to rely even more on those "alternative sources on income" - which both counters the funding change and is bad in itself, and rely even more on military surplus (free of charge).

To inform yourself:

FERGUSON LAW ENFORCEMENT EFFORTS ARE FOCUSED ON GENERATING REVENUE

https://www.justice.gov/sites/defaul...ngs_3-4-15.pdf

Ferguson may have improved since then, but I'm sure other police departments would do the same if they could get away with it - especially if they felt they needed the money.

That lack of analysis is what happens when you don't try to pragmatically solve the problem, but go for LARP-slogans.

[Elegiac]

Yes, but I haven't seen clear proof that the US spends excessive amount on law enforcement per capita. Note that many figures combine 'law enforcement' and 'correction' - and the US does spend a lot of 'correction', due to the large number of prisoners.

Well luckily the people calling for police reform also happen to be calling for a reform of the carceral system. Which you'd know if you bothered actually looking at any of the arguments past the surface level.

So, do you have any real arguments or is it just hypocritical pedantry and rolleyes?

Pointing out that waving around "the US doesn't have the most police officers per capita" is dishonest framing of the argument isn't pedantry.

The police do some things, and some of that is good.

Such as?

They don't serve or protect the general public, they don't stop crime, they don't solve crime. So what exactly do they do that is good?

The underlying assumption for funding is that the police gets money from the city, and if you reduce that the police will have less money - and for some reason they would then do less of the bad stuff.

Most people would say 'no shit, sherlock' for the first part; but in reality it's not that simple.

The reason is that the police have found other sources of income. Ferguson PD to name a bad apply, did rely a lot on fines and fees (traffic violations, badly cut grass, etc), and others have relied on civil forfeitures. Reducing funding without any other changes may cause the police to rely even more on those "alternative sources on income" - which both counters the funding change and is bad in itself, and rely even more on military surplus (free of charge).

To inform yourself:
FERGUSON LAW ENFORCEMENT EFFORTS ARE FOCUSED ON GENERATING REVENUE
https://www.justice.gov/sites/defaul...ngs_3-4-15.pdf

Ferguson may have improved since then, but I'm sure other police departments would do the same if they could get away with it - especially if they felt they needed the money.

That lack of analysis is what happens when you don't try to pragmatically solve the problem, but go for LARP-slogans.

And speaking of dishonest framing, this is just a massive strawman.

As I said previously, these sorts of things are in fact well known and discussed by advocates of police reform and have been so for decades. The slogan "Defund the Police", regardless of its reception, is just that - a slogan. It has never been the sole extent of anyone's argument.

A given slogan itself might be bad (i.e. poorly received), but that does not undercut the necessity of slogans as a hook for public interest because opening with a nuanced political dissertation that encompasses the full scope is equally as bad from an advertising perspective. You're taking an argument about marketing and trying to make it an argument about substance when the two are not inherently the same thing; which, ironically, your own posts are evidence of since you repeatedly take the slogan purely at face value without looking at any of the substance behind it.

[Forogil]

Well luckily the people calling for police reform also happen to be calling for a reform of the carceral system. Which you'd know if you bothered actually looking at any of the arguments past the surface level.

Totally ignoring the main part of whether the US law enforcement is actually costly per capita, and just adding insults as normal.

The problem is once more that 'defund the police' is a bad slogan as it alienates voters, and leads to bad policies when people attempt to implement it. That's why people recently try to steer away from it.

Why do you want to lose so badly and drag others down with you?

[Elegiac]

Totally ignoring the main part of whether the US law enforcement is actually costly per capita, and just adding insults as normal.

The problem is once more that 'defund the police' is a bad slogan as it alienates voters

Something I'm not disputing; I'm pointing out that criticism of the slogan is not in fact a basis for claiming a lack of substance as you've repeatedly done.

and leads to bad policies when people attempt to implement it. That's why people recently try to steer away from it.

Yeah, this is just blatantly untrue. "Defund the police" did not lead to any "bad policies" because there was no major defunding.

People turned away from the idea because the slogan was vague enough to be exploited by bad faith media and political narratives (like certain people claiming the rise in crime during 2021 was a result of police defunding that largely didn't happen), not because of any results based decision making. Once again, you're confusing marketing for substance.

Why do you repeatedly insist on lying and framing arguments dishonestly?

[Forogil]

Yeah, this is just blatantly untrue. "Defund the police" did not lead to any "bad policies" because there was no defunding.

The link disproves that - despite being clearly biased. You really should try to find less biased news-sources - 'The Real News' as a name stinks of try-hard bias - like 'Truth Social'.

In particular it shows that some cities in the middle of this, like Seattle and Minneapolis, did for one year decrease the funding for the police - and then changed their mind. They biased source you link try to argue that they didn't really decrease the funding since it shot back up, or that it was just part of normal budget-processes (that just happened to be there) despite being lauded as a success by the the activists at the time.

The simpler alternative explanation is that they did reduce funding and try to redirect money in unclear ways, but they didn't get any good results, and thus they changed their mind the next year.

The idea with pragmatic changes is that you do it slowly in some places, and show that it works so it can spread. Saying that it wasn't tested, since it wasn't tested widely and for a long time isn't a counter - it's an indication of failure.

[Elegiac]

The link disproves that - despite being clearly biased. You really should try to find less biased news-sources - 'The Real News' as a name stinks of try-hard bias - like 'Truth Social'.

In particular it shows that some cities in the middle of this, like Seattle and Minneapolis, did for one year decrease the funding for the police - and then changed their mind. They biased source you link try to argue that they didn't really decrease the funding since it shot back up, or that it was just part of normal budget-processes (that just happened to be there) despite being lauded as a success by the the activists at the time.

Ignoring your whining about bias when we're discussing the cited facts in the article - the cuts were by 11 and 14% respectively for the Seattle and Minneapolis Police Departments, which is well in line with precedented municipal budget cuts.

You've also not demonstrated what "bad policies" these cuts led to or that these "bad policies" were the result of what the reformists were asking for.

The simpler alternative explanation is that they did reduce funding and try to redirect money in unclear ways, but they didn't get any good results, and thus they changed their mind the next year.

The simplest explanation is that public pressure diminished in the face of bad faith narratives and thus the incentive to continue reform or increase the scope also diminished, not that there was any results based decision making.

The idea with pragmatic changes is that you do it slowly in some places, and show that it works so it can spread. Saying that it wasn't tested, since it wasn't tested widely and for a long time isn't a counter - it's an indication of failure.

As I've already pointed out several times, "defund the police" is a slogan and in no way representative of the entire scope of the reforms being demanded. So saying "two cities did marginal reductions to their police budgets with no other changes for less than a year and it didn't produce any good results therefore calling for police reform is a losing argument" is yet more dishonest framing on your part.

The funny thing is I've already conceded that "defund the police" is not a suitable slogan, so I'm not sure what the hell you think your point is unless your actual problem is with people wanting police reform regardless of how it's marketed.

[Endus]

People turned away from the idea because the slogan was vague enough to be exploited by bad faith media and political narratives (like certain people claiming the rise in crime during 2021 was a result of police defunding that largely didn't happen), not because of any results based decision making. Once again, you're confusing marketing for substance.

To make a comparison, it's not unlike the hit-job that's been done by McCarthyists for the last 70 years over the world "socialism", where any hint of the word was treated as a Soviet con job seeking to poison American thinking or some equivalently malevolent malarkey.

When the reality is that literally any business or industry that's worker-owned and worker-run is "socialist" in design.

Salvaging that word from those decades of propaganda is an effort that's really only starting to have effect the last decade or so, in the USA. It's still a struggle to get people to stop seeing propaganda caricatures or label an avowed socialist a Stalin-lover or the like. But ground's being made up.

Not by abandoning the term. But through constant repetition to the shared audience about how malicious and ignorant the McCarthyist wharrgarble is. This isn't remotely a new problem; see my sig.

The McCarthyist propaganda was the marketing. The reality of socialist theory is the substance. Realities like Canada's universal healthcare networks, a system pioneered by Tommy Douglas, a founder of the New Democratic Party here in Canada and one of the most beloved political figures in our history. And a man who was a self-avowed Democratic Socialist his entire political career, and a position he ran on consistently.

[Forogil]

Ignoring your whining about bias when we're discussing the cited facts in the article - the cuts were by 11 and 14% respectively for the Seattle and Minneapolis Police Departments, which is well in line with precedented municipal budget cuts.

Yet it was claimed as a victory by Black Visions Collective back then; despite later attempts at rewriting history.

And to first claim it was a victory and major change, and when the alleged consequences don't show claim that 'we didn't actually change anything' is just dishonest.

And if you don't want to be called out for your bias - stop linking to 'The Real News', 'Truth Social', and similar sources whose very name ooze bias.

You've also not demonstrated what "bad policies" these cuts led to or that these "bad policies" were the result of what the reformists were asking for.

I believe it is pretty clear that it didn't bring the alleged benefits. Note that even if the police funding didn't decrease that significantly - the policing decreased, as police officers left their job or took medical leave for PTSD. That residents sued the city for the lack of police is also a clear indication of a problem.

Even though not be a direct consequence of the budget changes, citizens arming themselves and remaining police officers being less proactive (both have been cited as reasons for the increase in violence in Minneapolis) are still consequences of the movement - and should have been foreseen.

Or in summary: it's on the proponents of 'defund the police' to show that their policies work; claiming that we didn't actually implement the policies that time, the bad consequences were just due to other factors, etc is rightly perceived as just bull-shit

[Elegiac]

I believe it is pretty clear that it didn't bring the alleged benefits. Note that even if the police funding didn't decrease that significantly - the policing decreased, as police officers left their job or took medical leave for PTSD. That residents sued the city for the lack of police is also a clear indication of a problem.

Even though not be a direct consequence of the budget changes, citizens arming themselves and remaining police officers being less proactive (both have been cited as reasons for the increase in violence in Minneapolis) are still consequences of the movement - and should have been foreseen.

Or in summary: it's on the proponents of 'defund the police' to show that their policies work; claiming that we didn't actually implement the policies that time, the bad consequences were just due to other factors, etc is rightly perceived as just bull-shit

Oh, okay; so not only are you admitting that your complaint about "defund the police led to bad policies" was nonsense, you're also admitting that your problem is the fact police reform was being demanded at all.

[Forogil]

Oh, okay; so not only are you admitting that your complaint about "defund the police led to bad policies" was nonsense, you're also admitting that your problem is the fact police reform was being demanded at all.

How about actually reading and responding to the texts? All those roll-eyes might be bad for your reading.

The problem with 'police reform' is that it can mean lots of different things, so the idea would be to check whether the specific police reforms worked or not. That's why 'defund' is a bad slogan - it doesn't highlight what reforms are needed. And there seems to be a direct and indirect link between lack of police officers and some of problems.

[Biglog]

The problem with the "defunding" is it ties into a lot of the McCarthyism that has been around for 70 years as stated here. There is clearly a widespread problem, and that's been well known long before Uvalde. But defunding assumes the only answers are polar - like either we let broken police forces operate as-is, or we completely get rid of them.

Having police I think is necessary, and most would agree there. That's also why the term defunding has been politicized so much. The difficult problem is how to root out the problem police and departments, especially in an industry where nepotism is very deeply rooted. Far too many cops on the job tend to get a us vs them mentality over time with the public, where "blue" (i.e. the police) takes priority over the public they are sworn to protect. That's tragically what we saw in Uvalde too.

The biggest problem is lack of accountability. And departments like to respond with this defund argument themselves, like if you don't like it what if we weren't here at all, which is a juvenile response. So this defund argument is being used as their get out of jail free card when they fail. No on defunding, which wasn't ever really going to happen anyway, but definitely yes some sort of reform of policing on a national level needs to take place. Because otherwise accountability and reform will never happen, they'll just continue to go straight to this McCarthy "defund" argument to deflect.

[Endus]

And if you don't want to be called out for your bias - stop linking to 'The Real News', 'Truth Social', and similar sources whose very name ooze bias.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/real-news-network/

Left bias (which has to do with framing)
High factual reporting (which is what you're trying to imply should be lower, due to being "biased")

Can't even compare them to Truth Social, which isn't a news media source. If you could agree to swap in OANN, for instance, though;

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/one-a...-news-network/

Far-right bias, low factual reporting.

Tip: It's the "factual reporting" that actually matters. "Bias" here just translates to framing, not accuracy or validity. I'm 100% on the side of discarding sources that make a habit of misrepresenting the facts; anything with a "mixed" rating or less on MBFC should be given a hairy eyeball. But a "high factual reporting" should at least be given a good-faith consideration, otherwise you're kneejerking based on ideological agreement rather than factual accuracy.

Or in summary: it's on the proponents of 'defund the police' to show that their policies work; claiming that we didn't actually implement the policies that time, the bad consequences were just due to other factors, etc is rightly perceived as just bull-shit

We can just point at other nations which don't have the same policing issues as the USA and which have already separated (or more properly; never originally combined) those duties from policing.

That evidence has always been there and has always been pointed at, so I don't know why you're claiming otherwise.

[wunksta]

The problem with 'police reform' is that it can mean lots of different things, so the idea would be to check whether the specific police reforms worked or not. That's why 'defund' is a bad slogan - it doesn't highlight what reforms are needed. And there seems to be a direct and indirect link between lack of police officers and some of problems.

In your opinion, what percentage of a city's budget should be allocated to police departments?

[Kathandira]

In your opinion, what percentage of a city's budget should be allocated to police departments?

That is WAY too broad of a question. And I think you are well aware of how obtuse it is.

[Deus Mortis]

In your opinion, what percentage of a city's budget should be allocated to police departments?

Simply depends on the city. Some cities will need to spend less as their cities are safer and other cities will have to spend more.

[wunksta]

That is WAY too broad of a question. And I think you are well aware of how obtuse it is.

That's the crux of the issue though. Do you believe any city should spend over 50% of their budget on police? Milwaukee, WI for example spent 58% of their budget just on police in 2020. Is this a good use of their budget?

[uuuhname]

oh hey, look at that, here's something specific we can do about police reform.

[Santti]

oh hey, look at that, here's something specific we can do about police reform.

Something something tradition, wild west, and it's so cool you guys.