Defund the Police U.S or anywhere?

[Forogil]

Some false statements trying to explain away a straw-man

It's a straw-man argument. End of story.

As for the implementation, I pointed directly at decriminalization efforts like Canada's decriminalization of marijuana.

That is a completely different implementation than previously suggested, and a simpler slogan for that is 'Legalize It', that people can sing along to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cIePqdz03A

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Obama criticizes "defund the police" messaging: "You lost a big audience the minute you say it"

"If you believe, as I do, that we should be able reform the criminal justice system so that it's not biased and treats everyone fairly, I guess you can use a snappy slogan like 'defund the police' but, you know, you lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you're actually going to get the changes you want done," Mr. Obama said.

"But if you instead say, 'let's reform the police department,' so that everyone's being treated fairly, divert young people from getting into crime, and if there's a homeless guy, can maybe we send a mental health worker there instead of an armed unit ... suddenly a whole bunch of folks who might not otherwise listen to you are listening to you," he added.

Yes. He managed to get elected and had slogans like 'Yes We can' and 'Forward'; indicating that he actually understands how to attract people and get things done.

And ACA has even to a large extent survived the current SCOTUS.

I'm more and more convinced that others deliberately set out to fail.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

You could do both?

While we are working on the underlying problems we should enforce the laws and dont let criminals run wild because why not

Doing both means defunding the police. To keep it simple lets say the police currently get $100. Now, to fix the probelms we're going to take $5 from that $100 and put it into social workers. We're going to take another $5 and put it into addiction treatment. We're gonna take another $5 to build homeless shelters. We're going to take another $5 and it into rehabilitating prisoners. Now, we have funded 4 different programs...but we had to defund the police $20 to make that happen.

[Forogil]

Doing both means defunding the police. To keep it simple lets say the police currently get $100. Now, to fix the probelms we're going to take $5 from that $100 and put it into social workers. We're going to take another $5 and put it into addiction treatment. We're gonna take another $5 to build homeless shelters. We're going to take another $5 and it into rehabilitating prisoners. Now, we have funded 4 different programs...but we had to defund the police $20 to make that happen.

No. You don't have to, and it would be stupid to do that.

If you do that at the start you will create a mess - as those other programs take time to take effect.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

No. You don't have to, and it would be stupid to do that.

If you do that at the start you will create a mess - as those other programs take time to take effect.

The money has to come from somewhere.

[Forogil]

The money has to come from somewhere.

And? You are combining a pie-in-the-sky-aspirations with strict budget discipline in a weird way, as if the intent is to deliberately fail.

It's like saying 'defund emergency care' to mean 'we need better preventive health care', or 'defund prisons' to mean 'we need better schools'.

[MCMLXXXII]

Well you could use an amount for proper training, let's say 3 years or so, in stead of buying military grade weapons and vehicles. Over here we have wijkagenten. Block-cops literally. They know the neighborhood and its inhabitants personally. Although they wear uniforms they are basically mediators.

[minteK917]

Well you could use an amount for proper training, let's say 3 years or so, in stead of buying military grade weapons and vehicles. Over here we have wijkagenten. Block-cops literally. They know the neighborhood and its inhabitants personally. Although they wear uniforms they are basically mediators.

Cops are public mediator and representative of the law, it should be high education, university level. Same as other public servants with massive responsibilities like social workers, teachers and doctors. Even the people they assist like social workers are university education levels. Why some cops in the US are literally high school drop out turned military discharged somehow a thing, I have no idea.

[MCMLXXXII]

Cops are public mediator and representative of the law, it should be high education, university level. Same as other public servants with massive responsibilities like social workers, teachers and doctors. Even the people they assist like social workers are university education levels. Why some cops in the US are literally high school drop out turned military discharged somehow a thing, I have no idea.

Well, in the Vietnam era, if you couldn't do anything else, you could always join Uncle Sam as cannon fodder

[Shadowferal]

In Philadelphia, the city council is demanding more police presence at 15th street station after a shooting there a couple days ago.

[PC2]

Neither the police nor military should exist in a rational world, but we haven't made enough progress to get rid of them yet. What I think is important is 'incrementalism' and 'feedback'. If the citizens of a place are getting less violent and less criminal then we can incrementally throw less money away on security, or if things are getting worse then maybe we need to increase police funding.

[enigma77]

How about no?

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

And? You are combining a pie-in-the-sky-aspirations with strict budget discipline in a weird way, as if the intent is to deliberately fail.

It's like saying 'defund emergency care' to mean 'we need better preventive health care', or 'defund prisons' to mean 'we need better schools'.

You'll note Im not saying "take all the money from the police and put it in other places". in this "$100 budget"...Only $20 has been re-allocated from the police to other programs". I have "defunded the police" $20. So yeah, the police will not be buying as much surplus military gear with my "pie-in-the-sky aspirations"

[Forogil]

You'll note Im not saying "take all the money from the police and put it in other places". in this "$100 budget"...Only $20 has been re-allocated from the police to other programs". I have "defunded the police" $20. So yeah, the police will not be buying as much surplus military gear with my "pie-in-the-sky aspirations"

When someone acquires surplus - military or otherwise - it is usually because it is cheap - not because they are too wealthy.

There are even reports that it is free of charge - shipping and handling not included -
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-...weapons-2020-8

So not only does attacking the funding attack the wrong problem, a possible outcome of trying to 'defund the police' would be that cash-strapped departments would rely even more on military equipment as the regular one actually has a cost. That may have bad outcomes, but as shown by George Floyd's death the police don't need any expensive equipment to kill.

If you want to remove the military equipment from the police - don't go through hoops based on vague understandings of the underlying problems - just say 'demilitarize the police', or 'demilitarize the cities'; and go for the federal program that sponsors it; and not only the police departments. The link also indicates how the recent presidents have acted regarding this; use that information to inform yourself.

Unless you want to fail.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Unless you want to fail.

The status quo has already failed.

[PC2]

The status quo has already failed.

You're wrong. That's not true in Western First World countries which are doing relatively good compared to almost everyone else.

Also if "the status quo fails" and is replaced then I'd say the authoritarian right wing would be more likely to take its place, rather than some enlightened left wing progressives.

[Orby]

I am always a bit puzzled on the 'defund the police' stuff. I do agree that way too much money goes into the police force than other more important areas in America, but at the same time defunding them will not improve them, they need retraining, better background checks, and maybe less involved in things that they shouldn't be handling, like family domestic abuse which a lot of police are unqualified to handle.

Police need restructure. It seems they cannot do their jobs very well or just are not trained well enough to handle those jobs. The police are the unruly stepchild of our emergency services. and yes I know its not all police but it always seems like they are the ones causing more problems than they solve.

Now I do hear people say 'abolish the police', I am not sure I am on that side of the fence. Now I am not sure what that entails? Are we talking about taking away law and order? Will crime rates not sky rocket? I mean not sure we want the army patrolling our streets instead :P

[Endus]

I am always a bit puzzled on the 'defund the police' stuff. I do agree that way too much money goes into the police force than other more important areas in America, but at the same time defunding them will not improve them, they need retraining, better background checks, and maybe less involved in things that they shouldn't be handling, like family domestic abuse which a lot of police are unqualified to handle.

Police need restructure. It seems they cannot do their jobs very well or just are not trained well enough to handle those jobs. The police are the unruly stepchild of our emergency services. and yes I know its not all police but it always seems like they are the ones causing more problems than they solve.

Internal police reform isn't even really a component of the Defund movement. It's primarily about removing particular duties from the police entirely, to have professionally trained experts handle it instead; social welfare/mental health checks, harassing the homeless, addressing issues driven by poverty, etc. Traffic infractions don't require police officers to handle, for instance; you could create a whole agency whose sole purpose was traffic law enforcement, and who thus had no cause to go armed to begin with.

Once you carve those off and get social and health care workers and such to handle them instead, there's less and less call for any policing at all. You need far fewer police officers, and those officers are responsible only for the narrowest slice of their current duties; largely down to resolving issues with violent offenders.

Police reform is also important, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time; this isn't a case where we need to pick one.

Now I do hear people say 'abolish the police', I am not sure I am on that side of the fence. Now I am not sure what that entails? Are we talking about taking away law and order? Will crime rates not sky rocket? I mean not sure we want the army patrolling our streets instead :P

Once you've carved off 95% of a police officer's job, as above, and you bump social support systems enough to account for and mitigate the poverty and inequity levels that fundamentally drive a lot of crime in the first place, what else are you needing police for? You're mostly down to serving warrants and making arrests, and managing crime scene investigations. But if you've got forensics teams, they're already not officers and generally don't go armed; that's the kind of carve-off we're talking about. It gets down to a point where you really don't need "police". You still have plenty of community enforcement, through all those various separate jobs; there are still people issuing traffic tickets and resolving violent mental health issues and investigating criminal offenses and all that. That never stopped. It was just handed off to people better-equipped and better-trained than police officers.

The idea that you need authoritarian Stasi-style cops kneeling on the necks of the citizenry is so completely nonsensical to me that I can't believe Americans actually support it. It's dystopian. If you craft a functional society, it's largely self-regulating. Which is why violent crime rates in the developed world other than the USA are so much lower than the USA's figures.

Like, take homicides;

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...homicide-rate/

Canada's consistently at 1/3 the rate of homicides, per capita, compared to the USA.

And Canada's not at a point that I'd consider "ideal" on this, either; we've got a lot of improvements we could make, too.

Every previous fascist state has been right wing, so I suppose you aren't wrong there, but that's because conservatives are more prone to becoming tyrannical.

Also that fascist states inevitably collapse in on themselves, because fascism is fundamentally rooted in scapegoating and mass punishment/execution, and that means fascist states start off by eating themselves, and once they've eaten the "bad" parts as they start out, they just keep on eating what they used to consider "healthy", until the state collapses and dies. Fascism is the human equivalent of an ant death spiral.

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Nobody serious is suggesting an abolition of the entire police force, though.

Well, define "policing" for me.

Because I can probably carve off most of that job into better-trained specialists, and about all you'd have left is the use of violence to take down violent criminals, and while there's a case for that role being filled, it's not a case that involves patrol officers or the like. It's an argument for a response team, that functions more like a fire station, only responding to violent crimes being committed rather than to fires in buildings.

You still need law enforcement. It doesn't have to take the form of modern police forces.

[PC2]

Also that fascist states inevitably collapse in on themselves, because fascism is fundamentally rooted in scapegoating and mass punishment/execution, and that means fascist states start off by eating themselves, and once they've eaten the "bad" parts as they start out, they just keep on eating what they used to consider "healthy", until the state collapses and dies. Fascism is the human equivalent of an ant death spiral.

Which won't be a problem for the West because neither fascism nor communism are coming to the USA or to Europe. We're just going to keep making incremental changes to our mixed economy liberal democracies. People expecting anything else are setting themselves up for failed expectations.

[Endus]

Which won't be a problem for the West because neither fascism nor communism are coming to the USA or to Europe. We're just going to keep making incremental changes to our mixed economy liberal democracies. People expecting anything else are setting themselves up for failed expectations.

It's literally happening, and visible. Claiming otherwise is intentional deflection.

[Jastall]

I am always a bit puzzled on the 'defund the police' stuff. I do agree that way too much money goes into the police force than other more important areas in America, but at the same time defunding them will not improve them, they need retraining, better background checks, and maybe less involved in things that they shouldn't be handling, like family domestic abuse which a lot of police are unqualified to handle.

Police need restructure. It seems they cannot do their jobs very well or just are not trained well enough to handle those jobs. The police are the unruly stepchild of our emergency services. and yes I know its not all police but it always seems like they are the ones causing more problems than they solve.

Now I do hear people say 'abolish the police', I am not sure I am on that side of the fence. Now I am not sure what that entails? Are we talking about taking away law and order? Will crime rates not sky rocket? I mean not sure we want the army patrolling our streets instead :P

I think it's a big branding problem as well. "Reorganize the police" is probably closer to what a lot of people want (and in some cases less funding would be part of it for sure) but for a lot of people "defund" is next to "defang" or even "abolish" and those just aren't popular positions in America. It seems like a radical idea at first glance and it's not hard to condemn it as such.

Much like terms such as "rape culture", it may sound good among activist groups and college-level research personnel, when put in proper context. When said to the average American, it really, really doesn't resonate as well.