To me, this article completely misrepresents the point of defunding the police by choosing some of the more extreme examples. Defunding the police is just the slogan. It's part of a larger...
To me, this article completely misrepresents the point of defunding the police by choosing some of the more extreme examples.
Defunding the police is just the slogan. It's part of a larger movement about deescalating police power and violence. Part of that includes lowering their budget since policing represents an outsized amount of most government budgets, but the more important part is taking that money and directing it toward programs that will lower the number of encounters people have with law enforcement.
This includes things like mental health specialists and crisis councilors that can work with people in crisis and deescalate rather than sending in a bunch of cops with guns to escalate the situation and increase the likelihood of someone dying. It also includes alternative programs like drug programs rather than just throwing someone in jail and letting them rot.
The way things work today, there is simply too much misconduct — and much too much quiet tolerance of misconduct — and not enough crime-solving.
This is true and it needs to change. Many of the points that the author mentions and dismisses later would bring about these changes. Removing immunity for law enforcement officers isn't the radical idea that the author presents it as. These professionals have abused their privilege time and time again for decades so it should be revoked.
I see your point. I think, just like many policial or social slogans, it doesn't cover all the nuances but it gets the main point across in a short, concise phrase. "Defund the police and give...
I see your point. I think, just like many policial or social slogans, it doesn't cover all the nuances but it gets the main point across in a short, concise phrase.
"Defund the police and give more money to mental health and alternative forms of punishment to help lessen the violence perpetrated on citizens by police officers" doesn't have the same ring to it.
In some ways, it seems to be have a better ring to it, though.
In some ways, it seems to be have a better ring to it, though.
An Axios survey in September asked people what they thought of “reducing the funding for the police in your community in order to fund an increase in social services for programs like housing and mental health.” That language polled 17 percentage points better, in net favorability, than did “defunding the police.”
I think that only makes sense from a logical standpoint. A group of people presented with a coherent thesis would be more likely to approve of said stance compared to an activism campaign slogan....
I think that only makes sense from a logical standpoint. A group of people presented with a coherent thesis would be more likely to approve of said stance compared to an activism campaign slogan. I think it's a bit disingenuous to say the thesis has a better ring to it. You can't fit it on a protest sign and leading protest chants is difficult enough, haha. Also, links to the survey and article because I couldn't find them in the thread: Slate article (wasn't working for me so here is the Google Cache results) Survey
I don't think it's as much about how they get disproportionate amount of funds, but how they misuse those funds buying shit they don't need like tank transports and military gear. If they actually...
Taking money from the cops, who get absolutely disproportionate amounts of money in most cities
I don't think it's as much about how they get disproportionate amount of funds, but how they misuse those funds buying shit they don't need like tank transports and military gear. If they actually cared about bettering the community they could distribute those funds to sources to help them de-escalate by sending counselors instead of just cops to calls about domestic disputes or people with mental illness and other situations where a gun isn't ever needed.
I think cops forgot they're supposed to be experts at de-escalating situations to prevent further violence. They have been trained to be afraid of every situation and thus just end up escalating them more because they're so scared in every situation they're required to enter. Bringing in experts that actually can help them do that might put things back in order. And they've proven they aren't smart enough with their funds to do it themselves, so defunding them and distributing it to those services externally is the next best thing.
He only briefly mentions the hardline "delete the police" stance, and moves on to the reallocation argument for the vast majority of the blog post since the former is frankly somewhat silly. I...
He only briefly mentions the hardline "delete the police" stance, and moves on to the reallocation argument for the vast majority of the blog post since the former is frankly somewhat silly.
I think part of it is just a weird consolidation of issues and solutions. Undoutably much of the defund the police debate will be around the all-too-common acts of violence by police, in particular for minority communities, because the movement really came to the mainstream with Floyd's murder among others.
And it is weird, and probably unoptimal in many ways, for police to be first responders to mental health emergencies. And there are a handful of cases where that has gone terribly wrong, and police turned their guns unnecessarily. However, these are dwarfed by the number of violent incidents and, well, murders perpetuated by police on patrol.
That violence is really endemic to difficulty, and extreme reluctance, to fire clearly disobendient police officers, and their further ability to simply be rehired later.
Removing immunity for law enforcement officers isn't the radical idea that the author presents it as.
I mean, it's one of the bullet points he suggests as reform
Police should be completely stripped of all special procedural rights and investigated with the same investigative tools that they use against anyone else.
These arbitration panels should be scrapped; officers should have some basic civil service protection against being fired for no cause at all, but the goal should be to build an effective police force not a sinecure for officers.
On a pragmatic level. As my opinion, to be sure, but replacing the police as an institution completely is a deeply, deeply unpopular sentiment in the US. Like, deeply. It's the kind of policy that...
On a pragmatic level. As my opinion, to be sure, but replacing the police as an institution completely is a deeply, deeply unpopular sentiment in the US. Like, deeply. It's the kind of policy that when pushed causes electoral backlash that will only make police violence worse, as the GOP has no problems empowering racial violence. And not even in a "our electoral system is stupid and puts power in empty land" way, it's just unpopular everywhere.
But, at least, I would say that the "sanewashed" version is worse, in that it has most of the negative electoral connotation while also not seeming to accomplish much on a policy level.
But it's not just the electoral system being fucked - for example, when polling (Ipsos) Los Angeles specifically, an area heavily left favored, "Defund the police" is net positive by only 1 point,...
But it's not just the electoral system being fucked - for example, when polling (Ipsos) Los Angeles specifically, an area heavily left favored, "Defund the police" is net positive by only 1 point, at 46-45. Californians a whole have a net negative rating towards it. It's not simply white people in Kansas with an outsized vote because they get the same amount of senators as New York.
I get that "well, it's too hard, so don't try" is somewhat defeatist, but imo you at least need your base to be into it.
Seems to me that the GOP has had no issues empowering racial violence and attempting electoral backlash perfectly fine since even before Trump became president. To call it an outcome of the recent...
It's the kind of policy that when pushed causes electoral backlash that will only make police violence worse, as the GOP has no problems empowering racial violence.
Seems to me that the GOP has had no issues empowering racial violence and attempting electoral backlash perfectly fine since even before Trump became president. To call it an outcome of the recent BLM and push to defund police seems disingenuous.
I'm not saying that defund the police caused the GOP to take that stance. Rather, the GOP always had that stance, but defund the police had demonstrably negative effects towards democratic...
I'm not saying that defund the police caused the GOP to take that stance. Rather, the GOP always had that stance, but defund the police had demonstrably negative effects towards democratic candidates just overall, but even moreso in swing states, which is to be expected when it's just not a popular stance.
And the less electoral victories for democrats, the more the GOP agenda can be enacted.
In general. Biden had a wishy-washy stance, that was actually not about defunding the police but he didn't really want to say that, but still suffered a 11% net favorability change during that...
In general. Biden had a wishy-washy stance, that was actually not about defunding the police but he didn't really want to say that, but still suffered a 11% net favorability change during that period. Of course, there are confounding factors with that poll but little else happened.
@stu2b50 outlines why defunding the police is a bad idea pragmatically but in my opinion the issue is even clearer than that. Let's imagine that electorally replacing the police force with some...
@stu2b50 outlines why defunding the police is a bad idea pragmatically but in my opinion the issue is even clearer than that.
Let's imagine that electorally replacing the police force with some alternative is possible. Unless that alternative is effective in stopping violent criminals you would have a hard time convincing me that you would not see an unprecedented growth in local militias as people seek to protect themselves from threats real and imagined. For a country as heavily armed as the USA I think this would be altogether an even worse outcome in terms of violence.
To be clear I think American police reform is certainly necessary but can we point to a single country where police aren't necessary? The primary raison d'être for the Social Contract is public...
To be clear I think American police reform is certainly necessary but can we point to a single country where police aren't necessary? The primary raison d'être for the Social Contract is public safety. If you do not have some state apparatus that can prevent violence (with threat of violence) you do not have a state and people will seek new social contracts.
Yes, a lot of this is deeply reflective of the systemic racism -- the sad reality is that white people are much better protected from violence than non-whites. That's probably even a feature inherited from America's troubled history. But I don't think we should pretend defunding the police will accomplish anything -- these people who desire that to continue to be a feature aren't going anywhere -- we're just lessening the ability to reform police (or in this case de-facto police).
I might be victim of what I'm viewing as poor messaging here. When I hear "defund the police" I'm hearing something akin to abolishing/replacing the police. I think redistribution of some police...
I might be victim of what I'm viewing as poor messaging here. When I hear "defund the police" I'm hearing something akin to abolishing/replacing the police. I think redistribution of some police funding (especially in context of current levels of American police funding) to programs that would have better impact is definitely worth pursuing -- the question of to what and how much being worth talking about.
This is a getting into the 'sanewashing' that has been posted here before, for which I agree with the premise that rather than attempt to attach the nuance to a poorly chosen moniker instead a better slogan is chosen.
I don’t think it’s silly, but I think the alternatives aren’t well explained. Or maybe they have been but the explanations haven’t been shared widely? For UBI, I can point to a few well-known...
I don’t think it’s silly, but I think the alternatives aren’t well explained. Or maybe they have been but the explanations haven’t been shared widely?
For UBI, I can point to a few well-known examples where it’s been tried at least on the small scale. Manitoba has gotten written about often enough that I‘m tired of reading introductory articles about it, but maybe that’s what it takes? And there are people doing more UBI studies. What would happen on a really large scale is still unknown.
The one example I know of for a big police restructuring is Camden, and that was replacing one police force with another, so I’m not sure if that’s the same thing?
It’s possible it (however you define “it”) simply hasn’t been tried. In general, I’m in favor of doing the experiment. It seems like it might be hard to find a community willing to give it a go, though?
A complete replacement of the police department with... something else... would probably require a pretty convincing proposal from the people who want to try it, to show the community that they have a plan and know what they’re doing. This is going to sound like a weird comparison, but it’s probably similar to the difficulty for scientists who want to try releasing genetically modified mosquitoes, in the need for community outreach and education and reassurance.
On the other hand, there seem to be a few cities with pilot projects for having non-police first responders for mental health situations, which seems promising, but perhaps too incrementalist for some?
The tl;dr at the bottom as to what Yglesias suggests in terms of policy I get his point, and actually I realized I didn't really think much about the main point, namely how defunding the police...
The tl;dr at the bottom as to what Yglesias suggests in terms of policy
Police should be completely stripped of all special procedural rights and investigated with the same investigative tools that they use against anyone else.
These arbitration panels should be scrapped; officers should have some basic civil service protection against being fired for no cause at all, but the goal should be to build an effective police force not a sinecure for officers.
Compensation structures should feature much higher starting salaries, but not escalate so much over the course of a career. You want way more people to consider a career in policing, but also make it lower stakes to counsel-out someone who finds it frustrating or can’t do the job well.
Quitting one department and going to work in another one should be more normalized than it currently is, where officers instead seem to respond to directives they disagree with by acting surly. But officers dismissed for actual misconduct should not just get hired elsewhere as a shortcut.
Departments need bigger recruiting budgets to invest in securing high-quality job candidates, including those who are Black, female, or fluent in Spanish or other locally relevant languages.
Politicians should acknowledge that when we ask officers to be more restrained with the use of force, we are asking them to take risks with their lives that most people would not want to take and that cops should be compensated accordingly.
But politicians should also insist that taking risks for the greater good of the community literally is the job, and officer fear can’t be an all-purpose answer to questions about brutality.
I get his point, and actually I realized I didn't really think much about the main point, namely how defunding the police would decrease police violence.
So a hardline defund the police would facetiously eliminate police violence because there wouldn't be police but no one is seriously suggesting that in the mainstream.
The softer defund the police stance, yeah, actually I'm not sure why that would help at all. It's true that it's bizarre police are the first responders to mental health crisis, but it's not the mental health calls that are perpetuating the vast majority of violence.
I think one important note is that police unions should not exist. Half of the issues listed would be solved by dissolving them. IMO policing shouldn't be an easily transferable job. You should be...
I think one important note is that police unions should not exist.
Half of the issues listed would be solved by dissolving them.
IMO policing shouldn't be an easily transferable job. You should be forced to live in the same neighborhood where you police. Possibly even have to be elected to remain in that position. The citizens being policed should be able to choose their police officers.
we are asking them to take risks with their lives that most people would not want to take and that cops should be compensated accordingly.
And this point in particular...they already use this argument they have the most dangerous job in the country (which has proven time and time again to be false). So ostensibly that point is already baked in to existing costs.
To me, this article completely misrepresents the point of defunding the police by choosing some of the more extreme examples.
Defunding the police is just the slogan. It's part of a larger movement about deescalating police power and violence. Part of that includes lowering their budget since policing represents an outsized amount of most government budgets, but the more important part is taking that money and directing it toward programs that will lower the number of encounters people have with law enforcement.
This includes things like mental health specialists and crisis councilors that can work with people in crisis and deescalate rather than sending in a bunch of cops with guns to escalate the situation and increase the likelihood of someone dying. It also includes alternative programs like drug programs rather than just throwing someone in jail and letting them rot.
This is true and it needs to change. Many of the points that the author mentions and dismisses later would bring about these changes. Removing immunity for law enforcement officers isn't the radical idea that the author presents it as. These professionals have abused their privilege time and time again for decades so it should be revoked.
I see your point. I think, just like many policial or social slogans, it doesn't cover all the nuances but it gets the main point across in a short, concise phrase.
"Defund the police and give more money to mental health and alternative forms of punishment to help lessen the violence perpetrated on citizens by police officers" doesn't have the same ring to it.
In some ways, it seems to be have a better ring to it, though.
I think that only makes sense from a logical standpoint. A group of people presented with a coherent thesis would be more likely to approve of said stance compared to an activism campaign slogan. I think it's a bit disingenuous to say the thesis has a better ring to it. You can't fit it on a protest sign and leading protest chants is difficult enough, haha. Also, links to the survey and article because I couldn't find them in the thread:
Slate article (wasn't working for me so here is the Google Cache results)
Survey
I don't think it's as much about how they get disproportionate amount of funds, but how they misuse those funds buying shit they don't need like tank transports and military gear. If they actually cared about bettering the community they could distribute those funds to sources to help them de-escalate by sending counselors instead of just cops to calls about domestic disputes or people with mental illness and other situations where a gun isn't ever needed.
I think cops forgot they're supposed to be experts at de-escalating situations to prevent further violence. They have been trained to be afraid of every situation and thus just end up escalating them more because they're so scared in every situation they're required to enter. Bringing in experts that actually can help them do that might put things back in order. And they've proven they aren't smart enough with their funds to do it themselves, so defunding them and distributing it to those services externally is the next best thing.
He only briefly mentions the hardline "delete the police" stance, and moves on to the reallocation argument for the vast majority of the blog post since the former is frankly somewhat silly.
I think part of it is just a weird consolidation of issues and solutions. Undoutably much of the defund the police debate will be around the all-too-common acts of violence by police, in particular for minority communities, because the movement really came to the mainstream with Floyd's murder among others.
And it is weird, and probably unoptimal in many ways, for police to be first responders to mental health emergencies. And there are a handful of cases where that has gone terribly wrong, and police turned their guns unnecessarily. However, these are dwarfed by the number of violent incidents and, well, murders perpetuated by police on patrol.
That violence is really endemic to difficulty, and extreme reluctance, to fire clearly disobendient police officers, and their further ability to simply be rehired later.
I mean, it's one of the bullet points he suggests as reform
On a pragmatic level. As my opinion, to be sure, but replacing the police as an institution completely is a deeply, deeply unpopular sentiment in the US. Like, deeply. It's the kind of policy that when pushed causes electoral backlash that will only make police violence worse, as the GOP has no problems empowering racial violence. And not even in a "our electoral system is stupid and puts power in empty land" way, it's just unpopular everywhere.
But, at least, I would say that the "sanewashed" version is worse, in that it has most of the negative electoral connotation while also not seeming to accomplish much on a policy level.
But it's not just the electoral system being fucked - for example, when polling (Ipsos) Los Angeles specifically, an area heavily left favored, "Defund the police" is net positive by only 1 point, at 46-45. Californians a whole have a net negative rating towards it. It's not simply white people in Kansas with an outsized vote because they get the same amount of senators as New York.
I get that "well, it's too hard, so don't try" is somewhat defeatist, but imo you at least need your base to be into it.
Seems to me that the GOP has had no issues empowering racial violence and attempting electoral backlash perfectly fine since even before Trump became president. To call it an outcome of the recent BLM and push to defund police seems disingenuous.
I'm not saying that defund the police caused the GOP to take that stance. Rather, the GOP always had that stance, but defund the police had demonstrably negative effects towards democratic candidates just overall, but even moreso in swing states, which is to be expected when it's just not a popular stance.
And the less electoral victories for democrats, the more the GOP agenda can be enacted.
In general. Biden had a wishy-washy stance, that was actually not about defunding the police but he didn't really want to say that, but still suffered a 11% net favorability change during that period. Of course, there are confounding factors with that poll but little else happened.
@stu2b50 outlines why defunding the police is a bad idea pragmatically but in my opinion the issue is even clearer than that.
Let's imagine that electorally replacing the police force with some alternative is possible. Unless that alternative is effective in stopping violent criminals you would have a hard time convincing me that you would not see an unprecedented growth in local militias as people seek to protect themselves from threats real and imagined. For a country as heavily armed as the USA I think this would be altogether an even worse outcome in terms of violence.
To be clear I think American police reform is certainly necessary but can we point to a single country where police aren't necessary? The primary raison d'être for the Social Contract is public safety. If you do not have some state apparatus that can prevent violence (with threat of violence) you do not have a state and people will seek new social contracts.
Yes, a lot of this is deeply reflective of the systemic racism -- the sad reality is that white people are much better protected from violence than non-whites. That's probably even a feature inherited from America's troubled history. But I don't think we should pretend defunding the police will accomplish anything -- these people who desire that to continue to be a feature aren't going anywhere -- we're just lessening the ability to reform police (or in this case de-facto police).
I might be victim of what I'm viewing as poor messaging here. When I hear "defund the police" I'm hearing something akin to abolishing/replacing the police. I think redistribution of some police funding (especially in context of current levels of American police funding) to programs that would have better impact is definitely worth pursuing -- the question of to what and how much being worth talking about.
This is a getting into the 'sanewashing' that has been posted here before, for which I agree with the premise that rather than attempt to attach the nuance to a poorly chosen moniker instead a better slogan is chosen.
I don’t think it’s silly, but I think the alternatives aren’t well explained. Or maybe they have been but the explanations haven’t been shared widely?
For UBI, I can point to a few well-known examples where it’s been tried at least on the small scale. Manitoba has gotten written about often enough that I‘m tired of reading introductory articles about it, but maybe that’s what it takes? And there are people doing more UBI studies. What would happen on a really large scale is still unknown.
The one example I know of for a big police restructuring is Camden, and that was replacing one police force with another, so I’m not sure if that’s the same thing?
It’s possible it (however you define “it”) simply hasn’t been tried. In general, I’m in favor of doing the experiment. It seems like it might be hard to find a community willing to give it a go, though?
A complete replacement of the police department with... something else... would probably require a pretty convincing proposal from the people who want to try it, to show the community that they have a plan and know what they’re doing. This is going to sound like a weird comparison, but it’s probably similar to the difficulty for scientists who want to try releasing genetically modified mosquitoes, in the need for community outreach and education and reassurance.
On the other hand, there seem to be a few cities with pilot projects for having non-police first responders for mental health situations, which seems promising, but perhaps too incrementalist for some?
While I concede that that may be true, one cannot complain if people interpret “defund the police” as, well, “defund the police”.
The tl;dr at the bottom as to what Yglesias suggests in terms of policy
I get his point, and actually I realized I didn't really think much about the main point, namely how defunding the police would decrease police violence.
So a hardline defund the police would facetiously eliminate police violence because there wouldn't be police but no one is seriously suggesting that in the mainstream.
The softer defund the police stance, yeah, actually I'm not sure why that would help at all. It's true that it's bizarre police are the first responders to mental health crisis, but it's not the mental health calls that are perpetuating the vast majority of violence.
I think one important note is that police unions should not exist.
Half of the issues listed would be solved by dissolving them.
IMO policing shouldn't be an easily transferable job. You should be forced to live in the same neighborhood where you police. Possibly even have to be elected to remain in that position. The citizens being policed should be able to choose their police officers.
And this point in particular...they already use this argument they have the most dangerous job in the country (which has proven time and time again to be false). So ostensibly that point is already baked in to existing costs.
IMO this should probably be posted in the new weekly US politics topic since it's not reporting on a "significant event" per se, moocow1452.
Got it, didn't know we had one of those.
They just started today, so no worries. :)