You do realize "defund the police" means diverting funds that would usually be spent on tons of military grade gear they don't need, and using those funds on community improvement programs, right?
I think the "defund the police" movement has a very unfortunate name. Many (hopefully most) people don't want to pull _all_ funding from the police. They want to appropriately redistribute funds. That means stopping spend on surplus military weapons and tanks, and instead put more money towards the proper training you mentioned.
I don't think any reasonable person is suggesting we fully defund or disband the police. They are suggesting that by giving police military style gear it incentivizes them to use it.
Instead of giving the police this crazy gear, we should redirect that money into training for the police. Or maybe some of it should go to schools.
I want the police to be equipped for the situations they might or will encounter, and that includes surplus military gear sold down to them. What they need is better training, discipline, and accountability and for that we absolutely should not be "defunding" them.
> there would have been lots of great claims: "Train police", "Restructure Police", "Rebuild Police"... but what's a single good argument do Defund Police other than going back to anarchy?
I believe it's a reaction to police forces now having military gear when it should be totally unnecessary. In many places police officers don't even need guns.
Maybe spending less money in militaria and more in training would be a consequence of not having to fund military equipment, supplies, and maintenance. It'd, at least, limit the violent options police has when they are going to engage a suspect.
Yes. I don’t think people realize police are expensive. You shouldn’t use them to “solve” problems unless you have no other means available. Police also aren’t terribly interested in the demoralizing work that gets put on their shoulders by a lack of investment in social infrastructure. Nobody becomes a cop to rip down a tent city.
There’s a sick irony that the very same people who are fighting “for” the police against the defund crowd also demand police officers perform tons of unnecessary grueling work the police themselves willingly admit they aren’t trained to handle.
I think for many people “Support the Police” really means only support their budget; not support them as human beings or public servants.
Yes. I've found a strange inconsistency with some of the people calling for the defunding of police - they were until very recently saying citizens didn't need guns because the police were always close by. Now they're saying the police are bad and we can take care of ourselves.
The call for defunding the police isn't meant to cut their pay, or even to eliminate the police.
It's to stop sending police armed with lethal weaponry to scenarios that don't require it. Homelessness, poverty, drug abuse, and mental disorders are things that cops are not equipped to deal with, yet we send cops to deal with them. Defunding the police means to stop sending cops to those instances and instead funnel the money into social programs to deal with them.
And, unsurprisingly, people calling to defund the police thought about how things would be if we stopped sending thugs with military-grade arms into our communities and calling them police. Also, unsurprisingly, no one who claimed those folks were wrong bothered listening to them.
I think the main problem is the _unbelievable_ level of incompetence roaming freely within the police force. They never catch the bad guys [1] and the money you give them may be used to buy expensive toys [2].
There are many items involved in this. Defunding things like SWAT and military vehicles for police forces is a reasonable thing to do as most of those police forces don't need these things. If you look at all these particular issues then what was the policing policy that caused them? I think you need to examine why those were executed to get a sense of how to not repeat those mistakes. You've also got to look inside a police force at the people that are police officers. There are a lot of less desirable personalities in there. I don't think throwing police forces to the wolves is the way to go as there are lots of good officers impacted by this. I think police need to evolve not be tossed aside to start from scratch and repeat the same mistakes.
Also, it's not quite clear how much of a material difference exists between the middle answer and the defund the police answer. The slogan has some optics issues, but diverting funds from overfunded surplus military gear filled police departments to social support networks is not likely to be controversial with the middle group either.
> You do realize "defund the police" means diverting funds that would usually be spent on tons of military grade gear they don't need, and using those funds on community improvement programs, right?
That's not what it means at all. In policing, as in most organizations, the overwhelming majority of expense comes from paying salaries and benefits. Equipment makes up a relatively small portion of the pie. The only way to defund the police, or anything else for that matter, is to cut the headcount.
Why I don't agree with AOC on much, she was considerably more honest than other politicians when she said, "Defund the police means defund the police".
As others have already pointed out, meaningful improvements to policing in the U.S. would require spending more money, not less.
> Yeah so “defund the police!” Should actually be “fund better police training!”
Most people saying the former would support it being accompanied by the latter, however, they will note that that the past several decades have involved several police reform movements that have driven additional net funding to police at the expense of other local services, contributing to the expansion of police roles. “Defund the police” is about driving down the proportion of local funding consumed by paramilitary law enforcement and, along with it, the scope of responsibility. Increasing the share of those remaining resoueces devoted to training, and even moreso the quality of that training in respect to the remaining role of the paramilitary law enforcement services, is not something “defund" activists oppose, just something that they see as inadequate and not the first priority.
Which raises the question why the US doesn't arm its EMT and firefighters.
The bit that many seem to overlook is that the US police are being called out for all manner of first response calls and traffic management that are essentially equivilant to fire and ambulance calls, the strategy should be to investigate the issue and then bring in the heavy handed response if required.
There seems to be a very general blinkered view that is unable to break out of the "this is how we've always done it, there is no better way".
As "the police" are so strongly identified with violence the best interpretation of "defund the police" is to break out "incidence response | community assistance" away from "armed thuggery" and work to get some respect back from the broader public.
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