[HN Gopher] Defund the Police meets the crime wave
___________________________________________________________________
Defund the Police meets the crime wave
Author : hncurious
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-12-09 21:19 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bariweiss.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bariweiss.substack.com)
| nverno wrote:
| Defunding the police, along with every other policy, applies well
| in some areas and poorly in others. When I was a kid, our town
| decided to defund the police, cutting the force from 3 to 1
| officers IIRC. It made sense because there was no crime, and the
| townspeople didn't want to waste the money on police. All useful
| politics are local.
| fatcat500 wrote:
| The people who support defunding the police have never felt
| genuine fear from being victimized by crime.
|
| It's only after the crime, when you're thinking about how someone
| else had the hubris to threaten your life, thinking about how you
| could have died, or worse, if your loved ones had been with you,
| that they could have died, that you begin to wade yourself into a
| deep and abiding anger.
|
| I used to feel sympathy for criminals. Especially seeing how many
| of them have led rough lives, having been raised by bad parents,
| in horrible environments, having been led by others to
| delinquency as youth, then into crime as adults.
|
| However, once you have been victimized, this sympathy vanishes.
| It does not matter how bad you've had it -- violence is never
| justified. Any person who resorts to violence instantly loses all
| justification.
|
| It is only the rich who can afford to stroke their moral ego in
| such an egregious manner. It is the poor and the middle class who
| pay with their lives for this sanctimony.
| reanimus wrote:
| I dunno man, both me and my mom have been mugged before and the
| police didn't help. Same with when my car was broken into and
| someone tried to break my front door lock.
|
| People make this argument all the time but I fail to see how
| the police have helped any time _I 've_ experienced any actual
| crime, not to mention so many others. That's not even getting
| into the politics of who can call the police and how the police
| react differently to situations, either.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I've been a victim of both violent crime and property theft.
| Police did nothing. It was pulling teeth just to get them to
| write up reports so that I could file insurance claims.
|
| Police don't prevent crime. Hell, they barely even respond to
| crime.
|
| And cops in our city have criminally generous pensions -- when
| you count the pension, lots of these high school grads making
| 100K+/yr. To say nothing of the absurd capital expenditures.
| So, I'm super okay with shifting resources from PDs to
| basically any other program. Value per dollar spent is just
| super low. Probably lower than literally every other item on
| the budget sheet.
|
| Doesn't have to be a political thing. Hell, prior to 2019,
| right-leaning libertarians were the only ones who I could find
| who agreed with me on this. PDs are just a shit use of tax
| dollars until we figure out how to bust up the unions and reign
| in the excessive toy purchases.
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| > Any person who resorts to violence instantly loses all
| justification
|
| This is an argument for defunding the police.
|
| Police reform is sorely needed. "Defund the police" as a slogan
| was insane political malpractice.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > The people who support defunding the police have never felt
| genuine fear from being victimized by crime.
|
| A lot of them felt more than once genuine fear from being
| victimized by crime committed by the police. Which, of course,
| is almost never reported as a crime.
| Bostonian wrote:
| The Democrats run the cities where this is happening. What are
| they going to do about it? Quoting the article:
|
| 'I recently finished reading "San Fransicko," by Michael
| Shellenberger. I recommend it. The subtitle is provocative: "Why
| Progressives Ruin Cities." But, as Shellenberger explains, he
| does not mean to imply that progressives always ruin the cities
| they govern. He's just interested in the specific phenomenon of
| when progressives do ruin cities, and explaining why that
| happens.
|
| And progressives--I count myself as one of them--do ruin cities.
| Or, at least, they put in place policies that cause profound harm
| to the people living in them.'
| noduerme wrote:
| I think we should start differentiating between Democrats and
| progressives. At least here in Portland, the differentiation is
| already complete. Basically everyone is a Democrat and most
| residents would like to have our police force back and see
| people prosecuted for property crimes. The city leadership is
| beholden to a radical fringe who aren't really even liberals so
| much as anarcho-communists.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > I think we should start differentiating between Democrats
| and progressives.
|
| Most US institutions are Marxist today, so stop lying about
| Democrats not being progressives (Marxists.)
|
| The only 2 institutions that are not yet Marxist are local
| police and the US Supreme Court. Note how both are under
| relentless attack by Marxists.
|
| What will happen in 2022 is that government at the Federal
| and state level will become Republican (ie. American)
| majority, but you're stuck with Marxists at the local level.
| So vote accordingly.
|
| Note that half of cnn's anchors (2/4) are under investigation
| this week for fake news, so that should tell you how corrupt
| the left has made the MSM. They've retracted (or worse, not
| yet retracted) every major story they aired since early 2020.
| One of their investors just said, "Maybe we should go back to
| reporting instead of opinion." Because their ratings are down
| 80% since the Nov. 2020 election.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > differentiating between Democrats and progressives...a
| radical fringe
|
| Well, I don't see the moderate democrat leadership denouncing
| the radical fringe, either.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > And progressives--I count myself as one of them--do ruin
| cities
|
| The word progessive can be translated as Marxist - shame on
| you.
|
| And if you're hoping for "racial justice", I'm from the Detroit
| area. Blacks think liberal SJW's are dupes, and without stable
| families and educational success, there is nothing to be done.
| Racism is the least of their problems, as any honest black
| leader will tell you.
|
| In the case of Detroit, it was not rebuilt after the 1969 riots
| - that's over 50 years ago. I expect the same of most of the
| cities the 2020 Marxist riots burned.
|
| Those looters you see in security camera videos - that's all
| they know how to do, until they're back inside prison.
|
| > they put in place policies that cause profound harm to the
| people living in them.
|
| So stop doing it. As the Black leader Frederick Douglas said,
| "Leave us alone." He meant stop the do-good white liberal SJW
| policies that destroyed the Black family with welfare programs.
|
| US Blacks used to have a higher marriage rate than whites, but
| now only 20% of Black women get married. That means almost all
| Black children grow up in a single-parent household, without a
| male authority to teach discipline and boundaries. Hence the
| looting.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads straight into partisan flamewar.
| This is a site for intellectually curious conversation. Those
| are opposite things.
|
| This is especially important when a thread is fresh, because
| threads are so sensitive to initial conditions. If someone
| shows up with a low-information provocation like this one,
| that's extremely likely to leave a negative imprint. Please
| don't do that.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| endymi0n wrote:
| The knee-jerk reaction of "defund the police" to the power abuses
| of police officers struck me as deeply weird from the beginning.
|
| It made me wonder whether the right NOR the left had any clue
| left as what the role of a police force in a democracy was
| actually supposed to be -- or whether that battle cry _really_
| originated from the same forces trying to split the US society:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-po...
|
| Like, there would have been lots of great claims: "Train police",
| "Restructure Police", "Rebuild Police"... but what's a single
| good argument to "Defund Police" other than wanting to go back to
| anarchy?
| rbanffy wrote:
| > 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.
| asdff wrote:
| Oftentimes they are given this military gear for pretty much
| free. When is the last time you've even seen SWAT deployed
| that made you think "I wish they didn't deploy SWAT?"
| r00fus wrote:
| TANSTAAFL - who's paying for that gear? How'd it get in the
| police department's hands "for free"?
|
| I don't want to be SWATTED (for script kiddie's Lulz) just
| because the police have the equipment and need to justify
| usage of it.
| pixelgeek wrote:
| Well the US taxpayer is paying for it. It is military
| equipment that is transferred to police departments
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/24/pros-j24.html
| endymi0n wrote:
| "Unfortunately, as a reaction to our budget cuts, the
| department has decided today to drop all unneccessary
| training, public relations, proactive policing and vehicle
| maintenance. We hope there won't be more cuts in the future
| so we can afford maintaining the urban tanks and full battle
| gear our officers so direly need in these dangerous times."
|
| Duh. Who could possibly have foreseen that defunding would
| not change their attitude?
| pixelgeek wrote:
| It isn't a recent issue. Progressives in the US were warning
| about this trend in the 1980s
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also to police forces closing ranks around their own
| misbehaving officers, such that it's not possible to effect
| change _within_ the system short of tearing down the whole
| system and replacing it with something else.
|
| I think that 2020s protests might've gone very differently
| if, after the previous 18 complaints against Chauvin for
| racially-motivated excessive use of force, his department had
| said "Yes, this is a problem. He is no longer with the force"
| rather than continuing to employ him until somebody died.
| _Most_ police officers I know have been decent people, with
| some bad apples. But unfortunately the bad apples are
| protected and ruin the trust in the police force for
| everyone.
| analog31 wrote:
| Since I had kids in school, I talked with people who expressed
| "defund the police" at the time. My observation is that it was
| a hasty reaction to things that people were acutely observing,
| such as the school police "resource" exclusively engaging with
| black students, sometimes violently, in one case lethally.
|
| And in fact, they had no clue what a police force or a
| democracy were supposed to look like.
| r00fus wrote:
| Bari Weiss is hardly a neutral (or reasonable) voice. Flagged.
| MonadIsPronad wrote:
| In fairness, the article isn't written by Weiss.
| pixelgeek wrote:
| She thought it was good enough to host it.
| terminatornet wrote:
| it's hosted on her substack, so I think we can assume it's
| probably an opinion endorsed by her
| _dain_ wrote:
| this isn't wikipedia
| Abroszka wrote:
| I thought violence is up almost everywhere in the US compared to
| previous years. It would be interesting to see whether this
| increase correlates with police funding or not. My bet would be
| no.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Police funding is also not significantly reduced basically
| anywhere in the US afaict - in fact, it increased in Oakland,
| though not by as much as police chiefs had hoped and as a
| slightly smaller percentage of the overall city budget due to
| increases elsewhere.
| https://oaklandside.org/2021/06/25/oakland-2021-2023-budget-...
|
| Separately, the article links to this source[0] when talking
| about how progressives are "ruining cities", arguing that
| progressives have successfully pushed for decreases police
| budgets despite violent crime increases. But the article linked
| shows increases in police budgets by percentage of the overall
| budget. There are real instances of yoy "cuts" but they seem to
| occur with disproportionately larger cuts elsewhere across the
| budget, which does not support the hypothesis that progressives
| are defending the police; it shows that when cutting budgets we
| still prioritize policing. [0]
| https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/when-the-crime-wave-hits-yo...
|
| Obviously crime is Oakland is too high, what happened to the
| author shouldn't happen anywhere. But it doesn't follow to me
| that the issue was caused by lower police budgets.
| nsriv wrote:
| Exactly this, I've seen so much made of local budgets giving
| less to PD's in percentage terms, which is disingenuous in
| the era of increased municipal spending during COVID.
| Trias11 wrote:
| To solve violent crime we just need to give citizens ability to
| protect themselves.
|
| Try to rob me or hurt my family - be carried away in a body bag.
|
| Yet that goes against some politicians narrative.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Try to rob me or hurt my family - be carried away in a body
| bag.
|
| If the criminal expects you to be armed, they'll just shoot
| first, before you even have the chance to reach your weapons.
| Remember they have the surprise on their side. This expectation
| should by itself increase violent crime and turn violent crimes
| that wouldn't be.
| Trias11 wrote:
| That's what conceal weapons permits are for. Criminals won't
| know and every attempt to do stupid thing might mean the end
| of them.
|
| If wanabe robbers expect citizens to be armed and legally
| able to protect themselves and their loved ones - they will
| think twice if it worth dying for $100.
| [deleted]
| le_epic_throw wrote:
| How many lives is your flatscreen worth?
| Trias11 wrote:
| My life and well being of my family worth more than the
| worthless lowlives who going around robbing, shooting and
| hurting people.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| This is one of many articles which are trying to suggest that we
| cut police budgets and then crime went up, but the first half of
| that never actually happened. Oakland's police budget is the
| highest it's ever been and was not cut in 2020. The article it
| links to as a source for police budgets being cut has the
| headline "Cities Say They Want to Defund the Police. Their
| Budgets Say Otherwise.", and shows that police budgets as a
| percentage of major city budgets slightly _increased_.
| felistoria wrote:
| The police departments can get 100 billion a year and it won't
| matter when the DA just lets criminals walk after they are
| arrested. I think that is one of the main factors in the rise of
| crime and violence. The Waukesha tragedy is a good example of
| this.
| rboes wrote:
| That's the problem here in the Seattle area. First the DA won't
| charge for many crimes and if they do the judges often don't
| sentence appropriately
| le_epic_throw wrote:
| Sorry, but I haven't seen any evidence for a "crime wave" in
| 2020-2021. FBI stats show a slight uptick in violent crimes.
| These rates haven't been seen since... _gasp_ ... 2017.
|
| If police-civilian interactions really decreased 80% (as quoted
| in the article), and in exchange violent crime only raised 5.6%
| [0], personally that shows even dramatic reductions in police
| presence don't lead to complete "anarchy".
|
| I fear, given the increasing discussion around this crime
| """wave""", that some disastrous "tough on crime" policies are
| going to be (re)introduced in the coming years.
|
| [0]https://crime-data-
| explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/cri...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| This should probably be flagged, but I've thought about creating
| an HN clone where people could put some kind of code in their
| profile to validate their identity, to have these kinds of
| conversations with the same handle they use here, while keeping
| HN clean and tech friendly.
| mysecretaccount wrote:
| > Defund advocates often claim that police don't actually prevent
| crimes, that they only bust the perpetrators after the fact. But
| that's untrue. Police presence deters crime[citation provided].
| Arresting career criminals takes them out of circulation. And,
| most important, effective policing bolsters a community's faith
| in government-administered justice.
|
| Regardless of whether defunding is good/bad for crime, this is
| the core justification for existing funding in this article and
| it is quite thin.
|
| Edit: I am unclear on why this is getting downvoted. Almost
| nothing in that paragraph is adequately substantiated anywhere in
| the article. I am not married to any particular perspective on
| this topic, but remain unconvinced of the author's conclusion.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Why is it thin? There are several studies showing how policing
| reduces crime through a couple of measures.
|
| Intuitively it would make sense that locking up criminals would
| reduce crime (making them unable to commit more crime), that
| increasing the chance of a criminal getting locked up would
| reduce crime (via incentives), and just seeing more police
| officers around would reduce crime.
|
| I would be really surprised if for the past 1000 years,
| civilization was tricked into believing in a criminal justice
| system was necessary when in reality it wasn't.
|
| Are there any studies where they dramatically reduced police
| presence and crime wasn't affected?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Walking and spraying multiple houses... I was surprise there was
| no return fire, then I saw it was CA.
| gcheong wrote:
| Unless you have your gun on you at all times in your house what
| are the chances you're going to move fast enough to return fire
| on people cruising through a neighborhood randomly shooting at
| houses?
| giantg2 wrote:
| My understanding was they weren't cruising, but on foot. A
| drive by would be different.
| pengaru wrote:
| > I was surprise there was no return fire, then I saw it was
| CA.
|
| I'm in CA and am surrounded by neighbors with guns, for better
| or worse. If you think CA is devoid of gun owners you're sorely
| mistaken.
| [deleted]
| MonadIsPronad wrote:
| Good article. Nice calm tone, interesting points. Seems like a
| good addition to the conversation.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Bari doesn't sound to me a genuine person. I have seen her first
| podcast with Joe Rogan where she sounded like a layperson with
| typical 21yr old understanding of sociology-political affair.
| Then she suddenly became pro free speech and anti establishment
| media. This is a person who has worked for NYT for gods sake.
| blast wrote:
| Leighton Woodhouse wrote the article.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Just another entertainer grasping desperately for an audience
| large enough to justify an upper-middle class income's worth of
| ad revenue.
| aejnsn wrote:
| You get what you pay for.
| mejari wrote:
| Except they're still paying for it and the police weren't
| defunded
|
| https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-didnt-cut-any-money-from-t...
| nerdponx wrote:
| I can't speak for Oakland specifically. But when I see police
| departments with lots of fancy combat gear, but with minimal
| fitness standards and minimal training in things like unarmed
| combat, I can't help but feel like the people are not getting
| their tax money's worth.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| this article has no content. just show some contextualized
| statistics of how police funding correlates with crime. in
| seattle, it really hasnt from what ive seen. but if you have
| compelling numbers, go ahead
| WalterBright wrote:
| Seattle crime statistics are misleading. It's been reported
| many times that since the police no longer even show up for
| shoplifting crimes, business owners no longer bother to report
| it.
|
| Nobody knows what the crime rate actually is as a result. But
| the accountants at the retail stores know, and they're raising
| prices, installing armored doors, or simply leaving the city.
|
| The local bank branch I patronize now sports an armed guard
| wearing body armor standing outside the door. It's only a block
| from the police station. Pretty sad.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> The local bank branch I patronize now sports an armed
| guard wearing body armor standing outside the door. It 's
| only a block from the police station. Pretty sad._
|
| Well that's certainly a vote of confidence for the
| professionalism and effectiveness for the police.
| terminatornet wrote:
| > I have seen the unraveling over the past year in my own
| neighborhood. In October, about three blocks from my house, a
| neighbor was shot and killed in a home invasion. About a mile
| south in the same month, a 15-year-old girl was shot to death in
| an act of road rage. And just a few weeks ago, a little more than
| a half-mile west of me, another teenager was fatally shot.
|
| What exactly would police have done in any of these situations to
| prevent them from happening?
|
| > They claim that, by taking money from police and putting it
| toward social programs, they can eliminate the need for heavy-
| handed policing in the first place. But the social programs are
| an afterthought. What matters most to these activists is tearing
| down the cops, not building up the tattered neighborhoods those
| cops are charged with protecting.
|
| Progressives in the US want an increased federal minimum wage and
| guaranteed healthcare for everyone. Studies seemed to show mixed
| results on whether or not this will result in a decrease in
| overall crime, but now seems like the time to try.
| scrollbar wrote:
| I read most of the article, in which the author implies that
| defunding the police increases crime, and blames the people in
| charge of Oakland with this crime.
|
| Yet I recalled hearing that police budgets in Oakland were steady
| to up this year, despite the protests.
|
| A quick search seems to confirm this:
| https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-didnt-cut-any-money-from-t...
|
| >Despite claims to the contrary, the Oakland City Council did not
| make any cuts to the police budget at all this year. In fact,
| Oakland police were allotted about $39 million more than in the
| previous two years, according to a KTVU analysis of city records.
|
| What did I miss?
| codenesium wrote:
| Not much. It's an opinion piece. Probably doesn't belong on HN.
| mitigating wrote:
| Would it be similar to if I wrote an article saying I'm 10ft
| tall?
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| There is a difference between opinion pieces that are at
| least backed by reality and ones that are mostly hot air
| omegaworks wrote:
| This one is mostly hot air.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| It's more than an implication, it's a direct statement:
|
| > As the surge in violence has become less theoretical to
| white, middle class residents, Oakland's mayor has been
| afforded the political space to push to restore the funds that
| were cut from the police budget.
| deeg wrote:
| Crime is going up in cities all over the country, including
| those in red states that never had a sniff of "Defund the
| Police". I'm unconvinced that it's a direct contributor.
| omegaworks wrote:
| >Crime is going up in cities all over the country
|
| False
| pixelgeek wrote:
| And your link to supporting data is where?
| treeman79 wrote:
| Going after a bad guy is now very risky.
|
| If someone puts a gun to your head and says they will kill
| you and you protect yourself. Well you will be made an
| example.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| My guess is that the root cause is a mix of increasing
| inequalities (perceived or real), low wages and polarizations
| in the media.
| zzzbra wrote:
| Some added data to back up what you're saying:
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-
| homi...
|
| Increases in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Minnesota, and
| Kentucky would indicate to me a lack of correlation for
| various partisan policies driving this.
| ybessyehs654 wrote:
| The article you posted is dated July 1st. The author's citation
| for the "defunding" bill was approved on June 24 [1], in which
| funds were redirected from the police to "violence prevention
| programs." Obviously both articles are talking about different
| things.
|
| [1] https://abc7news.com/oakland-police-funding-city-council-
| cut...
| scrollbar wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this.
|
| If I read this article correctly then the author's point is
| that simply the passage of a bill to be enacted in the future
| is the cause of increased crime in the present, which seems
| like a shaky argument to me.
|
| Also I'm noticing that the ABC7News article says
|
| >More than $17 million will be diverted from the police to
| violence prevention and other services not involving police.
| Another $3.6 million will be put into the new MACRO program
| which will basically be a civilian crisis response program
| within the Oakland Fire Department addressing those in mental
| health crises.
|
| This means that even assuming this is a net decrease of $20.6
| million to budget, this is still giving back only ~half the
| net increase from this year's budget. So we should still be
| up $16 million or so vs. 2020
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I wouldn't put it past upset American cops to simply not do
| their job properly as a form of protest.
| user982 wrote:
| _The police in essence said: "If you challenge us, if you
| insult us, we will no longer protect you."_ -
| https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/nypd-police-slowdown-
| defund-d...
|
| Police are intentionally allowing crimes specifically to
| boost the narrative of posts like this.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| I think it is that the movement itself has caused crime to
| increase.
|
| My friend is a police officer and is moving out of my
| progressive state to a more conservative one. He told me this
| is happening in nearly every department.
|
| His reasoning was that they use to feel like they were on the
| side of the community, but in many places it is now the
| community is opposed to the police. Also they don't risk
| certain things because they might have to use force and they're
| worried they'll be charged with a crime f or doing so,
| (especially if people riot enough and the DA needs to satisfy
| them).
|
| All that adds up to more crime, even though budgets will
| probably rise to pay more to try to convince officers to stay.
|
| How do we both protest police brutality when it rears its head,
| while still treating officers like they're on the side of the
| good guys (like most, but not all, are).
|
| I have no answer.
| scrollbar wrote:
| That may or may not be true and is worth exploring more.
| Although as another poster points out, this is a vastly
| different argument than saying as the article does:
|
| >As the surge in violence has become less theoretical to
| white, middle class residents, Oakland's mayor has been
| afforded the political space to push to restore the funds
| that were cut from the police budget.
|
| Which seems to be to be a misunderstanding of consensus
| reality
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _All that adds up to more crime_
|
| And yet there is a dearth of evidence for this claim.
| reanimus wrote:
| You're right on the mark. A lot of articles scare-mongering
| about defunding the police point to numbers in places that
| haven't seen any defunding (quite the contrary, many of them
| have had boosts to their budgets, as usual).
| wobblyasp wrote:
| You missed the opportunity to push your narrative
| vondur wrote:
| The main item in certain states is not prosecuting crime. We
| recently had a smash and grab robbery that made news here in
| SoCal. The suspects were quickly apprehended, but it turns out
| they were released on bail almost immediately afterwards. Due
| to the non-prosecution of criminal acts, these people will
| probably never do any jail time. People are definitely
| cognizant of this at this point, and it's eroding peoples trust
| of the government.
| x1ph0z wrote:
| > What did I miss
|
| Someone pushing their propaganda
| nerdponx wrote:
| > What did I miss?
|
| Nothing. There is a narrative being pushed that tries to
| correlate Black Lives Matter, Defund The Police, etc. activity
| with increasing crime. That narrative might have some validity
| in some localized cases, but is clearly not universally causal.
| eckmLJE wrote:
| Actual instances of police funding being reduced are so rare
| that the author reaches for incidents of low police-citizen
| interaction following controversial police-on-citizen violence
| as evidence of what a straw-man version of "defund the police"
| advocates for.
|
| "Defund the police" has to be the most poorly conceived
| political slogan of all time. It sounds more like a pejorative
| its opponents came up with.
| mitigating wrote:
| wouldn't that mean the cause of the increased crime is either
| criminals who are angry at the police so they commit more
| crimes or the police not working as hard (or a combination)
| ben_w wrote:
| Could be, but those aren't exhaustive possibilities. There
| might also just be more crime e.g. because of the pandemic
| rather than anger at the police, or there might be the same
| actual level of crime but more is getting reported.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I can understand some criticisms of the slogan, but why are
| you criticizing the slogan in this case when the police were
| literally not defunded?
| torstenvl wrote:
| Well, first off, a 1.3% increase in dollar terms in the face of
| 6.2% inflation is, in point of actual fact, a budget cut.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| > What did I miss?
|
| A cultural shift. We now have people getting mad about things
| that aren't happening and sharing this info as fact to anyone
| who will listen
| pixelgeek wrote:
| > Defund advocates dismiss these arguments--not because they can
| refute them with evidence, but because they're blinded by
| ideology.
|
| I don't know how you are supposed to take a writer seriously when
| they write things like this.
|
| > Even in the absence of a viable alternative, they demand that
| existing law enforcement structures be torn down.
|
| And this actually just isn't true. The author has time to read
| academic papers on policing issues but he doesn't seem to have
| read any of the material that police abolitionists have written.
|
| He also references Michael Shellenberger frequently, a man who
| has also written "Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism
| Hurts Us All" and "Break Through: Why We Can't Leave Saving the
| Planet to Environmentalist". I think Shellenberger had to put
| aside his 'liberal' credentials a long time ago.
|
| > Today, with few exceptions, there is no more involuntary
| treatment for serious mental disease or drug addiction. But nor
| is there a humane alternative. There is only jail or the streets.
|
| Maybe this has something to do with public funding for mental
| health being slashed almost everywhere and also linked to drug
| laws. So people who are on the streets and self-medicating
| because they couldn't get treatment can't be placed in the few
| available options because of their drug intake.
|
| The entire article is a gloss over the issues without any real
| look at it.
|
| San Fran is indeed a messed up city. So is Oakland. But I really
| don't have time for white people complaining about a situation
| that _never_ affects them. He is complaining about his nanny
| having to move. Not him. His nanny. How does that compare to the
| police killing your friends and relatives for no reason?
| [deleted]
| adt2bt wrote:
| > They claim that, by taking money from police and putting it
| toward social programs, they can eliminate the need for heavy-
| handed policing in the first place. But the social programs are
| an afterthought.
|
| This feels like a strawman. I don't think it's surprising that
| there's a rise in crime when police are defunded, especially when
| those social programs aren't enacted. I think most reasonable
| progressives who support defunding the police also recognize the
| whole point is to shift investment away from punishment (police)
| into aid (social programs) to deter crime. It takes years for
| that to happen, and really needs to happen on a societal level to
| provide opportunities that otherwise 'career criminals' do not
| have which leads them down that path.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Are there any good comparisons on how much a dollar of policing
| vs a dollar of social programs deter crime?
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Is there any evidence that current police funding levels help
| to deter crime in any significant way whatsoever?
| settrans wrote:
| Is there any evidence that, on net, state welfare programs
| deter crime in any significant way?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem with "defund the police" is that we never really
| defined what it was.
|
| Are we talking about the libertarian thing were you literally
| don't have the police anymore, and then you have a posse of
| ordinary citizens come together to execute arrest warrants and a
| high rate of private firearms ownership to deter crime? That
| would have been a weird thing to hear from progressives, I would
| think. And did anybody actually do this anywhere?
|
| But if it's not that then the whole thing comes down to the
| details of what you're actually talking about.
|
| That's kind of the problem with the whole movement. You have some
| really quite serious problems with the criminal justice system.
| Police unaccountability, perjury, prosecutorial misconduct,
| overcharging, the plea bargaining system. Civil asset forfeiture.
| Traffic fines used for revenue generation, creating adversarial
| interactions between ordinary people and the police and
| needlessly increasing the opportunities for things to go very
| wrong. Over-criminalization of everything, causing the US to have
| the largest prison population in the world. The War on Drugs.
| Things that really need to get fixed.
|
| But then we have a video of a white cop killing a black man and a
| media narrative that says it's all about race, even though the
| statistics don't bear that out.
|
| If you misidentify the problem then you're going to come up with
| dumb solutions.
| dang wrote:
| I took the less baity title from the author's site:
| https://leightonwoodhouse.substack.com/p/defund-the-police-m....
| I didn't change the URL because this appears to be a more recent
| article on the same topic.
| drewwwwww wrote:
| i think it's worth pointing out giving the still semi-
| inflammatory nature of the headline, no serious advocate of
| defunding the police has ever suggested that simply doing that is
| the goal. the idea is to shift funding from cops walking around
| with guns killing people to things that actually prevent crime
| from happening, and as the piece points out, even in the few
| places that have actually reduced funding to police, that has not
| occurred in any significant way.
|
| it's a resource allocation argument, not an 'everything would be
| better if police instantly winked out of existence' argument.
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