Can someone explain “defund” the police vs police reform?
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Anonymous
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https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ead8f9692ebee25b72f17f/t/5b65cd58758d46d34254f22c/1533398363539/CR_NoCops_reform_vs_abolition_CRside.pdf
This is a good graphic. Basically the goal is to demilitarize the police and reduce funding by ensuring police that behave badly don’t get paid admin leave, union protection, etc. Instead funds should go toward community programs, education, housing, etc. |
Anonymous
Interesting that you should mention domestic violence. That movement has been pondering the policy of "defunding" and "decriminalizing" domestic violence away from police intervention to social and community services for years. Let's be clear - for the most part, cops do NOT assist in domestic violence incidents. They often make it worse and just ill equipped to handle it. So instead of asking ill-equipped police officers to assist, fund community services that ARE equipped to work in the area more effectively. So take that one example, and multiply it into a variety of circumstances, and stop funneling so much money to police departments to eff up and mishandle the situations. Also, I think they are calling for not giving police departments lucrative outside contracts to provide security at large events/sporting events/etc. |
Anonymous
Please ignore pp's tone. PP is correct, the police will still be there for their core duties. Other duties, such as dealing with suicide threats and writing parking tickets, would be spun off to trained social workers and others. Core police would continue to function with reforms like banning chokeholds, requiring a police officer to announce s/he's drawing a gun, etc. Officers with almost 20 complaints and 2 formal reprimands, like Chauvin, would be kicked off the police force. I'm no expert, but Campaign Zero, which participated in Obama's Town Hall, had 8 experience-tested reform suggestions. https://www.joincampaignzero.org |
Anonymous
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There are some kooks who want police gone. Abolished. None of them really understands what police do. And they have no suggestions for alternatives.
Others are really talking about reform. But many of them often have no idea what police do everyday. Other than the bad stuff that shows up in the news. We need evidence based reform and not emotion driven reform by well meaning but ignorant politicians. Professional police organizations have been on this for a decade. But they need buy in from every department tout there and many just don’t care. Google PERF Use Of Force. Best practices are there. |
Anonymous
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It is an unfortunate phrase that is wrongly leading people to believe it means get rid of the police force everywhere, and so is now being amplified by the far right to scare people into thinking the far left wants a lawless country. It isn't about that at all. It is about specific police funding changes in specific communities.
What those changes may be are different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction because, of course, the police force is a locally funded and governed entity, so this is a local, not a federal issue (e.g. in some places, unlike DC, the police write parking tickets; a huge waste of police time and resources for some locations, but probably fine in tiny towns). So, in some places it means to alleviate the police from aspects of the job they aren't trained for or shouldn't be wasting resources on by shifting funding for those functions to people who are trained to do those things (like social workers, in some cases, or high school grads in others). It also includes ending funding for practices and initiatives that have proven to be a failure or actually harmful. In some locations, as one example, a ton of money is spent on systems to create gang profiling, but they have been misused and abused, in addition to being ineffective, so there is a call to defund the broken program and work on a better solution. And in some places where the police force has gotten outsized and is grossly overfunded, it does mean to cut it back and shift funding to underfunded programs like education and community programs. As in a giant corporation, a police department can also sometimes become bloated with middle management and people who make things up to do to keep their own jobs. Meanwhile, critical community services are severely underfunded or nonexistent and would, if funded, go a long way to reducing crime. In yet other areas where the people and the police are particularly at odds, some are making compelling arguments to completely reimagine what "policing" that community should look like, which may including abolishing what we now think of as police for that community. So if you want to know what changes fall under the unfortunately labeled Defund Police movement, you need to research the initiatives proposed in your local jurisdiction. The LA lists have been fairly well publicized and debated (but obviously would not mean much to a small town in Md.) Why the focus on funding? Because in any entity, when money is earmarked for a project or promotions have caused middle management bloat, and people have jobs because of it, they will do anything and everything to keep funds running to that project/task/position even in the face of abject failure, especially when backed by a strong union (notoriously difficult to eliminate police jobs). It takes courage and political will to admit something expensive didn't work and pull the plug on funding (aka, defund it), and it takes even more political courage to take a dime away from the police force/union, when the slogan for it is complicated and the slogan against it is so easy to promote with fear (and where there is a history of using fear and bullying tactics to prevent it). |
Anonymous
Thank you for taking the time to explain this. Defund is a bad phrase then. Redefine, makes more sense |
Anonymous
No, abolition means abolition. It doesn't mean reduction. To answer PP's question: police aren't very good at preventing things like bank robberies or domestic assaults. They're purely reactive. And even then, they're not very good at solving crime, either. We'd start by investing in things that reduce crime: universal health care (including prenatal care), subsidized childcare, free drug/alcohol treatment for those that want it, and mental heath care workers in EVERY school. And we'd create a new universe of "first responders" that are equipped to solve the issues you mentioned: think social workers, mental health professionals, domestic violence advocates, paramedics, crisis response workers, etc. |
Anonymous
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Agree it's a terrible slogan. No one that isn't already firmly on your side and well-informed is going to understand that it doesn't actually mean to get rid of the police altogether, especially when they are already primed by their criticism of cancel culture to interpret it that way. And no one is going to go google the slogan to make sure they're interpreting it correctly!
It's incredibly counterproductive. Just like the Abolish ICE slogan. People thought that meant we should just throw open the borders. As I watch and applaud the incredible ads being made against Trump by Never Trump Republican political operatives, I am slack-jawed at how brilliant their messaging is and how terrible ours is. It's especially frustrating now as public opinion among the great majority of Americans, including white people and moderates, is on the side of the protesters. People seem to finally understand and support what Black Lives Matter means. Why must we shoot ourselves in the foot now? |
Anonymous
When you say "we" you mean a very small part of progressives. |
Anonymous
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There are a lot of resources if folks genuinely want to understand the issues being discussed, but the short version is: different activists are calling for different things, and that's okay.
The argument for abolition isn't that the police cease to exist tomorrow. It is that, over time, we move key services away from armed officers of the law and toward other civil servants. Black activists have been engaging with this issue, and doing Q&As with skeptical audiences, for years. If you want to understand the discussion, here's a good compilation of articles and explainers: https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/3382-police-abolition |
Anonymous
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11:34 again: One thing I found really compelling from abolitionist activists was a list of the reforms being advocated by folks like 8can'twait compared to the deaths that have happened in police custody recently.
In almost every case, the police already had those regulations on the books, and it didn't matter. Eric Garner died from a choke hold. The NYPD isn't allowed to use choke holds, but it took years and massive, widespread, public protest to get the cop who killed Garner removed from the job. Or, like, the "duty to intervene" when a cop sees another cop being violent. Minneapolis has those regulations on the books, and three cops sat and watched George Floyd die. Buffalo has those regulations on the books, and fifteen cops watched an elderly man bleed from the ear and did nothing. What good do reforms do if the actual culture of the police force is rooted in violence and white supremacy? I think we have the answer. |
Anonymous
Agree!! Whoever came up with the slogan Defund the Police is not in PR. We need good clear messaging. On the same note, while I love the Ads created by The Lincoln Project, Republicans Against Trump, and The Midas Touch; why can’t the DNC create such effective messages and Ads? |
Anonymous
| “Defund the police” is something woke people like to say but haven’t really thought through. |
Anonymous
From the responses and the explanation in this thread, It sounds like the woke people thought it through. What they did not think through was the actual slogan, as it is misunderstood. |
Anonymous
No. What a lazy knee-jerk answer. Here is a better place to start.
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