Defund MPD - thoughts?

[Anonymous]

I've been seeing a lot more discussion about defunding MPD, and some of the articles written about it seem to have merit. One thing that struck me was the question: what has MPD actually done for you? How often are they useless? Here's my list, I'm curious about others.
Helpful:
-gave me a police report for a hit and run on my parked car, which I needed for insurance
-gave me a police report for a stolen bike, which was helpful to get it back later
-arrested a couple of people in a shooting by my house

Not helpful:
-they do nothing for traffic violence - people can do pretty much whatever they want and MPD does nothing. Leave it to the cameras...
-they refused to take a report of someone pulling out a gun and trying to rob me (the guy dropped it, I got away)
-they downplayed several other reported crimes "are you sure you didn't just lose it?"
-they harassed me for reporting other MPD officers misbehavior

It's clear that the "not helpful" list grows a lot if you're a young Black man or teen. What I'm wondering is why can't we cut down on the number of MPD officers vastly? These officers are paid a lot. More than needed for writing a report. Sure, we still need some armed officers, but not to write police reports.
Even the response to the shooting - when I saw details of it, it was clear that there were some violence prevention efforts going on, but not enough. I'd rather have more violence interruption efforts on the street to keep those kids from doing something stupid. They might at least have a shot at a life instead of dead / in jail.

Ok, flame away.

[Anonymous]

On the contrary, we meed more funding to train police officers in non-violent methods, as well as more pay to select intelligent human beings capable of nuance rather than bottom-of-the-barrel freaks who apply because they’re too stupid to work elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Cops don't do anything. They don't prevent crimes. They don't solve crimes. DC has the biggest police force in the country, on a per capita basis, and I have no idea what they do all day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
On the contrary, we meed more funding to train police officers in non-violent methods, as well as more pay to select intelligent human beings capable of nuance rather than bottom-of-the-barrel freaks who apply because they’re too stupid to work elsewhere.

"Needs more training" sounds like responding to poor driving with "needs more education". Pretty weak.

MPD is already well-trained and well-paid. Why do you think more is the answer?

[Anonymous]

Defunding is idiotic. We need real consequences for misconduct, de-escalating training, and to remove the racists.

[Anonymous]

We have to have some government body that makes arrests for crimes. Getting rid of law enforcement entirely is idiotic.

However, cops aren’t necessary in all situations. More 911 calls should be routed to mental health professionals, social workers, etc. who are trained to deal with specific situations.

But getting rid of cops entirely is mindnumbingly stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Defunding is idiotic. We need real consequences for misconduct, de-escalating training, and to remove the racists.

Start throwing cops in prison for misconduct. That will clean things up real quick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Defunding is idiotic. We need real consequences for misconduct, de-escalating training, and to remove the racists.

Any time real consequences for misconduct have been proposed they squeal about striking. I think that happened in NYC, right? I'd say have fewer people on there.

There's plenty of deescalation training in MPD already. Why do you think we need more?

The police union prevents racists from being removed. Literally. And that's just the overt ones with racist tattoos or t-shirts. "Mildly" racist police officers are still a huge problem because they have such power. Remove that power and then it's less if an issue that they are racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have to have some government body that makes arrests for crimes. Getting rid of law enforcement entirely is idiotic.

However, cops aren’t necessary in all situations. More 911 calls should be routed to mental health professionals, social workers, etc. who are trained to deal with specific situations.

But getting rid of cops entirely is mindnumbingly stupid.

OP literally said "Sure, we still need some armed officers"

So do you agree with downsizing? Or really, recategorizing many jobs to be more administrative, like to the people who ticket parked cars?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have to have some government body that makes arrests for crimes. Getting rid of law enforcement entirely is idiotic.

However, cops aren’t necessary in all situations. More 911 calls should be routed to mental health professionals, social workers, etc. who are trained to deal with specific situations.

But getting rid of cops entirely is mindnumbingly stupid.

OP literally said "Sure, we still need some armed officers"

So do you agree with downsizing? Or really, recategorizing many jobs to be more administrative, like to the people who ticket parked cars?

We need many fewer armed law enforcement officers, and more mental health professionals, social workers, etc. If you call 911 to say a crazy person is on your block ranting (which happens constantly in NYC, where i used to live) a cop shouldn’t be the one responding to that situation. It should be a mental health professional, who knows how to interact with that person and can make the determination about whether that person needs services.

A cop isn’t trained to handle that situation properly and too often ends up escalating it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
On the contrary, we meed more funding to train police officers in non-violent methods, as well as more pay to select intelligent human beings capable of nuance rather than bottom-of-the-barrel freaks who apply because they’re too stupid to work elsewhere.

"Needs more training" sounds like responding to poor driving with "needs more education". Pretty weak.

MPD is already well-trained and well-paid. Why do you think more is the answer?

Because existing funding is more often than not used for purposes other than non-violent response training.

I’d also be ok with defunding other police programs in order to funnel money into NVR training.

But we must also raise pay and be more selective in who we hire, just like for teachers! These jobs are essential to our community wellbeing and smart hires are of critical importance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have to have some government body that makes arrests for crimes. Getting rid of law enforcement entirely is idiotic.

However, cops aren’t necessary in all situations. More 911 calls should be routed to mental health professionals, social workers, etc. who are trained to deal with specific situations.

But getting rid of cops entirely is mindnumbingly stupid.

+1 Invest more in drug rehabilitation and prevention. That could decrease calls to 911.

Give citizen review boards actual power by recommendations to fire cops with multiple complaints....

If there is no police, what are the replacements? Private security forces and gangs...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have to have some government body that makes arrests for crimes. Getting rid of law enforcement entirely is idiotic.

However, cops aren’t necessary in all situations. More 911 calls should be routed to mental health professionals, social workers, etc. who are trained to deal with specific situations.

But getting rid of cops entirely is mindnumbingly stupid.

+1 Invest more in drug rehabilitation and prevention. That could decrease calls to 911.

Give citizen review boards actual power by recommendations to fire cops with multiple complaints....

If there is no police, what are the replacements? Private security forces and gangs...

Yep, basically racketeers, which is what happened when the government lost control in 1990s Russia.

This is a great book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Violent-Entrepreneurs-Making-Russian-Capitalism/dp/0801487781

[Anonymous]

After seeing the protests and the stuff the police pulled out, I think we can fund a lot less equipment. Clearly, we gave them too many hammers so everything looked like a nail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have to have some government body that makes arrests for crimes. Getting rid of law enforcement entirely is idiotic.

However, cops aren’t necessary in all situations. More 911 calls should be routed to mental health professionals, social workers, etc. who are trained to deal with specific situations.

But getting rid of cops entirely is mindnumbingly stupid.

+1 Invest more in drug rehabilitation and prevention. That could decrease calls to 911.

Give citizen review boards actual power by recommendations to fire cops with multiple complaints....

If there is no police, what are the replacements? Private security forces and gangs...

Again, OP literally did not say zero police "Sure, we still need some armed officers". Please read more carefully.