Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 8, 2020 18:30:37 GMT -5
My concern is that I don't think there's a ton of data on what happens if you completely dismantle a police department in a major city. To be clear I'm not necessarily an advocate for dismantling Over-bloated police departments and military has been discussed since the Bush era. That really isn't the issue. I think most people would be in favor of budget cuts for the police force. "Dismantling" is really the key issue here because what exactly are you dismantling? Are you gonna replace all the police officers with a new breed of police officers? Are you going to... privatize... the police, similar to certain elements of the military during the Bush-Cheney years? Both options are stupid and actually quite dangerous. Police officers right now are thinking to themselves, "oh wait, my job is in jeopardy? Fuck this." And if they decide to go on strike as an act of rebellion, before a solution has been put in place, chaos is gonna be put in place. Look at what just happened in New York. The police were hands-off during the protests and the looters took over. People protesting the police, I hate to tell ya, but you need the police. That said, you did highlight something very important. If we allocate police funds into social programs and eliminate people's temptations for crime, that would be a MAJOR step in the right direction. If you have less crime that means you need less officers and it means you can be A LOT more selective in hiring officers. You can actually weed out the troublemakers and create a healthier police culture.
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jun 8, 2020 19:00:47 GMT -5
I see a fair amount of people on the far left advocating for "accerationism" towards "dismantling Capitalism" etc. They hope that Trump wins because they want the entire governmental structure redone.
Their arguments in this piece of policy should be taken with a grain of salt and as bad faith.
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Jun 8, 2020 20:06:21 GMT -5
Alright, I’ll break my silence on this.
The Minneapolis Police Department in its current form has proven itself time and again but especially recently to be a corrupt piece of shit and has now proven to be a worldwide embarrassment for which we may never recover. On principal I’d be happy to see it burned to the ground and every officer on it shit-canned, and especially the union leadership that seems to have acted as an impediment to any and all real reform. If “disbanding” the whole department is truly the only way to get out of the city’s fucked up union contract then it won’t take much to persuade me of that. However, I’m not exactly excited at the prospect of having my property and my life placed at risk in order to turn the city into a test tube for a bunch of untested ideas that are being dived into without fully thinking them through. In short, I’m going to need to hear a whole hell of a lot more about whatever it is they’re planning before I’m going to be comfortable with something as “out there” as disbanding a police department.
I’m hearing a lot of the ideas floating around about this and frankly a lot of them sound great in theory but I’m not terribly sure how well they’ll actually work. I’m sure that social workers and the like could do some great things if given more funding, but let’s not act like such social programs don’t already exist on some level already and they haven’t exactly brought about a crime free utopia so far and (especially in a cash crunched COVID economy) there are going to be limits to how much more funding they can receive and how much more effective they can really be. Also, cities aren’t walled off bubbles. Minneapolis in particular is a relatively small city at the center of a very large metropolitan area. We have St. Paul to our east and a range of rather large (not particularly affluent) suburbs to our North, South, and West and I don’t think any of them are terribly interested in following the Minneapolis City Council’s lead. So, there are limits to how much of our own money we can spend keeping people from becoming criminals through poverty.
There are also frankly limits to how much a lot of these various social services can really be divided. Like, if there’s a call about a mentally ill person waving a knife around do you call the mental health police or do you call the regular police? Maybe the mental health police would be able to talk him down but maybe they can’t. Also what happens if you get the call about the knife waving person, the real police are patrolling two blocks away but the mental health police are five miles away? Do you wait on the mental health police and hope no one gets stabbed in the time it takes them to get there, or do you send the real police? And what about traffic stops? We’re presumably still going to need people to track down stolen cars, enforce basic traffic laws, and pull over drunk drivers… are those going to be traditional cops? If not what happens the first time one of them ends up coming up against a guy with a gun?
I would also question this assumption people make that “violent” crimes are the only ones that need to be enforced. There are plenty of crimes like shoplifting that might technically be “non-violent” but which still obviously need to be enforced in order for society to operate. Like, if a shop owner calls 911 about a shoplifter and you send some kind of community outreacher or whatever do they still have the power to make arrests? If so wouldn’t they ultimately have to resort to the same kind of violence that regular cops would if the suspect in question resists that arrest and isn’t terribly interested in participating in whatever social outreach those “non-cops” are supposed to be doing.
I would also question this tacit assumption everyone is making that these social workers, mental health officials, and drug treatment people aren’t going to be susceptible to the same racist biases, run of the mill corruption, and chummy blue-line bullshit that the regular police are currently engaging in. People are constantly complaining about district attorney offices becoming far too close to and protective of the police, who’s to say that these social workers and mental health officials won’t fall into the same trap? There’s also the question of how much crime police deter simply by their very existence. When it becomes clear to potential criminals that they can get away with more and more are they going to try to do exactly that? I tend to have a pretty dim view of human nature; when left to their own devices I think people are inherently prone to violence, exploitation, and self-interest. This is something that’s been proven true about humanity over and over again and frequently proven true by the police themselves. I have my strong doubts that people will only behave better when there are fewer enforcement mechanisms forcing them to behave. I don’t really think less cops is the answer, better and more equitable cops who are more closely watched and kept in line are the answer.
So rather than following this pie-in-the-sky aspirational “abolish the police model” I’d much rather see what they can do if they destroy the police union to see what can be done if the reformer police chiefs and civilian oversight can really accomplish if they aren’t constantly battling with that bullshit red tape that’s been protecting the worst aspects of the department. You can even mix some of these social service ideas into the strategy without predicating it on the “abolition” of the very idea of police.
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PG Cooper
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Post by PG Cooper on Jun 8, 2020 21:01:13 GMT -5
Fair points and well stated, Drac.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 8, 2020 21:28:48 GMT -5
In short, I’m going to need to hear a whole hell of a lot more about whatever it is they’re planning before I’m going to be comfortable with something as “out there” as disbanding a police department. Exactly. Like, if a shop owner calls 911 about a shoplifter and you send some kind of community outreacher or whatever do they still have the power to make arrests? If so wouldn’t they ultimately have to resort to the same kind of violence that regular cops would if the suspect in question resists that arrest and isn’t terribly interested in participating in whatever social outreach those “non-cops” are supposed to be doing. That's another of my many questions, what kind of authority will these semi-cops have? Whoever is given responsibility to 'keep the peace' for lack of better words has to be given some teeth. You and Coop both make good points, it'll be interesting to see what solutions are brought to the table but like you said I'm not anxious to see what city serves as a test for this.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 8, 2020 23:52:13 GMT -5
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Ramplate
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Post by Ramplate on Jun 9, 2020 6:01:54 GMT -5
good, maybe they'll all get the virus
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jun 9, 2020 6:22:43 GMT -5
good, maybe they'll all get the virus Hey man, good to hear from you!
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Ramplate
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Post by Ramplate on Jun 9, 2020 7:55:06 GMT -5
good, maybe they'll all get the virus Hey man, good to hear from you! Thanks, yeah I finally signed in after wiping my password memory
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frankyt
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Post by frankyt on Jun 9, 2020 13:33:19 GMT -5
Most municipalities will be forced to lower their police budgets due to the covid recession anyway (which is an easy thing to politicize one way or another), they should (and my guess will) capitulate on lowering their budget and overall numbers placating some protestors and the general public to return to business as usual when the greater populace forgets about this.
Same as it ever was.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 9, 2020 20:33:08 GMT -5
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 9, 2020 22:28:07 GMT -5
PG Cooper thebtskink SnoBorderZerofrankyt, back when cops dropped a bomb in West Philly: My folks are from across Jersey, so not their hood, but shit’s still terrifying. Imagine minding your business and the cops flyby and drop a bomb on your street. You put that in a movie and people will say it’s unrealistic — like the mayor in Jaws. Police reform... political reform... is looonnng overdue.
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SnoBorderZero
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Post by SnoBorderZero on Jun 9, 2020 22:40:54 GMT -5
We are well past due for significant police reform in this country.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 9, 2020 22:46:59 GMT -5
I could get behind political reform. I know it would never, ever happen but anyone who supports term limits gets my vote.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 9, 2020 22:49:23 GMT -5
I could get behind political reform. I know it would never, ever happen but anyone who supports term limits gets my vote. Republicans created term limits cause of FDR. FDR. Of all fucking people. So I think it’s only fair that Democrats create term limits cause of Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 9, 2020 22:50:59 GMT -5
A lot of people think that someone being in office for 25 or 30 years is a good thing. 'Hey, he's been around for a while, he's got my vote.' Christ.
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jun 9, 2020 23:00:33 GMT -5
ah, MOVE.
Bigger clusterfuck than Waco imo.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 9, 2020 23:02:00 GMT -5
A lot of people think that someone being in office for 25 or 30 years is a good thing. 'Hey, he's been around for a while, he's got my vote.' Christ. It doesn’t need to be a bad thing. We just don’t have voters to keep politicians in check.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 9, 2020 23:10:19 GMT -5
A lot of people think that someone being in office for 25 or 30 years is a good thing. 'Hey, he's been around for a while, he's got my vote.' Christ. It doesn’t need to be a bad thing. We just don’t have voters to keep politicians in check. Exactly. When the approval ratings for Congress at any point are in the low teens to mid twenties while their re-election rate is in the high eighties to low nineties then there's a disconnect somewhere.
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Wyldstaar
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Post by Wyldstaar on Jun 9, 2020 23:24:29 GMT -5
These police departments keep forgetting that respect has to be earned, not demanded. When you spend every day pissing away every last drop of respect with BS policies like Stop & Frisk, you're left with as much respect as you deserve. They also appear to have forgotten that it was the NYPD who murdered Eric Garner. Of course, that was waaaaaay back in 2014, so it doesn't apply. Right? The officer who killed him was never prosecuted. The District Attorney who handled the case allowed the officer to testify to the Grand Jury for TWO HOURS! It's unheard of to have the defendant testify to the Grand Jury, but they did it anyway. Federal investigators took over the investigation after that, but the case was ended last year by Trump's personal errand boy AG William Barr.
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Jun 10, 2020 0:31:06 GMT -5
Same handwriting, no postage. Amazing.
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Ramplate
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Post by Ramplate on Jun 10, 2020 5:51:30 GMT -5
No doubt pollice reform is needed. I like Biden's statement that funding be based on the record each force. The federal government has the right to withhold that kind of funding.
I think most of the modern problem comes from army surplus items. Nice to have extra equipment used and not sitting idle, but when you keep giving police high tech war weapons and equipment they all start acting like. SWAT. Top that with the Jim Crow carry over built into policing and you have trouble. (yes, right up to the late '60's police were still beating down black people who gathered to protest)
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jun 10, 2020 12:46:56 GMT -5
LARPers- sorry, anarchists- have cordoned off a 6 block are in Seattle they have deemed the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.
I recently listened to the Revolutions Podcast on The Paris Commune.
This will all end well.
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Neverending
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Post by Neverending on Jun 10, 2020 13:45:13 GMT -5
The Bostonians beheaded a Christopher Columbus statue
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thebtskink
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Post by thebtskink on Jun 10, 2020 13:47:16 GMT -5
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