
There's a growing call to defund the police. Here's what it means - MilnerRoute
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/what-is-defund-police-trnd/index.html
======
humanrebar
How else does a victim of domestic violence get a restraining order enforced
or recover possessions from an unsafe home? I'm all for better funding for
social work and food banks, but at some point, it seems hard to avoid armed
officials providing safety. We just need them to actually do that.

The alternatives in those particular situations (the neighborhood makes it
work) looks a lot like vigilantism to me, which doesn't sound net safer.
There's no particular requirement of equality or due process there, not even
notionally.

~~~
chrisseaton
> it seems hard to avoid armed officials

Why on earth do they need to be armed? There is zero reason for a local police
officer be carrying firearms. It's insane. Dis-arming all but specialist
firearms officers should be the first step.

I find it really frightening when I visit the US and all the police are armed
to the teeth.

~~~
onei
I, much like I imagine you to be, grew up in a country where guns are
restricted and rare.

In the US, that's not the case and any attempts to restrict gun ownership
meets huge political hurdles. Even if those restrictions are what other
countries would deem to be common sense, e.g. Switzerland or New Zealand.

I think it's all kinds of crazy to sell guns in supermarkets with next to no
checks on who owns them, but I get why police would want to have guns in the
US.

~~~
NoOneNew
> sell guns in supermarkets with next to no checks on who owns them

Yea, A, you might be able to get a single shot hunting rifle in a walmart in a
rural part of the USA... but it may not work to begin with because it's a
cheap piece of crap. You're really not going to buy some eggs, milk, loaf of
bread and an AK in the same store in the USA. Stop believing bullshit.

B, Neil Steinberg for the Chicago Sun Times believed the same thing of "no
checks". He got denied a gun because he got picked up for beating his wife a
few years prior. Then blamed the store for the deny. Which, a gun store
clerk/owner is in full legal right to deny service to anyone, even if the
customer qualifies. The DEA encourages them to deny and report people if they
feel the customer is purchasing a gun for malice... except, Neil beat his wife
after drinking too much booze. So the DEA denied him on that one. Lots of
people think they can get easily approved for a gun and realize real quick
they can't. I've been in gun stores plenty of times to see people apply, wait
and get denied.

Just like in countries where guns are illegal, you can buy guns on the black
market.

If you actually know cops in the USA, they generally like those with conceal
permit licenses. It means they're not prior felons, they don't want to lose
their gun or the license, thus don't want to do anything stupid. There are
exceptions, just like with anything else. "Sovereign citizens" are a special
class of complete stupid. But a majority of legal gun owners have zero
interest in doing anything stupid. I already know all of this is unpopular
opinion and I'll get lambasted by non-gun owners. Whatever.

~~~
onei
As far as I can tell, there's checks on criminal history, but not much else,
but I'm happy to be corrected. Furthermore, those checks are dependent on
state record being populated to a federal database and there's a suggestion
that sometimes things gets missed. Maybe it's inevitable given the structure
of policing in America.

You don't have to look far to find massacres committed by legal gun owners in
the US: El Paso (2019), Las Vegas (2017), the list goes on. If someone can
legally buy a gun and then do this, the checks are insufficient.
Contrastingly, there hasn't been a similar event in the UK in my lifetime.

I'm not suggesting all gun owners are lunatics, bear ill will to others or do
anything unsafe with their guns. Nonetheless, if someone can legally buy a gun
and do anything with it, the arms race with police is inevitable.

------
humanrebar
I would like to see statistics on inconsistently or seldom enforced laws.
Those seem to be a vector for corruption and should be considered for repeal.
Minor drug crimes seem to fit this profile, but so do certain occupational
regulations (certification to braid hair?). If we end up with fewer things for
police to do, it sounds like a net win.

~~~
hedora
If you’re a young black man in DC, you have a 75% chance of eventually winding
up in prison. Country wide, on an average day, 10% of black men in their
thirties are serving time in prison.

This is mostly due to racial disparities in prosecution and sentencing than
crime rates between races. Drug possession accounts for a significant fraction
of the disparity: Whites use illegal drugs at a similar rate, but rarely go to
prison for it.

[https://www.mic.com/articles/86519/19-actual-statistics-
abou...](https://www.mic.com/articles/86519/19-actual-statistics-about-
america-s-prison-system)

[http://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/racial-
disparity/](http://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/racial-disparity/)

------
juanbyrge
Yes we need to address the root causes of the crime problem: poverty, racism,
and addiction. Many types of crimes (theft, drug dealing) are caused because
people have been marginalized and have no other means of making money. This is
to a large extent caused by racism. Also a lot of crime is related to
addiction, which can lead to catastrophic consequences when handled by police.

~~~
syshum
While poverty, racism, and addiction. are a factor, the root cause of crime is
over criminalization of society [2] that creates a cycle of crime that once
started it is very hard to escape from.

The thousands upon thousands of sooo called "victimless" crime that it used to
dump millions of people in to the criminal system which then society punishes
for the rest of their lives by denying them opportunities in all segments of
life from Jobs to Housing to access to government assistance.

Often time people have "no other means of making money" due to this cycle of
over criminalization, they were busted with a small amount of weed, from that
point they were a "convicted criminal" where by many employers will deny them
a job, schools will deny them admission, landlords will deny them housing,
etc.

We have a narrative in this nation that a Misdemeanor Conviction Is Not a Big
Deal [1], this is a false narrative one that the legal system pushes because
they often over charge individuals with felonies then "allow" them to plea out
to a "lesser" misdemeanor to improve the efficiency of "justice".

The biggest flaw in the system is that we have created so many criminal laws
that we need to make the "justice system" an assembly line of contract
negotiation

[1] [https://time.com/76356/a-misdemeanor-conviction-is-not-a-
big...](https://time.com/76356/a-misdemeanor-conviction-is-not-a-big-deal-
right-think-again/)

[2]
[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/overcriminal...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/overcriminalization-
of-america-113991)

------
elicash
It does seem weird that if I just want a report for insurance purposes, that
the people that get sent out to help me get that paperwork carry guns.

Edit: What's nice about cops versus, for instance, the Department of Motor
Vehicles is that police make home visits. Maybe some of the boring stuff could
be done by non-violent agencies that make home visits, like child protective
services.

~~~
throwaway894345
Seems like it would make more sense to change that aspect of the system rather
than to defund the police altogether, no?

~~~
elicash
Not sure if you read the article, but different people mean different things
by "defund the police." One thing that's obvious is that pretty much every
police department is going to have some amount of defunding, due to state and
local budget problems that are expected to arise due to decreased tax revenue.
My concern is that not enough leaders will try to reimagine what gets built in
its place, given those budget constraints.

Not to say there isn't any consideration. Some people say that poverty, mental
health issues or lack of quality education is a driver of crime and that we
need to divert resources. Others, people like me, want to experiment to
replace some of the things police do, study it, follow the evidence and maybe
eventually build something entirely different.

What I love about this debate is it's causing people to think about, often for
the first time, why we've set it up this way.

------
sys_64738
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.

------
mikece
Let’s assume a city (or two?) decide to abolish their police force (which is
what defunding would achieve).

What then?

~~~
Joeri
Private security. Everyone gets a private security contract with ex-cops, with
an emergency number to call. The rich will be well-protected, the poor mostly
left to fend for themselves.

That won’t be better, it will be far worse, but it’s a thing people can do, so
in the absence of other things to do, it may end up as the thing that is done.
Desperate people do foolish things if they see no alternative.

~~~
throwaway894345
Imagine this on any significant scale. The richest become a law unto
themselves. They become the de facto government by virtue of control over the
largest armies. If you didn’t like the 1% before, why would you give them
absolute power and the monopoly on violence?

------
humanrebar
Isn't part of the argument for gun control that policing is robust enough to
provide superior safety?

~~~
taborj
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.

~~~
elicash
It's probably different people saying different things.

First, folks who have been calling for prison abolition, for instance, tend to
be anti-gun control because it's a tool that's used to put more black and
brown people in prisons. A lot of these folks also call for defunding police.

Second, this is different from saying "citizens don't need guns." That
different argument is simply based on the idea that people are less safe when
they have guns, not more safe. While some is due to accidents, much of it is
suicides.

~~~
humanrebar
But what is the policy approach to protect law-abiding citizens from crazy
exes and people who take an affinity to lynching? Saying "solve poverty" seems
like both a huge leap in logic and frankly harder than "solving" crime.

I appreciate the discord between current political alliances, but explaining
that it exists seems to imply that major reductions in policing is not a fully
considered plan.

~~~
elicash
You should read some books about prison abolition if you're interested in
getting all the details about how it would work.

