
Police are out of control. It’s time to hit them where it hurts: their budgets - smacktoward
https://craigcalcaterra.com/blog/police-are-out-of-control-its-time-to-hit-them-where-it-hurts-their-budgets/
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davismwfl
I'd say it is two fold but the primary change needs to be in their training.
Stop the military style training, tactics and supplies. Stop all the military
threat engagement and move more towards the social worker style of training.
No I don't mean make cops all defenseless, but the fact is over the last 30
years we have militarized our police and forgotten to teach them to use their
words to disarm people and instead given them more and more training on how to
get physical with people.

Cops are literally trained how to yell and how to intimidate people and given
military style equipment and training -- so what do we expect them to do?? How
about instead, we teach them to use their compassion and voice to reason with
the vast majority of people. No not all problems can be resolved with
compassion and reason, some require a gun and someone willing to use it, but
we shouldn't start there. It is called escalation of violence/force and police
used to be trained to prevent it, anymore it feels as though they are the ones
to escalate resolvable problems into all out fights.

I am not saying all cops are bad, there are a huge number which will first use
their words and compassion, the problem is as a group, it feels like those who
will use their brain first are no longer the majority.

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codeddesign
Is this what you have experienced or what you are seeing on the news? In my
own experience, most cops are usually really nice, but I have also come into
contact with those that have ego’s and are just plain assholes. However, from
my own experience this is the case for society/people you come across in
general.

~~~
davismwfl
Combo of both. I spent ~8 years working on EMS/911 systems and interfacing
with law enforcement fairly regularly. I also worked for one of my parents
businesses which built (software) law enforcement systems in the 80's and
90's. I know quite a number of very good people who are LEOs who work hard to
help their community and care about what they do. And I'd say the vast
majority of people go into being a LEO so they can do good for their
community, not because they are dicks (but like any profession some are).
Three of the people I know that are officers in the recent past have told me
personally the training has gotten too focused on militaristic tactics and on
physical enforcement (threat neutralization to prevent officer harm). Even
pointing out the types of surplus military gear their departments are
purchasing etc. So that's one of my primary sources for that specific comment.
The news seems to confirm much of it once you remove the sensationalism most
news outlets like to put out there, but look at the gear and training tactics
they are using, much of it comes from the military.

My own personal interactions have varied over the years, but have been net
positive, that said, I am a 40 something entrepreneur/professional who is
white. However, even with that, I have had more than a few run ins where a LEO
tried to use intimidation and threats instead of conversation to understand
what is going on. To be super clear, I am not against them doing their jobs in
any way, I know their job is hard and I first hand know (from EMS work) how
hard it is when you are dealing with people who abuse the system. But as an
example,. less then 2 months ago I had a cop in a neighboring city screaming
threats at me and stopping my vehicle for driving around a car accident. What
made it interesting is I was following the instructions of the Sgt that was
directing traffic who had told me to go around a specific way (which I was
doing at less then 10 MPH as he said proceed slowly). My luck is I knew the
Sgt could hear this tantrum and the Sgt came over to put a stop to it. Sadly
though, this was after the cop had already asked me if I was "fucking stupid"
and threatened me with arrest, but I hadn't even said a word yet. When the Sgt
walked over he told me to have a nice day and go ahead and made a point of
saying that I did nothing wrong. In one example, I saw the good LEO and the
dickhead. So that is a recent personal interaction with a bad cop, who I don't
think is in the majority, but nonetheless he is out there and is getting
training that focuses on threat neutralization instead of calm deescalation. I
mean he had every right to stop me and say hey, wth dude why are you driving
through here, and I could've said I was told to and that'd be it, he
could/would confirm and all is good. No need for the crazy talk.

My overall feeling is the vast majority of cops are good humans doing a hard
job where they deal with mainly societies troubled people all day long. So
when you train them on threat neutralization or in other militaristic tactics
it gives them muscle memory of the wrong nature. Even good ones. And for the
bad ones it only intensifies their ego and trains them to be better at their
aggression.

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sacks2k
As long as the castle doctrine becomes federal law and we make it really easy
for citizens to get a firearm to protect their families in every state.

Wealthy activists, politicians, and movie stars have private security. They
don't care if we have less cops to protect the average person or we make it
impossible for the average person to protect themselves.

I have no issue with the protests. My main issues is with radical separatists
groups like BLM that are going to make the average citizen unsafe and ruin the
city around them to prove some sort of point.

They also want to abolish all prisons.

If this does happen, people like me will just get weapons illegally and take
our chances.

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codeddesign
^ THIS. I am all for protests, but BLM leaders are turning that movement into
a movement of terrorism. I am all for different view points and freedom of
expression and dissatisfaction. However, if someone attempts to endanger my
family because they feel they were disrespected by someone else, I WILL
protect my family by all means possible.

~~~
garlicGum
Umm, police have been terrorizing citizens legally for decades.

~~~
codeddesign
I didn’t mention police at all, nor does that thread have anything to do with
police. Read the thread again, it’s about stupid people terrorizing their
communities.

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codeddesign
This isn’t like taking a child’s allowance away. Less budget means less
police, and less training for those police. Hitting budgets is an easy
rebuttal but a poor one.

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ideophobia
Like some others I'm a little skeptical of the budget argument. A lot of the
equipment that one would typically see employed for a protest or riot response
(riot gear, crowd control weapons, armored vehicles) are often obtained via
funding from federal Homeland Security and DOJ grants. Hitting the local
city/county budget wont impact the militarization argument, and with a
president like Trump, I can easily see an increase in federal grants swooping
in to offset that, at least partially.

My second concern is that pay for police is often considered not great.
Hitting the city/county budget will likely impact salaries, pay increases,
health care benefits, vehicle maintenance, and many other areas. Sadly the
fastest thing to get cut from municipal agencies is often training, so I'm
skeptical we can "defund" the police while simultaneously adding additional
training requirements around mental health, de-escalation, etc.

I'm not inherently against the defund argument, particularly when it involves
shifting those funds toward more community services that would reduce crime
and poverty anyways. It just seems like the problem has less to do with the
amount of money police departments actually have and more to do with a lack of
oversight on how they're spending it.

~~~
codeddesign
Just so we all have the facts straight - police militarization was also
happening during Obama (not sure about bush or clinton). This isn’t new. So
much spare military equipment from Iraq war with no where to go.

~~~
ideophobia
Yea 100% true, I didn't think I suggested otherwise but appreciate the
clarification. I only mentioned Trump because he is 1. the current president,
and 2. seems to support militarization of police. To me this puts him in an
ideal spot to directly rebuke the desired impacts of defunding since the
departments could just get their money from UASI (Urban Area Security
Initiative) DHS grants, that I'm assuming Trump could get funded with at least
some ease.

~~~
codeddesign
Question: Wouldn’t funding be congress rather than a president? In regards to
funding, every president seems to have been for it. Obama may not have been
verbal about it, but certainly “funded” it:

Source:
[https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_3566478](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_3566478)

