and I’m not saying you’re wrong.
I’m not justifying it. I just understand it. there’s a difference.
I don’t live there with the culture that country has cultivated with their right-wing NRA psychobabble. But I understand why it exists.
Fear.
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Who actually meaningfully defunded their police?
It’s really difficult to actually analyze whether and to what degree defunding is associated with changes in public safety because so few places did anything meaningful to reduce the budgets. We did see plenty of reactionaries increase their police funding in response to the rhetoric and its pretty clear from that it did nothing to help produce better outcomes.
It’s also because the people who get to buy and use them just think it’s cool as shit to buy all this gear and get to use it. If you give people a budget to spend on stupid shit and give them a pipeline through which they can acquire said stupid shit, they will buy the stupid shit without consideration of whether it is needed or will do any actual good. Once they’ve bought it they have to find ways to use it
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refer to Seattle. lowered their budget by 11% two years ago. Crime increased 20%.
Seattle is cited in the article I shared. An 11% one year decrease in funding that 1) Is not inconsistent with year to funding swings police departs routinely experience (as evidenced by it all coming back the following year) and 2) still left them with over 20% of the city’s budget.
Untangling the crime stats are stuff because they are complicated, but you cannot make meaningful inferences based on just a single relative increase measure like “crime went up 20%”. The statistic in seattle is that that violent crime went up 20%, higher than the overall increase in crime. That sounds bad, but the statistic is affected by it starting out as a city with low crime…each new incident causes a greater increase in the relative increase than would be the case if the city already had lots of cases.
Going from 2 to 3 is an increase of 50%. Going from 100 to 101, the same absolute increase, is an increase of 1%. In a city with relatively low crime during a nationwide increase in violent crime, you would expect Seattle to experience a greater relative increase than most other places just due to maths. That is what has happened and its still comparatively a very safe place to live or be.
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Ha. Comparatively to what? Chicago?
Been to Portland recently? place is a shitshow.
No reason to split hairs.
Holding individual officers accountable for misdeeds. Good thing to do.
Using political language like “defund” to demonize all police. Very bad idea.
These people do a difficult job and a very high percentage of their interactions with the public go just fine.
The majority of ones that do not go well are often at least partly caused by the behavior of the other party.
In a handful of cases, actions of the police are unambiguously wrong.
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excellent post. Thanks.
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You don’t happen to be a minority do you?
The difference in how UK and US police, is similarly mirrored in the military. Look at the counter insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The British emphasis in urban setting was very different. It was not about fear, a far greater emphasis on minimal force, security building trust, changing mindset. (Almost becoming peacekeepers)
The US were far more clumsy, used far more force, struggled to connect with local population. Despite billions, overwhelming superiority ultimately failed.
The US approach to policing will fail for same reasons. You don’t win by fear, core issues need to be addressed. Policing is just one element and is imperative it is seen as independent and accountable. Police having tanks, feeds the fallacy that the population needs arms to protect itself from the government. It also highlights the absurdity of that notion.
Too many in the US police abuse their power, they are not very bright and protected by unions. In their minds eye they are Dirty Harry or Sherif from a western. Like a posse you end up with likes of Karl Rittenhouse (protecting thin blue line).
Reform is needed. From top to bottom.
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Focusing on the individual misses that the issues are systemic. I don’t know what bar different people have to describe something as rare, but what certainly is rare is that when an officer has done something wrong, the department acts with a focus on justice, accountability and transparency of the response rather than on protecting the individual.
This is a relevant point and I think it comes down to the relationship you suggest a department has with its community by the jobs you tell them they have to do and the tools you give them to do it. A police force with tanks might not need the tank to kill you, but by painting community members as combatants then officers are going to be a damn sight more liable to kill you with whatever tool they have available.
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This is a bit backwards, though. Police arms developed as a countermeasure to the public’s arms. The amount of weaponry in America is not the fault of police; yet they must deal with that threat in doing their jobs.
I am, yes. The Very Enlightened Man. 
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Agree with the gist of this, except that I believe now police departments are forced to address their own errors because so many of them are on film. Even on their own bodycams. A lot tougher to lie one’s way through an incident these days.
I wonder how many body cams are actually working at the time of an incident and how much footage is uncorrupted?
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On paper yes. In practice no. What they have realized is they are generally powerful enough to not follow their own policies regarding transparency and not be held accountable. Somehow the body cam is always switched off.
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Portland is again a really bad example to use. Much of the problems in Portland directly caused by a huge overreaction to protest by Portland police. Some of the most brutal crackdowns on civil disobedience was seen there and as a result the relationship between police and citizen would be far better with a lower police presence.
The Uprising podcast is a good one for more infor from Portland. Much of it reported on straight from the middle of the protests, cataloging numerous and ongoing police brutality issues.
Defind the police is not about making police jobs harder or more dangerous. Its not about demonising officers or allowing gangs to take over cities (whatever that means) it is trying to acknowledge that the current path of policing in America is adversarial to the general public, not in our aid. We don’t need police officers going through military style bootcamp - in fact most people I know who have done both sides say police academy is WAY harder and they shoot a lot more often - to perform most of their duties.
Policing is hard. Agreed. So lets make it easier. Lets use funds appropriately. Its not a good use of money to send police in to break up homeless camps, or deal with mental health issues. There are professionals who do that stuff, lets fund them and remove the budget for the newest APC.
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Uh oh Joe…
Confidential docs found at your old office??
The QAnon mouse just went into overdrive on its wheel…
Not sure what evidence there is for this. Maybe there are some cases. I do believe a fair few officers have been both exonerated and convicted by officer body cams. Here is a famous recent one.
Police question Houston taco customer after he shoots alleged robber (nbcnews.com)
Houston police are questioning a customer who fatally shot an alleged robber after a surveillance video showing the incident was released. NBC News’ Morgan Chesky reports from Texas on how a grand jury will now decide if the act was in self-defense.
That’s interesting. Not living in the US myself, I can only rely on at best second-hand accounts/studies, that tend to show large differences in treatment based on ethnicity.