Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

theappeal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 398 posts

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#21

Post by projectileboy »

macspoofing wrote: post #6

I don't think it will work. Minneapolis has one of the highest crime rates in the country, just as Baltimore did, and that city saw crime rates rise even higher after protests led to tighter regulations on the Police ... but I don't live in Minneapolis and so I'm curious to see how it will turn out. I support this as a great social experiment.

But the high crime rate and low rate of actually solving and punishing crimes reinforces the argument. It’s worth comparing various police-related statistics between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Police across America do indeed have systemic problems, but Minneapolis does seem to belong to a handful of truly bad police departments.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#25

Post by fullshark »

TrevorAustin wrote: post #4

"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used solution in American life, even in the private sector. Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...

> (They were initially nonunion but have since unionized.)

Fascinating parenthetical. Sounds like they dissolved the city PD organization and expanded the county PD. I don't know what Minneapolis plans here.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#26

Post by CamperBob2 »

sunseb wrote: post #7

What could go wrong? Lunatics are running the asylum it seems. Authority is always here. Disband the police and you will get another arbitrary authority (being gangs, some kind of political repression, and so). There already are no-go zones in Europa where the police don't go anymore, believe me, you wouldn't want to live there. If you don't want the official police anymore, why not starting with your place, your hom…

(Shrug) If another street gang takes over, at least my taxes won't be paying their salaries.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#27

Post by abbadadda »

matwood wrote: post #10

I mentioned this solution in a comment the other day. The NCAA gives sports programs the 'death penalty' when the 'loss of institutional control' [0] is so great the only fix is to disband and start over. Having it as an option is a good thing. The people in charge can't use an 'I didn't know' defense, because that itself is evidence of loss of institutional control. [0] https://www.ncaa.org/governance/institutional-…

The NCAA should be given the death penalty https://deadspin.com/c/death-to-the-ncaa

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#28

Post by javajosh »

_bxg1 wrote: post #3

a) I'm incredibly happy to see that the masses still have a voice b) I'm not positive this is the right solution, but it could be, and it will be fascinating to see how it plays out and whether it's something that could work everywhere

The masses have a voice in proportion to the degree to which they control where their taxes go. The power of the purse is remarkable, because you can destroy (almost) any instutition by simply defunding it (which is also why any attempt to circumvent that power, e.g. Executive re-purposing of funds, should set off huge blaring alarms.)

And when it comes to "what congress can do" I'd argue that it's 90% about allocation of funds -- because it doesn't matter what the law is if there is no money to enforce it.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#29

Post by claudeganon »

macspoofing wrote: post #19
notatoad wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe the suggestion here is to disband the concept of having police entirely, just to disband the current police department.

Fair enough. The devil is in the details of course. But I am skeptical that the crime rates would drop if there is less policing since the crime rates are not caused by police.

> I am skeptical that the crime rates would drop if there is less policing since the crime rates are not caused by police.

About that...

>When New York police officers temporarily reduced their “proactive policing” efforts on low-level offenses, major-crime reports in the city actually fell, according to a study based on New York Police Department crime statistics.

https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#30

Post by Natsu »

TrevorAustin wrote: post #4

"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used solution in American life, even in the private sector. Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...

When it comes to code, I thought the consensus was strongly against that because it tends to introduce more problems than it solves.
Post reply on HN