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Defund the Police meets the crime wave

bariweiss.substack.com

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Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#271

Post by smsm42 »

zzzbra wrote: post #94
deeg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime is going up in cities all over the country, including those in red states that never had a sniff of "Defund the Police". I'm unconvinced that it's a direct contributor.

Some added data to back up what you're saying: https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homi... Increases in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Kentucky would indicate to me a lack of correlation for various partisan policies driving this.

When I saw Texas, I thought to myself - I bet they mean Austin. And sure enough... Austin is the Portland of Texas. Bringing it up as if it is politically aligned to the right with the rest of Texas makes no sense. On the contrary, if anything it'd support the hypothesis that leftist policies drive crime up.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#272

Post by uoaei »

mostertoaster wrote: post #211
mint2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the LA times report on the the Torrence police department. A substantial number of officers were texting klan like message and bragging about racially profiling and lying about it. Note the articles refer back to earlier texting scandals in places like SF where recently cops were caught on camera just sitting around watching people rob a dispensary. It’s obvious some cops do not serve and protect, and there a…

> It’s obvious some cops do not serve and protect, Completely agree > and there are too few good cops holding their own accountable Maybe true in SF and other progressive cities, but I’m doubtful this is the norm across all police departments. The problem is people are treating all cops the same. In Oakland there might be a good precinct, and a bad one, if you treat the good like the bad, all you will be left with is…

> Maybe true in SF and other progressive cities, but I’m doubtful this is the norm across all police departments.

Hypothesizing too few good cops in progressive cities, and implying (happily assuming) there are plenty of good cops in conservative areas to keep checks and balances? Color me unconvinced.

> The problem is people are treating all cops the same.

The phrase "a bad apple spoils the barrel" absolutely applies in fraternistic, spartan settings of indoctrination such as "the brotherhood". Yes cops literally call it that; the dominant culture has most people in the course of their duties acting tough by cosplaying military with looser rules of engagement, and other impressionable folks fall into a similar pattern to be accepted by a community that they hold in respect (their brothers, not the citizenry). If you are relatively free-thinking, you are filtered out at the application level. If you somehow slip through, you have no power to make real change. We know this from countless examples of those who left the force after seeing obscene behavior. Chris Dorner's case is the most prominent recent example I can think of right now.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#273

Post by heavyset_go »

alphabettsy wrote: post #226
rafale wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jazz never glorified crime. Big difference here. You are making a false equivalence.

I’m not. It doesn’t matter what jazz is or isn’t. The point is misdirection. I’m not going to argue that Rap isn’t often talking about crime and violence, but rap is a wide genre and quite a lot of it is not violent. The origins of Rap are quite different than what we have today, you might be interested to learn the history of rap and how/why it changed. You might also learn about rap and not cherrypick what fits you…

> If rap causes black people to commit crime then country music must certainly cause drunk driving and Call of Duty is why we have school shootings.

Also, I guess Marilyn Manson's music actually was responsible for turning young people away from God. Atheism's popularity has grown ever since its debut, and so has the Church of Satan. The numbers don't lie!

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#274

Post by uoaei »

mostertoaster wrote: post #166
uoaei wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cops aren't willing to do their jobs, and instead let their feelings get in the way, they are negligent in their service and incompetent... to say the least. It is not the jobs of people being policed to watch their own tone so they avoid offending cops. It is the job of cops to serve and protect , full stop. It is well-known that police departments align closely with the cultural segments that (among other things…

Are you saying cops don’t serve and protect? Do you know any who rushed into active mass shooting scenes, which is clearly a dangerous place to be? If you did, then you might think differently. Have cops used undue force? Yes. Are there some that are on a power trip and need to be fired? Yes. That doesn’t change what the police officers I know are like, nor the risks they are taking with every patrol. I think the mai…

Aside from the other responses you have received, I want to say:

Exceptions do not disprove the rule. We can look to one or a handful of officers who put on their big kid pants and fulfilled the nominal job description that they consensually agreed to (despite not being required to do so, by law). Statistically speaking, they are completely insignificant when you want to draw conclusions such as those you imply are proven by the counterexample you've provided.

"Police officers you know" are probably nice to you, and recount stories from their perspective. Sure some may actually be decent, but again, that's not exactly a safe bet considering the evidence we have. Even with the 5th amendment, we can include the evidence that cops regularly hide evidence which would otherwise make them look bad as a factor in comprehending the reality of the situation.

Even the nice ones among the officers you know are regularly silent about numerous abuses, large and small. The fact that no one speaks up against the ne'er-do-wells means they are complicit. Complicity is generally not any more morally good than performing the action yourself, especially when you are in a position to prevent it from happening.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#275

Post by cmh89 »

giantg2 wrote: post #138
uoaei wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cops aren't willing to do their jobs, and instead let their feelings get in the way, they are negligent in their service and incompetent... to say the least. It is not the jobs of people being policed to watch their own tone so they avoid offending cops. It is the job of cops to serve and protect , full stop. It is well-known that police departments align closely with the cultural segments that (among other things…

You're not necessarily wrong, but if the conditions of any job are such that people are no longer interested in doing it, it becomes harder to attract, replace, and retain people. Reluctance of police to get involved or respond to incidents, law enforcement discretion, is not new and has a long history, including abuses and refusal of service. The real question is how can we attract and retain officers that want to d…

> The real question is how can we attract and retain officers that want to do the job?

Maybe the job just doesn't make sense in modern America? If police as a concept didn't exist already, no one would create it.

If you broke it down into its parts, you find plenty of people who would sign up to handle mental health crisis and plenty of people to sign up to handle quality of life problems. You'd have a third group that wants to do the more dangerous stuff.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#276

Post by myfavoritedog »

"Defund the Police" has been just one part of the problem. Combine it with catch-and-release no-bail, Soros prosecutors who refuse to prosecute, COVID policies that released criminals to avoid infections, immigration policies that allow the free flow of gangs and drugs across the border, and the hyper-sensationalist efforts of the media to cause a riot every time there's a killing of a black suspect by a white police officer... and disaster was inevitable.

I'd really respect Progressives if they took a long hard look at all these factors, admitted their culpability in promoting them, and actually did something about them.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#277

Post by myfavoritedog »

drewwwwww wrote: post #29

i think it's worth pointing out giving the still semi-inflammatory nature of the headline, no serious advocate of defunding the police has ever suggested that simply doing that is the goal. the idea is to shift funding from cops walking around with guns killing people to things that actually prevent crime from happening, and as the piece points out, even in the few places that have actually reduced funding to police,…

"no serious advocate of defunding"

No true Scotsman. The montages of prominent politicians and community leaders asking for the elimination of the police are easy to google.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#278

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tshaddox wrote: post #196
harry8 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no meaningful reform happened and whatever did happen doesn't, at face value, appear to be positive?

I would want to evaluate the merits of a particular slogan by means other than whether the intended reform happened. It’s easy to say “no thanks” to reform regardless of how good of a slogan it is.

But a misleadingly bad slogan makes it much more likely that people will say "no thanks". If what you said isn't what you meant, and what you said makes people reject what you meant, why did you say it?

I suspect that proponents thought anger at the police was much more widely spread than it was, so they grabbed what they thought would sell.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#279

Post by starik36 »

alphabettsy wrote: post #245
starik36 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some context is in order. Giuliani's heavy handedness in dealing with criminals forced the crime to come down in a way. Meaning, police were forced to deal even with the pettiest of crimes. Giuliani banned all sorts of "unsavory" businesses from Times Square. That reduced crime in the area and helped a ton because it showed that a horrible area can be rehabilitated. One year, the subways were gross, smelly, h…

You’re right it needs context, but my point was that it needs to be analyzed far beyond what party controls the mayor’s office. Also crime was already falling when each of them took office so I’m not sure I’d attribute the falling crime solely to their tactics or leadership.

> crime was already falling

That is possible. I can only speak from my experience. I visited NYC a number of times pre-Giuliani, then moved to NYC after he became mayor. It was like night and day, particularly the area around Times Square where I ended up working.

Re: Defund the Police meets the crime wave

#280

Post by pengaru »

baby wrote: post #235
pengaru wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was surprise there was no return fire, then I saw it was CA. I'm in CA and am surrounded by neighbors with guns, for better or worse. If you think CA is devoid of gun owners you're sorely mistaken.

It depends where you are in CA, I specifically moved to a place where I would know people around me don't own guns (SF). I have a hard time seeing myself live anywhere where people are allowed to carry or buy guns liberally.

A surprising number of people I've known who lived in SF proper owned handguns, fully aware of the legal ramifications. They were mostly well-off tech people, and didn't care about the legal risk any more than they obeyed speed limits.

As always, there's laws, and then there's enforcement of those laws.

You're completely delusional if you believe nobody in SF has guns at home because the law says so. Ask yourself how on earth such a thing would be enforced without police searching everyones' homes on a regular basis.

My connections to the city have waned in the past decade or so, during which it sounds crime has only worsened. I'd assume there's even more gun ownership in response to what seems to be a police force unwilling to enforce laws and a continuous stream of growing area crime reported in the news.

Out by me which is rural desert CA there's just guns all over the place. Technically it's illegal to fire anything other than a scattershot round in a shotgun openly around here (Morongo Basin), yet on any given weekend you'll hear all sorts of semi-auto and even full-auto shooting without any police response.

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