231–240 of 356 posts
> Minneapolis, which had 912 uniformed officers in May 2019, is now down to 699. 23% of officers leaving in only a year and a half. What kind of impact will this have in 3-5 years as officers who are holding out for pensions also retire?
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Sitting member of Congress: "No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can't be reformed." https://mobile.twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1381745303997... Sitting member of Congress: "We can’t reform this." https://mobile.twitter.com/AyannaPressley/status/13817027443... Activist with 475k followers whose name is currently: "DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE" https://mobile.twitter.com/BreeNewsome Ben & Jerrys: "T…
Highlighting "a very very small niche" of politicians/activists isn't really debunking the "a very very small niche of the police reform community" claim. I like Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, but they can hardly be claimed to be the mainstream portion of Congress, or even Congressional Democrats.
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Law enforcement can be dangerous but it's only #22 in occupational death rates. Lumberjacks and roofers are far more likely to get killed. https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
For people replying to this comment, the point is, policing isn’t as dangerous as you might think. Certainly it isn’t risk free, but people perform many more dangerous jobs. Police deaths are often tragic and a result of human on human violence though, so it tends to spark a stronger reaction than “well, a giant tree fell on Jimmy and he died”. Still tragic but there are no “bad guys” in that scenario for a lumberjac…
Further compounding the issue is that law enforcement is not the job that the police are often tasked with. Some of the job hazards they are exposed to are due to making inappropriate demands of law enforcement officials.
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Law enforcement can be dangerous but it's only #22 in occupational death rates. Lumberjacks and roofers are far more likely to get killed. https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j...
Accidents are less psychologically stressful than violence.
Coincidentally, the murder rate is way up. > A 25 percent increase in murder in 2020 would mean the United States surpassed 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995. (The final official numbers for 2020 will not be released until late September.) https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/upshot/murder-rate-usa.ht... Thanks, BLM.
Conveniently ignoring that there was a global pandemic going on for most of the year with record high unemployment. Crime went up basically as soon as the pandemic started.
> Total police recorded crime decreased by 4% in England and Wales to approximately 5.8 million offences in the 12 months ending June 2020; police reported crime levels were relatively stable from July 2019 to March 2020 and the annual decrease was mainly driven by substantial falls during the April to June 2020 period, particularly in theft offences.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
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But it's a reason to choose your words carefully. "Defund the Police" is very easy to interpret as "abolish" or "practically abolish". Which means it's very easy to twist even the less extreme politicians' and activists' meaning toward that end. This sets them up for abuse from their opposition who then cost them possible supporters. The fact is, many people on the right wouldn't mind if police were a little less of…
When did Hacker News become so tediously and odiously consumed with "moderate voices," which 99% of the time is just self-consumed owners of capital who have a fervent interest in maintaining the status quo.
What about the comment makes it odious or tedious?
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I can imagine how they become this way. With most offenders being from minority groups it's hard to keep an open mind if you're having to chase after them every day. Even though these problems are societal, not really caused by the minorities themselves but rather lack of opportunities etc But if you're on the business end of society's failures on a daily basis I can imagine how this changes one's opinion. I've worke…
“Even though these problems are societal, not really caused by the minorities themselves but rather lack of opportunities etc” That’s the line of thinking that keeps many of them in that situation. We need to be honest -African American culture is largely dysfunctional and self-destructive. 120 years ago my ancestors were dirt poor, they didn’t have “equitable” opportunities in education, housing, or employment, yet…
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The meaning of "diverting funding to other resources" has been a consensus in the community for a very long time. It's only recently that "defund" has been conflated with "abolish," which has always been a very very small niche of the police reform community.
But it's a reason to choose your words carefully. "Defund the Police" is very easy to interpret as "abolish" or "practically abolish". Which means it's very easy to twist even the less extreme politicians' and activists' meaning toward that end. This sets them up for abuse from their opposition who then cost them possible supporters. The fact is, many people on the right wouldn't mind if police were a little less of…
The problem is that they don't seem to mind if the cops shoot a gas canister into someone else's baby's crib, as long as that someone else is different from them.
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Highlighting "a very very small niche" of politicians/activists isn't really debunking the "a very very small niche of the police reform community" claim. I like Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, but they can hardly be claimed to be the mainstream portion of Congress, or even Congressional Democrats.
Perhaps they should have chosen a slogan where the dictionary definition differs from the opinion of "a very very small niche".
"to stop providing money or as much money to pay for something"
Sounds like 'defund the police' is stupid, self-defeating sloganeering that makes no sense given what its apparent settled-upon meaning (only settled upon many months after becoming popular).
It's obvious that society needs a police force. But it's also obvious to me that American policing is in need of serious reform. When your slogan targets the general concept of "Police" it gives the bad (many aspects of modern American policing) coverage to hide under the good (the concept of having police at all)
It's why the common retort to this line of rhetoric is "Well, when your house gets broken into you'll need us" - Yes, but when I call the cops I don't want to have to worry about my dog getting shot, or a SWAT team coming to my door armed to the teeth, improperly trained and trigger happy.
Efforts should be focused around reformation, not blanket just hating cops. "Defund the police" just sounds overly punitive. I wouldn't want to do that job either if I felt like everybody hated me.