Defund the Police

[minx]

An interesting article


www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/burlington-vermont-decided-to-cut-its-police-force-30-percent-heres-what-happened-next/ar-AARXuGW?ocid=ientp

I thought it was interesting.  I do agree that we need to ask police to focus on policing, and not social policy, but we can't do that in a vacuum.  Kind of hard to say 'We're going to have social workers respond to folks in crisis' when there are no social workers available as an example.

Interested in your opinions.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

Saw that the other day.

I put it in similar context to the healthcare professionals I went on about in the other thread. What is law enforcement? I think the definition is in the/their title. They are not healthcare professionals. If I need a bone reset, I don't call the police. If someone is shooting up the block, I don't call St Elizabeths.

Might have brought this up in the past but in a perfect world we wouldn't be asking police officers to be psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, dispute resolution experts, crisis negotiators and all things that are outside the scope of le.

I am 100 percent behind taking the money that is used to give police departments militaristic capabilities and using them to fund personnel that specializes in those other professions, and somehow work in concert with LE, or where LE is able to assist them as opposed to the other way around.

[minx]

I think that the jackass who came up with the idea of defund the police should be slapped senseless.

Should have been re-'fund' the police.
Put more money in, but also redefine priorities.

-make it easier to discipline/remove problem officers
-add support personnel to handle minor cases and act as liaisons to other government agencies/services
-add staff to conduct regular reviews of complaints and also to review cases with officers

Then add money for services so the police and citizens do have options - when someone does need help, they can actually get it.

[Dave's Not Here Man]

I never heard anyone involved with that movement come out and admit that the name and slogan was poorly chosen. I assume these are the same type of folks that decided words like literal didn't mean literal.

[minx]

I agree with you on that - most of them are very short-sighted. And I suspect that many of them have never lived in a high-crime area.

Police are necessary, but need oversight. And additional training does not replace oversight.
And someone needs to get through these asshole's heads that oversight protects them from overzealous citizens who might want to accuse them of being bad. Cause after all, if you're not beating up folk for no reason, or pulling someone over for Driving While Black, then you have nothing to fear, right?

Cause they tell me that shit like 'Stop and Frisk' is fine if I'm a law-abiding citizen, cause I'll never be stopped.