8 ms·

If their budget is reduced, the police will choose where to cut services in such a way as to inflict maximum fear in the population, to cause their budget to be

If their budget is reduced, the police will choose where to cut services in such a way as to inflict maximum fear in the population, to cause their budget to be restored. They will, for example, say they cannot investigate the rape of a white woman, supposedly because lack of funds. But they will have plenty of funds to harass poor and non-white people for maybe smoking pot, but mostly for being poor and/or non-white. We can see it right now, in that they teargas, shoot with rubber bullets, beat and arrest completely peaceful protesters and people just on their own porches but do nothing about looters. It is obvious why: looting makes protestors look bad (especially if news coverage cooperates with the police's narrative), makes people scared and proves that police are necessary. Of course, the mafia can also provide safety if you obey them and pay them. Might even be a better deal for some populations than the current police. If you want police that work for the population and are not an occupation force extracting tribute through use of force, you need to do more than reduce their budget. You need to punish the offenders (jail, not layoffs) and replace the people in charge (their union bosses and informal leaders, not just the nominal chief of police who might have little actual power).

ghthor 6y ago
Using "completely peaceful" protestors is a disingenuous statement.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  Some protestors have been completely peaceful. Some entire protests have been completely peaceful. And some of those completely peaceful protests have still met tear gas, and/or pepper spray. For example, see the protest in DC that was peaceful and broken up before curfew. Is your assertion that nationwide, over 9 days, there hasn't been any peaceful protests?
  - holler 6y ago
    If we’re focused on Seattle still, and basing this off the news from the past few days, it certainly was hard to notice any peaceful protesting occurring. Of course many people were peaceful, but amidst scenes of people busting through every retailer’s window downtown, looting stores until they were bare, while dozens of cars burned in the street...
    - chrismcb 6y ago
      Almost all of the protests in Seattle have been peaceful, until the cops started spaying made and throwing flash grenades into the crowd. Yes there has been some looting, generally away from the protestors, because the police are busy.
      - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
        So far, everyone who has said that cops reacted this way for absolutely no reason has been misinformed or lying when I go investigate. It’s actually quite surprising how frequently these blatantly wrong claims keep coming up. Often there is an assumption that because they didn’t see what started it, it must have been nothing. You might think they didn’t have a good enough reason, but I have yet to see police in any city deploy OC for no reason at all.
        selimthegrim 6y ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the_moment_it_all_happened/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...
        taborj 6y ago
        I'm sorry, this is like pulling a single line out of a book and using it to bolster a specific argument. In other words, there's loads of context that's missing. Your video has less than 10 seconds of context. What happened just before the video starts? What happened 15 minutes before?
        loeg 6y ago
        It's just a boring sit-in for hours before the clip starts. There is literally no context. The next night there isn't even an umbrella pretext, they just start spraying around 11:40pm after peaceful sit-in from 5pm. Here's video of the incident from 13 minutes prior (June 1): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/3657142187633903/ https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36571421876... And earlier recording of the hours beforehand (June 1, earlier): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/3657010030980452/ https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36570100309... You're not missing any violent context; just the bigger picture.
ncallaway 6y ago
Sure, "defund the police" isn't the only demand. I just wanted to clarify that particular demand. For example, another demand was to keep SPD in the consent decree under DOJ supervision. The city council was planning on ending it. They council announced just today that they are retaining to consent decree, so that's a policy win for the protestors.
_jahh 6y ago
or they'll spend less of their budget on highly expensive military equipment and more on less expensive deescalation skills and community engagement...HA
- taneq 6y ago
  Don't they basically get given that stuff second-hand by the military?
elliotec 6y ago
This is so obvious. Defund the police, and regulate their roles. Prioritize rape/violence/home invasion, deprioritize protests/drugs/etc., and as you say punish offenders. This is obvious.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  >This is so obvious. Defund the police, and regulate their roles. >deprioritize protests/drugs/etc Yeah, already done that. And it's miserable. My parents came to visit (from the midwest and right before the pandemic) and were absolutely appalled at seeing needles on the street when we went out to dinner. I don't blame them, really. I blame the people who pretend that shrugging at enforcing drug laws is some sort of "justice". It's not, it's political nihilism. And we've run this test 1000 times at this point across the country. Some will say that "it's not that bad", and to them I say "yeah ... I've been in worse places around the world too". Which is a snide way of saying that I'm really annoyed that people are okay with third world standards of living in the USA because they have this inverted sense of "justice".
  - frostburg 6y ago
    Drug addiction is best treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one. You're just observing the effects of a lack of rug sweeping.
    - remarkEon 6y ago
      At what point does "treating it like a public health issue" start to impede on public safety?
      - wffurr 6y ago
        It's more that not treating it (drug addiction) as a public health issue impedes on public safety. Supervised injection sites, housing first integrated support, access to effective medicine (methadone), etc. are all stymied by various flavors of political problems. What you're seeing is the result of a patchwork approach in disarray.
baddox 6y ago
If your comment is accurate, then it serves as a strong argument for why the police should be defunded even more than 50%.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
taneq 6y ago
> If their budget is reduced, the police will choose where to cut services in such a way as to inflict maximum fear in the population, to cause their budget to be restored. Sounds like they're a protection racket, no different from the Mafia. The issue here clearly isn't funding. The issue is control. Police in the U.S. have been allowed to become an autocratic state in their own right, and it is this state which needs to be dismantled.

ghthor 6y ago

Using "completely peaceful" protestors is a disingenuous statement.

ncallaway 6y ago
Some protestors have been completely peaceful. Some entire protests have been completely peaceful. And some of those completely peaceful protests have still met tear gas, and/or pepper spray. For example, see the protest in DC that was peaceful and broken up before curfew. Is your assertion that nationwide, over 9 days, there hasn't been any peaceful protests?
- holler 6y ago
  If we’re focused on Seattle still, and basing this off the news from the past few days, it certainly was hard to notice any peaceful protesting occurring. Of course many people were peaceful, but amidst scenes of people busting through every retailer’s window downtown, looting stores until they were bare, while dozens of cars burned in the street...
  - chrismcb 6y ago
    Almost all of the protests in Seattle have been peaceful, until the cops started spaying made and throwing flash grenades into the crowd. Yes there has been some looting, generally away from the protestors, because the police are busy.
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      So far, everyone who has said that cops reacted this way for absolutely no reason has been misinformed or lying when I go investigate. It’s actually quite surprising how frequently these blatantly wrong claims keep coming up. Often there is an assumption that because they didn’t see what started it, it must have been nothing. You might think they didn’t have a good enough reason, but I have yet to see police in any city deploy OC for no reason at all.
      - selimthegrim 6y ago
        https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the_moment_it_all_happened/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/gv0ru3/this_is_the...
        taborj 6y ago
        I'm sorry, this is like pulling a single line out of a book and using it to bolster a specific argument. In other words, there's loads of context that's missing. Your video has less than 10 seconds of context. What happened just before the video starts? What happened 15 minutes before?
        loeg 6y ago
        It's just a boring sit-in for hours before the clip starts. There is literally no context. The next night there isn't even an umbrella pretext, they just start spraying around 11:40pm after peaceful sit-in from 5pm. Here's video of the incident from 13 minutes prior (June 1): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/3657142187633903/ https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36571421876... And earlier recording of the hours beforehand (June 1, earlier): https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/3657010030980452/ https://www.facebook.com/jessica.bundy.79/videos/36570100309... You're not missing any violent context; just the bigger picture.

ncallaway 6y ago

Sure, "defund the police" isn't the only demand. I just wanted to clarify that particular demand. For example, another demand was to keep SPD in the consent decree under DOJ supervision. The city council was planning on ending it. They council announced just today that they are retaining to consent decree, so that's a policy win for the protestors.

_jahh 6y ago

or they'll spend less of their budget on highly expensive military equipment and more on less expensive deescalation skills and community engagement...HA

taneq 6y ago
Don't they basically get given that stuff second-hand by the military?

elliotec 6y ago

This is so obvious. Defund the police, and regulate their roles. Prioritize rape/violence/home invasion, deprioritize protests/drugs/etc., and as you say punish offenders. This is obvious.

remarkEon 6y ago
>This is so obvious. Defund the police, and regulate their roles. >deprioritize protests/drugs/etc Yeah, already done that. And it's miserable. My parents came to visit (from the midwest and right before the pandemic) and were absolutely appalled at seeing needles on the street when we went out to dinner. I don't blame them, really. I blame the people who pretend that shrugging at enforcing drug laws is some sort of "justice". It's not, it's political nihilism. And we've run this test 1000 times at this point across the country. Some will say that "it's not that bad", and to them I say "yeah ... I've been in worse places around the world too". Which is a snide way of saying that I'm really annoyed that people are okay with third world standards of living in the USA because they have this inverted sense of "justice".
- frostburg 6y ago
  Drug addiction is best treated as a public health issue, not a criminal one. You're just observing the effects of a lack of rug sweeping.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    At what point does "treating it like a public health issue" start to impede on public safety?
    - wffurr 6y ago
      It's more that not treating it (drug addiction) as a public health issue impedes on public safety. Supervised injection sites, housing first integrated support, access to effective medicine (methadone), etc. are all stymied by various flavors of political problems. What you're seeing is the result of a patchwork approach in disarray.

baddox 6y ago

If your comment is accurate, then it serves as a strong argument for why the police should be defunded even more than 50%.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

taneq 6y ago

> If their budget is reduced, the police will choose where to cut services in such a way as to inflict maximum fear in the population, to cause their budget to be restored. Sounds like they're a protection racket, no different from the Mafia. The issue here clearly isn't funding. The issue is control. Police in the U.S. have been allowed to become an autocratic state in their own right, and it is this state which needs to be dismantled.