27 ms·

To defund the police, activists rewrote city budgets

138 points by SamWhited 6y ago

aswanson 6y ago
People focus so much on presidential elections, but the intrusion of freedoms and use of force against the citizen is largely at the municipal and state level.
- Loughla 6y ago
  Also, I've noticed that people care greatly about misspent federal dollars, and don't seem to notice when all local city or county contracts go to someone in the local government's brother or cousin. I know the federal dollars are larger, but the disconnect is just astounding. What got me involved in local politics was when the local county board asked a group of us to write a grant for federal and state dollars to fund a rural transportation program. This would be curb to curb service, at a very low rate. Turns out we were the only county classified as 'rural' in our state that did not have this grant. They brought us in 2 months before the deadline, after 5 years and 10 months of doing nothing with the grant but sitting on it and not publicizing it. They were confused why we couldn't put together a multiple-hundred page research document in two months. I was confused why they seemed so slapdash with this process. Until I realized one of the board members' brother and sister owned the only 'taxi' service that served areas outside of the 'city'. What a mess.
  - beamatronic 6y ago
    Didn’t anyone loudly proclaim the conflict of interest?
    - Analemma_ 6y ago
      Most likely nobody knows. This is unfortunately what happens when local newspapers disappear; there's no one else around to discover this stuff.
      - Loughla 6y ago
        This is the answer. Local media is owned by two families, one of which sits on the board. It's small town politics at its absolute finest.
  - dave5104 6y ago
    I live in the Bay Area, which as you probably know has a shortage of new housing construction. The town I live in has a councilmember that is a staunch opponent of state-level housing regulations and regularly votes against new housing projects in the town (or votes for less units, more difficulties on the developer, etc.) Surprise surprise, the councilmember, and her husband, are both realtors with a personal interest in keeping the housing market tight. And of course, no recusals when it comes to discussing policies or issues that she would benefit from as a realtor. The number of conflicts of interest at the municipal level is crazy, to the point of being depressing sometimes.
    - threatofrain 6y ago
      What’s the town in question, if I might ask?
  - ZainRiz 6y ago
    In my area the city had been paying the owners of a golf course thousands of dollars every year to have first dibs on the rights to purchase that land if and when the owners ever decided to sell it. A few years ago the golf course owners finally decided to sell. The mayor of the city (a real estate developer) decided that the city did not want to buy that land...and then bought the land for himself in a private transaction.
- beefalo 6y ago
  It's not like those happen in a vacuum though. The tone the executive branch sets for policy affects local decisions as well.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    also the funding
- _bxg1 6y ago
  This is a really good point. Local elections may be even more important, and are definitely easier to have an impact on. Local governments also - from my anecdotal impression - seem to have a lot more corruption, probably because they often go ignored.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Both parties focus all attention on the national level. (Also, Democrats are especially hampered as the things they want tend to require congressional action more.) It's a toxic exercise in impotence, dejection, and at best, change with is still very slow and indirect. Anything that focuses energy at the local level is a huge step. Both parties will be caught with their pants down. Issues are concrete and visceral, and do not require a high education to understand. It is by far the best way to fix the governance of this country. Local issues have a history of been deemed non-partisan, which means the everyday conservatism of single family zoning, hyper local funding of everything, etc. could rot out the culture completely by stealth post-WWII even before the more well-known rise in policing and decline in social services began the 70s and 80s.
- jdoliner 6y ago
  This is an incredibly important point in this debate. Almost all of the institutions people want to change are controlled at these lower levels of government. Even with federal legislation, all of the implementation will be up to lower level governments. But most of the things people want to change can only be changed at the City level, they're outside the federal governments jurisdiction. Crucially, this means that a lot of these issues can be addressed without navigating party politics. There are plenty of cities and states that are controlled top to bottom by one party (they exist for both parties). So either party should be able to more or less unilaterally pass these changes. IMO if you're not talking about fixing this at municipal and state levels you're more interested in party politics than fixing it.
- misiti3780 6y ago
  This is a great book I just read about this very subject: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TD6FVHG https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TD6FVHG
- metalgearsolid3 6y ago
  I'm sure if I worked at a company like Facebook, my day to day work-life and experiences would be primarily dictated by my managers, and perhaps their managers. But at the end of the day, Zuck is at the top, and people ultimately listen to him. Not to knock your point. Political activism needs to be local, but there is a reason there is so much focus on the president. I don't think it is unwarranted.
  - toasterlovin 6y ago
    The president has literally zero influence or control over what happens in local police departments.
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  All elections are important. State and local laws can't protect you from federal policy, and so the presidential election is arguably as important as any other, if not more important related to individual rights. As the president picks Supreme Court nominations, which are approved by Congress, all of these elections are important. The Supreme Court has been instrumental in reinterpreting existing laws, in order to make explicit how laws are meant to work and be implemented. This has caused things like gay marriage to now be legal, which is clearly consistent with our Constitutional values spirit; the letter of the law was used to discriminate contrary to the intent of the law.
beastman82 6y ago
That sounds like a truly horrible idea
- Avicebron 6y ago
  Remember Twitch plays Pokemon? I'm interested in the new experiment, Twitch plays LA and then Twitch plays America. Worth the shot right?
- illumanaughty 6y ago
  The police do not need billions of dollars. Defunding the police is a great idea. There are many more effective ways to spend this money. Police are used as a (poor) bandage for issues that stem from lack of funding in other areas, like healthcare, social work and housing.
  - bzb3 6y ago
    And handouts. Basically bribe the troublemakers so the police is not necessary. Clever.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    The streams of dollars are from different sources. Defunding local police is easy, but there is no way to meaningfully take that money and meaningfully apply it to social purposes.
  - graeme 6y ago
    I think part of the confusion stems from the choice of word. This is the definition of defund from the Oxford English Dictionary: "prevent from continuing to receive funds" It doesn't mean "Reduce funding down to a much smaller level in order to ensure the police fulfil only essential functions, while raising health, social and housing spending" I'm not sure which word would be a better choice, maybe there is none. But the literal meaning of defund suggests the proposal is to eliminate the police.
trixie_ 6y ago
Changing the laws to end 'qualified immunity' is much more important. Demilitarizing the police is also important. Maybe defunding would help with that. Watching police impose an excessive curfew on 10 million people (LA county) and then round up hundreds of peaceful protesters last night was sickening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_cDengPeSY&t=2240 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_cDengPeSY&t=2240 These people expressing their first amendment right to assemble should have been protected not persecuted. Police are out of control.
- justchilly 6y ago
  The curfew was ordered by the mayor, an elected official (LA in the case of the video you linked), not the police.
  - Alkhwarizmi 6y ago
    The mayor was not the one out there mercilessly beating down civil protestors, rather it was the police and militarized animals!
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    Curfews are ordered by mayors and enforced by the police. The distinction, in this case, isn’t very relevant.
    - skrtskrt 6y ago
      Especially when you watch the press conferences you can practically see the mayors’ puppet strings being pulled by the police chief standing next to them. Chicago was exactly the same. They know who the real power is.
      - garmaine 6y ago
        Police chiefs are also elected.
        6y ago
throwawaysea 6y ago
The "People's Budget"? The folks calling for defunding are small in number and do not represent the views of all or even most of the "People". I don't want to see the police defunded, nor do most reasonable people around me. Here in Seattle, given the sharp increase in property crimes and blight over the last ten years, I would like to see the opposite - increased policing and increased prosecution. It's an especially big problem since most people are so jaded from the total lack of police response, that they simply no longer report property crimes. We've already hamstrung our justice system due to calls from activists. For example, the city regularly releases criminals instead of sentencing them, which resulted in infuriating situations, like a man with 74 prior convictions including 15 assaults being released, only to then throw hot coffee at a toddler (https://komonews.com/news/project-seattle/no-felony-charges-for-repeat-offender-who-threw-coffee-at-toddler-in-seattle https://komonews.com/news/project-seattle/no-felony-charges-...). Reducing policing simply further removes disincentives for crime, beyond what we've done already, and will remove all the good we get from policing as well. The calls for "community programs" also seem incredibly vague and wasteful, and are unlikely to provide any substitute for the societal safety that comes from enforcing laws. Instead, I suggest we focus on more nuanced and precise actions - like banning or altering training around carotid artery holds, like banning no-knock raids, like having always-on body cams, like revisiting qualified immunity (https://fee.org/articles/to-curtail-police-impunity-rep-justin-amash-announces-legislation-to-end-qualified-immunity/ https://fee.org/articles/to-curtail-police-impunity-rep-just...), etc.
- empath75 6y ago
  what evidence is there that more police reduces crime?
  - monocasa 6y ago
    In fact I'll throw out there the time that the NYPD went on strike to prove to the people of New York how much they needed the force (which is pretty fucked up IMO, they were essentially sacrificing the security of civilians in their mind), but instead crime plummeted even accounting for reduced reports of crime. Ie. the presence of police in fact seems to increase crime. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5
crazygringo 6y ago
To be clear, "defunding" here doesn't mean to zero, just defunding most. As the chart shows, reducing a city's police spending from 53.8% to 5.72%. I mean... I'm actually shocked to hear that policing is a majority of the budget. That seems wild. Surely a twentieth of the budget is more in line with legitimate needs to fight crime?
- bb2018 6y ago
  I think the chart is misleading for those just seeing it in isolated form on social media. It doesn't include education budget because that is not discretionary. The school budget is 4x the police budget. I'm not exactly sure the right way to show what to include and not to include - but think it is a bit misleading to represent it this way. If I was running a company and didn't show the cost spent on salaries or office space it might look like we were spending a ton of money on coffee. (I am in favor of reducing militarization of police - just offended as a statistician!)
  - nharada 6y ago
    Frankly the fact that education is only 4x the budget of the police force is depressing in itself.
    - Kalium 6y ago
      Depending on the state, education might not be the city's job at all. It might be a separate level of government entirely. It's hard to make comparisons like this because obligations and reporting methodology can vary wildly.
    - bb2018 6y ago
      Again - I think this is misleading and I should have specified. In California, most of the money for schools comes from the state. So, when I say school budget from LA is 4x the police budget, that is just covering the 21% and 12% part of this graph. Doubling the LA school budget would only increase the total school budget about ~33% Again - if I was in charge I probably would lower police budgets and raise school budgets - but I think those sharing the slices without being informed are doing a disservice. Source: https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays I would love to be corrected on some of these issues, but in general looking at just discretionary funds from a city and ignoring all other funds will lead you to some wild conclusions.
starpilot 6y ago
Watch Swedish cops restrain a belligerent on the nyc subway. They take him down, then keep asking him if he's ok. Why can't American cops be like this? Why do they talk about "hitting them hard" rather than just "make sure they're ok"? Why is the default relationship adversarial?
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  For reference, here's the incident the parent comment is talking about: https://youtu.be/pBekdnGWAcs https://youtu.be/pBekdnGWAcs
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- renewiltord 6y ago
  There was a belligerent drunk being an asshole to the conductor on my train in Switzerland and these two guys sitting in the back suddenly pulled out their badges (which were on chains around their necks) and turned out to be plainclothes transport police. It was an amusing interaction to watch because: * The drunk fellow was much larger than the conductor but she didn't even seem fazed and was pretty much telling him that if he wasn't going to produce a ticket (I don't know if this was one of those buy-in-the-train trains) he was going to have to get off. * He was being all up in her face but when the cops got up they just walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder * They did have to restrain him but it was all rather civilized I can't help but think that considering everything he'd be tackled to the ground where I live now. It was sort of like a movie to watch these two guys dressed like you'd see street punks in a movie suddenly turn out to be transport police. Naturally it's one incident and I don't know what use of force is like in Switzerland or Sweden in general.
- uoaei 6y ago
  The training regimen for police is broadly one based on acting before you even have to react. Remember the game "slaps"? The one where you have to move your hands before your opponent moves theirs from below to above your hands, and slaps them. They train by playing this, but with guns.
- 6y ago
clairity 6y ago
i'm all for people’s budgets over police-oriented budgets. yesterday's take two† had councilman mike bonin talking about LA's budget, also calling out the increases in police budget relative to cuts in services that could soften the economic devastation we've seen this year. incidentally, the covid response (lockdowns, fear-driven justifications, selective enforcement) and the protest response (needless curfews, calling in the national guard, selective protection) has really revealed LA mayor garcetti's weakness as a leader, someone who runs to use of force at the slightest provocation. with such authoritarian tendencies, he needs to exit stage left. † https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/03/20895/ https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/03/20895/
cm2187 6y ago
Except that minorities are the first victims of crimes, so defunding the police will likely have the opposite effect, impacting the hardest the people who cannot afford private security.
- ChristianBundy 6y ago
  Smells like ideology to me. EDIT: Downvotes don't change the fact that you didn't read the article. Nobody is advocating for 'the purge'. Read the article or stop replying to my comment. EDIT 2: If you're too lazy to read this article (it's dense, I get it), here are some others: - https://www.newsweek.com/defund-police-movement-growing-heres-what-it-actually-means-1508761 https://www.newsweek.com/defund-police-movement-growing-here... - https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670...
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    Take the rod out of your own eye. What do you believe and why? Is it based on facts? Step back for a second. Some of these cities that are currently being ravaged by riots in the US are being run by left/liberal democrats. In places like Chicago/Detroit, they've been run by black democrats for years! It is about class. They are well off minorities in power who are using the system to keep themselves in power, just like their non-minority counterparts. They are part of the problem. What if this is less about race and more about class (and yes, systemic racism is likely leading to more black people being kept in that lower class, but that's actually a slightly different issue). In a period of extreme civil unrest, do we really need less security? Disbanding the police didn't work in Iraq. It turned things to chaos. How about just more police, with less guns, less expensive vehicles, and get rid of all private prisons?
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      It's an experiment. We will see. If it fails, we can always raise funding again.
    - 6y ago
grey-area 6y ago
Some figures for police budgets in US cities: City of Orlando spends 31.6% of its budget on police. Oakland spent 41 percent of the city's general fund on policing in Fiscal Year 2017. Chicago spent nearly 39 percent, Minneapolis almost 36 percent, Houston 35 percent. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-07/cities-spend-more-and-more-on-police-is-it-working https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-0... These figures seem remarkably high compared to other spending.
- inetknght 6y ago
  I'm a Houston resident. In a recent election there was a ballot measure which would affect the pay of Houston firefighters. In particular our firefighters were getting paid less than our police. The ballot measure was supposed to increase firefighters' pay to match. It was accomplished... but didn't meet the budget I guess. So firefighters were laid off instead. Here's [0] a related news article about it. [0] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-firefighters-begin-receiving-layoff-13810648.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/...
  - chomp 6y ago
    Also Houston resident. That whole thing was ridiculous. The problem goes back many years. Municipal and Police blew up the pension budget to something unsustainable through a variety of tactics, and firefighters got nowhere near the amount of cash that those two departments got. Then like 20 years ago when all of the cities in America started defunding pensions and then the chickens came to roost, Houston started issuing crazy bonds to keep up with the police and municipal workers, and firefighters actually had a decent fund that was mostly self sustaining and didn't require external funding as far as I know. Something super high like 90% of their pensions were fully funded. Then when Houston made budget cuts recently, they disproportionately cut firefighter pensions even though they were mostly responsible and funded, but I guess it looked like a stash of cash to the city. Keep in mind firefighters had previously made pay raise sacrifices to ensure their pension benefits continued. So they wanted the pay raises back since the pensions got cut, and they got laid off (and also some raise was given).
peter_retief 6y ago
It is hard to believe there are people who have such little understanding of reality.
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  We're in a period of mass hysteria, largely at the hands of social media networks. The only thing a sane person can do right now is sit back and let it play itself out before we're moved on to the next thing to be outraged and divided over.
  - peter_retief 6y ago
    Defunded police are a danger to the society they serve, it is a dangerous narrative as well.
User23 6y ago
This is a good example of an area where the far left and the far right are in total agreement. The far left is obvious, but the far right people also love the idea of defunding the police. It sets back the gun control agenda because without effective police the arguments for gun ownership become immeasurably stronger. It sets back the feminist agenda because it means women will have to depend on the men they know for protection, unless they are willing to carry and use a gun. And that's barely scratching the surface. The number of higher order consequences of defunding the police are mind-boggling. Insurance costs will obviously skyrocket for one, if policies even continue to be offered at all. Seeing a market opportunity, organized criminals will certainly step up their classic protection rackets. The wealthy will have to spend slightly more on private security, but obviously that doesn't really bother them. And of course if all that money is instead sent to minority communities, well I guarantee there will be some kind of struggle over who gets control of it.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Well, the high-liberty right is anti-police because they are the arm of state violence so there's a more direct relationship.
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
Give the people what they want. Cut the budgets and reduce policing. If this is truly what the people want, then on their heads may it be.
- dk8996 6y ago
  I agree with you in a game setting where we play multiple roads but that's not possible and I think many people will be hurt by this.
Vysero 6y ago
Yes let's de-fund the police. I am sure that will have no impact on future police recruitment or their general sense of appreciation for that matter. Which I am sure will have zero impact on their willingness to put their lives on the line when they are actually needed.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  I think it's important not to hate the police. If there are problems with the system, it's the laws that need to be changed. We're seeing that right now with marijuana laws, and it is having an impact. We can do the same by at least offering better programs for people arrested for meth/opioids. More free treatment. If they fail out, fine, go back to the jail route, but give people a chance to at least try and choose. The police do take a lot of money, but we're also seeing more money go to teachers/schools, working-class city workers (garbage, sewer, public works). That's not always a bad thing, but if you break down the numbers, you can often find corruption everywhere (like a school district superintendent taking like a $300k income). I think the focus on police is the wrong policy choice right now. That's not the core issue. It's everything else.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    The police have frankly earned every last scintillia of their hatred from their actions and lack of accountability. We don't accept a rapist or fraudster blaming society for the damage they do to get the sex or money they want and we should certainly hold actual authorities to higher standards instead of lower ones. The system being messed up does not negate their own moral agency and deriliction from it. To acquit them is even worse than even "just following orders" but an utterly insane "it is unfair that I am being judged by the intentions and outcomes of my actions taken on my own initiative".
    - Vysero 6y ago
      First of all: "The police have frankly earned every last scintillia of their hatred from their actions and lack of accountability." Is just ignorant. The VAST majority of police are wonderful people who have dedicated their lives to helping others. Secondly, you have no idea what the stakes are for anyone who is following orders, and it could vary from: none at all too: not being able to pay for their child's leukemia treatments.
jeffbee 6y ago
Numbers the article lacks. In 1993 the LAPD budget was $555m, or $985m today. The proposed budget for next year was $1860m, almost double. The population of LA has increased about 15% in the interim but the number of reported crimes fell from 80k/year to 30k/year. The real-dollar cost per crime reported has gone up more than 5x.
- taborj 6y ago
  Not sure if this was your point, but you just made a case for keeping the funding. Funding went up between 1993 to today, and crime went down by 50k reports per year, even as the population increased. Read another way, funding doubled, while crime reports were cut by more than half, even though the population went up by 15%. I know this is potentially a case of correlation doesn't equal causation, but if your goal is to argue against police budgets, these aren't the numbers to use. > The real-dollar cost per crime reported has gone up more than 5x. Yes, but that's a terrible way to look at something. You're not trying to reduce the cost per crime reported; you're trying to reduce the crime reported itself. That's going to take more money to accomplish, so the cost per crime going up is a good thing. It means you're getting good value for money. EDIT: Doing some simple math, the cost per crime today is way less than the cost per crime back in 1993, according to your numbers. Drastically less. (for the record, I don't know enough about this whole situation to have an informed opinion; my gut feeling is reducing the funding of your peacekeeping force by drastic amounts in a short time frame during a time of unrest is perhaps not wise)
- dk8996 6y ago
  Please feel free to ignoring the fact that cost of living in LA has gone up above inflation rate. Check your bias at the door please. "For example, the Bureau of Census reports that the average price of a new home in January 2000 was $194,800.4 According to the inflation calculator, that price in January 2020 should be $297,705.3 The same report places the average sale price for January 2020 at $402,400, more than 35% higher when accounting for inflation alone."
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Great, now do the LAUSD budget. It has gone up less than baseline inflation in the same period. So why are police getting a huge real-dollar increment in their budget while schools get none?
Symmetry 6y ago
I think this is a bad idea. We really need drastically more police training on things like de-escalation. I think we actually also need more police. Part of our problem is that while putting police in cars and dispatching them centrally via radio let us cut down on the number of police we use it also had the effect of making police officer isolated from the community. The start of this in the US was during Prohibition and this was looked on as a plus at the time in terms of enforcing laws communities didn't agree with. Making the police's only community contacts be with criminals means that they subconsciously absorb social norms from criminals and I think that's on display right now. We need to purse community policing even at the cost of decreased efficiency. We can't get rid of the police and the US's current system is obviously not working.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Turning the other cheek and buying more training is not an effective strategy of reforming an institutional adversary.
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    I think it's very important in situations like this to have a goal in mind. I don't see abolishing the police as an option here, martial law and self-help justice are even more undesirable than our current situation. So changes have to be made with a view to creating a better world rather than just lashing out to make ourselves feel better. Countries like Britain show that good policing is a possibility so we should be working towards reforms that make that possible.
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      It's not lashing out, it's a calculated decision to reduce the power of the adversary. > Countries like Britain show that good policing is a possibility so we should be working towards reforms that make that possible. Just because we call our thing "police" and they call their thing "policy" doesn't mean there is a direct path of reform from one to the other. The situation in the US is very different from other rich nations---former widespread slavery, more guns, fewer social services. All this in forms the culture of the institution in the US as much anything it has in common with other rich countries. Defunding and simultaneously reinvesting in this areas addresses exactly these underlying conditions---the Police are forced to do less and other agencies are empowered to do more. Then, and only then, can the US police be expected to act like their Western European counterparts.
jb775 6y ago
I wonder who the "activists" will blame when business investment moves to other cities, property values drop dramatically, and crime goes through the roof. I'm assuming whatever's in-vogue politically at the time.
627467 6y ago
I would assume that before you go make resources decisions you first reassess the goals that society have for said funding. Maybe rethink the role of police?
g00s3_caLL_x2 6y ago
Based on the sign, I would say that policing IS a 'social program'. I live in the inner city, and let me tell you something. People, by and large, SUCK! Drugs, violence, and general mayhem are a constant. It's much less of a policing problem and much more of a social ill problem. For every perceived 'decent person' in the hood, you have 5 that are scumbags. Now we have the protesters getting violent and mimicking that which is everyday life in the inner city like it's something good. It's not.
gok 6y ago
No, they didn't actually write a budget in any meaningful sense. They sent out polls on social media [1] and asked respondents to rank four categories they invented, three of which are unfocused concepts about what a civic government might do: 1. Universal Aid and Crisis Management 2. The Built Environment 3. Reimagined Community Safety …and one category which covers an actual budget item: 4. Law Enforcement I should add that in order to take this survey, you had to decide to click through a web page that says "We demand that the Mayor and City Council prioritize care NOT cops", which... may have skewed the results somewhat. Then they used those ranking to arbitrarily move numbers around. They decided to skip over some important things like, I don't know, having a fire department, or how they're going to pay for the pensions of those thousands of now-unemployed police officers. [1] https://peoplesbudgetla.com/survey/ https://peoplesbudgetla.com/survey/
Simulacra 6y ago
I disagree with defunding the police because at some point, we run the risk of losing the rank and file cop. What happens if 40% of LAPD calls out sick for a week, and those remaining abstain from crowd control or enforcement. I guess I’m just saying maybe defunding the police will make them feel attacked unjustly which may spiral to worse depths.
- uoaei 6y ago
  You are making the false assumption that we currently have exactly as many cops as we need.
  - Simulacra 6y ago
    No, no assumptions here. If I had to make any assumptions it would be that we do not have enough police officers in total, but that is largely dependent upon geographical or local criteria, much it is with any public service entity such as teachers, firefighters, etc. A $150 million cut (7.2%) in the LAPD budget ($1.8 bn) might mean nothing in the overall functioning of the organization, but to a smaller police department, a 7% cut in funding could mean very bad consequences.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Really defunding the police is a natural punishment for their repeated failures and lack of accountability. If more funding doesn't get better results, and the purse strings don't even get responsiveness to their needs then why bother beyond a bare minimium? Even a temporary measure to bring them to heel and forcing them to recognize who is really in charge could be useful for relations.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  > Even a temporary measure to bring them to heel and forcing them to recognize who is really in charge could be useful for relations. The police have a trump card. There really are bad people. And force is required to stop them. In protest, they can just slow walk all calls and say this is due to the budget being cut. If crime rises in the cities, people are going to blame the city leadership. Remember that a lot of the “tough on crime” emphasis of the 90’s came because of rising crime in the 70’s and 80’s. People hate chaos.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
I think 2020 will go down as the year, that housing prices drop in big cities. Between the pandemic and the social unrest and property destruction, the suburbs are looking more and more appealing, especially if you have children.
gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
This smacks of utopianism - social policy won't do away with crime. And color me surprised if the woke crowd successfully run with an austerity agenda.
codeddesign 6y ago
Less funding means less police, not better police. I don’t see how this resolves any issues. In Detroit, you can see what happens when you heavily defund police departments. Crime and police response time dramatically increase. Defunding is like taking the clothes away from a mis-behaving child. It doesn’t fix the child’s issue, the child is just naked now.
egberts1 6y ago
I’m all for experimentation in these days and ages. We’ll be able to document far-reaching changes (both good and bad). Sure, some communities and business sectors may dissolved due to such disruption but that’s the price of civilization and (d)evolving governance.

138 points by SamWhited 6y ago

People focus so much on presidential elections, but the intrusion of freedoms and use of force against the citizen is largely at the municipal and state level.

Loughla 6y ago
Also, I've noticed that people care greatly about misspent federal dollars, and don't seem to notice when all local city or county contracts go to someone in the local government's brother or cousin. I know the federal dollars are larger, but the disconnect is just astounding. What got me involved in local politics was when the local county board asked a group of us to write a grant for federal and state dollars to fund a rural transportation program. This would be curb to curb service, at a very low rate. Turns out we were the only county classified as 'rural' in our state that did not have this grant. They brought us in 2 months before the deadline, after 5 years and 10 months of doing nothing with the grant but sitting on it and not publicizing it. They were confused why we couldn't put together a multiple-hundred page research document in two months. I was confused why they seemed so slapdash with this process. Until I realized one of the board members' brother and sister owned the only 'taxi' service that served areas outside of the 'city'. What a mess.
- beamatronic 6y ago
  Didn’t anyone loudly proclaim the conflict of interest?
  - Analemma_ 6y ago
    Most likely nobody knows. This is unfortunately what happens when local newspapers disappear; there's no one else around to discover this stuff.
    - Loughla 6y ago
      This is the answer. Local media is owned by two families, one of which sits on the board. It's small town politics at its absolute finest.
- dave5104 6y ago
  I live in the Bay Area, which as you probably know has a shortage of new housing construction. The town I live in has a councilmember that is a staunch opponent of state-level housing regulations and regularly votes against new housing projects in the town (or votes for less units, more difficulties on the developer, etc.) Surprise surprise, the councilmember, and her husband, are both realtors with a personal interest in keeping the housing market tight. And of course, no recusals when it comes to discussing policies or issues that she would benefit from as a realtor. The number of conflicts of interest at the municipal level is crazy, to the point of being depressing sometimes.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    What’s the town in question, if I might ask?
- ZainRiz 6y ago
  In my area the city had been paying the owners of a golf course thousands of dollars every year to have first dibs on the rights to purchase that land if and when the owners ever decided to sell it. A few years ago the golf course owners finally decided to sell. The mayor of the city (a real estate developer) decided that the city did not want to buy that land...and then bought the land for himself in a private transaction.
beefalo 6y ago
It's not like those happen in a vacuum though. The tone the executive branch sets for policy affects local decisions as well.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  also the funding
_bxg1 6y ago
This is a really good point. Local elections may be even more important, and are definitely easier to have an impact on. Local governments also - from my anecdotal impression - seem to have a lot more corruption, probably because they often go ignored.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Both parties focus all attention on the national level. (Also, Democrats are especially hampered as the things they want tend to require congressional action more.) It's a toxic exercise in impotence, dejection, and at best, change with is still very slow and indirect. Anything that focuses energy at the local level is a huge step. Both parties will be caught with their pants down. Issues are concrete and visceral, and do not require a high education to understand. It is by far the best way to fix the governance of this country. Local issues have a history of been deemed non-partisan, which means the everyday conservatism of single family zoning, hyper local funding of everything, etc. could rot out the culture completely by stealth post-WWII even before the more well-known rise in policing and decline in social services began the 70s and 80s.
jdoliner 6y ago
This is an incredibly important point in this debate. Almost all of the institutions people want to change are controlled at these lower levels of government. Even with federal legislation, all of the implementation will be up to lower level governments. But most of the things people want to change can only be changed at the City level, they're outside the federal governments jurisdiction. Crucially, this means that a lot of these issues can be addressed without navigating party politics. There are plenty of cities and states that are controlled top to bottom by one party (they exist for both parties). So either party should be able to more or less unilaterally pass these changes. IMO if you're not talking about fixing this at municipal and state levels you're more interested in party politics than fixing it.
misiti3780 6y ago
This is a great book I just read about this very subject: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TD6FVHG https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TD6FVHG
metalgearsolid3 6y ago
I'm sure if I worked at a company like Facebook, my day to day work-life and experiences would be primarily dictated by my managers, and perhaps their managers. But at the end of the day, Zuck is at the top, and people ultimately listen to him. Not to knock your point. Political activism needs to be local, but there is a reason there is so much focus on the president. I don't think it is unwarranted.
- toasterlovin 6y ago
  The president has literally zero influence or control over what happens in local police departments.
aspenmayer 6y ago
All elections are important. State and local laws can't protect you from federal policy, and so the presidential election is arguably as important as any other, if not more important related to individual rights. As the president picks Supreme Court nominations, which are approved by Congress, all of these elections are important. The Supreme Court has been instrumental in reinterpreting existing laws, in order to make explicit how laws are meant to work and be implemented. This has caused things like gay marriage to now be legal, which is clearly consistent with our Constitutional values spirit; the letter of the law was used to discriminate contrary to the intent of the law.

beastman82 6y ago

That sounds like a truly horrible idea

Avicebron 6y ago
Remember Twitch plays Pokemon? I'm interested in the new experiment, Twitch plays LA and then Twitch plays America. Worth the shot right?
illumanaughty 6y ago
The police do not need billions of dollars. Defunding the police is a great idea. There are many more effective ways to spend this money. Police are used as a (poor) bandage for issues that stem from lack of funding in other areas, like healthcare, social work and housing.
- bzb3 6y ago
  And handouts. Basically bribe the troublemakers so the police is not necessary. Clever.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- Spooky23 6y ago
  The streams of dollars are from different sources. Defunding local police is easy, but there is no way to meaningfully take that money and meaningfully apply it to social purposes.
- graeme 6y ago
  I think part of the confusion stems from the choice of word. This is the definition of defund from the Oxford English Dictionary: "prevent from continuing to receive funds" It doesn't mean "Reduce funding down to a much smaller level in order to ensure the police fulfil only essential functions, while raising health, social and housing spending" I'm not sure which word would be a better choice, maybe there is none. But the literal meaning of defund suggests the proposal is to eliminate the police.

trixie_ 6y ago

Changing the laws to end 'qualified immunity' is much more important. Demilitarizing the police is also important. Maybe defunding would help with that. Watching police impose an excessive curfew on 10 million people (LA county) and then round up hundreds of peaceful protesters last night was sickening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_cDengPeSY&t=2240 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_cDengPeSY&t=2240 These people expressing their first amendment right to assemble should have been protected not persecuted. Police are out of control.

justchilly 6y ago
The curfew was ordered by the mayor, an elected official (LA in the case of the video you linked), not the police.
- Alkhwarizmi 6y ago
  The mayor was not the one out there mercilessly beating down civil protestors, rather it was the police and militarized animals!
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  Curfews are ordered by mayors and enforced by the police. The distinction, in this case, isn’t very relevant.
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    Especially when you watch the press conferences you can practically see the mayors’ puppet strings being pulled by the police chief standing next to them. Chicago was exactly the same. They know who the real power is.
    - garmaine 6y ago
      Police chiefs are also elected.
      - 6y ago

throwawaysea 6y ago

The "People's Budget"? The folks calling for defunding are small in number and do not represent the views of all or even most of the "People". I don't want to see the police defunded, nor do most reasonable people around me. Here in Seattle, given the sharp increase in property crimes and blight over the last ten years, I would like to see the opposite - increased policing and increased prosecution. It's an especially big problem since most people are so jaded from the total lack of police response, that they simply no longer report property crimes. We've already hamstrung our justice system due to calls from activists. For example, the city regularly releases criminals instead of sentencing them, which resulted in infuriating situations, like a man with 74 prior convictions including 15 assaults being released, only to then throw hot coffee at a toddler (https://komonews.com/news/project-seattle/no-felony-charges-for-repeat-offender-who-threw-coffee-at-toddler-in-seattle https://komonews.com/news/project-seattle/no-felony-charges-...). Reducing policing simply further removes disincentives for crime, beyond what we've done already, and will remove all the good we get from policing as well. The calls for "community programs" also seem incredibly vague and wasteful, and are unlikely to provide any substitute for the societal safety that comes from enforcing laws. Instead, I suggest we focus on more nuanced and precise actions - like banning or altering training around carotid artery holds, like banning no-knock raids, like having always-on body cams, like revisiting qualified immunity (https://fee.org/articles/to-curtail-police-impunity-rep-justin-amash-announces-legislation-to-end-qualified-immunity/ https://fee.org/articles/to-curtail-police-impunity-rep-just...), etc.

empath75 6y ago
what evidence is there that more police reduces crime?
- monocasa 6y ago
  In fact I'll throw out there the time that the NYPD went on strike to prove to the people of New York how much they needed the force (which is pretty fucked up IMO, they were essentially sacrificing the security of civilians in their mind), but instead crime plummeted even accounting for reduced reports of crime. Ie. the presence of police in fact seems to increase crime. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

crazygringo 6y ago

To be clear, "defunding" here doesn't mean to zero, just defunding most. As the chart shows, reducing a city's police spending from 53.8% to 5.72%. I mean... I'm actually shocked to hear that policing is a majority of the budget. That seems wild. Surely a twentieth of the budget is more in line with legitimate needs to fight crime?

bb2018 6y ago
I think the chart is misleading for those just seeing it in isolated form on social media. It doesn't include education budget because that is not discretionary. The school budget is 4x the police budget. I'm not exactly sure the right way to show what to include and not to include - but think it is a bit misleading to represent it this way. If I was running a company and didn't show the cost spent on salaries or office space it might look like we were spending a ton of money on coffee. (I am in favor of reducing militarization of police - just offended as a statistician!)
- nharada 6y ago
  Frankly the fact that education is only 4x the budget of the police force is depressing in itself.
  - Kalium 6y ago
    Depending on the state, education might not be the city's job at all. It might be a separate level of government entirely. It's hard to make comparisons like this because obligations and reporting methodology can vary wildly.
  - bb2018 6y ago
    Again - I think this is misleading and I should have specified. In California, most of the money for schools comes from the state. So, when I say school budget from LA is 4x the police budget, that is just covering the 21% and 12% part of this graph. Doubling the LA school budget would only increase the total school budget about ~33% Again - if I was in charge I probably would lower police budgets and raise school budgets - but I think those sharing the slices without being informed are doing a disservice. Source: https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays https://ed100.org/lessons/whopays I would love to be corrected on some of these issues, but in general looking at just discretionary funds from a city and ignoring all other funds will lead you to some wild conclusions.

starpilot 6y ago

Watch Swedish cops restrain a belligerent on the nyc subway. They take him down, then keep asking him if he's ok. Why can't American cops be like this? Why do they talk about "hitting them hard" rather than just "make sure they're ok"? Why is the default relationship adversarial?

throwawaysea 6y ago
For reference, here's the incident the parent comment is talking about: https://youtu.be/pBekdnGWAcs https://youtu.be/pBekdnGWAcs
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
renewiltord 6y ago
There was a belligerent drunk being an asshole to the conductor on my train in Switzerland and these two guys sitting in the back suddenly pulled out their badges (which were on chains around their necks) and turned out to be plainclothes transport police. It was an amusing interaction to watch because: * The drunk fellow was much larger than the conductor but she didn't even seem fazed and was pretty much telling him that if he wasn't going to produce a ticket (I don't know if this was one of those buy-in-the-train trains) he was going to have to get off. * He was being all up in her face but when the cops got up they just walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder * They did have to restrain him but it was all rather civilized I can't help but think that considering everything he'd be tackled to the ground where I live now. It was sort of like a movie to watch these two guys dressed like you'd see street punks in a movie suddenly turn out to be transport police. Naturally it's one incident and I don't know what use of force is like in Switzerland or Sweden in general.
uoaei 6y ago
The training regimen for police is broadly one based on acting before you even have to react. Remember the game "slaps"? The one where you have to move your hands before your opponent moves theirs from below to above your hands, and slaps them. They train by playing this, but with guns.
6y ago

clairity 6y ago

i'm all for people’s budgets over police-oriented budgets. yesterday's take two† had councilman mike bonin talking about LA's budget, also calling out the increases in police budget relative to cuts in services that could soften the economic devastation we've seen this year. incidentally, the covid response (lockdowns, fear-driven justifications, selective enforcement) and the protest response (needless curfews, calling in the national guard, selective protection) has really revealed LA mayor garcetti's weakness as a leader, someone who runs to use of force at the slightest provocation. with such authoritarian tendencies, he needs to exit stage left. † https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/03/20895/ https://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2020/06/03/20895/

cm2187 6y ago

Except that minorities are the first victims of crimes, so defunding the police will likely have the opposite effect, impacting the hardest the people who cannot afford private security.

ChristianBundy 6y ago
Smells like ideology to me. EDIT: Downvotes don't change the fact that you didn't read the article. Nobody is advocating for 'the purge'. Read the article or stop replying to my comment. EDIT 2: If you're too lazy to read this article (it's dense, I get it), here are some others: - https://www.newsweek.com/defund-police-movement-growing-heres-what-it-actually-means-1508761 https://www.newsweek.com/defund-police-movement-growing-here... - https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670...
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Take the rod out of your own eye. What do you believe and why? Is it based on facts? Step back for a second. Some of these cities that are currently being ravaged by riots in the US are being run by left/liberal democrats. In places like Chicago/Detroit, they've been run by black democrats for years! It is about class. They are well off minorities in power who are using the system to keep themselves in power, just like their non-minority counterparts. They are part of the problem. What if this is less about race and more about class (and yes, systemic racism is likely leading to more black people being kept in that lower class, but that's actually a slightly different issue). In a period of extreme civil unrest, do we really need less security? Disbanding the police didn't work in Iraq. It turned things to chaos. How about just more police, with less guns, less expensive vehicles, and get rid of all private prisons?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    It's an experiment. We will see. If it fails, we can always raise funding again.
  - 6y ago

grey-area 6y ago

Some figures for police budgets in US cities: City of Orlando spends 31.6% of its budget on police. Oakland spent 41 percent of the city's general fund on policing in Fiscal Year 2017. Chicago spent nearly 39 percent, Minneapolis almost 36 percent, Houston 35 percent. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-07/cities-spend-more-and-more-on-police-is-it-working https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-07-0... These figures seem remarkably high compared to other spending.

inetknght 6y ago
I'm a Houston resident. In a recent election there was a ballot measure which would affect the pay of Houston firefighters. In particular our firefighters were getting paid less than our police. The ballot measure was supposed to increase firefighters' pay to match. It was accomplished... but didn't meet the budget I guess. So firefighters were laid off instead. Here's [0] a related news article about it. [0] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Houston-firefighters-begin-receiving-layoff-13810648.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/...
- chomp 6y ago
  Also Houston resident. That whole thing was ridiculous. The problem goes back many years. Municipal and Police blew up the pension budget to something unsustainable through a variety of tactics, and firefighters got nowhere near the amount of cash that those two departments got. Then like 20 years ago when all of the cities in America started defunding pensions and then the chickens came to roost, Houston started issuing crazy bonds to keep up with the police and municipal workers, and firefighters actually had a decent fund that was mostly self sustaining and didn't require external funding as far as I know. Something super high like 90% of their pensions were fully funded. Then when Houston made budget cuts recently, they disproportionately cut firefighter pensions even though they were mostly responsible and funded, but I guess it looked like a stash of cash to the city. Keep in mind firefighters had previously made pay raise sacrifices to ensure their pension benefits continued. So they wanted the pay raises back since the pensions got cut, and they got laid off (and also some raise was given).

peter_retief 6y ago

It is hard to believe there are people who have such little understanding of reality.

cmdshiftf4 6y ago
We're in a period of mass hysteria, largely at the hands of social media networks. The only thing a sane person can do right now is sit back and let it play itself out before we're moved on to the next thing to be outraged and divided over.
- peter_retief 6y ago
  Defunded police are a danger to the society they serve, it is a dangerous narrative as well.

User23 6y ago

This is a good example of an area where the far left and the far right are in total agreement. The far left is obvious, but the far right people also love the idea of defunding the police. It sets back the gun control agenda because without effective police the arguments for gun ownership become immeasurably stronger. It sets back the feminist agenda because it means women will have to depend on the men they know for protection, unless they are willing to carry and use a gun. And that's barely scratching the surface. The number of higher order consequences of defunding the police are mind-boggling. Insurance costs will obviously skyrocket for one, if policies even continue to be offered at all. Seeing a market opportunity, organized criminals will certainly step up their classic protection rackets. The wealthy will have to spend slightly more on private security, but obviously that doesn't really bother them. And of course if all that money is instead sent to minority communities, well I guarantee there will be some kind of struggle over who gets control of it.

renewiltord 6y ago
Well, the high-liberty right is anti-police because they are the arm of state violence so there's a more direct relationship.

cmdshiftf4 6y ago

Give the people what they want. Cut the budgets and reduce policing. If this is truly what the people want, then on their heads may it be.

dk8996 6y ago
I agree with you in a game setting where we play multiple roads but that's not possible and I think many people will be hurt by this.

Vysero 6y ago

Yes let's de-fund the police. I am sure that will have no impact on future police recruitment or their general sense of appreciation for that matter. Which I am sure will have zero impact on their willingness to put their lives on the line when they are actually needed.

djsumdog 6y ago
I think it's important not to hate the police. If there are problems with the system, it's the laws that need to be changed. We're seeing that right now with marijuana laws, and it is having an impact. We can do the same by at least offering better programs for people arrested for meth/opioids. More free treatment. If they fail out, fine, go back to the jail route, but give people a chance to at least try and choose. The police do take a lot of money, but we're also seeing more money go to teachers/schools, working-class city workers (garbage, sewer, public works). That's not always a bad thing, but if you break down the numbers, you can often find corruption everywhere (like a school district superintendent taking like a $300k income). I think the focus on police is the wrong policy choice right now. That's not the core issue. It's everything else.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  The police have frankly earned every last scintillia of their hatred from their actions and lack of accountability. We don't accept a rapist or fraudster blaming society for the damage they do to get the sex or money they want and we should certainly hold actual authorities to higher standards instead of lower ones. The system being messed up does not negate their own moral agency and deriliction from it. To acquit them is even worse than even "just following orders" but an utterly insane "it is unfair that I am being judged by the intentions and outcomes of my actions taken on my own initiative".
  - Vysero 6y ago
    First of all: "The police have frankly earned every last scintillia of their hatred from their actions and lack of accountability." Is just ignorant. The VAST majority of police are wonderful people who have dedicated their lives to helping others. Secondly, you have no idea what the stakes are for anyone who is following orders, and it could vary from: none at all too: not being able to pay for their child's leukemia treatments.

jeffbee 6y ago

Numbers the article lacks. In 1993 the LAPD budget was $555m, or $985m today. The proposed budget for next year was $1860m, almost double. The population of LA has increased about 15% in the interim but the number of reported crimes fell from 80k/year to 30k/year. The real-dollar cost per crime reported has gone up more than 5x.

taborj 6y ago
Not sure if this was your point, but you just made a case for keeping the funding. Funding went up between 1993 to today, and crime went down by 50k reports per year, even as the population increased. Read another way, funding doubled, while crime reports were cut by more than half, even though the population went up by 15%. I know this is potentially a case of correlation doesn't equal causation, but if your goal is to argue against police budgets, these aren't the numbers to use. > The real-dollar cost per crime reported has gone up more than 5x. Yes, but that's a terrible way to look at something. You're not trying to reduce the cost per crime reported; you're trying to reduce the crime reported itself. That's going to take more money to accomplish, so the cost per crime going up is a good thing. It means you're getting good value for money. EDIT: Doing some simple math, the cost per crime today is way less than the cost per crime back in 1993, according to your numbers. Drastically less. (for the record, I don't know enough about this whole situation to have an informed opinion; my gut feeling is reducing the funding of your peacekeeping force by drastic amounts in a short time frame during a time of unrest is perhaps not wise)
dk8996 6y ago
Please feel free to ignoring the fact that cost of living in LA has gone up above inflation rate. Check your bias at the door please. "For example, the Bureau of Census reports that the average price of a new home in January 2000 was $194,800.4 According to the inflation calculator, that price in January 2020 should be $297,705.3 The same report places the average sale price for January 2020 at $402,400, more than 35% higher when accounting for inflation alone."
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Great, now do the LAUSD budget. It has gone up less than baseline inflation in the same period. So why are police getting a huge real-dollar increment in their budget while schools get none?

Symmetry 6y ago

I think this is a bad idea. We really need drastically more police training on things like de-escalation. I think we actually also need more police. Part of our problem is that while putting police in cars and dispatching them centrally via radio let us cut down on the number of police we use it also had the effect of making police officer isolated from the community. The start of this in the US was during Prohibition and this was looked on as a plus at the time in terms of enforcing laws communities didn't agree with. Making the police's only community contacts be with criminals means that they subconsciously absorb social norms from criminals and I think that's on display right now. We need to purse community policing even at the cost of decreased efficiency. We can't get rid of the police and the US's current system is obviously not working.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Turning the other cheek and buying more training is not an effective strategy of reforming an institutional adversary.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  I think it's very important in situations like this to have a goal in mind. I don't see abolishing the police as an option here, martial law and self-help justice are even more undesirable than our current situation. So changes have to be made with a view to creating a better world rather than just lashing out to make ourselves feel better. Countries like Britain show that good policing is a possibility so we should be working towards reforms that make that possible.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    It's not lashing out, it's a calculated decision to reduce the power of the adversary. > Countries like Britain show that good policing is a possibility so we should be working towards reforms that make that possible. Just because we call our thing "police" and they call their thing "policy" doesn't mean there is a direct path of reform from one to the other. The situation in the US is very different from other rich nations---former widespread slavery, more guns, fewer social services. All this in forms the culture of the institution in the US as much anything it has in common with other rich countries. Defunding and simultaneously reinvesting in this areas addresses exactly these underlying conditions---the Police are forced to do less and other agencies are empowered to do more. Then, and only then, can the US police be expected to act like their Western European counterparts.

jb775 6y ago

I wonder who the "activists" will blame when business investment moves to other cities, property values drop dramatically, and crime goes through the roof. I'm assuming whatever's in-vogue politically at the time.

627467 6y ago

I would assume that before you go make resources decisions you first reassess the goals that society have for said funding. Maybe rethink the role of police?

g00s3_caLL_x2 6y ago

Based on the sign, I would say that policing IS a 'social program'. I live in the inner city, and let me tell you something. People, by and large, SUCK! Drugs, violence, and general mayhem are a constant. It's much less of a policing problem and much more of a social ill problem. For every perceived 'decent person' in the hood, you have 5 that are scumbags. Now we have the protesters getting violent and mimicking that which is everyday life in the inner city like it's something good. It's not.

gok 6y ago

No, they didn't actually write a budget in any meaningful sense. They sent out polls on social media [1] and asked respondents to rank four categories they invented, three of which are unfocused concepts about what a civic government might do: 1. Universal Aid and Crisis Management 2. The Built Environment 3. Reimagined Community Safety …and one category which covers an actual budget item: 4. Law Enforcement I should add that in order to take this survey, you had to decide to click through a web page that says "We demand that the Mayor and City Council prioritize care NOT cops", which... may have skewed the results somewhat. Then they used those ranking to arbitrarily move numbers around. They decided to skip over some important things like, I don't know, having a fire department, or how they're going to pay for the pensions of those thousands of now-unemployed police officers. [1] https://peoplesbudgetla.com/survey/ https://peoplesbudgetla.com/survey/

Simulacra 6y ago

I disagree with defunding the police because at some point, we run the risk of losing the rank and file cop. What happens if 40% of LAPD calls out sick for a week, and those remaining abstain from crowd control or enforcement. I guess I’m just saying maybe defunding the police will make them feel attacked unjustly which may spiral to worse depths.

uoaei 6y ago
You are making the false assumption that we currently have exactly as many cops as we need.
- Simulacra 6y ago
  No, no assumptions here. If I had to make any assumptions it would be that we do not have enough police officers in total, but that is largely dependent upon geographical or local criteria, much it is with any public service entity such as teachers, firefighters, etc. A $150 million cut (7.2%) in the LAPD budget ($1.8 bn) might mean nothing in the overall functioning of the organization, but to a smaller police department, a 7% cut in funding could mean very bad consequences.

Nasrudith 6y ago

Really defunding the police is a natural punishment for their repeated failures and lack of accountability. If more funding doesn't get better results, and the purse strings don't even get responsiveness to their needs then why bother beyond a bare minimium? Even a temporary measure to bring them to heel and forcing them to recognize who is really in charge could be useful for relations.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> Even a temporary measure to bring them to heel and forcing them to recognize who is really in charge could be useful for relations. The police have a trump card. There really are bad people. And force is required to stop them. In protest, they can just slow walk all calls and say this is due to the budget being cut. If crime rises in the cities, people are going to blame the city leadership. Remember that a lot of the “tough on crime” emphasis of the 90’s came because of rising crime in the 70’s and 80’s. People hate chaos.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

I think 2020 will go down as the year, that housing prices drop in big cities. Between the pandemic and the social unrest and property destruction, the suburbs are looking more and more appealing, especially if you have children.

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago

This smacks of utopianism - social policy won't do away with crime. And color me surprised if the woke crowd successfully run with an austerity agenda.

codeddesign 6y ago

Less funding means less police, not better police. I don’t see how this resolves any issues. In Detroit, you can see what happens when you heavily defund police departments. Crime and police response time dramatically increase. Defunding is like taking the clothes away from a mis-behaving child. It doesn’t fix the child’s issue, the child is just naked now.

egberts1 6y ago

I’m all for experimentation in these days and ages. We’ll be able to document far-reaching changes (both good and bad). Sure, some communities and business sectors may dissolved due to such disruption but that’s the price of civilization and (d)evolving governance.