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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 s

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
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    A counter example is Iraq, where disbanding existing police and trying to create a new unit from scratch caused Baghdad to turn into a violent warzone. (source: Iraq No End in Sight. documentary)
    - monocasa 6y ago
      Baghdad was already a literal violent warzone. We had just invaded and they didn't want an occupying army there.
      - djsumdog 6y ago
        That is absolutely, 100%, not true. Barbra Bodine stated in "Iraq: No End in Sight," Baghdad had ~11 murders in their morgue each year. It was safe for foreigners to have coffee and walk out on the street. In the opening weeks of the invasion, there were over 30 murders per day. It was under an autocratic fist. Speak against Saddam and go to jail .. but it was safe.
        monocasa 6y ago
        I'm saying that the US invading turned it into a warzone, not the removal of police. They created a civil war where the only thing that nearly everyone agreed with was that the Americans should leave.
        djsumdog 6y ago
        True. But I do think better planning and reconstruction efforts would have prevented the war zone. General Shinseki requested three times the number of troops that were deployed. They simply did not have enough to take an old Baghdad or much of Iraq. That combined with turning away the local current military leadership that was volunteering to help, made it spiral way worse that it needed to.
    - empath75 6y ago
      Well that’s because the police became terrorists. And it was already literally a warzone.
Bjartr 6y ago
Here's the prosecutor's office's response to the release of the man who threw coffee at a toddler (from the article you linked in fact). ---------------- In evaluating whether there is sufficient evidence to support a felony charge, we are ethically bound to apply the facts of a particular case to the law as established by the legislature. This is regardless of the history of a particular defendant or the outrageousness of the conduct. In order to elevate an assault against a child from a gross misdemeanor to a felony, there must be some level of bodily harm to the victim. The details of this law are specified here: https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.140 https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.140 Throwing coffee on a child is horrible and abusive behavior. Due to the Seattle Police Department (SPD) patrol’s response we were able to answer the questions we needed to determine the appropriate charges in this case. We learned from the police report that the child, thankfully, did not appear to have been injured in any way and we were told that the child received no medical treatment. In other words, the facts of this particular case didn’t support this being a felony. That said, we were able to refer the case to Seattle Municipal Court to ensure the offender was kept in custody. ---------------- According to the laws in place, no matter how many police there were or how well funded they were, the man, by law, should have been released in that particular circumstance. If that's unacceptable, then the laws should change, but as it stands this event was the justice system working as designed.
- monocasa 6y ago
  The prosecutor is wrong, and you can tell that they know they're wrong because they linked to the wrong statute. https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.130 https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.130 You can upgrade to second degree for "or (ii) causing the child physical pain or agony that is equivalent to that produced by torture." I think you can make the argument that pouring near boiling water on a toddler counts as that.
  - Bjartr 6y ago
    Playing devil's advocate: You could also make the argument in the other direction, so this isn't as cut and dry a case of the prosecution being clearly at fault. Additionally, this is a legal document, and there could be a strict definition of "torture" or for how one determines "pain or agony equivalent to" that doesn't make intuitive sense, but applies in the legal context (as I understand things as a non-lawyer, it's not that uncommon for words to mean surprising things in legal documents, which is a big part of why lawyers are valuable, they know how to currently interpret words that would mean something very different in conversational English) Do you have more information on this that would eliminate that ambiguity?

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
- djsumdog 6y ago
  A counter example is Iraq, where disbanding existing police and trying to create a new unit from scratch caused Baghdad to turn into a violent warzone. (source: Iraq No End in Sight. documentary)
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Baghdad was already a literal violent warzone. We had just invaded and they didn't want an occupying army there.
    - djsumdog 6y ago
      That is absolutely, 100%, not true. Barbra Bodine stated in "Iraq: No End in Sight," Baghdad had ~11 murders in their morgue each year. It was safe for foreigners to have coffee and walk out on the street. In the opening weeks of the invasion, there were over 30 murders per day. It was under an autocratic fist. Speak against Saddam and go to jail .. but it was safe.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        I'm saying that the US invading turned it into a warzone, not the removal of police. They created a civil war where the only thing that nearly everyone agreed with was that the Americans should leave.
        djsumdog 6y ago
        True. But I do think better planning and reconstruction efforts would have prevented the war zone. General Shinseki requested three times the number of troops that were deployed. They simply did not have enough to take an old Baghdad or much of Iraq. That combined with turning away the local current military leadership that was volunteering to help, made it spiral way worse that it needed to.
  - empath75 6y ago
    Well that’s because the police became terrorists. And it was already literally a warzone.

Bjartr 6y ago

Here's the prosecutor's office's response to the release of the man who threw coffee at a toddler (from the article you linked in fact). ---------------- In evaluating whether there is sufficient evidence to support a felony charge, we are ethically bound to apply the facts of a particular case to the law as established by the legislature. This is regardless of the history of a particular defendant or the outrageousness of the conduct. In order to elevate an assault against a child from a gross misdemeanor to a felony, there must be some level of bodily harm to the victim. The details of this law are specified here: https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.140 https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.140 Throwing coffee on a child is horrible and abusive behavior. Due to the Seattle Police Department (SPD) patrol’s response we were able to answer the questions we needed to determine the appropriate charges in this case. We learned from the police report that the child, thankfully, did not appear to have been injured in any way and we were told that the child received no medical treatment. In other words, the facts of this particular case didn’t support this being a felony. That said, we were able to refer the case to Seattle Municipal Court to ensure the offender was kept in custody. ---------------- According to the laws in place, no matter how many police there were or how well funded they were, the man, by law, should have been released in that particular circumstance. If that's unacceptable, then the laws should change, but as it stands this event was the justice system working as designed.

monocasa 6y ago
The prosecutor is wrong, and you can tell that they know they're wrong because they linked to the wrong statute. https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.130 https://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.36.130 You can upgrade to second degree for "or (ii) causing the child physical pain or agony that is equivalent to that produced by torture." I think you can make the argument that pouring near boiling water on a toddler counts as that.
- Bjartr 6y ago
  Playing devil's advocate: You could also make the argument in the other direction, so this isn't as cut and dry a case of the prosecution being clearly at fault. Additionally, this is a legal document, and there could be a strict definition of "torture" or for how one determines "pain or agony equivalent to" that doesn't make intuitive sense, but applies in the legal context (as I understand things as a non-lawyer, it's not that uncommon for words to mean surprising things in legal documents, which is a big part of why lawyers are valuable, they know how to currently interpret words that would mean something very different in conversational English) Do you have more information on this that would eliminate that ambiguity?