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I feel like this argument is an example of gaslighting. The people who are calling to defund the police literally mean defunding the police. Presumably the one

I feel like this argument is an example of gaslighting. The people who are calling to defund the police literally mean defunding the police. Presumably the ones that make this call are hoping an ideological paramilitary arm (such as antifa) can fill the power vacuum left behind. Those that want reform are asking for reform. Don’t be gaslit.

sangnoir 6y ago
You don't need to presume; just read their platform. They want the police to stop filling the vacuum left by lack of social services (i.e. police currently respond to people mental distress because there are no social workers who currently do that). They want to defund the police and have the money directed to social services so that police stop being a jack of all trades (especially since they are not trained in deescalation). Public education has been defunded for decades, but we still have teachers and public schools, and their charter alternatives - that should be your mental model not abolishment of police.
megameter 6y ago
Gaslighting occurs with respect to a current situation, not a hypothetical. Here are top results on Google for "defund the police." “Defund the police” means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies ... “Defund the police” means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality. "Defund the police" is a slogan that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources. Instead of funding a police department, a sizable chunk of a city's budget is invested in communities, especially marginalized ... Police abolition means reducing, with the vision of eventually eliminating, our reliance on policing to secure our public safety. It ... No sources in these results say "create a power vacuum". That is the invention of critics. Please demonstrate otherwise.
- treeman79 6y ago
  Google is extremely political. Search results are not trustworthy on anything political.
rsynnott 6y ago
As far as I know, essentially everyone is either asking for either "in some way reorganise this, maybe lose the leadership, or at most fire the lot and make a new one" or "pull money and responsibilities from this and give to social services/community groups/whatever". However, those make for awful slogans. "Defund the police" is a good slogan. This is, incidentally, probably the US left learning the Hillary Clinton Lesson. Detailed, costed proposals of what you want to do may be very practical, but people prefer a good slogan, and to leave the details to the detail people.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> The people who are calling to defund the police literally mean defunding the police. The people who are saying defund the police do want that literally, but they don't mean “reduce funding to zero”, they mean reduce funding and responsibility and transfer the bits that aren't optimally served by an armed paramilitary law enforcement force to be served by other agencies, who also get the associated funding. There are people who take that a step further, who prefer the slogan “dismantle the police” or “abolish the police”. Mostly, like the “defund” group with which they overlap (these are variations rather than strict alternatives) they want to fund agencies that they see as more appropriate for the functions, but the dismantle/abolish group thinks that the kind of centralized armed groups with paramilitary organization that exist as local police departments aren't the right solution to any problems (except perhaps for large scale civil disorder, but we already have the national guard to respond to that, who don't do nearly as much to provoke that disorder in the first place), so they think all the functions of existing police departments should be transferred to other agencies (some of which might have arrest powers, and even armed agents, but those agents would be working for domain-specific agencies, not a massive centralized general-purpose paramilitary law enforcement agency.) > Presumably the ones that make this call are hoping an ideological paramilitary arm (such as antifa) can fill the power vacuum left behind. No, for the most part the defund/dismantle/abolish group thinks that the problem is centralized omnipresent paramilitary forces with a separate ideology and culture from the general society, not that we just need to swap one out for a different one. > Those that want reform are asking for reform. “Defund the police” and “dismantle/abolish the police” are approaches to reform of how society serves the functions currently served by the police. They are approaches differing from the counterproductive “reform” efforts that have led us where we are today because they don't involve shoveling more scarce resources and more responsibility into local centralized paramilitary law enforcement agencies.

sangnoir 6y ago

You don't need to presume; just read their platform. They want the police to stop filling the vacuum left by lack of social services (i.e. police currently respond to people mental distress because there are no social workers who currently do that). They want to defund the police and have the money directed to social services so that police stop being a jack of all trades (especially since they are not trained in deescalation). Public education has been defunded for decades, but we still have teachers and public schools, and their charter alternatives - that should be your mental model not abolishment of police.

megameter 6y ago

Gaslighting occurs with respect to a current situation, not a hypothetical. Here are top results on Google for "defund the police." “Defund the police” means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies ... “Defund the police” means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality. "Defund the police" is a slogan that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources. Instead of funding a police department, a sizable chunk of a city's budget is invested in communities, especially marginalized ... Police abolition means reducing, with the vision of eventually eliminating, our reliance on policing to secure our public safety. It ... No sources in these results say "create a power vacuum". That is the invention of critics. Please demonstrate otherwise.

treeman79 6y ago
Google is extremely political. Search results are not trustworthy on anything political.

rsynnott 6y ago

As far as I know, essentially everyone is either asking for either "in some way reorganise this, maybe lose the leadership, or at most fire the lot and make a new one" or "pull money and responsibilities from this and give to social services/community groups/whatever". However, those make for awful slogans. "Defund the police" is a good slogan. This is, incidentally, probably the US left learning the Hillary Clinton Lesson. Detailed, costed proposals of what you want to do may be very practical, but people prefer a good slogan, and to leave the details to the detail people.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> The people who are calling to defund the police literally mean defunding the police. The people who are saying defund the police do want that literally, but they don't mean “reduce funding to zero”, they mean reduce funding and responsibility and transfer the bits that aren't optimally served by an armed paramilitary law enforcement force to be served by other agencies, who also get the associated funding. There are people who take that a step further, who prefer the slogan “dismantle the police” or “abolish the police”. Mostly, like the “defund” group with which they overlap (these are variations rather than strict alternatives) they want to fund agencies that they see as more appropriate for the functions, but the dismantle/abolish group thinks that the kind of centralized armed groups with paramilitary organization that exist as local police departments aren't the right solution to any problems (except perhaps for large scale civil disorder, but we already have the national guard to respond to that, who don't do nearly as much to provoke that disorder in the first place), so they think all the functions of existing police departments should be transferred to other agencies (some of which might have arrest powers, and even armed agents, but those agents would be working for domain-specific agencies, not a massive centralized general-purpose paramilitary law enforcement agency.) > Presumably the ones that make this call are hoping an ideological paramilitary arm (such as antifa) can fill the power vacuum left behind. No, for the most part the defund/dismantle/abolish group thinks that the problem is centralized omnipresent paramilitary forces with a separate ideology and culture from the general society, not that we just need to swap one out for a different one. > Those that want reform are asking for reform. “Defund the police” and “dismantle/abolish the police” are approaches to reform of how society serves the functions currently served by the police. They are approaches differing from the counterproductive “reform” efforts that have led us where we are today because they don't involve shoveling more scarce resources and more responsibility into local centralized paramilitary law enforcement agencies.