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> “Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency hea

• hartator 6y ago
  > “Abolish the police” is a scale Words have meaning though. No one on the political board is against reforms but “abolish”, “defund”, or “shut down” mean what it means.
  • dorian-graph 6y ago
    Well, yes, duh? In what movements are there not scales attached to pithy lines? I even said: > Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.
    • DHPersonal 6y ago
      I don’t think it necessarily is a bad choice for some: many people who do use that word want what we call “policing” to be abandoned completely and replaced with something far less punitive in its reactions to emergencies.
  • capableweb 6y ago
    Sure, and sometimes different people have different understandings of the meaning of a particular word. Someone can say "abolish the police" and mean that there should be no one with monopoly on violence. Another one can say "abolish the police" and refer the to current state/situation with the police in the US, and simply want the police to stop shooting people at sight and instead act like police in other countries, where they try to de-escalate instead of using their guns. So while it's easy to try to put everyone in one bucket, it's hardy useful to do so in reality.
    • NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      Right. Compare "Occupy Wall Street". Snappy slogan; lots of public visibility; many groups coming together under that umbrella; no coherent policy agenda; no lasting impact.
  • jkingsbery 6y ago
    > "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." > "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abolish https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abolish : > to end the observance or effect of (something, such as a law) : to completely do away with (something)
  • badRNG 6y ago
    "Let's move funds from police departments to public health infrastructure, and additionally, use remaining funding on accountability mechanisms" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue at a protest.
    • goda90 6y ago
      "Reform public safety" works though
      • shadowgovt 6y ago
        Has less punch, and we're not talking about restructuring fire departments.
        • basch 6y ago
          Is the goal to be as polarizing as possible, or to persuade people on the fence to come over to the party?
          • shadowgovt 6y ago
            How many people, at this point in the first four years of the Trump administration, are still on the fence?
            • tarboreus 6y ago
              Pretty much everyone who matters if you're trying to convince people of something.
              • shadowgovt 6y ago
                I suspect we're well past the time of convincing and into the time of doing.
                • 6y ago
  • moomin 6y ago
    Yes, defunding means literally that, take money away. The way that governments keep doing to health care and schooling. However, typically you'll find that unlike those cases, the people advocating defunding have very good ideas of what to do with that money to help the communities better than the current arrangements. (Which... isn't hard. US policing is almost uniquely expensive and ineffective in the western world.) "Shut down" means something too. The Royal Ulster Constabulary got shut down. Does it mean Northern Ireland doesn't have police? No, but it means it's got far fewer bad cops. Abolish means something different again. Trying to pretend these are the same proposals is nonsense.
• syshum 6y ago
  >>From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. The problem is a large number of people calling for for abolishing the police do not have an actual plan on what to replace them with, saying things like "Something will rise up to replace it" There is also a over riding belief that criminality is 100% related to systemic racism and poverty which is not really the case, Some of it is sure and we should address that with reform but a large part of criminality is not and abolishing the police is not a solution to that crime We need massive reform and demilitarization of the police, and abolish police unions, but abolish police is crazy town
  • adjkant 6y ago
    I think you're falling for the straw man here. A quick Google of the phrase yields many nuanced results with plans that sound very much in line with your prescriptions: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/12/21283813/george-floyd-blm-abolish-the-police-8cantwait-minneapolis https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/12/21283813/g...
    • syshum 6y ago
      I dont think I am, and reading thought the that story reinforced my statement "There is also a over riding belief that criminality is 100% related to systemic racism and poverty " as most of the commentary is about defunding the police and replacing that with some kind of social programs (aka socialism) under the belief that the reason people commit crime is solely do to economic hardship There belief is if we give people free stuff they will stop harming people. I disagree with this position We can eliminate militarization of police and decriminalize society with out adopting socialism I am 100% pro-capitalism and libertarian solutions to the problem, the "Abolish Police" movement seems to be just a reformation of democratic socialism under a new banner
      • adjkant 6y ago
        This is incredible stretching + straw man to frame this as a political boogey-man (socialism). Do you consider EMT's socialist? They are non-police first responders. Why not make more departments like this to address the massive over-jurisdiction of police responsibility?
• laichzeit0 6y ago
  Why should an ambulance driver have to respond to a call in a dangerous neighborhood without a police escort? I wouldn’t. Fuck that, you don’t want police, good luck.
  • dorian-graph 6y ago
    This comment I will call a straw-man argument.
    • loco5niner 6y ago
      It's a valid argument. No police, no protection. I wouldn't respond either.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• throwaway924385 6y ago
  Not sure if this could have been more perfectly executed to discredit the idea of abolishing/defunding the police, which in my understanding has always been proposed as a structured, intentional shift away from heavily militarized policing toward a system of robust social services. I've seen others use the language of divest/invest to make clear that it's a shift in resources. Reading a little bit of abolitionist literature (because this stems out of a much larger, ongoing conversation about the prison industrial complex), it seems even full abolitionists see it as a process that involves building new systems and drastically shifting the American mindset around punitive retribution. Instead, you have a situation where the police to abandon a precinct all at once and not long after, far-right groups start showing up at night to stoke violence. Hard not to read that as intentional.
  • williamgrant 6y ago
    > Instead, you have a situation where the police to abandon a precinct all at once and not long after, far-right groups start showing up at night to stoke violence. Do you have any references to support that? It flies in the face of everything I've observed so far but in all sincerely, given the extreme polarisation in how these events are being reported by seemingly all parties, I'd not be at all surprised to find I've missed something important and would appreciate a source to clear things up for me.
• john-shaffer 6y ago
  > "Abolish the police" is a scale where there is an extreme end where they may call for completely removing police from across the USA. From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word. It's not "Abolish the police" by itself. The same people also say "All Cops Are Bastards" and "Policing is a racist institution". It would be unreasonable to take these words as supporting anything other than doing away with police entirely.
• donkey-hotei 6y ago
  For those of you who were not here when this happened: The police decided not to respond the actual 911 calls in or _near_ the CHOP (the auto shop was a block _away_, not within) was a retaliatory tactic they employed out of spite. Knowing full and well that it would look bad on the protesters and those who created the CHOP. Denying health services and aide is NOT what people who are advocating for defunding the police are advocating for. I agree, this is absolutely a straw-man argument.
• xab31 6y ago
  > I'd call this article a straw-man argument, but there are those on the extreme end of the scale, apparently. I too found it hard to believe that such people exist, but my own wife said she agrees with the statement "I believe police cause overall more harm than good in the USA, and it would be better to have no police at all than policing in its current form." And yes, she believes that all police, except for investigating detectives, could be replaced by social workers and the like. Many of her friends believe similarly. So it isn't a straw man, these people really exist. As you suggest, "defunding the police" is a motte and bailey argument, in that "defund" CAN equal abolish, if the defunding is 100%. On the other hand, a 5% shifting of funds would be a minor reform. So advocates, if they are unscrupulous -- and not all of them are -- can simultaneously advocate for a radical change in policing and assert it will have modest impact, by equivocating on the meaning of the word "defund".
  • CapricornNoble 6y ago
    >>>And yes, she believes that all police, except for investigating detectives, could be replaced by social workers and the like. Many of her friends believe similarly. So it isn't a straw man, these people really exist. Show them content like this and ask them how a "social worker" is supposed to handle it (graphic warning?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRF4yOIY00I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRF4yOIY00I