8 ms·

I'd like to see how this cuts by age. A lot of older folks I talk to see police very differently, and often say "You just don't know how things used to be befor

I'd like to see how this cuts by age. A lot of older folks I talk to see police very differently, and often say "You just don't know how things used to be before the police", which I think really misses what people are asking for ie: redistribution of grossly overbudgeted police departments to preventative measures like better schooling, community centers, and more subtle reactive measures like un-armed "police" (or whatever you want to call this new role). I also wonder if the question were phrased differently (and more accurately representing what is actually being asked for), more like "Would you support an N% cut to police budgets, which would come from X part of the police budget, to support preventative measures like social services?", if we'd see a different response.

questionmarks 6y ago
when was "before the police"?
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Often they're referring to New York in the 60s/70s. Of course, there were absolutely police back then. But they largely attribute the increase in their feeling of personal safety with a larger investment in police.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Statistically crime in NY peaked in 1990.
    - austhrow743 6y ago
      I would expect crime statistics to peak shortly after a surge in policing but not actual crime.
      - username90 6y ago
        Murders peaked 1990 and not a lot of murders goes unreported. Then in just a few years NYC went from being one of the most murderous cities in USA to one of the least murderous cities.
- aspaceman 6y ago
  Lawmen != police My town just had the sheriff for example. The sheriff had a small crew of 1-2 deputies and a secretary. When something really rough would happen, the sheriff would round up a crew. It was a really light group of people. Lots of differences between that, a militia, community policing, etc. Even today some rural communities are “policed” very differently. Now that same town has a standing police force of 40 officers, a K-9 unit, and they have fancy military vehicles. This is with a change from 5000->10000 in population. This was all up until pretty recently (1940s-1950s) too.
bradleyjg 6y ago
It’s hard to blame people for misunderstanding slogans that supposedly don’t mean what the plain meaning would suggest. Perhaps the young activists should say what they mean and mean what they say and then all those “older folks” might not miss the point.
- slavik81 6y ago
  'I do,' Alice hastily replied... `that's the same thing, you know.'
  - slavik81 6y ago
    That is to say, bradleyjg's phrasing reminded me of one of my favourite bits of Alice in Wonderland on saying what you mean and meaning what you say: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland_(1866)/Chapter_7#97 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderl...
- peterwoerner 6y ago
  They are engaging in a Motte and Bailey argument, perhaps unintentionally.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    "They" are many people. I suspect that many of them don't understand that it's a motte and bailey argument. But I suspect that some of them do understand, and are doing it deliberately.
- judofyr 6y ago
  > It’s hard to blame people for misunderstanding slogans that supposedly don’t mean what the plain meaning would suggest. I find it very easy to blame people who are not willing to spend 10 seconds researching what a movement stands for. We can't say that it's okay to read three words on a sign, interpret it in your own context, and then blame the movement when you don't "understand" it. It's a slogan! What do you expect for a less-than-five-word sentence that people can unite under?
cwhiz 6y ago
NYC tried unarmed “police” to handle minor moving violations and parking. It was a disaster. People bullied them, assaulted them, and/or ignored them. The sad truth is that people respect police not because of the badge but because of the gun, and because of the threat of violence. Many of the reform ideas being thrown around lately are ideas that places across the US have already tried. I think people are saying photos and videos from Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Kenosha, WI. They’re thinking they’ll take their chances with the police than with arsonists and rioters.
- throwaway13337 6y ago
  The US is indeed a different place than countries where unarmed police are the norm. It's a pretty sad realization that perhaps the reason we have such violent police is, in part, because we have such a violent society.
  - margaretdouglas 6y ago
    Ding ding ding
  - adventured 6y ago
    > It's a pretty sad realization that perhaps the reason we have such violent police is, in part, because we have such a violent society. In terms of violent crime overall the US isn't an outlier, it is located at the median of the OECD in terms of violent crime. The outlier for the US is murder, overwhelmingly due to the mass proliferation of illegal gun possession. This has been written about for decades and remains true today. "America doesn’t have more crime than other rich countries. It just has more guns." https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe "The seminal work here is a 1999 book by Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, called Crime Is Not the Problem. Zimring and Hawkins set out to examine what was, at the time, the conventional wisdom: that America had a uniquely terrible crime problem, one without any parallel in other developed democracies. "They found, pretty definitively, that the conventional wisdom was wrong. "Rates of common property crimes in the United States are comparable to those reported in many other Western industrial nations, but rates of lethal violence in the United States are much higher," they write." ... "A landmark 1997 study actually tried to answer this question. Its findings — which scholars say still hold up — are that America doesn't really have a significantly higher rate of crime compared to similar countries. But that crime is much likelier to be lethal: American criminals just kill more people than do their counterparts in other developed countries. And guns appear to be a big part of what makes this difference."
iateanapple 6y ago
> “You just don't know how things used to be before the police", which I think really misses what people are asking for ie: redistribution of grossly overbudgeted police departments to preventative Or more likely they don’t think preventative measures work as well as you think they do. Edit: Once you have seen acts of senseless violence - real cruel stuff - it is hard to believe that some people can be reliably rehabilitated. Maybe that cruelty could have been nipped in the bud if they had received better care in the past - but that’s not a risk I would take with my community.
- teucris 6y ago
  Focusing on the rare cruel cases has meant we aren’t funding preventive measures which could prevent the vast majority of other crime.
  - iateanapple 6y ago
    > which could prevent the vast majority of other crime. Could it? California is one of the richest places on earth and has an incredibly progressive population. So “we” have the desire and the money - and have for at least 20 years - and yet we have more violent crime than much poorer places.
- Klathmon 6y ago
  > Once you have seen acts of senseless violence - real cruel stuff - it is hard to believe that some people can be reliably rehabilitated. It's ironic that this is exactly how many feel about the police themselves.
RickJWagner 6y ago
I think it'd also be productive to have community education on your rights and responsibilities with police. You have rights, you don't have to do anything outside the law. But you do have to comply with lawful orders. If everybody understood these things, there would be much less trouble, fear, and violence.
- GeneralMayhem 6y ago
  Agreed! We should start by teaching police what lawful orders they're actually able to give, prevent them from lying about their powers and individuals' rights, and putting the ones who do intimidate people into relinquishing their rights in prison.
  - refurb 6y ago
    and putting the ones who do intimidate people into relinquishing their rights in prison Are you saying if a cop is interrogating someone and says "I know you did this, if you don't talk you're going to prison for a long time", we should send that cop to prison? That would be intimidating a person into relinquishing their rights.
  - donw 6y ago
    I agree with you. Other than undercover cops being able to lie to cover their background, the fact that police can -- legally! ruled so by the supreme court! -- lie to citizens is a real problem. How are citizens supposed to trust police that can freely lie to them without consequence?
  - kls 6y ago
    I think this falls into better education of the public, many times these incidents arise because people try to argue their case with the officer but the officer is not the judge nor the jury. Trying to argue your case with a belligerent officer is only going to serve their purpose. Whereas if people know that have an absolute right to remain silent and exercise that right, they will be better served, especially if the officer is issuing unlawful orders / abusing power. If the officer thinks you are guilty, you cannot talk your way out of jail, but you can certainly give them more ammo to charge you with. e.g Resisting, Obstruction charges.
jeffbee 6y ago
I think the age difference might be caused by the fact that people over 65 are now watching television as a full-time job and their brains have turned to soup. https://www.statista.com/chart/15224/daily-tv-consumption-by-us-adults/ https://www.statista.com/chart/15224/daily-tv-consumption-by...
Reimersholme 6y ago
Rather than missing the point, they might just be disagreeing. It might be skepticism about the effectiveness of many of these “preventive measures”. Just because they are named by their hoped for results, it doesn’t mean that they will lead to that outcome. At least many might think that the effect from reducing police presence in the neighborhood (=defunding) won’t be counteracted by the other measures sufficiently.
zarkov99 6y ago
where are some of the grossly over budgeted police departments?

questionmarks 6y ago

when was "before the police"?

staticassertion 6y ago
Often they're referring to New York in the 60s/70s. Of course, there were absolutely police back then. But they largely attribute the increase in their feeling of personal safety with a larger investment in police.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Statistically crime in NY peaked in 1990.
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    I would expect crime statistics to peak shortly after a surge in policing but not actual crime.
    - username90 6y ago
      Murders peaked 1990 and not a lot of murders goes unreported. Then in just a few years NYC went from being one of the most murderous cities in USA to one of the least murderous cities.
aspaceman 6y ago
Lawmen != police My town just had the sheriff for example. The sheriff had a small crew of 1-2 deputies and a secretary. When something really rough would happen, the sheriff would round up a crew. It was a really light group of people. Lots of differences between that, a militia, community policing, etc. Even today some rural communities are “policed” very differently. Now that same town has a standing police force of 40 officers, a K-9 unit, and they have fancy military vehicles. This is with a change from 5000->10000 in population. This was all up until pretty recently (1940s-1950s) too.

bradleyjg 6y ago

It’s hard to blame people for misunderstanding slogans that supposedly don’t mean what the plain meaning would suggest. Perhaps the young activists should say what they mean and mean what they say and then all those “older folks” might not miss the point.

slavik81 6y ago
'I do,' Alice hastily replied... `that's the same thing, you know.'
- slavik81 6y ago
  That is to say, bradleyjg's phrasing reminded me of one of my favourite bits of Alice in Wonderland on saying what you mean and meaning what you say: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland_(1866)/Chapter_7#97 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderl...
peterwoerner 6y ago
They are engaging in a Motte and Bailey argument, perhaps unintentionally.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  "They" are many people. I suspect that many of them don't understand that it's a motte and bailey argument. But I suspect that some of them do understand, and are doing it deliberately.
judofyr 6y ago
> It’s hard to blame people for misunderstanding slogans that supposedly don’t mean what the plain meaning would suggest. I find it very easy to blame people who are not willing to spend 10 seconds researching what a movement stands for. We can't say that it's okay to read three words on a sign, interpret it in your own context, and then blame the movement when you don't "understand" it. It's a slogan! What do you expect for a less-than-five-word sentence that people can unite under?

cwhiz 6y ago

NYC tried unarmed “police” to handle minor moving violations and parking. It was a disaster. People bullied them, assaulted them, and/or ignored them. The sad truth is that people respect police not because of the badge but because of the gun, and because of the threat of violence. Many of the reform ideas being thrown around lately are ideas that places across the US have already tried. I think people are saying photos and videos from Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Kenosha, WI. They’re thinking they’ll take their chances with the police than with arsonists and rioters.

throwaway13337 6y ago
The US is indeed a different place than countries where unarmed police are the norm. It's a pretty sad realization that perhaps the reason we have such violent police is, in part, because we have such a violent society.
- margaretdouglas 6y ago
  Ding ding ding
- adventured 6y ago
  > It's a pretty sad realization that perhaps the reason we have such violent police is, in part, because we have such a violent society. In terms of violent crime overall the US isn't an outlier, it is located at the median of the OECD in terms of violent crime. The outlier for the US is murder, overwhelmingly due to the mass proliferation of illegal gun possession. This has been written about for decades and remains true today. "America doesn’t have more crime than other rich countries. It just has more guns." https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe "The seminal work here is a 1999 book by Berkeley's Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins, called Crime Is Not the Problem. Zimring and Hawkins set out to examine what was, at the time, the conventional wisdom: that America had a uniquely terrible crime problem, one without any parallel in other developed democracies. "They found, pretty definitively, that the conventional wisdom was wrong. "Rates of common property crimes in the United States are comparable to those reported in many other Western industrial nations, but rates of lethal violence in the United States are much higher," they write." ... "A landmark 1997 study actually tried to answer this question. Its findings — which scholars say still hold up — are that America doesn't really have a significantly higher rate of crime compared to similar countries. But that crime is much likelier to be lethal: American criminals just kill more people than do their counterparts in other developed countries. And guns appear to be a big part of what makes this difference."

iateanapple 6y ago

> “You just don't know how things used to be before the police", which I think really misses what people are asking for ie: redistribution of grossly overbudgeted police departments to preventative Or more likely they don’t think preventative measures work as well as you think they do. Edit: Once you have seen acts of senseless violence - real cruel stuff - it is hard to believe that some people can be reliably rehabilitated. Maybe that cruelty could have been nipped in the bud if they had received better care in the past - but that’s not a risk I would take with my community.

teucris 6y ago
Focusing on the rare cruel cases has meant we aren’t funding preventive measures which could prevent the vast majority of other crime.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > which could prevent the vast majority of other crime. Could it? California is one of the richest places on earth and has an incredibly progressive population. So “we” have the desire and the money - and have for at least 20 years - and yet we have more violent crime than much poorer places.
Klathmon 6y ago
> Once you have seen acts of senseless violence - real cruel stuff - it is hard to believe that some people can be reliably rehabilitated. It's ironic that this is exactly how many feel about the police themselves.

RickJWagner 6y ago

I think it'd also be productive to have community education on your rights and responsibilities with police. You have rights, you don't have to do anything outside the law. But you do have to comply with lawful orders. If everybody understood these things, there would be much less trouble, fear, and violence.

GeneralMayhem 6y ago
Agreed! We should start by teaching police what lawful orders they're actually able to give, prevent them from lying about their powers and individuals' rights, and putting the ones who do intimidate people into relinquishing their rights in prison.
- refurb 6y ago
  and putting the ones who do intimidate people into relinquishing their rights in prison Are you saying if a cop is interrogating someone and says "I know you did this, if you don't talk you're going to prison for a long time", we should send that cop to prison? That would be intimidating a person into relinquishing their rights.
- donw 6y ago
  I agree with you. Other than undercover cops being able to lie to cover their background, the fact that police can -- legally! ruled so by the supreme court! -- lie to citizens is a real problem. How are citizens supposed to trust police that can freely lie to them without consequence?
- kls 6y ago
  I think this falls into better education of the public, many times these incidents arise because people try to argue their case with the officer but the officer is not the judge nor the jury. Trying to argue your case with a belligerent officer is only going to serve their purpose. Whereas if people know that have an absolute right to remain silent and exercise that right, they will be better served, especially if the officer is issuing unlawful orders / abusing power. If the officer thinks you are guilty, you cannot talk your way out of jail, but you can certainly give them more ammo to charge you with. e.g Resisting, Obstruction charges.

jeffbee 6y ago

I think the age difference might be caused by the fact that people over 65 are now watching television as a full-time job and their brains have turned to soup. https://www.statista.com/chart/15224/daily-tv-consumption-by-us-adults/ https://www.statista.com/chart/15224/daily-tv-consumption-by...

Reimersholme 6y ago

Rather than missing the point, they might just be disagreeing. It might be skepticism about the effectiveness of many of these “preventive measures”. Just because they are named by their hoped for results, it doesn’t mean that they will lead to that outcome. At least many might think that the effect from reducing police presence in the neighborhood (=defunding) won’t be counteracted by the other measures sufficiently.

zarkov99 6y ago

where are some of the grossly over budgeted police departments?