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> The whole "defund the police" movement feels very much in line with the "Luxury beliefs" Why do you believe this? It seems to me that reinvesting budgets spe

> The whole "defund the police" movement feels very much in line with the "Luxury beliefs" Why do you believe this? It seems to me that reinvesting budgets spent on surplus humvees on more/better school counselors is a perfectly reasonable goal.

war1025 6y ago
> It seems to me that reinvesting budgets spent on surplus humvees on more/better school counselors is a perfectly reasonable goal. The level of "defund" people are advocating for varies pretty wildly. Yes, reallocating budget is perhaps a reasonable thing. A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though. Oddly enough, I'd expect the widespread riots that have continued all summer long will have the exact opposite effect in the medium to long term.
- pwinnski 6y ago
  > the widespread riots that have continued all summer long Uh, what? No. Just, no.
  - war1025 6y ago
    The net effect of people hearing "Black Lives Matter protesters clashed with police again last night" on the news for an entire summer is going to be a giant step backwards for whatever BLM is actually trying to achieve. That is true whether or not the riots have actually been geographically widespread.
    - strathmeyer 6y ago
      I'm an American and have only seen the police rioting. Defunding the police is the most reasonable option I have heard in my lifetime. Seems like the perfect solution, there is nothing bad to say about it, it's opponents are left to make up "widespread rioting".
      - Rebelgecko 6y ago
        Would you mind elaborating? Are you not aware of the rioting, looting, and arson that has stricken many cities across America?
      - arkis22 6y ago
        > I'm an American and have only seen the police rioting I'm an American. I can't believe you can say that with a straight face. As soon as you say that ONLY the police are doing something wrong means you have an understanding of the situation that no facts will fix.
        shirakawasuna 6y ago
        As someone who was personally targeted by violent police for kneeling and holding my hands up, let me assure you that they are correct. Have you gone to any protests where the police used chemical weapons?
        arkis22 6y ago
        Were you personally targeted? As in there was a line of people that they walked past to personally give you a dose of chemical weapons? Gas is a chemical weapon. Pepper spray is a chemical weapon. Please don't compare Assad's use of chemical weapons to tear gas.
        shirakawasuna 6y ago
        I mean I was targeted. By personally I meant that I had that personal experience. It was as part of a group - the cops tend to use "collective punishment" when it comes to protests, after all. The use of tear gas is the use of a chemical weapon and a war crime, but when you turn it against civilians in your own country we give it a pass.
        arkis22 6y ago
        So you weren't personally targeted. In what way were you targeted? Were you doing nothing to arouse police attention? I think most first world countries have a gas they can use for riot control. Are you insisting that most first world countries are regularly engaging in what you would call war crimes... that are worse than other countries?
    - shirakawasuna 6y ago
      That usually means that the police used fairly extreme violence and chemical weapons on protesters and received maybe a handful of water bottles thrown at them after doing so. Your news sources have an agenda and tend to get these things wrong. Go to a protest and see for yourself if you want to viscerally watch them lie in real time.
      - zo1 6y ago
        > "Your news sources have an agenda and tend to get these things wrong." So do yours, let's not pretend otherwise.
        shirakawasuna 6y ago
        My sources are video and personal direct knowledge.
        zo1 6y ago
        The sources for the other side also include video and personal direct knowledge.
        shirakawasuna 6y ago
        No they don't.
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      Polling does not support your view. Support for BLM has risen more during this summer than in the previous several years combined. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-...
      - war1025 6y ago
        They got a huge initial boost. It's dragged on to the point that I fully expect support to start dropping precipitously. Especially as the protests have become continuously more destructive riots.
        pwinnski 6y ago
        > the protests have become continuously more destructive riots This just doesn't seem to be happening as you believe it does. Campaign advertising is not news.
        war1025 6y ago
        > Campaign advertising is not news. No, but Twitter live streams aren't campaign advertising. The protests are demonstrably violent and destructive.
- ianleeclark 6y ago
  > A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though. This categorically isn't defunding police, this is police abolition, and getting them confused is likely why you think it's a luxury belief because I fail to see what's luxurious about getting tear gassed every Friday/Saturday night or having the cops stand aside letting groups like the Proud Boys brutalize protestors and journalists. There's nothing luxurious about getting tear gassed for 3 months straight, it's a genuine struggle. What's luxurious is you and I.
  - aortega 6y ago
    >There's nothing luxurious about getting tear gassed for 3 months straight Why are you being tear gassed so often? I've been in US many times, for many months, I have never been tear gassed by police.
    - ianleeclark 6y ago
      You seem a little out of the loop. You might want to go back through the past few months worth of news.
      - dang 6y ago
        It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which specific politics you support or abhor. If you'd like to understand why, there are extensive past explanations at these links. (If you or anyone reads those explanations and still has a question that isn't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site as intended, we'd appreciate it.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  > A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though. That's certainly what the conservative news outlets are reporting, but is it actually true?
  - war1025 6y ago
    > but is it actually true? Perception is all that matters, and a large chunk of the country follows conservative media. Unfortunately the country is doing a great job of lining up behind their preferred propaganda outlets rather than looking for truth. This is true for both Liberals and Conservatives. We hear what we want to hear.
    - bawolff 6y ago
      You were the one who brought it up to support your argument. Your argument doesn't seem to rest on what the public preception is but in what is actually happening. So yes i would say the veracity of the statement is relavent here.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ggurface123 6y ago
    Here's an article from the New York Times stating that defund actually means abolish. Do you consider them a conservative news outlet? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
    - shirakawasuna 6y ago
      I would consider them a vehicle of capital that tends to do a terrible job covering these things. Conservative-adjascent.
  - dbrueck 6y ago
    Judge for yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-became-police-abolitionist/613540/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-beca... https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minneapolis-city-council-announces-plan-to-dismantle-police-department/89-a2260d74-4e21-4069-9b06-735aafba95cd https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minne...
war1025 6y ago
Thought about your reply a bit more. If the movement were "Demilitarize the police", then yes, that is absolutely something I could be in favor of. As it stands, "Defund the police" is to me a weasel word version of "Abolish the police" and I honestly do think people are just being coy when they claim not to see that.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  It's a weasel word if they want to get rid of the police. It's clickbait if they want to shift budgets. I honestly have no idea whether it's primarily one vs the other.
  - shirakawasuna 6y ago
    It's not a PR campaign. It wasn't planned for maximum effect or focus grouped. It's just what caught on.
- Zak 6y ago
  Most people using the word "defund" mean to reduce the level of funding for police and spend more on other social services. One argument is that police are not well equipped to provide services to people who are having a mental health, relationship, or substance abuse crisis and not actively doing violence. A mental health nurse or social worker might be a more appropriate first responder in situations that are not primarily characterized by violence. There are a small but significant number of people in the current protests calling for policing as we know it to be abolished; they don't beat around the bush about it. The phrase "abolish the police" has 2.5 million google hits, a NYT op-ed, and a Wikipedia article.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    Maybe they should carry signs that read “Fund social services” instead. The entire country has been through a traumatic event, coming at the heals of a massive opioid epidemic, I’m pretty sure it would be a unifying message that every American would support unequivocally. Notably these funds don’t need to come at the expense of police funding. We just dumped something like $5 trillion into a fire pit called COVID. There’s no lack of emergency funding for these programs if people demanded it.
tomschlick 6y ago
> It seems to me that reinvesting budgets spent on surplus humvees on more/better school counselors is a perfectly reasonable goal. While that sounds great on paper, nothing the schools do is going to make a difference if the family support at home isn't there. You can't just throw money at the problem to make it better. Anecdotal, but my sister used to work as a teacher & reading specialist in poorer areas. Per my last conversation with her on this topic, she said maybe 20% of the kids have a solid backing from family for education. The rest she had interacted with for one reason or another were a mix of parents who told her it was her job to teach and they wouldn't do that at home; another group of parents that were too drunk/drugged out to even answer the phone or call back; and another that would just swear at her for bothering them at home. All of her co-workers had similar accounts of this happening. Kids that did want to learn in class were bullied for "acting white" and there were physical fights occurring weekly. She didn't teach high school, she taught 4/5th grade. For us to make any progress with poorer schools there needs to be a community focus on education, having respect for each other, and having respect for the law. If you grow up for 18 years in an environment without those then nothing matters long term and we end up in the vicious cycle of poverty, crime, imprisonment, broken families and even more kids going through the same thing.
- manicdee 6y ago
  Throwing money at the problem helps a lot to some extent: - putting food on the table - putting kids through school with at least one new set of clothes a year - having food in your belly makes it far easier to cope with the endless "why" questions of the curious child Sure, there are social issues to address as well, but don't go assuming that throwing money at the problem won't help at all.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  It is sad to see this downvoted, I know several people who were outcasts for "acting white" by trying hard in school (their words, not mine). The issue really isn't about race though, it is about poverty and culture. I know a kindergarten teacher from a very rural, very white, very poor school district who was cussed out by one of her 5 year old students. The parents don't care, and it shows in the students' progression through school and young adulthood. If parents show up at all, it is to yell at teachers for giving their children bad grades or any sort of discipline. Of course, putting any sort of onus on the parents gets talked down, as it undermines the argument that things will magically get better if only we threw more money at the problem... because the problem isn't the school or the teachers at all.
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
It isn’t, it only shows you know absolutely nothing about police budgets, and your well intentioned but incredibly naive attempt at social engineering using completely untested ideas will get more people killed.
ffggvv 6y ago
why do you keep providing cover for people like this? https://twitter.com/awkward_duck/status/1297746569605898240?s=20 https://twitter.com/awkward_duck/status/1297746569605898240?... they clearly mean defund when they say defund. Many other activists feel the same. why say defund when you mean something else.
hhjinks 6y ago
This is tosh. If the idea is to defund the surplus, then the police will effectively maintain the exact same level of presence as already displayed. Basically, with your suggestion, nothing will change, other than police garages. That's clearly not what the protestors want, and as such, we can immediately discard your assertion.
graeme 6y ago
Would it surprise you to know that the US is actually low on the scale of police officers per capita? Your comment is based on a false assumption. Demilitarizing the police would be a great idea! But the idea of defunding presumes excess funds. Data on funding amounts are a bit harder to come by but they generally show the US has less police funding than Europe per capita. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
zarkov99 6y ago
Why do you believe that? Isn't it possible that in high crime areas it would make more sense to focus on the police first, so that everybody, including school counselors, is not too afraid to go to work?

war1025 6y ago

> It seems to me that reinvesting budgets spent on surplus humvees on more/better school counselors is a perfectly reasonable goal. The level of "defund" people are advocating for varies pretty wildly. Yes, reallocating budget is perhaps a reasonable thing. A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though. Oddly enough, I'd expect the widespread riots that have continued all summer long will have the exact opposite effect in the medium to long term.

pwinnski 6y ago
> the widespread riots that have continued all summer long Uh, what? No. Just, no.
- war1025 6y ago
  The net effect of people hearing "Black Lives Matter protesters clashed with police again last night" on the news for an entire summer is going to be a giant step backwards for whatever BLM is actually trying to achieve. That is true whether or not the riots have actually been geographically widespread.
  - strathmeyer 6y ago
    I'm an American and have only seen the police rioting. Defunding the police is the most reasonable option I have heard in my lifetime. Seems like the perfect solution, there is nothing bad to say about it, it's opponents are left to make up "widespread rioting".
    - Rebelgecko 6y ago
      Would you mind elaborating? Are you not aware of the rioting, looting, and arson that has stricken many cities across America?
    - arkis22 6y ago
      > I'm an American and have only seen the police rioting I'm an American. I can't believe you can say that with a straight face. As soon as you say that ONLY the police are doing something wrong means you have an understanding of the situation that no facts will fix.
      - shirakawasuna 6y ago
        As someone who was personally targeted by violent police for kneeling and holding my hands up, let me assure you that they are correct. Have you gone to any protests where the police used chemical weapons?
        arkis22 6y ago
        Were you personally targeted? As in there was a line of people that they walked past to personally give you a dose of chemical weapons? Gas is a chemical weapon. Pepper spray is a chemical weapon. Please don't compare Assad's use of chemical weapons to tear gas.
        shirakawasuna 6y ago
        I mean I was targeted. By personally I meant that I had that personal experience. It was as part of a group - the cops tend to use "collective punishment" when it comes to protests, after all. The use of tear gas is the use of a chemical weapon and a war crime, but when you turn it against civilians in your own country we give it a pass.
        arkis22 6y ago
        So you weren't personally targeted. In what way were you targeted? Were you doing nothing to arouse police attention? I think most first world countries have a gas they can use for riot control. Are you insisting that most first world countries are regularly engaging in what you would call war crimes... that are worse than other countries?
  - shirakawasuna 6y ago
    That usually means that the police used fairly extreme violence and chemical weapons on protesters and received maybe a handful of water bottles thrown at them after doing so. Your news sources have an agenda and tend to get these things wrong. Go to a protest and see for yourself if you want to viscerally watch them lie in real time.
    - zo1 6y ago
      > "Your news sources have an agenda and tend to get these things wrong." So do yours, let's not pretend otherwise.
      - shirakawasuna 6y ago
        My sources are video and personal direct knowledge.
        zo1 6y ago
        The sources for the other side also include video and personal direct knowledge.
        shirakawasuna 6y ago
        No they don't.
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    Polling does not support your view. Support for BLM has risen more during this summer than in the previous several years combined. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-...
    - war1025 6y ago
      They got a huge initial boost. It's dragged on to the point that I fully expect support to start dropping precipitously. Especially as the protests have become continuously more destructive riots.
      - pwinnski 6y ago
        > the protests have become continuously more destructive riots This just doesn't seem to be happening as you believe it does. Campaign advertising is not news.
        war1025 6y ago
        > Campaign advertising is not news. No, but Twitter live streams aren't campaign advertising. The protests are demonstrably violent and destructive.
ianleeclark 6y ago
> A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though. This categorically isn't defunding police, this is police abolition, and getting them confused is likely why you think it's a luxury belief because I fail to see what's luxurious about getting tear gassed every Friday/Saturday night or having the cops stand aside letting groups like the Proud Boys brutalize protestors and journalists. There's nothing luxurious about getting tear gassed for 3 months straight, it's a genuine struggle. What's luxurious is you and I.
- aortega 6y ago
  >There's nothing luxurious about getting tear gassed for 3 months straight Why are you being tear gassed so often? I've been in US many times, for many months, I have never been tear gassed by police.
  - ianleeclark 6y ago
    You seem a little out of the loop. You might want to go back through the past few months worth of news.
    - dang 6y ago
      It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of which specific politics you support or abhor. If you'd like to understand why, there are extensive past explanations at these links. (If you or anyone reads those explanations and still has a question that isn't answered there, I'd like to know what it is.) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=political%20overlap%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use this site as intended, we'd appreciate it.
jjoonathan 6y ago
> A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though. That's certainly what the conservative news outlets are reporting, but is it actually true?
- war1025 6y ago
  > but is it actually true? Perception is all that matters, and a large chunk of the country follows conservative media. Unfortunately the country is doing a great job of lining up behind their preferred propaganda outlets rather than looking for truth. This is true for both Liberals and Conservatives. We hear what we want to hear.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    You were the one who brought it up to support your argument. Your argument doesn't seem to rest on what the public preception is but in what is actually happening. So yes i would say the veracity of the statement is relavent here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ggurface123 6y ago
  Here's an article from the New York Times stating that defund actually means abolish. Do you consider them a conservative news outlet? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
  - shirakawasuna 6y ago
    I would consider them a vehicle of capital that tends to do a terrible job covering these things. Conservative-adjascent.
- dbrueck 6y ago
  Judge for yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol... https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-became-police-abolitionist/613540/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-beca... https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minneapolis-city-council-announces-plan-to-dismantle-police-department/89-a2260d74-4e21-4069-9b06-735aafba95cd https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minne...

war1025 6y ago

Thought about your reply a bit more. If the movement were "Demilitarize the police", then yes, that is absolutely something I could be in favor of. As it stands, "Defund the police" is to me a weasel word version of "Abolish the police" and I honestly do think people are just being coy when they claim not to see that.

jjoonathan 6y ago
It's a weasel word if they want to get rid of the police. It's clickbait if they want to shift budgets. I honestly have no idea whether it's primarily one vs the other.
- shirakawasuna 6y ago
  It's not a PR campaign. It wasn't planned for maximum effect or focus grouped. It's just what caught on.
Zak 6y ago
Most people using the word "defund" mean to reduce the level of funding for police and spend more on other social services. One argument is that police are not well equipped to provide services to people who are having a mental health, relationship, or substance abuse crisis and not actively doing violence. A mental health nurse or social worker might be a more appropriate first responder in situations that are not primarily characterized by violence. There are a small but significant number of people in the current protests calling for policing as we know it to be abolished; they don't beat around the bush about it. The phrase "abolish the police" has 2.5 million google hits, a NYT op-ed, and a Wikipedia article.
- zaroth 6y ago
  Maybe they should carry signs that read “Fund social services” instead. The entire country has been through a traumatic event, coming at the heals of a massive opioid epidemic, I’m pretty sure it would be a unifying message that every American would support unequivocally. Notably these funds don’t need to come at the expense of police funding. We just dumped something like $5 trillion into a fire pit called COVID. There’s no lack of emergency funding for these programs if people demanded it.

tomschlick 6y ago

> It seems to me that reinvesting budgets spent on surplus humvees on more/better school counselors is a perfectly reasonable goal. While that sounds great on paper, nothing the schools do is going to make a difference if the family support at home isn't there. You can't just throw money at the problem to make it better. Anecdotal, but my sister used to work as a teacher & reading specialist in poorer areas. Per my last conversation with her on this topic, she said maybe 20% of the kids have a solid backing from family for education. The rest she had interacted with for one reason or another were a mix of parents who told her it was her job to teach and they wouldn't do that at home; another group of parents that were too drunk/drugged out to even answer the phone or call back; and another that would just swear at her for bothering them at home. All of her co-workers had similar accounts of this happening. Kids that did want to learn in class were bullied for "acting white" and there were physical fights occurring weekly. She didn't teach high school, she taught 4/5th grade. For us to make any progress with poorer schools there needs to be a community focus on education, having respect for each other, and having respect for the law. If you grow up for 18 years in an environment without those then nothing matters long term and we end up in the vicious cycle of poverty, crime, imprisonment, broken families and even more kids going through the same thing.

manicdee 6y ago
Throwing money at the problem helps a lot to some extent: - putting food on the table - putting kids through school with at least one new set of clothes a year - having food in your belly makes it far easier to cope with the endless "why" questions of the curious child Sure, there are social issues to address as well, but don't go assuming that throwing money at the problem won't help at all.
zdragnar 6y ago
It is sad to see this downvoted, I know several people who were outcasts for "acting white" by trying hard in school (their words, not mine). The issue really isn't about race though, it is about poverty and culture. I know a kindergarten teacher from a very rural, very white, very poor school district who was cussed out by one of her 5 year old students. The parents don't care, and it shows in the students' progression through school and young adulthood. If parents show up at all, it is to yell at teachers for giving their children bad grades or any sort of discipline. Of course, putting any sort of onus on the parents gets talked down, as it undermines the argument that things will magically get better if only we threw more money at the problem... because the problem isn't the school or the teachers at all.

lawnchair_larry 6y ago

It isn’t, it only shows you know absolutely nothing about police budgets, and your well intentioned but incredibly naive attempt at social engineering using completely untested ideas will get more people killed.

ffggvv 6y ago

why do you keep providing cover for people like this? https://twitter.com/awkward_duck/status/1297746569605898240?s=20 https://twitter.com/awkward_duck/status/1297746569605898240?... they clearly mean defund when they say defund. Many other activists feel the same. why say defund when you mean something else.

hhjinks 6y ago

This is tosh. If the idea is to defund the surplus, then the police will effectively maintain the exact same level of presence as already displayed. Basically, with your suggestion, nothing will change, other than police garages. That's clearly not what the protestors want, and as such, we can immediately discard your assertion.

graeme 6y ago

Would it surprise you to know that the US is actually low on the scale of police officers per capita? Your comment is based on a false assumption. Demilitarizing the police would be a great idea! But the idea of defunding presumes excess funds. Data on funding amounts are a bit harder to come by but they generally show the US has less police funding than Europe per capita. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

zarkov99 6y ago

Why do you believe that? Isn't it possible that in high crime areas it would make more sense to focus on the police first, so that everybody, including school counselors, is not too afraid to go to work?