5 ms·

Seems like the natural corollary to defund the police. People who can afford to do so will hire private services.

by zepto 5y ago

DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
Look at that as retarded right wing and racist as the last of your comments.
- rayiner 5y ago
  I know you’re just trolling, but for the benefit of the reader: https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-adams-defund-the-police-young-white-affluent-people-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-adams-defund-the-police... > In an interview with New York Magazine published Tuesday, Adams said the "defund the police" movement is led not by people of color in the Big Apple, but rather by young white professionals. Adams is absolutely correct. He ran on a common-sense approach to policing, and won every non-white constituency in NYC. Maya Wiley supported defunding and her base was affluent white professionals: https://nypost.com/2021/07/04/nyc-mayor-race-shows-its-well-off-whites-who-back-far-left/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/04/nyc-mayor-race-shows-its-well-... > But despite her leftish credentials, Wiley won only 22 percent of first-choice votes. She carried no assembly districts in Manhattan or The Bronx and none with large black percentages. Calling criticism of defunding the police “racist” is an classic example of how left-wing white people (and non-whites platformed mainly by white people, whether in the media or academic) invoke the moral authority of purporting to speak people of color to push their own agendas.
  - DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
    Nice to dig even deeper.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Sorry, what’s racist—or at least unseemly in the same way as stolen valor—is white progressives trading on the political capital of POC to further their own ends. I was never opposed to “identity politics” until I realized that, because white liberals control most media outlets as well as institutions, it’s trivial to invoke people’s identities for political ends without actually having their support. CNN will have some professor of XYZ studies on TV, but who selected that professor to be on TV? Or granted her tenure?
    - dang 5y ago
      Your account has been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so frequently that I've banned it. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    It’s amazing to me that mostly-white progressive activists pushed so hard for defunding this last year, employing every aggressive tactic like rioting and political intimidation. They completely ignored what minority communities want and need in service of their ideological goals. There was a past discussion on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24275500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24275500) about how polls show that Black Americans overwhelmingly want policing to stay the same or increase, an inconvenient piece of data that was given little emphasis on news or social media, and ignored by politicians. In the end numerous cities defunded police departments anyways and the result was a predictable surge in crime. The failure of society to communicate and hold civil discourse just makes me sad and leaves me with little faith that our political process is more than just random noise.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      “Defund the police” doesn't mean “reduce law enforcement activity”, it means “move funding and responsibility for non-law-enforcement activity out of police departments to entities that can do it more efficiently and without turning encounters that should not require armed law enforcement in the first place into bloodbaths that then consume even more.law enforcement resources”. Defunding has, as a corollary, more police resources dedicated to core law enforcement activities, despite less total resources. (The disband/abolish alternative works out similarly, though it envisions a more comprehensive reorganization of local community services that wont have a monolithic paramilitary “police department” as a component.)
      - zepto 5y ago
        This is not true. It is true that there is more than one view represented by the phrase ‘defund’, but many who say defund do mean abolish.
      - throwawaysea 5y ago
        I’ve heard this claimed definition of defunding over and over, and it just feels like gaslighting or a distraction tactic. I still think defunding is an unacceptable concept for multiple reasons: 1. Minorities want police. Not social workers, police. Progressives want to play the role of a white savior, but they ignore what minorities want and need, which means this whole push for defunding amounts to exploitation of minorities for political goals. 2. I find the rhetoric around police response to be hyperbolic. Your use of the word “bloodbath” feels that way to me. Use of force is rare, and unjust use of force is incredibly rare. The entire notion of defunding is disrupting an effective system to address a near non-existent problem based on a few heavily popularized anecdotal incidents. 3. The defund movement and abolish movement are the same. First off this is true in the literal sense since to “defund” is to stop all funding. Second, activists regularly claim they truly do mean abolish - at best they are attempting incremental steps towards that dangerous goal. Third, both reduced funding and complete defunding of police go hand in hand with other dangerous ideas like restorative justice policies in places like SF, the goal of which is to not enforce the law in order to reduce consequences (like prison time) in search of “equity”. I would reject any reduced funding policy that is part of this collection of related policies, so the semantic debate doesn’t feel particularly useful (for me).
p49k 5y ago
That’s disingenuous, given that the movement is about allowing police to only focus on security rather than trying to solve every societal ill. https://mobile.twitter.com/nskorpen/status/1284144925039263744 https://mobile.twitter.com/nskorpen/status/12841449250392637...
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Who gets to gatekeep what the movement is actually about? I've seen quite a few at protests with signs saying "abolish the police". Seems like those people don't want police to focus on security. AFAIK there hasn't been any polls to see preferences for the desired level of defunding w/in the movement. I wouldn't be surprised if 100% defunding was a plurality (but not a majority)
  - harimau777 5y ago
    The way that I would approach it is to try to take the strongest version of a given argument; particularly if that is the argument that the leaders/spokesmen in a movement are making.
    - MikeUt 5y ago
      It's certainly not the way disfavored movements or ideas are handled.
      - harimau777 5y ago
        What do you mean? Outside of trolls, it seems like a common approach.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > I've seen quite a few at protests with signs saying "abolish the police". The abolish/disband faction is a different faction from the defund faction, sharing with the other that both believe the reform cycle where police problems are dealt woth by increasing budgets for retraining or other reform measures, reducing resources for other services, which results in police roles expanding, resulting in new police problems from inserting armed law enforcement into nee and inappropriate roles needs to be broken. The “defund” crowd says, lets wind that the other way and drive non-core roles and the funding to go with them to agencies outside of the police departments, so that the police department is focussed on roles that require armed law enforcement. The “disband/abolish” crowd says lets go further, and redesign community services without an all-encompassing centralized paramilitary law enforcement service, with enforcement arms where necessary within agencies with focuses other than “law enforcement”. (There's a fringe within the disband/abolish faction that would eliminate armed law enforcement as a local government function entirely, but they aren't typical of the disband/abolish movement much less the defund movement or an umbrella including both defund and disband/abolish.)
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
It sounds like South Africa. As garbage as US police can be sometimes, it's miles better than hoping you're within your private security force zone being afraid to leave it.
- ixacto 5y ago
  The USA police don’t ask you for a bribe or usually just mess with you with some notable exceptions. Police in other countries though…
mc32 5y ago
This already happens in parts of the world where the police are ineffective in combating rampant crime.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Yes, and if the authorities become more ineffective, it mutates into warlords controlling territory. Really controlling, as in "de facto government".
throwawaysea 5y ago
This has already been the case in Seattle for a while, where even some upper middle class neighborhoods (not just wealthy enclaves) will organize a community-paid private security program just like businesses hire similar services. It’s necessary because the police have been woefully understaffed for a decade or more, and have been unable to investigate most crimes like burglaries. Here’s an article from over 5 years ago detailing the rise of private residential security in response to “blatant lawlessness” (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/citizen-anti-crime-movement-afoot-in-seattles-neighborhoods/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/citizen-anti-crime...). Unfortunately, re-reading this now, I can say that every problem detailed here has only become worse since then.

Seems like the natural corollary to defund the police. People who can afford to do so will hire private services.

by zepto 5y ago

Seems like the natural corollary to defund the police. People who can afford to do so will hire private services.

DeliriumTrigger 5y ago

Look at that as retarded right wing and racist as the last of your comments.

rayiner 5y ago
I know you’re just trolling, but for the benefit of the reader: https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-adams-defund-the-police-young-white-affluent-people-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/eric-adams-defund-the-police... > In an interview with New York Magazine published Tuesday, Adams said the "defund the police" movement is led not by people of color in the Big Apple, but rather by young white professionals. Adams is absolutely correct. He ran on a common-sense approach to policing, and won every non-white constituency in NYC. Maya Wiley supported defunding and her base was affluent white professionals: https://nypost.com/2021/07/04/nyc-mayor-race-shows-its-well-off-whites-who-back-far-left/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/04/nyc-mayor-race-shows-its-well-... > But despite her leftish credentials, Wiley won only 22 percent of first-choice votes. She carried no assembly districts in Manhattan or The Bronx and none with large black percentages. Calling criticism of defunding the police “racist” is an classic example of how left-wing white people (and non-whites platformed mainly by white people, whether in the media or academic) invoke the moral authority of purporting to speak people of color to push their own agendas.
- DeliriumTrigger 5y ago
  Nice to dig even deeper.
  - rayiner 5y ago
    Sorry, what’s racist—or at least unseemly in the same way as stolen valor—is white progressives trading on the political capital of POC to further their own ends. I was never opposed to “identity politics” until I realized that, because white liberals control most media outlets as well as institutions, it’s trivial to invoke people’s identities for political ends without actually having their support. CNN will have some professor of XYZ studies on TV, but who selected that professor to be on TV? Or granted her tenure?
  - dang 5y ago
    Your account has been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so frequently that I've banned it. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  It’s amazing to me that mostly-white progressive activists pushed so hard for defunding this last year, employing every aggressive tactic like rioting and political intimidation. They completely ignored what minority communities want and need in service of their ideological goals. There was a past discussion on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24275500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24275500) about how polls show that Black Americans overwhelmingly want policing to stay the same or increase, an inconvenient piece of data that was given little emphasis on news or social media, and ignored by politicians. In the end numerous cities defunded police departments anyways and the result was a predictable surge in crime. The failure of society to communicate and hold civil discourse just makes me sad and leaves me with little faith that our political process is more than just random noise.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    “Defund the police” doesn't mean “reduce law enforcement activity”, it means “move funding and responsibility for non-law-enforcement activity out of police departments to entities that can do it more efficiently and without turning encounters that should not require armed law enforcement in the first place into bloodbaths that then consume even more.law enforcement resources”. Defunding has, as a corollary, more police resources dedicated to core law enforcement activities, despite less total resources. (The disband/abolish alternative works out similarly, though it envisions a more comprehensive reorganization of local community services that wont have a monolithic paramilitary “police department” as a component.)
    - zepto 5y ago
      This is not true. It is true that there is more than one view represented by the phrase ‘defund’, but many who say defund do mean abolish.
    - throwawaysea 5y ago
      I’ve heard this claimed definition of defunding over and over, and it just feels like gaslighting or a distraction tactic. I still think defunding is an unacceptable concept for multiple reasons: 1. Minorities want police. Not social workers, police. Progressives want to play the role of a white savior, but they ignore what minorities want and need, which means this whole push for defunding amounts to exploitation of minorities for political goals. 2. I find the rhetoric around police response to be hyperbolic. Your use of the word “bloodbath” feels that way to me. Use of force is rare, and unjust use of force is incredibly rare. The entire notion of defunding is disrupting an effective system to address a near non-existent problem based on a few heavily popularized anecdotal incidents. 3. The defund movement and abolish movement are the same. First off this is true in the literal sense since to “defund” is to stop all funding. Second, activists regularly claim they truly do mean abolish - at best they are attempting incremental steps towards that dangerous goal. Third, both reduced funding and complete defunding of police go hand in hand with other dangerous ideas like restorative justice policies in places like SF, the goal of which is to not enforce the law in order to reduce consequences (like prison time) in search of “equity”. I would reject any reduced funding policy that is part of this collection of related policies, so the semantic debate doesn’t feel particularly useful (for me).

p49k 5y ago

That’s disingenuous, given that the movement is about allowing police to only focus on security rather than trying to solve every societal ill. https://mobile.twitter.com/nskorpen/status/1284144925039263744 https://mobile.twitter.com/nskorpen/status/12841449250392637...

Rebelgecko 5y ago
Who gets to gatekeep what the movement is actually about? I've seen quite a few at protests with signs saying "abolish the police". Seems like those people don't want police to focus on security. AFAIK there hasn't been any polls to see preferences for the desired level of defunding w/in the movement. I wouldn't be surprised if 100% defunding was a plurality (but not a majority)
- harimau777 5y ago
  The way that I would approach it is to try to take the strongest version of a given argument; particularly if that is the argument that the leaders/spokesmen in a movement are making.
  - MikeUt 5y ago
    It's certainly not the way disfavored movements or ideas are handled.
    - harimau777 5y ago
      What do you mean? Outside of trolls, it seems like a common approach.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I've seen quite a few at protests with signs saying "abolish the police". The abolish/disband faction is a different faction from the defund faction, sharing with the other that both believe the reform cycle where police problems are dealt woth by increasing budgets for retraining or other reform measures, reducing resources for other services, which results in police roles expanding, resulting in new police problems from inserting armed law enforcement into nee and inappropriate roles needs to be broken. The “defund” crowd says, lets wind that the other way and drive non-core roles and the funding to go with them to agencies outside of the police departments, so that the police department is focussed on roles that require armed law enforcement. The “disband/abolish” crowd says lets go further, and redesign community services without an all-encompassing centralized paramilitary law enforcement service, with enforcement arms where necessary within agencies with focuses other than “law enforcement”. (There's a fringe within the disband/abolish faction that would eliminate armed law enforcement as a local government function entirely, but they aren't typical of the disband/abolish movement much less the defund movement or an umbrella including both defund and disband/abolish.)

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

It sounds like South Africa. As garbage as US police can be sometimes, it's miles better than hoping you're within your private security force zone being afraid to leave it.

ixacto 5y ago
The USA police don’t ask you for a bribe or usually just mess with you with some notable exceptions. Police in other countries though…

mc32 5y ago

This already happens in parts of the world where the police are ineffective in combating rampant crime.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Yes, and if the authorities become more ineffective, it mutates into warlords controlling territory. Really controlling, as in "de facto government".

throwawaysea 5y ago

This has already been the case in Seattle for a while, where even some upper middle class neighborhoods (not just wealthy enclaves) will organize a community-paid private security program just like businesses hire similar services. It’s necessary because the police have been woefully understaffed for a decade or more, and have been unable to investigate most crimes like burglaries. Here’s an article from over 5 years ago detailing the rise of private residential security in response to “blatant lawlessness” (https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/citizen-anti-crime-movement-afoot-in-seattles-neighborhoods/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/citizen-anti-crime...). Unfortunately, re-reading this now, I can say that every problem detailed here has only become worse since then.