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I should think that the number of people who want to completely do away with the police is vanishingly small. Actually, it's probably about 3 people. It seems

I should think that the number of people who want to completely do away with the police is vanishingly small. Actually, it's probably about 3 people. It seems like the right in the USA are being deliberately pedantic about the phrase "defund the police", to make it sound like those on the left are crazy.

bandushrew 5y ago
Its a social problem, largely driven by the FPP political system in the US. The left hold up the opinions of the far right/right lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the right is" The right hold up the opinions of the far left/left lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the left is" The moderate left and the moderate right have far more in common with each other than they do with the extremes at either end, yet somehow each is convinced that the other is represented most accurately by the extreme edge.
- vkou 5y ago
  The 'moderate' right and the 'moderate' right are both pretty insane when it comes to the police, because they largely support their current status quo, and their current status quo is insane. Pants-on-head insane. Just because you're a centrist on <an arbitrary political spectrum, that spans a single country's politics> doesn't mean that the things you believe in aren't crazy or horrifying.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I think we get different facts about the characterization of US policing. If you look at extreme cherry-picked examples one way or the other, you tend to end up at the extremes. If you accept that reality is more nuanced and the good and evil police aren’t evenly distributed (and that the trite policies offered up by extremists do much more harm than good a la the current surge in homicides), etc then you’re probably much more likely to be a moderate on the issue.
    - vkou 5y ago
      The issue isn't that particular police officers are 'good' and 'evil', the issue is that systemically, the police, the justice department, and prosecutors collude to protect gang-like behaviour in police forces. We give them absolute power over life and death, and zero accountability. The justice system is in theory, supposed to be a leash on that dog, but in practice, it's the other way around.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        Sure, there’s a certain amount of injustice in policing. 90% of Americans agree that some form of police reform is necessary. Leftists lose the rest of us when they argue for depolicing reforms rather than reforms which increase accountability while keeping policing levels. In particular, it stands to reason that increasing spending for social services isn’t going to pay dividends for many years, but following policing reductions, crime surges immediately and significantly. So again, the rest of us are puzzled by the folks who emphasize “depolicing” rather than some more reasonable policy of “increase social spending while also maintaining a robust police element, at least for the short term”.
    - monocasa 5y ago
      > a la the current surge in homicides How do police prevent homicides? Are people really out there thinking "the police department is 10% smaller than last year (but has a larger budget), I bet I could off my neighbor and get away with it"?
      - vkou 5y ago
        > How do police prevent homicides? They don't, they clean up after the fact, and convict someone for ~50% of them. Unless it's one of their own that's responsible, then the entire country needs to riot for a week, before anyone even thinks of pressing charges.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        My understanding is that police have reduced their preventative policing activities either by policy or soft pressure. Criminals aren’t idiots—they can tell when police pressure goes up or down.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I would like to believe this, but legislative outcomes on things that you'd expect to be bipartisan (like dealing with the pandemic) have been fairly poor, right? If there really was this large moderate population, you'd expect us to elect moderate elected officials, who'd find each other and pass some moderate legislation, right?
  - dantheman 5y ago
    The primary process is not well attended my the normal voter, only those on the extremes. So to win the primary you have to go more extreme, then to win the general you have go more moderate. So we ended up having to choose between more extreme candidates that don't reflect the majority. In fact the majority of people don't identify as republican or democrat.
  - bandushrew 5y ago
    The extremes always vote, many moderates only bother to vote if you can convince them the other side are totally insane/evil/stupid and life as they know it is going to be over if the other side get into/remain in power. So politicians in particular get very good at making the other side look extremely insane, evil and stupid. The better they are at that (lying) the better they do in elections. So...the politicians who would be good for us tend to have integrity and strong personal beliefs about lying, and so tend to do poorly in elections. Which leaves us with everyone else.
throwaway894345 5y ago
It was originally “abolish the police” and it was a pretty widespread slogan in summer of 2020 for those of us who visited the BLM protests. Perhaps they didn’t literally mean “do away with all police”, but no one was very explicit about what the slogan actually meant. And when the media tried to rationalize it as a metaphor (because it was so damaging to Democrats), many leftists corrected them, clarifying that they literally wanted police abolished. In whichever case, we’re presently suffering the effects of these anti-police protests as homicides have surged to levels not seen in 30 years (whether due to official “depolicing” policies or soft pressure for police to minimize proactive policing or due to reduced cooperation from the community or so on). Whether they literally meant “no police” or some other policy, it’s pretty clear that all of this leads to more crime, and the communities who pay are predominantly poor and/or minorities.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  Since virtually no police departments were "defunded" in any sense to any significant extent, it's not clear to me at all how that slogan or those protests contributed to any rising violence.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I refer you to the parenthetical in my third paragraph. > whether due to official “depolicing” policies or soft pressure for police to minimize proactive policing or due to reduced cooperation from the community or so on Note these findings regarding the St. Louis police department following the shooting of Michael Brown: > In the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, self-initiated arrests fell 62 percent. Similar declines are seen across nine out of 11 categories of self-initiated activities, including foot patrol (down 82 percent) and pedestrian checks (76 percent). Notably, the decline in arrests is concentrated among misdemeanor arrests (more discretionary than felonies) and among arrests of blacks (rather than whites). This reduction in police activity persisted for at least the next two years. In the same period, the city experienced a significant rise in homicide and aggravated assault. https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-protests-and-rising-violent-crime https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-pr...
nitwit005 5y ago
Some of the protestors are/were openly anarchists, and eliminating police is central to what they want. There are certainly more than 3 anarchists around.
kbelder 5y ago
I think it's more than that. I've seen at multiple people on national television advocating for exactly that. I'll concede that it's a small minority, though. The problem is that it's a really stupid slogan. A natural, unbiased reading of it says something that 95% of the supporters don't mean. That's not the fault of the people interpreting it, it's the fault of those saying it.
dfxm12 5y ago
I should think that the number of people who want to completely do away with the police is vanishingly small. Actually, it's probably about 3 people. Importantly, and I do think this is worth pointing out, those people have zero political power & zero input on any budgets, legislation, etc. Situations like those described in the article are actually happening. It seems like the right in the USA are being deliberately pedantic about the phrase "defund the police", to make it sound like those on the left are crazy. Conservatives have been gaslighting the electorate for as long as I've been a voter. This is no different.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
In June of 2020, as I'm sure you recall, The New York Times published an opinion piece titled "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police". Why do you think the New York Times was publishing opinions that you believe were only held by 3 people? You of course also remember that when the New York Times published the opinion piece titled "Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops" arguing that the military should be sent in to stop riots and looting, there was a massive backlash and the editor for the opinion page resigned. This even though the opinion expressed by Tom Cotton was fairly popular. I would think if the New York Times was publishing opinions that had no popular support at all, there would have been a backlash about that, wouldn't you?
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  One of these things is of doubtful constitutionality, the other is not. If Cotton suggested suspending habeas corpus would you want the Times to print that too?
  - rufus_foreman 5y ago
    From Cotton's opinion column itself: "For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson called out the military to disperse mobs that prevented school desegregation or threatened innocent lives and property. This happened in my own state. Gov. Orval Faubus, a racist Democrat, mobilized our National Guard in 1957 to obstruct desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and called in the 101st Airborne in response. The failure to do so, he said, 'would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy.' More recently, President George H.W. Bush ordered the Army’s Seventh Infantry and 1,500 Marines to protect Los Angeles during race riots in 1992." What Cotton suggested is expressly permitted by an act of Congress and that act has been invoked many times over more than two centuries. It's been used half a dozen times to suppress riots since the 1960's. Not one of those actions has ever been found to be unconstitutional. Second, if Tom Cotton and only two other people in the entire US want habeas corpus suspended, than no, I would not want the Times to print an opinion column suggesting that. A poll had 52% of Americans agreeing with sending in troops to stop the riots. If Tom Cotton and 52% of Americans want habeas corpus suspended, then I think a paper that calls itself the "paper of record" is exactly where that case should be made. Just as it would have been appropriate to make the case in those opinion pages for why we would send the 101st Airborne into Little Rock and Detroit, the 197th Infantry into Baltimore, the 1st Marines Division into Los Angeles, and military police to the Virgin Islands.
beepbooptheory 5y ago
It's so weird we talk about it like this, to say an entire swath of social research and theorists are "crazy," because they have the audacity to think a less-than-150-year state institution is maybe not perfect. Like, do any research at all into the history of criminal justice, you will find we live in a very contingent situation now, one that has other options. Like, do you all really think that police have been around forever? Do you really all think we would be violent state-of-nature monsters without them? That civilization is assured by them? Are we really so historically shortsighted that we see the existence of police as exactly corollary to law and order? Can we imagine for a second that just because something is sufficient doesn't mean that it is necessary? Can we think about this rationally at all? And then look at cost of the status quo... I don't know, its just so sad this is how we talk about it: the police (specifically, its unions/fraternities) truly have won the cultural battle. Doesn't even matter if there are some radicals out there, because the only way we can talk about these things means they will always win. Call those people naive if you like, but "crazy" is just disheartening to hear for people who are mostly just angry and wanting it to stop.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  I mean, it is nothing short of crazy to think that solutions that worked 150 years ago would work better than the system that has evolved along side our society now. It is also crazy to think that we should throw out something that mostly works in favor of something entirely different when the ramifications of the new thing not working are very very serious. Also, you're throwing up a lot of extreme straw man arguments like that's what is being said. > Like, do you all really think that police have been around forever? I believe in dinosaurs, so no. > Do you really all think we would be violent state-of-nature monsters without them? No. I think more people would be without them than with them. Even if the difference between the two is 1%, that's a pretty serious change for the worse. > That civilization is assured by them? No, it's assured by faith in the system. Much like money. If everyone decided the law didn't matter there is very little the police force could do about that. > Are we really so historically shortsighted that we see the existence of police as exactly corollary to law and order? No. I certainly don't believe that. It's a component, but a small piece of the pie. > Can we imagine for a second that just because something is sufficient doesn't mean that it is necessary? Sure. Totally on board for that. It is sufficient to drive a monster truck to get where I want to go, but certainly not necessary. Not really a hard thing to imagine. I can run counter to basically every argument you lay and still believe that a police force is necessary without there being any logical inconsistency in my beliefs... > And then look at cost of the status quo Look at the cost of social security. Look at the cost of public school. There is so much tangible and intangible value locked up on those institutions that if anyone said "we can do better" you'd be hesitant to throw them out whether or not you agreed. > the police (specifically, its unions/fraternities) truly have won the cultural battle it's not a culture battle. We're in an equilibrium, and people are rightfully hesitant to leave it behind for promises of utopian glory. It's fine to think there is a better way, and it's fine to test that out. Looking at the places running such tests, the 'better ways' so far proposed are far short of actually better. > Call those people naive if you like It's a good term for how I see it. > but "crazy" is just disheartening to hear for people who are mostly just angry and wanting it to stop. It's subjective. If I saw someone saw off their own foot, I'd call them crazy. If I see someone do something, or advocate doing something, that I think would be extremely damaging, I call that crazy. It's not crazy to want to do better, it's not crazy to be upset that things aren't getting better fast enough. Only another set of crazies are calling that crazy.

bandushrew 5y ago

Its a social problem, largely driven by the FPP political system in the US. The left hold up the opinions of the far right/right lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the right is" The right hold up the opinions of the far left/left lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the left is" The moderate left and the moderate right have far more in common with each other than they do with the extremes at either end, yet somehow each is convinced that the other is represented most accurately by the extreme edge.

vkou 5y ago
The 'moderate' right and the 'moderate' right are both pretty insane when it comes to the police, because they largely support their current status quo, and their current status quo is insane. Pants-on-head insane. Just because you're a centrist on <an arbitrary political spectrum, that spans a single country's politics> doesn't mean that the things you believe in aren't crazy or horrifying.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I think we get different facts about the characterization of US policing. If you look at extreme cherry-picked examples one way or the other, you tend to end up at the extremes. If you accept that reality is more nuanced and the good and evil police aren’t evenly distributed (and that the trite policies offered up by extremists do much more harm than good a la the current surge in homicides), etc then you’re probably much more likely to be a moderate on the issue.
  - vkou 5y ago
    The issue isn't that particular police officers are 'good' and 'evil', the issue is that systemically, the police, the justice department, and prosecutors collude to protect gang-like behaviour in police forces. We give them absolute power over life and death, and zero accountability. The justice system is in theory, supposed to be a leash on that dog, but in practice, it's the other way around.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Sure, there’s a certain amount of injustice in policing. 90% of Americans agree that some form of police reform is necessary. Leftists lose the rest of us when they argue for depolicing reforms rather than reforms which increase accountability while keeping policing levels. In particular, it stands to reason that increasing spending for social services isn’t going to pay dividends for many years, but following policing reductions, crime surges immediately and significantly. So again, the rest of us are puzzled by the folks who emphasize “depolicing” rather than some more reasonable policy of “increase social spending while also maintaining a robust police element, at least for the short term”.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    > a la the current surge in homicides How do police prevent homicides? Are people really out there thinking "the police department is 10% smaller than last year (but has a larger budget), I bet I could off my neighbor and get away with it"?
    - vkou 5y ago
      > How do police prevent homicides? They don't, they clean up after the fact, and convict someone for ~50% of them. Unless it's one of their own that's responsible, then the entire country needs to riot for a week, before anyone even thinks of pressing charges.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      My understanding is that police have reduced their preventative policing activities either by policy or soft pressure. Criminals aren’t idiots—they can tell when police pressure goes up or down.
bee_rider 5y ago
I would like to believe this, but legislative outcomes on things that you'd expect to be bipartisan (like dealing with the pandemic) have been fairly poor, right? If there really was this large moderate population, you'd expect us to elect moderate elected officials, who'd find each other and pass some moderate legislation, right?
- dantheman 5y ago
  The primary process is not well attended my the normal voter, only those on the extremes. So to win the primary you have to go more extreme, then to win the general you have go more moderate. So we ended up having to choose between more extreme candidates that don't reflect the majority. In fact the majority of people don't identify as republican or democrat.
- bandushrew 5y ago
  The extremes always vote, many moderates only bother to vote if you can convince them the other side are totally insane/evil/stupid and life as they know it is going to be over if the other side get into/remain in power. So politicians in particular get very good at making the other side look extremely insane, evil and stupid. The better they are at that (lying) the better they do in elections. So...the politicians who would be good for us tend to have integrity and strong personal beliefs about lying, and so tend to do poorly in elections. Which leaves us with everyone else.

throwaway894345 5y ago

It was originally “abolish the police” and it was a pretty widespread slogan in summer of 2020 for those of us who visited the BLM protests. Perhaps they didn’t literally mean “do away with all police”, but no one was very explicit about what the slogan actually meant. And when the media tried to rationalize it as a metaphor (because it was so damaging to Democrats), many leftists corrected them, clarifying that they literally wanted police abolished. In whichever case, we’re presently suffering the effects of these anti-police protests as homicides have surged to levels not seen in 30 years (whether due to official “depolicing” policies or soft pressure for police to minimize proactive policing or due to reduced cooperation from the community or so on). Whether they literally meant “no police” or some other policy, it’s pretty clear that all of this leads to more crime, and the communities who pay are predominantly poor and/or minorities.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
Since virtually no police departments were "defunded" in any sense to any significant extent, it's not clear to me at all how that slogan or those protests contributed to any rising violence.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I refer you to the parenthetical in my third paragraph. > whether due to official “depolicing” policies or soft pressure for police to minimize proactive policing or due to reduced cooperation from the community or so on Note these findings regarding the St. Louis police department following the shooting of Michael Brown: > In the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, self-initiated arrests fell 62 percent. Similar declines are seen across nine out of 11 categories of self-initiated activities, including foot patrol (down 82 percent) and pedestrian checks (76 percent). Notably, the decline in arrests is concentrated among misdemeanor arrests (more discretionary than felonies) and among arrests of blacks (rather than whites). This reduction in police activity persisted for at least the next two years. In the same period, the city experienced a significant rise in homicide and aggravated assault. https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-protests-and-rising-violent-crime https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-pr...

nitwit005 5y ago

Some of the protestors are/were openly anarchists, and eliminating police is central to what they want. There are certainly more than 3 anarchists around.

kbelder 5y ago

I think it's more than that. I've seen at multiple people on national television advocating for exactly that. I'll concede that it's a small minority, though. The problem is that it's a really stupid slogan. A natural, unbiased reading of it says something that 95% of the supporters don't mean. That's not the fault of the people interpreting it, it's the fault of those saying it.

dfxm12 5y ago

I should think that the number of people who want to completely do away with the police is vanishingly small. Actually, it's probably about 3 people. Importantly, and I do think this is worth pointing out, those people have zero political power & zero input on any budgets, legislation, etc. Situations like those described in the article are actually happening. It seems like the right in the USA are being deliberately pedantic about the phrase "defund the police", to make it sound like those on the left are crazy. Conservatives have been gaslighting the electorate for as long as I've been a voter. This is no different.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

In June of 2020, as I'm sure you recall, The New York Times published an opinion piece titled "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police". Why do you think the New York Times was publishing opinions that you believe were only held by 3 people? You of course also remember that when the New York Times published the opinion piece titled "Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops" arguing that the military should be sent in to stop riots and looting, there was a massive backlash and the editor for the opinion page resigned. This even though the opinion expressed by Tom Cotton was fairly popular. I would think if the New York Times was publishing opinions that had no popular support at all, there would have been a backlash about that, wouldn't you?

selimthegrim 5y ago
One of these things is of doubtful constitutionality, the other is not. If Cotton suggested suspending habeas corpus would you want the Times to print that too?
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  From Cotton's opinion column itself: "For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson called out the military to disperse mobs that prevented school desegregation or threatened innocent lives and property. This happened in my own state. Gov. Orval Faubus, a racist Democrat, mobilized our National Guard in 1957 to obstruct desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and called in the 101st Airborne in response. The failure to do so, he said, 'would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy.' More recently, President George H.W. Bush ordered the Army’s Seventh Infantry and 1,500 Marines to protect Los Angeles during race riots in 1992." What Cotton suggested is expressly permitted by an act of Congress and that act has been invoked many times over more than two centuries. It's been used half a dozen times to suppress riots since the 1960's. Not one of those actions has ever been found to be unconstitutional. Second, if Tom Cotton and only two other people in the entire US want habeas corpus suspended, than no, I would not want the Times to print an opinion column suggesting that. A poll had 52% of Americans agreeing with sending in troops to stop the riots. If Tom Cotton and 52% of Americans want habeas corpus suspended, then I think a paper that calls itself the "paper of record" is exactly where that case should be made. Just as it would have been appropriate to make the case in those opinion pages for why we would send the 101st Airborne into Little Rock and Detroit, the 197th Infantry into Baltimore, the 1st Marines Division into Los Angeles, and military police to the Virgin Islands.

beepbooptheory 5y ago

It's so weird we talk about it like this, to say an entire swath of social research and theorists are "crazy," because they have the audacity to think a less-than-150-year state institution is maybe not perfect. Like, do any research at all into the history of criminal justice, you will find we live in a very contingent situation now, one that has other options. Like, do you all really think that police have been around forever? Do you really all think we would be violent state-of-nature monsters without them? That civilization is assured by them? Are we really so historically shortsighted that we see the existence of police as exactly corollary to law and order? Can we imagine for a second that just because something is sufficient doesn't mean that it is necessary? Can we think about this rationally at all? And then look at cost of the status quo... I don't know, its just so sad this is how we talk about it: the police (specifically, its unions/fraternities) truly have won the cultural battle. Doesn't even matter if there are some radicals out there, because the only way we can talk about these things means they will always win. Call those people naive if you like, but "crazy" is just disheartening to hear for people who are mostly just angry and wanting it to stop.

BobbyJo 5y ago
I mean, it is nothing short of crazy to think that solutions that worked 150 years ago would work better than the system that has evolved along side our society now. It is also crazy to think that we should throw out something that mostly works in favor of something entirely different when the ramifications of the new thing not working are very very serious. Also, you're throwing up a lot of extreme straw man arguments like that's what is being said. > Like, do you all really think that police have been around forever? I believe in dinosaurs, so no. > Do you really all think we would be violent state-of-nature monsters without them? No. I think more people would be without them than with them. Even if the difference between the two is 1%, that's a pretty serious change for the worse. > That civilization is assured by them? No, it's assured by faith in the system. Much like money. If everyone decided the law didn't matter there is very little the police force could do about that. > Are we really so historically shortsighted that we see the existence of police as exactly corollary to law and order? No. I certainly don't believe that. It's a component, but a small piece of the pie. > Can we imagine for a second that just because something is sufficient doesn't mean that it is necessary? Sure. Totally on board for that. It is sufficient to drive a monster truck to get where I want to go, but certainly not necessary. Not really a hard thing to imagine. I can run counter to basically every argument you lay and still believe that a police force is necessary without there being any logical inconsistency in my beliefs... > And then look at cost of the status quo Look at the cost of social security. Look at the cost of public school. There is so much tangible and intangible value locked up on those institutions that if anyone said "we can do better" you'd be hesitant to throw them out whether or not you agreed. > the police (specifically, its unions/fraternities) truly have won the cultural battle it's not a culture battle. We're in an equilibrium, and people are rightfully hesitant to leave it behind for promises of utopian glory. It's fine to think there is a better way, and it's fine to test that out. Looking at the places running such tests, the 'better ways' so far proposed are far short of actually better. > Call those people naive if you like It's a good term for how I see it. > but "crazy" is just disheartening to hear for people who are mostly just angry and wanting it to stop. It's subjective. If I saw someone saw off their own foot, I'd call them crazy. If I see someone do something, or advocate doing something, that I think would be extremely damaging, I call that crazy. It's not crazy to want to do better, it's not crazy to be upset that things aren't getting better fast enough. Only another set of crazies are calling that crazy.