4 ms·
You should instead actually consider the side being offered here instead of seemingly rejecting it over a slogan. Police duties are expensive and stretched pre
by sli 5y ago
You should instead actually consider the side being offered here instead of seemingly rejecting it over a slogan.
Police duties are expensive and stretched pretty thing, and thus they get funding for things that should not be within the purview of policing. A classic example is police response to mental health crises, and the frankly bizarre and spurious justification that creates for outlawing suicide. Far too often, people need help but are sent a militarized police response instead.
A retort to this is frequently around the suicidal person being armed and therefore needing armed police, but that seems to me like exactly what you should expect when sending heavily armed wannabe-soldiers to bust down the door of someone who needs a doctor or a therapist. Predictable fear responses are used as justification to continue or even escalate the problem rather than address it systemically.
- ctoth 5y agoHold on so if someone is intending to kill themselves with a gun, so cops that come have guns, the only reason a person has a gun suddenly becomes to defend themselves from the police? What happened to the original gun? Am I just parsing this wrong?
- relaxing 5y agoThe original gun probably wasn’t going to be fired at all. A trained responder could talk then down. But throw in a hostile force and you’ve increased the likelihood of a shootout. Also it may not even have been a gun. The police will also treat a knife or a motor vehicle as a deadly weapon and respond with lethal force.
- kmonsen 5y agoI don't think so, if there is a gun the police is coming with guns. That is true even in Norway. Once you start waving around a gun or something that looks like a gun with some threats as well you will be taken seriously. With one very possible consequence that you will be shot. Defund the police is not solving this situation. It could solve a lot of situations more calmly but not this one.
- tunesmith 5y agoWhich has nothing to do with "Defund the police". People hear "defund the police" and take it to mean literally defunding them, with zero budget.