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It’s the natural move and the eventual evolution of major US metros suffering from crime. As police forces continue to dwindle with less and less new recruits,

It’s the natural move and the eventual evolution of major US metros suffering from crime. As police forces continue to dwindle with less and less new recruits, local governments may not have a choice of disallowing surveillance when it’s a tool to help mitigate crime. Even before BLM and defund the police movements, on average US police departments only had 60% of the officers needed to effectively maintain order. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-cop-shortage https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-co... Less people want to become a police officer because the pay doesn’t match both the physical and legal threats of the job. Constant overtime and local government’s bad habit of seeing every problem as a nail that could be solved by police has exacerbated the problem.

throwaway_4ever 5y ago
Not always. Oakland PD is notorious for no one wanting to work for, for obvious reasons. Across the Bay Area, Mountain View PD get paid $500k to do diddly-squat.
syshum 5y ago
Like most government programs that are "under funded" the solution is not actually more funding. The solution is doing a proper analysis of what they are doing with the money, and readjusting. Specifically law enforcement, the root cause of almost everything is over criminalization of society, combined with "policing for profit" where cities pass all kinds of laws and then place priority of enforcement on laws that generate them the most revenue instead of public safety This create a perverse feedback loop of violent or unpopular police interactions with the public. Another factor in this is the way local and state government do budgeting. Police, Fire, Schools and Road (core services) are actually often the FIRST to have their budgets cut over social or other non-core services. This makes tax increases more palatable to the tax payers, as they are often willing to absorb tax increases for core services but not for non-core services. All tax money currently in most cities in fungible, so those that control the budgets can shift fund away from core services, create a crisis, then push for the public to access a tax increase to "solve" the crisis they created.
pjc50 5y ago
> local government’s bad habit of seeing every problem as a nail that could be solved by police One of the messages that got buried under "defund the police" was "fund social services and nonlethal interventions instead". Ironically many of the standard anti-government rightwing messages are true about some of America's many police forces. They're often over-funded and wasteful at the same time as being ineffective in terms of actually dealing with crime. Prejudice makes this worse: rather than investigating and dealing with the people actually responsible for crimes, it's easier to go round and find some people who "look criminal" and arrest them to boost your stats.
- specialist 5y ago
  File under: Say what you're for, not what you're against. > "fund social services and nonlethal interventions instead" I've been racking my brains to divine a slogan or phrase or framing that captures this. Nadda. I imagine Frank Luntz could do it. We need our own Frank Luntz.
  - ruined 5y ago
    talking about funding anything in America has been a losing game for decades now. "defund" was a tactical appeal to this ideology
mschuster91 5y ago
> Even before BLM and defund the police movements, on average US police departments only had 60% of the officers needed to effectively maintain order. Yeah, no surprise there when almost all issues of society get offloaded onto police, and a barely trained one at that. All that police is is a band-aid on existing, far-reaching issues in society - poverty and lack of access to mental health care being the worst contributors.
vkou 5y ago
> on average US police departments only had 60% of the officers needed to effectively maintain order. Might it have something to do with the shitty, corrupt culture in most of them? SPD's been operating under a federal injunction for the past ten years. Ten years in and not a damn thing about it has changed. It's still an old boys' club that is allergic to integrity, flip-flopping between being the extremes of being actively useless, and completely out-of-control.

throwaway_4ever 5y ago

Not always. Oakland PD is notorious for no one wanting to work for, for obvious reasons. Across the Bay Area, Mountain View PD get paid $500k to do diddly-squat.

syshum 5y ago

Like most government programs that are "under funded" the solution is not actually more funding. The solution is doing a proper analysis of what they are doing with the money, and readjusting. Specifically law enforcement, the root cause of almost everything is over criminalization of society, combined with "policing for profit" where cities pass all kinds of laws and then place priority of enforcement on laws that generate them the most revenue instead of public safety This create a perverse feedback loop of violent or unpopular police interactions with the public. Another factor in this is the way local and state government do budgeting. Police, Fire, Schools and Road (core services) are actually often the FIRST to have their budgets cut over social or other non-core services. This makes tax increases more palatable to the tax payers, as they are often willing to absorb tax increases for core services but not for non-core services. All tax money currently in most cities in fungible, so those that control the budgets can shift fund away from core services, create a crisis, then push for the public to access a tax increase to "solve" the crisis they created.

pjc50 5y ago

> local government’s bad habit of seeing every problem as a nail that could be solved by police One of the messages that got buried under "defund the police" was "fund social services and nonlethal interventions instead". Ironically many of the standard anti-government rightwing messages are true about some of America's many police forces. They're often over-funded and wasteful at the same time as being ineffective in terms of actually dealing with crime. Prejudice makes this worse: rather than investigating and dealing with the people actually responsible for crimes, it's easier to go round and find some people who "look criminal" and arrest them to boost your stats.

specialist 5y ago
File under: Say what you're for, not what you're against. > "fund social services and nonlethal interventions instead" I've been racking my brains to divine a slogan or phrase or framing that captures this. Nadda. I imagine Frank Luntz could do it. We need our own Frank Luntz.
- ruined 5y ago
  talking about funding anything in America has been a losing game for decades now. "defund" was a tactical appeal to this ideology

mschuster91 5y ago

> Even before BLM and defund the police movements, on average US police departments only had 60% of the officers needed to effectively maintain order. Yeah, no surprise there when almost all issues of society get offloaded onto police, and a barely trained one at that. All that police is is a band-aid on existing, far-reaching issues in society - poverty and lack of access to mental health care being the worst contributors.

vkou 5y ago

> on average US police departments only had 60% of the officers needed to effectively maintain order. Might it have something to do with the shitty, corrupt culture in most of them? SPD's been operating under a federal injunction for the past ten years. Ten years in and not a damn thing about it has changed. It's still an old boys' club that is allergic to integrity, flip-flopping between being the extremes of being actively useless, and completely out-of-control.