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1. Police have never been defunded. San Francisco PD budget is up 5% from 2019. This is similar to every other city in the US (LAPD has $250M more in funding af

1. Police have never been defunded. San Francisco PD budget is up 5% from 2019. This is similar to every other city in the US (LAPD has $250M more in funding after George Floyd). 2. "Defund the Police" usually means diverting money away from reactive policies (policing) to proactive policies (community initiatives that prevent people from falling into abject poverty to begin with). You can claim that "defund the police" is bad optics, but honestly the US is such a far gone police state that "liberals" could have picked any rallying cry and it would have been weaponized. 3. The reason you see police forces doing less even though they have more funding is because they are using the narrative that they were "defunded" (recall this never happened) as a bargaining chip for police unions to negotiate with lawmakers for less oversight and more funding. 4. There is no correlation between police funding and crime rates. Police only show up AFTER a crime has been committed, and anyone who has dealt with police firsthand knows how much they love to drag their feet: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2022/03/31/preventing-gun-violence-takes-more-than-police/#:~:text=A%20national%20poll%20found%20that,one%20way%20or%20the%20other https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2022/03/31/preven.... 5. This one might be a bit philosophical but when you have a police force you aren't reducing violence, you're just shifting the violence that is done to the state. While the crazy homeless people and crack addicts might be "out of sight out of mind", you can guarantee they are getting stabbed and beaten up in prison, or shot in the street by the cops. If your goal is to simply remove "undesirables" from the view of the public then police are a great tool, but if our conception of justice is that crude then we might as well return to the code of Hammurabi. If the goal is to reduce violence and crime overall, then police are not the best tool for the job. Preventative measures must be taken to keep people from getting to the mental state that causes them to commit crimes.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Where are you getting your numbers? This link [1], says budget was cut 15% in 2020, 11% in 2021, and 11% in 2022. This link [2] says police headcount is down 25% from 2017. https://californiaglobe.com/articles/new-report-sfpd-short-825-officers-by-the-end-of-2022/ https://californiaglobe.com/articles/new-report-sfpd-short-8... https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/police-staffing-crisis-san-francisco/ https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/police-staffing-crisis-san-...
- green_man_lives 4y ago
  https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/ https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen... Police budget was lowered in 2020, that's from a decrease in tax revenue though, not ideological. https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/breed-orders-departments-to-make-15-percent-budget-cuts-to-close-deficit/article_aee54281-58cf-590a-a69f-ef59e305d9d8.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/breed-orders-departments... It was also increased back to normal levels in 2022.
uejfiweun 4y ago
> While the crazy homeless people and crack addicts might be "out of sight out of mind", you can guarantee they are getting stabbed and beaten up in prison, or shot in the street by the cops. Well, quite frankly, they deserve that outcome a lot more than guys like Bob Lee. I don’t understand how one could care so much about protecting dangerous, crazy homeless people from harm. It’s like worrying about making sure Osama bin Laden doesn’t get hit by any hijacked planes
- green_man_lives 4y ago
  > I don’t understand how one could care so much about protecting dangerous, crazy homeless people from harm. This is some Hammurabi thinking. It's not about protecting "Osama Bin Laden" (although justice should be blind and not paywalled), it's about ensuring that our system produces fewer Osama Bin Ladens. To steelman your point, let's say that police are 100% necessary in society and the more police the better. In this universe the police never cause collateral damage and are always 100% in the right. In this world, even if you lock up every "Osama Bin Laden" you are still putting the police officers in harm's way. They are using their bodies to ensure that the Bob Lee's of the world can keep on innovating. To prevent harm to officers, we should figure out how to reduce the number of encounters they have, which means reducing the number of criminals through other means. If society is a machine that produces Osama Bin Laden's as a byproduct, isn't it in everyone's best interest to reduce the rate at which we produce Osama Bin Laden's? Especially the police who put themselves in harms way?
  - uejfiweun 4y ago
    I don’t disagree that we should try to gear our society towards producing less dangerous people. It sounds like we have very different ideas on how to achieve that, though. My personal opinion is that the threat of severe punishment is enough to scare most people into line. You see this in places like Singapore that are extremely safe yet have much lower incarceration rates. As for the police obviously it’s unfortunate that they get put in harms way, but it is kinda what they signed up for, to an extent. An over focus on cop safety leads to situations like Uvalde. If there was a way to solve these issues while also being really nice and compassionate then I’d be all for it, but if you’re getting bullied sometimes the best thing to do is to just sock the bully in the mouth.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Where are you getting your numbers? This link [1], says budget was cut 15% in 2020, 11% in 2021, and 11% in 2022. This link [2] says police headcount is down 25% from 2017. https://californiaglobe.com/articles/new-report-sfpd-short-825-officers-by-the-end-of-2022/ https://californiaglobe.com/articles/new-report-sfpd-short-8... https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/police-staffing-crisis-san-francisco/ https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/police-staffing-crisis-san-...

green_man_lives 4y ago
https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/ https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen... Police budget was lowered in 2020, that's from a decrease in tax revenue though, not ideological. https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/breed-orders-departments-to-make-15-percent-budget-cuts-to-close-deficit/article_aee54281-58cf-590a-a69f-ef59e305d9d8.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/breed-orders-departments... It was also increased back to normal levels in 2022.

uejfiweun 4y ago

> While the crazy homeless people and crack addicts might be "out of sight out of mind", you can guarantee they are getting stabbed and beaten up in prison, or shot in the street by the cops. Well, quite frankly, they deserve that outcome a lot more than guys like Bob Lee. I don’t understand how one could care so much about protecting dangerous, crazy homeless people from harm. It’s like worrying about making sure Osama bin Laden doesn’t get hit by any hijacked planes

green_man_lives 4y ago
> I don’t understand how one could care so much about protecting dangerous, crazy homeless people from harm. This is some Hammurabi thinking. It's not about protecting "Osama Bin Laden" (although justice should be blind and not paywalled), it's about ensuring that our system produces fewer Osama Bin Ladens. To steelman your point, let's say that police are 100% necessary in society and the more police the better. In this universe the police never cause collateral damage and are always 100% in the right. In this world, even if you lock up every "Osama Bin Laden" you are still putting the police officers in harm's way. They are using their bodies to ensure that the Bob Lee's of the world can keep on innovating. To prevent harm to officers, we should figure out how to reduce the number of encounters they have, which means reducing the number of criminals through other means. If society is a machine that produces Osama Bin Laden's as a byproduct, isn't it in everyone's best interest to reduce the rate at which we produce Osama Bin Laden's? Especially the police who put themselves in harms way?
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  I don’t disagree that we should try to gear our society towards producing less dangerous people. It sounds like we have very different ideas on how to achieve that, though. My personal opinion is that the threat of severe punishment is enough to scare most people into line. You see this in places like Singapore that are extremely safe yet have much lower incarceration rates. As for the police obviously it’s unfortunate that they get put in harms way, but it is kinda what they signed up for, to an extent. An over focus on cop safety leads to situations like Uvalde. If there was a way to solve these issues while also being really nice and compassionate then I’d be all for it, but if you’re getting bullied sometimes the best thing to do is to just sock the bully in the mouth.