8 ms·

From my understanding that's a core goal of the "defund the police" movement. The police as it exists in this country right now is a state militia. We need more

From my understanding that's a core goal of the "defund the police" movement. The police as it exists in this country right now is a state militia. We need more 911 respondents that are not armed to the teeth, to join the corpus of medics and firefighters, replacing the police in 80% of use cases. Noise complaint? Homeless person shooting up? Car accident? Cops are over-equipped and undertrained in most of these cases. They respectively need negotiation, compassion and first-aid, and a logistics/insurance official. Cops don't necessarily need to be trained in all these things, because cops suck up so much funding to deal with the few cases they might actually be necessary (gang shootout, protest security, armed robbery, etc), and one official can only be reliably trained in so many things. They just need to not be sent for these non-violent cases in favor of specialized unarmed social workers.

Dalewyn 3y ago
I want the police to be equipped for the situations they might or will encounter, and that includes surplus military gear sold down to them. What they need is better training, discipline, and accountability and for that we absolutely should not be "defunding" them.
- chaps 3y ago
  You want rural towns to have APCs?
- defrost 3y ago
  Most G20 countries have front line first responding police that can handle most calls without resorting to military gear, and call on specialised SWAT teams for ecounters that escalate. Having every officer primed to be a para military kill machine is exactly the wrong approach. You're in agreement with the original core "defund the police" groups when you want first responders to be trained to de-escalate mental health crisis situations, they want the same if not more money in public facing response, but a whole lot less going to the haress the public we view as bad divisions.
  - sleepybrett 3y ago
    Sadly the people they confront in those european countries are significantly less armed than your average american.
    - reaperman 3y ago
      To be pedantic, the median American does not own a firearm. There's a steel-manned version of your point which is valid, however.
      - sethammons 3y ago
        44% of households have a firearm. That is pretty close to median and will probably have regional distribution differences. https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...
        reaperman 3y ago
        Literally the first sentence of your article: “32% of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun”. I agree that there’s a steel-manned version of the original statement which is valid. You’re definitely getting a lot closer to it. I mean we can keep splitting hairs (I own guns, but only for sport not defense, I never carry, and they're stored field stripped with uppers and lowers in two separate safes and all ammunition in a third safe in a separate room). But of course after additional back-forth we’ll reach a point where we all eventually mostly agree with the intended sentiment of the GP’s comment. I just thought it was important to clarify to the audience that the “average” american is not, in fact, armed with a firearm.
        sethammons 3y ago
        Not sure your point. The very first sentence says both: > Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 44%, report living in a gun household If my wife owns a gun and I "don't," we both still have access to firearms. 44% of households have a similar dynamic. The American population is more armed than Europe. And it is close to half the population. I'm not making a value judgement. I own guns. Multiple of them. I guess I'm not sure what your point was. Mine is saying that nearly half of all households have a firearm.
- ehnto 3y ago
  Disagree on the surplus military gear point. Are they fighting a war? No, they are serving a community. I think they would do well to split the police and tactical response forces into different concepts entirely. Citizens are armed and that complicates things. But there are still two different tasks being done, one is supporting the community on a local level, and the other is exceptional uses of force to apply law. You shouldn't have the same forces doing both, which is more like how police were prior 9/11, if I had to put a date on it.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  What I want is for the "we just need better training" folks to define some sort of end point where they will admit that they've failed. Otherwise, we can keep shouting "we just need better training" until the end of time while cops regularly violate people's rights.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  There's zero practical means to hold police accountable. The reality is that we managed to create a social mechanism that's beyond our ability to control and that alone means we aren't ready to employ it. We have to understand our natural limits as a species and come to terms that having police is beyond them. There's no shame in that. In fact, that's the most mature outcome.
jimnotgym 3y ago
In the UK the police are generally armed only with a lightweight baton and cs spray. That forces you to deescalate. There are specialist armed officers to respond to serious incidents, terrorism, guarding public buildings etc. In my view these are becoming far too common and visible.
- tonylemesmer 3y ago
  Yes even in the West Country tasers are routinely carried and in cities firearms are very visibly carried. Seems like quite a change in the last ten/fifteen years.
  - xnorswap 3y ago
    Indeed there has been. Tasers were brought in with the excuse that they would replace the need for guns and reduce how many officers would carry guns. Tasers would, as argued when they were introduced, only be used by specialists in cases where previously they would have to use lethal force. And yet here we are ~20 years later and tasers have started to become part of a routine carry. In Q2 2018, Avon and Somerset police record 1 use of taser for the whole quarter. In 2022, they recorded between 80 and 120 uses of taser per month. Although I suspect "use" in the 2023 report may be drawn not fired, the Q2 2021 reports 230 uses of taser with 51 firings, so applying a similar ratio is still an escalation of 100x over a few years. Statistics from their "use of force" reports: https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/about/our-priorities/use-of-force/ https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/about/our-priorities/u...
    - avianlyric 3y ago
      Tasers are interesting one, I’m not a huge fan of them myself. But I did have a very interesting conversation with a Met Police Officer while he was escorting me to hospital. He pointed out that without the Taser, his only other option was his baton. He frequently used the threat of the Taser to deal with situations where he would be forced to use a baton instead, and noted most of the simply the threat of a Taser was enough to get people to reconsider their actions, and accept arrest more peacefully. Obviously there are places where the presence of Tasers have resulting an increase an escalation which wouldn’t have otherwise, and no doubt there are some officers that abuse their Tasers, but I don’t removing Tasers would be a clear cut improvement. But I would be in favour of more technical controls (automatic logging of a Taser being upholstered, automatic trigging of body-worn cameras, simple method for the public to request footage etc) to prevent abuses. Edit: > In Q2 2018, Avon and Somerset police record 1 use of taser for the whole quarter. I would be very careful reading this data. Looking through what’s available it’s clear to me something significant changed in either police behaviour or, more likely, data collection. According to the data, Tasers were used only 15 times in 2018/2019 Q4, but in 2019/2020 Q1 usage shot up to 201. They were fired 0 times in 2018/2019 Q4 and fired 30 times in 2019/2020 Q1. Additionally “tactical communication” was used 1,865 times in 2018/2019 Q4, but only 515 times in 2019/2020 Q1. So either the Avon and Somerset Police got a lot less talkative, and lot more trigger happy after the 2019 easter holiday, or the 2018/2019 data was collected using a different methodology, and appears to be wildly inaccurate. If we exclude the 2018/2019 data, the increase in Taser usage is still there, but it’s not a 100X increase, more like a 10X increase. Not great I agree, but still an order of magnitude lower than your original analysis.
freedomben 3y ago
I fully agree with what you've said, but it's worth pointing out that there are a bunch of different movements all using the "defund the police" moniker. That leads to a lot of disagreement about what it means, and the most extreme types (who really mean eliminate the police) use it too. I stopped using it to avoid confusion after the anarchists adopted it, and would encourage others to do so as well.
- Karellen 3y ago
  > there are a bunch of different movements all using the "defund the police" moniker. That leads to a lot of disagreement about what it means, and the most extreme types (who really mean eliminate the police) use it too. It might be worth checking the history there. I read that the anarchists who want to eliminate the police are the origin of the specific phrase "defund the police", and the less "extreme" types are the ones who attempted to expand/dilute the meaning. Saying that the anarchists "use it too" and "adopted it" is, I think, a little unfair. See also the discussions around r/antiwork a couple of years ago, where the subreddit had been pretty anarchist since its inception, before it suddenly got popular and watered down, and suddenly the original regulars who'd been there for years were being labelled as extremists who didn't fit in and shouldn't even be there.
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    lol, I checked out r/antiwork and nobody there seems to be rooting to abolish wage work altogether. Most are just complaining about their job and commenters tell them to fight for their rights or search another job. That seems pretty similar to people interpreting "defund the police" as anything else than "abolish the police in it's current form"
    - Capricorn2481 3y ago
      From what I understand, that sub used to be anarchists and kind of exploded into just general distaste for modern working conditions and pushed out the regular anarchists. The death of that side of anti-work was probably when that highly publicized Fox interview with one of its mods happened
vasco 3y ago
You go respond to a noise complaint in a bad neighborhood full of guns without any protection then! I'm all for police not to be armed in countries where owning guns is not allowed. In the US that proposition sounds crazy though.
- bratwurst3000 3y ago
  It’s not about having no guns. It’s about having better training to have other options than pure violence and intimidation to solve problems.
- throwaway161718 3y ago
  You are very right in terms of the dangers cops face. But somehow, all this reminds me of: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/immune-snakes-outrun-toxic-newts-in-evolutionary-arms-races https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/immune-sn... But we got to find a way to break this escalatory cycle?
- autoexec 3y ago
  The vast majority of noise complaints shouldn't require deadly force or any weapon at all. It's exactly the kind of work that police shouldn't even be involved in. I suppose it would be a massive improvement if they even kept their weapons in the trunk of their cars, but ideally you'd have someone qualified responding to noise complaints who could request police backup when needed.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    >The vast majority of noise complaints shouldn't require deadly force or any weapon at all. It's exactly the kind of work that police shouldn't even be involved in. The problem is many Americans will become violent when told by someone they're being too loud. I had a neighbor in college threaten to shoot me once because I complained about their noise. Police can't be expected to run to their car when some nutcase pulls a gun on them. In other countries this might be ok, but in the land of extremist individualism where there's far more guns than people, it's a bad idea.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
When citizens have the right to bear arms, any sort of domestic violence complaint (the most dangerous for police) can turn into an armed confrontation. Social workers tasked with dealing with unhoused in our area often want police escorts anyway for their own safety as they don’t know what they are getting into (just as the police wouldn’t). We aren’t Europe, our murder and violent crime rate are way above them.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
FireBeyond 3y ago
> Car accident? Cops are ... undertrained A small point, just one that recently ground my gears... My step-daughter was recently in a collision. Her car and someone else's collided in the middle of a traffic lighted intersection. No intersection cameras, dash cameras, or nearby business security cameras, no witnesses. Officer, "Did you have a green light?" Step-daughter: "Yes, I believe so, I was moving with traffic." Other party: "Yes, I definitely did." Officer to step-daughter: "I am issuing you with a citation for failure to obey a traffic control device." On what grounds? The other party was more ... adamant? The other party, who is biased (just as my step-daughter is, to be clear), who is also a potentially liable party? Thankfully, that got contested and dismissed, but in the process caused a whole slew of insurance-related drama, and then court cases, where the other party attempted to sue her, and because she is a minor, it couldn't be in small claims court, etc., etc.

Dalewyn 3y ago

I want the police to be equipped for the situations they might or will encounter, and that includes surplus military gear sold down to them. What they need is better training, discipline, and accountability and for that we absolutely should not be "defunding" them.

chaps 3y ago
You want rural towns to have APCs?
defrost 3y ago
Most G20 countries have front line first responding police that can handle most calls without resorting to military gear, and call on specialised SWAT teams for ecounters that escalate. Having every officer primed to be a para military kill machine is exactly the wrong approach. You're in agreement with the original core "defund the police" groups when you want first responders to be trained to de-escalate mental health crisis situations, they want the same if not more money in public facing response, but a whole lot less going to the haress the public we view as bad divisions.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  Sadly the people they confront in those european countries are significantly less armed than your average american.
  - reaperman 3y ago
    To be pedantic, the median American does not own a firearm. There's a steel-manned version of your point which is valid, however.
    - sethammons 3y ago
      44% of households have a firearm. That is pretty close to median and will probably have regional distribution differences. https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...
      - reaperman 3y ago
        Literally the first sentence of your article: “32% of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun”. I agree that there’s a steel-manned version of the original statement which is valid. You’re definitely getting a lot closer to it. I mean we can keep splitting hairs (I own guns, but only for sport not defense, I never carry, and they're stored field stripped with uppers and lowers in two separate safes and all ammunition in a third safe in a separate room). But of course after additional back-forth we’ll reach a point where we all eventually mostly agree with the intended sentiment of the GP’s comment. I just thought it was important to clarify to the audience that the “average” american is not, in fact, armed with a firearm.
        sethammons 3y ago
        Not sure your point. The very first sentence says both: > Thirty-two percent of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun, while a larger percentage, 44%, report living in a gun household If my wife owns a gun and I "don't," we both still have access to firearms. 44% of households have a similar dynamic. The American population is more armed than Europe. And it is close to half the population. I'm not making a value judgement. I own guns. Multiple of them. I guess I'm not sure what your point was. Mine is saying that nearly half of all households have a firearm.
ehnto 3y ago
Disagree on the surplus military gear point. Are they fighting a war? No, they are serving a community. I think they would do well to split the police and tactical response forces into different concepts entirely. Citizens are armed and that complicates things. But there are still two different tasks being done, one is supporting the community on a local level, and the other is exceptional uses of force to apply law. You shouldn't have the same forces doing both, which is more like how police were prior 9/11, if I had to put a date on it.
UncleMeat 3y ago
What I want is for the "we just need better training" folks to define some sort of end point where they will admit that they've failed. Otherwise, we can keep shouting "we just need better training" until the end of time while cops regularly violate people's rights.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
There's zero practical means to hold police accountable. The reality is that we managed to create a social mechanism that's beyond our ability to control and that alone means we aren't ready to employ it. We have to understand our natural limits as a species and come to terms that having police is beyond them. There's no shame in that. In fact, that's the most mature outcome.

jimnotgym 3y ago

In the UK the police are generally armed only with a lightweight baton and cs spray. That forces you to deescalate. There are specialist armed officers to respond to serious incidents, terrorism, guarding public buildings etc. In my view these are becoming far too common and visible.

tonylemesmer 3y ago
Yes even in the West Country tasers are routinely carried and in cities firearms are very visibly carried. Seems like quite a change in the last ten/fifteen years.
- xnorswap 3y ago
  Indeed there has been. Tasers were brought in with the excuse that they would replace the need for guns and reduce how many officers would carry guns. Tasers would, as argued when they were introduced, only be used by specialists in cases where previously they would have to use lethal force. And yet here we are ~20 years later and tasers have started to become part of a routine carry. In Q2 2018, Avon and Somerset police record 1 use of taser for the whole quarter. In 2022, they recorded between 80 and 120 uses of taser per month. Although I suspect "use" in the 2023 report may be drawn not fired, the Q2 2021 reports 230 uses of taser with 51 firings, so applying a similar ratio is still an escalation of 100x over a few years. Statistics from their "use of force" reports: https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/about/our-priorities/use-of-force/ https://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/about/our-priorities/u...
  - avianlyric 3y ago
    Tasers are interesting one, I’m not a huge fan of them myself. But I did have a very interesting conversation with a Met Police Officer while he was escorting me to hospital. He pointed out that without the Taser, his only other option was his baton. He frequently used the threat of the Taser to deal with situations where he would be forced to use a baton instead, and noted most of the simply the threat of a Taser was enough to get people to reconsider their actions, and accept arrest more peacefully. Obviously there are places where the presence of Tasers have resulting an increase an escalation which wouldn’t have otherwise, and no doubt there are some officers that abuse their Tasers, but I don’t removing Tasers would be a clear cut improvement. But I would be in favour of more technical controls (automatic logging of a Taser being upholstered, automatic trigging of body-worn cameras, simple method for the public to request footage etc) to prevent abuses. Edit: > In Q2 2018, Avon and Somerset police record 1 use of taser for the whole quarter. I would be very careful reading this data. Looking through what’s available it’s clear to me something significant changed in either police behaviour or, more likely, data collection. According to the data, Tasers were used only 15 times in 2018/2019 Q4, but in 2019/2020 Q1 usage shot up to 201. They were fired 0 times in 2018/2019 Q4 and fired 30 times in 2019/2020 Q1. Additionally “tactical communication” was used 1,865 times in 2018/2019 Q4, but only 515 times in 2019/2020 Q1. So either the Avon and Somerset Police got a lot less talkative, and lot more trigger happy after the 2019 easter holiday, or the 2018/2019 data was collected using a different methodology, and appears to be wildly inaccurate. If we exclude the 2018/2019 data, the increase in Taser usage is still there, but it’s not a 100X increase, more like a 10X increase. Not great I agree, but still an order of magnitude lower than your original analysis.

freedomben 3y ago

I fully agree with what you've said, but it's worth pointing out that there are a bunch of different movements all using the "defund the police" moniker. That leads to a lot of disagreement about what it means, and the most extreme types (who really mean eliminate the police) use it too. I stopped using it to avoid confusion after the anarchists adopted it, and would encourage others to do so as well.

Karellen 3y ago
> there are a bunch of different movements all using the "defund the police" moniker. That leads to a lot of disagreement about what it means, and the most extreme types (who really mean eliminate the police) use it too. It might be worth checking the history there. I read that the anarchists who want to eliminate the police are the origin of the specific phrase "defund the police", and the less "extreme" types are the ones who attempted to expand/dilute the meaning. Saying that the anarchists "use it too" and "adopted it" is, I think, a little unfair. See also the discussions around r/antiwork a couple of years ago, where the subreddit had been pretty anarchist since its inception, before it suddenly got popular and watered down, and suddenly the original regulars who'd been there for years were being labelled as extremists who didn't fit in and shouldn't even be there.
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  lol, I checked out r/antiwork and nobody there seems to be rooting to abolish wage work altogether. Most are just complaining about their job and commenters tell them to fight for their rights or search another job. That seems pretty similar to people interpreting "defund the police" as anything else than "abolish the police in it's current form"
  - Capricorn2481 3y ago
    From what I understand, that sub used to be anarchists and kind of exploded into just general distaste for modern working conditions and pushed out the regular anarchists. The death of that side of anti-work was probably when that highly publicized Fox interview with one of its mods happened

vasco 3y ago

You go respond to a noise complaint in a bad neighborhood full of guns without any protection then! I'm all for police not to be armed in countries where owning guns is not allowed. In the US that proposition sounds crazy though.

bratwurst3000 3y ago
It’s not about having no guns. It’s about having better training to have other options than pure violence and intimidation to solve problems.
throwaway161718 3y ago
You are very right in terms of the dangers cops face. But somehow, all this reminds me of: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/immune-snakes-outrun-toxic-newts-in-evolutionary-arms-races https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/immune-sn... But we got to find a way to break this escalatory cycle?
autoexec 3y ago
The vast majority of noise complaints shouldn't require deadly force or any weapon at all. It's exactly the kind of work that police shouldn't even be involved in. I suppose it would be a massive improvement if they even kept their weapons in the trunk of their cars, but ideally you'd have someone qualified responding to noise complaints who could request police backup when needed.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  >The vast majority of noise complaints shouldn't require deadly force or any weapon at all. It's exactly the kind of work that police shouldn't even be involved in. The problem is many Americans will become violent when told by someone they're being too loud. I had a neighbor in college threaten to shoot me once because I complained about their noise. Police can't be expected to run to their car when some nutcase pulls a gun on them. In other countries this might be ok, but in the land of extremist individualism where there's far more guns than people, it's a bad idea.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

When citizens have the right to bear arms, any sort of domestic violence complaint (the most dangerous for police) can turn into an armed confrontation. Social workers tasked with dealing with unhoused in our area often want police escorts anyway for their own safety as they don’t know what they are getting into (just as the police wouldn’t). We aren’t Europe, our murder and violent crime rate are way above them.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

FireBeyond 3y ago

> Car accident? Cops are ... undertrained A small point, just one that recently ground my gears... My step-daughter was recently in a collision. Her car and someone else's collided in the middle of a traffic lighted intersection. No intersection cameras, dash cameras, or nearby business security cameras, no witnesses. Officer, "Did you have a green light?" Step-daughter: "Yes, I believe so, I was moving with traffic." Other party: "Yes, I definitely did." Officer to step-daughter: "I am issuing you with a citation for failure to obey a traffic control device." On what grounds? The other party was more ... adamant? The other party, who is biased (just as my step-daughter is, to be clear), who is also a potentially liable party? Thankfully, that got contested and dismissed, but in the process caused a whole slew of insurance-related drama, and then court cases, where the other party attempted to sue her, and because she is a minor, it couldn't be in small claims court, etc., etc.