"Defund the police"

[Phoebe]

The defund the police slogan strikes me as so ratchetly (no, my vtt dude, you should know that I never use this word and that I said wretchedly which is a word I use all the time) politically ill advised and stupid that it would make more sense if it was started by a police union trying to discredit their foes. It's tragic because now the public discourse oxygen has been taken up by this stupidity when we really need reform and a revisiting of the whole model of emergency response. Everything from who gets sent where, and who pays the bills, and where they get taken if necessary, and how the situations are de-escalated and handled, needs a big fixing. Maybe leadership on this needs to come from a fully outside source that would come up with different plans through bringing together emergency response teams - fire, medical, security, etc. It affects everything from how we deal with weather to public protests. A security presence sometimes is necessary but it's a security very unlike what we normally expect from police.

[Kyle]

I agree with all of this. My wife and I were so irritated that they were calling it "defund the police"-- what a gift to conservative racists, right? And as you're pointing out- it's not really a defunding of anything- it's a reallocation of the resources. Such a dumb blunder.

[Stan]

Someone who is involved political activism said that this played extremely poorly in many suburbs and may have given Trump a boost of a couple of percent. It's a situation where I agree with the concept but not the hamfisted presentation.

[poorpete]

There are I think three groups in this: those who want to fix the police (which possibly means giving the organizations more or less or the same amount of money), those who want to reduce funding of the police, and those who want to abolish the police. The last two camps exist, for sure. I'm in the first camp.

I am not an abolish the police person. I am a fan of the theoretical ideas of police, to serve, protect, to keep the peace. Believing that police were invented to catch slaves and is therefore are always rotten is to similarly think that Republicans wanted abolition of slavery and therefore will always be saints. I am not an anarchist, nor do I think all cops are bad, nor that the only way to fix policing is to destroy policing.

If cleaning up policing involves reducing their funding, I'm fine with that.

Really, I'm okay with the slogan, but it's not the most important slogan, which is: "Black Lives Matter" -- it's a movement of respect, and I only care about what gets us to that point.

Racists have pretended that the opposite of "Black Lives Matter" is "Support the Police" and years has been spent pushing back on that. Although "Defund the Police" isn't the opposite of "Support the Police" it sure is easier to convince people it is, as well as then making people believe that's what this has all been about from day one.

Just frustrating as if they played into a political strategist's hand.

Anyways, black lives matter, and that means changing lots of things, one of which is policing.

[Mike]

If I had to put any label on it, I prefer "Improve community safety." And that will look different from community to community. It most places, I believe is probably does involve less money for "police", and more money other entities that ensure the safety of the community, but maybe not always.

[Stan]

If I had to put any label on it, I prefer "Improve community safety." And that will look different from community to community. It most places, I believe is probably does involve less money for "police", and more money other entities that ensure the safety of the community, but maybe not always.

Well said.
Responding to domestic violence or a mental health emergency might require different skill sets than responding to a robbery so maybe we shouldn't make the same person do all of them.

There's also the issue of how localized police are with varying standards and training. Some might be doing great and have implemented more nuanced programs but then there's some small town where the sheriff hires only friends and relatives, regardless of qualifications. Discourse needs to make clear that only one of the above needs to be severely overhauled.

[FlameBlade]

Let me quickly go there -- what does "defund education" means -- does it means zeroing out the funding?

Of course, the slogan itself -- leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but what it really means is...transfer funds to critical areas such as social services (by which can be used instead of police in non-violent situations), or perhaps social services to aid. A lot of little things that can be diverted from police where the expectation is that they have to do everything...

[bralbovsky]

To be fair, political sloganeering is a tricky business.
How to come up with something catchy, categorically nonviolent, non-agressive even, and still transmit the idea that a broken system must be reimagined...

It wasn't the kind of blunder "teabaggers" was. It lost in the PVP that our discourse has become.

The other complication here is the undeniable weight that cash has in determining power. It's also polluted our discourse and our capacity for real problem solving.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Hence the whole ACAB thing, because regardless of how humane an individual officer is, the law itself is designed to protect wealth rather than humanity. Look at the "blue lives" flag for crissakes, everything about the symbolism is sincere but sinister.

So ya, would Purge Bad Cops, or Criminalize Discrimination, or something else be a better motto? I think anything that threatens the status quo and the culture of fearing the 'other' is going to be a target of the Orwellian twisting that ALWAYS happens.

[Pdyx]

So ya, would Purge Bad Cops, or Criminalize Discrimination, or something else be a better motto? I think anything that threatens the status quo and the culture of fearing the 'other' is going to be a target of the Orwellian twisting that ALWAYS happens.

I think this is a good point, anything can be twisted and will be. I'm not so sure I think Defund the Police is so super bad, because it's pretty clear what it's getting at. Maybe it's not perfect, but I pretty much can agree with it on first sight, and it's striking and maybe that's okay too? It's got us talking about it...

[Kyle]

So ya, would Purge Bad Cops, or Criminalize Discrimination, or something else be a better motto? I think anything that threatens the status quo and the culture of fearing the 'other' is going to be a target of the Orwellian twisting that ALWAYS happens.

I think this is a good point, anything can be twisted and will be. I'm not so sure I think Defund the Police is so super bad, because it's pretty clear what it's getting at. Maybe it's not perfect, but I pretty much can agree with it on first sight, and it's striking and maybe that's okay too? It's got us talking about it...

I understand this point, but when we both first heard "Defund the Police," we thought, "Oh great, dummies. There goes the suburbs." I'm a huge liberal and that was my first impression.

[Mike]

So ya, would Purge Bad Cops, or Criminalize Discrimination, or something else be a better motto? I think anything that threatens the status quo and the culture of fearing the 'other' is going to be a target of the Orwellian twisting that ALWAYS happens.

I think this is a good point, anything can be twisted and will be. I'm not so sure I think Defund the Police is so super bad, because it's pretty clear what it's getting at. Maybe it's not perfect, but I pretty much can agree with it on first sight, and it's striking and maybe that's okay too? It's got us talking about it...

I understand this point, but when we both first heard "Defund the Police," we thought, "Oh great, dummies. There goes the suburbs." I'm a huge liberal and that was my first impression.

Agreed. I understand that no matter how it was phrased, conservatives were going to act like it meant abolishing police, but this particular phrasing makes that reading far more believable to far more people.

Desegregate... stop segregation
Demonetize... no longer monetized
Derail... take off the rails
Etc...

Negation is the first definition that comes to mind for that prefix, and it's what I would have assumed "defund" meant if I didn't have context.

[bralbovsky]

Your principles are correct.
Rules or policies are always best expressed in the positive.

[Phoebe]

Police unions comparing vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany. Fine I don't care if it's a bad slogan let's just defund them. If you think getting vaccinated is a Nazi genocide level imposition on your freedom when you serve the public in a way they have no control over, you shouldn't be a police officer and the public would be better off turning to their neighbors or whoever to help them out of a jam. If you want the ability to force people to do whatever you tell them to do under threat of violence or death, but you can't handle being told what to do to keep other people safe, you really shouldn't have a gun you get to use almost completely without accountability.