US police & murders of black men

[Gentleman Jim]

couple this with training from Israeli military forces in methods of “mass surveillance, racial profiling, and suppression of protest and dissent,” which PDs from Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington state and Washington D.C. have participated in since 2002, according to Amnesty International, there is a perfect storm for the brutalization of communities of color.

No cross-over with the way Israel treats the Palestinians?

[EACLucifer]

Here's an article on what the ACLU mean by 'defund the police', for example.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicamelt ... faa2342f92

When your slogan is 20+ points underwater in polling, and you need to link people to articles to explain what you really mean, it is a bad slogan.

[bjn]

Here's an article on what the ACLU mean by 'defund the police', for example.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicamelt ... faa2342f92

When your slogan is 20+ points underwater in polling, and you need to link people to articles to explain what you really mean, it is a bad slogan.

^ This.

[discovolante]

Here's an article on what the ACLU mean by 'defund the police', for example.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/monicamelt ... faa2342f92

When your slogan is 20+ points underwater in polling, and you need to link people to articles to explain what you really mean, it is a bad slogan.

^ This.

I'm not really sure what the point being made here is, if any. BOAF hasn't defended the campaign slogan at any point and specifically said what he meant by it in his initial post. And his version of it has the public just about in favour.

I spent a couple of minutes this morning trying to think of how to compare polling trends over time in vaguely similar circumstances. The only recent one I could think of off the top of my head was climate change. Unfortunately on YouGov there didn't seem to be a lot of historical polling on climate change before late 2018, apart from one about whether people thought the effects of climate change had been exaggerated, and the responses didn't seem to change much over time (I.e. between 2017 to present, which were my search parameters).

[Bird on a Fire]

I even said they need a new name.

The organisation behind 8 Can't Wait have been around since 2015 and have clearly been working on both how to sell ideas, and which ideas are easiest to sell to policymakers. I agree that they're a good start and sensible suggestions, but I'm doubtful that they go far enough on they're own. That's not a criticism in the slightest - the whole point is that those proposals can be enacted immediately. That doesn't mean that anybody sensible, including the 8 Can't Wait folks themselves, thinks that we could fix this overnight through those measures alone.

So yes, clearly the movement that's sprung up in the last month has more work to do before its proposals would poll well with the majority.

[bjn]

I never intended it as a criticism of BOAF, but the choice of slogan, which is also how I read Luci’s post. 8 Can’t Wait sounds much better.

[Squeak]

I dunno. I always assumed that Defund the Police was never meant to get majority approval but mostly to move the Overton window. It's an absolutely shocking idea, which sounds ludicrous on the surface and which may therefore encourage people to read the longer versions because "They can't possibly mean that?!" It's certainly got me thinking more creatively about what police are for and how else we could improve public safety.

It's certainly not a slogan that a serious presidential candidate can go anywhere near but I think it's an interesting experiment trying to shock people into thinking.

[Bird on a Fire]

It's interesting that this is probably the first time abolitionist ideas are getting any kind of hearing in mainstream media, because they've been kicking around for a while.

Angela Davis wrote Are Prisons Obsolete? back in 2003, which attacks the prison system from both racial and feminist perspectives.

Some more recent books from Verso Press have been made free to download on their website (they ask you donate the cost to Black Visions Collective or bail funds):
The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale
Policing the Planet Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter Edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2530-police

and a bunch more of them are on sale https://www.versobooks.com/lists/4747-l ... er-reading

I dunno. I always assumed that Defund the Police was never meant to get majority approval but mostly to move the Overton window. It's an absolutely shocking idea, which sounds ludicrous on the surface and which may therefore encourage people to read the longer versions because "They can't possibly mean that?!" It's certainly got me thinking more creatively about what police are for and how else we could improve public safety.

It's certainly not a slogan that a serious presidential candidate can go anywhere near but I think it's an interesting experiment trying to shock people into thinking.

While there certainly are plenty of sincere abolitionists, though by no means everyone calling for cuts to police budgets has an end goal of abolition. There is also huge variation globally in the kinds of tasks police are expected to do, and the kinds of powers they're given to do it - drastically defunding US police would simply bring the country closer to international norms:

The distinctions are stark when comparing America with its peer nations. The U.S. spends 18.7 percent of its annual output on social programs, compared with 31.2 percent by France and 25.1 percent by Germany. It spends just 0.6 percent of its GDP on benefits for families with children, one-sixth of what Sweden spends and one-third the rich-country average. It spends far more on health care than these other countries, notably, but for a broken, patchy, and inequitable system, one that leaves people dying without care and bankrupts many of those who do get it.

Meanwhile, the U.S. spends twice what Europe does on the military. It spends more on domestic public-safety programs than virtually all of its peer nations, double what Singapore spends in GDP terms. It locks up millions, with an incarceration rate many times that of other NATO countries. If the state with the lowest incarceration rate, Massachusetts, were its own country, it would imprison more people than all but nine other nations, among them Turkmenistan.

As you allude to, I don't think anybody thinks this problem will be solved quickly, and mainstream politics tends to follow the public discussion. The kneejerk response of why US police budgets should be maintained at the level they are doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, so the only real questions are how far to cut them and how to make those ideas palatable.

[Bird on a Fire]

Meanwhile, multiple black men hanging from trees in public places lead some to suspect a return of lynching.

[FlammableFlower]

Can't find it quickly again on my phone, but last night I was reading a Washington Post article about an entire SWAT team in Florida that resigned (from that duty, but completely) in 'disgust' at how police are bring treated - to which the article concluded - in that case, good thing too. It turns out they're based in a very small area and the question arose, why did you think it was necessary to have a SWAT team? 95% of their activity was in an even smaller area where the black community lived and in one year the number of killings by police was 1:1 with non-police murders (apparently the national average is 1:15).

[bmforre]

Here it is.

... last night I was reading a Washington Post article about an entire SWAT team in Florida that resigned (from that duty, but completely) in 'disgust' at how police are bring treated - to which the article concluded - in that case, good thing too. It turns out they're based in a very small area and the question arose, why did you think it was necessary to have a SWAT team? 95% of their activity was in an even smaller area where the black community lived and in one year the number of killings by police was 1:1 with non-police murders (apparently the national average is 1:15).

[FlammableFlower]

Cheers!

Seems it's 86% (33/38), not 95% - I'd inflated it, but it's a highly disproportionate number.

[dyqik]

While there certainly are plenty of sincere abolitionists, though by no means everyone calling for cuts to police budgets has an end goal of abolition. There is also huge variation globally in the kinds of tasks police are expected to do, and the kinds of powers they're given to do it - drastically defunding US police would simply bring the country closer to international norms:

The distinctions are stark when comparing America with its peer nations. The U.S. spends 18.7 percent of its annual output on social programs, compared with 31.2 percent by France and 25.1 percent by Germany. It spends just 0.6 percent of its GDP on benefits for families with children, one-sixth of what Sweden spends and one-third the rich-country average. It spends far more on health care than these other countries, notably, but for a broken, patchy, and inequitable system, one that leaves people dying without care and bankrupts many of those who do get it.

Meanwhile, the U.S. spends twice what Europe does on the military. It spends more on domestic public-safety programs than virtually all of its peer nations, double what Singapore spends in GDP terms. It locks up millions, with an incarceration rate many times that of other NATO countries. If the state with the lowest incarceration rate, Massachusetts, were its own country, it would imprison more people than all but nine other nations, among them Turkmenistan.

As you allude to, I don't think anybody thinks this problem will be solved quickly, and mainstream politics tends to follow the public discussion. The kneejerk response of why US police budgets should be maintained at the level they are doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, so the only real questions are how far to cut them and how to make those ideas palatable.

And certainly literal abolition of the police doesn't make any sense whatsoever when there are heavily armed white supremacists wandering around to protect their town from Antifa terrorists [sic], blocking roads to prevent buses arriving in towns, evicting campers for campsites because they aren't from around there, and so are obviously left-wing terrorists, and walking into State Houses to protest at being asked to wear a mask.

[Woodchopper]

As you allude to, I don't think anybody thinks this problem will be solved quickly, and mainstream politics tends to follow the public discussion. The kneejerk response of why US police budgets should be maintained at the level they are doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, so the only real questions are how far to cut them and how to make those ideas palatable.

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

[dyqik]

As you allude to, I don't think anybody thinks this problem will be solved quickly, and mainstream politics tends to follow the public discussion. The kneejerk response of why US police budgets should be maintained at the level they are doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, so the only real questions are how far to cut them and how to make those ideas palatable.

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

[tom p]

As you allude to, I don't think anybody thinks this problem will be solved quickly, and mainstream politics tends to follow the public discussion. The kneejerk response of why US police budgets should be maintained at the level they are doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, so the only real questions are how far to cut them and how to make those ideas palatable.

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

Plus by sacking all the racists & replacing them with new cops, the wage costs automatically go down for a few years

[dyqik]

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

Plus by sacking all the racists & replacing them with new cops, the wage costs automatically go down for a few years

Then there'll be all the savings from not paying out lawsuits for injuring and killing people.

[tom p]

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

Plus by sacking all the racists & replacing them with new cops, the wage costs automatically go down for a few years

Then there'll be all the savings from not paying out lawsuits for injuring and killing people.

well, defending said lawsuits until the claimants run out of money

[Woodchopper]

As you allude to, I don't think anybody thinks this problem will be solved quickly, and mainstream politics tends to follow the public discussion. The kneejerk response of why US police budgets should be maintained at the level they are doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, so the only real questions are how far to cut them and how to make those ideas palatable.

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

Think of it this way. Reform will require universal training. In Europe it takes 2-3 years to train a police officer.

It might not take so long in the US for existing officers so perhaps it could be as little as a year. But for the huge number of new recruits that’ll be needed to make the police representative of their communities we are looking at two to three years.

Before you retrain and train the officers it’ll first be necessary to train all the instructors. That will take years.

There will still need to be police forces while all those officers are being retrained, and new recruits are being trained. So the absolute numbers of police will temporarily need to increase for years so that enough officers are available to prevent and investigate crimes etc.

There’s a lot been written on the experience of police reform in Northern Ireland.

[Woodchopper]

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

Plus by sacking all the racists & replacing them with new cops, the wage costs automatically go down for a few years

Actually, replacing old cops with new recruits is expensive and will take years. If you want the new cops to be any better than the old ones you’ll need to spend years training them.

[Fishnut]

From what I understand the increase in budgets is largely because of the expansion of what police do, and a large part of the defund the police objective is to reverse that expansion. Police are doing mental health checks, dealing with homelessness, dealing with people with disabilities, and all sorts of other jobs that aren't about law enforcement. And they're responding with deadly violence. Part of that response is because of a culture that has been engendered that police are in a war and need to be constantly prepared to use deadly force but arguably a larger part is because these are jobs that really shouldn't be performed by police. It's outside their remit and outside their training and so they don't know how to respond in any other way. Defund the police, aiui, is arguing that rather than giving police all these jobs it would be better to hive off their budget for specialists in other organisations or departments to deal with these cases and leave the police to deal with crime.

[jimbob]

As you allude to, I don't think anybody thinks this problem will be solved quickly, and mainstream politics tends to follow the public discussion. The kneejerk response of why US police budgets should be maintained at the level they are doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny, so the only real questions are how far to cut them and how to make those ideas palatable.

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

To say nothing of the efficiencies of scale.

About 6,000 police forces have ten or fewer officers. Imagine the duplication of resources in that.

[dyqik]

I disagree. For at least a decade or so, US police budgets probably need to be increased.

What is needed is root and branch systemic reform of policing in the US. That has been achieved elsewhere - for example in Northern Ireland. Its hard but with enough will it is achievable. But it takes a long time, and its expensive.

In the US, the needed reform will almost certainly save money, even if they hire more people - less spending on overtime, less spending on maintaining unnecessary military hardware, less paying unnecessary SWAT teams, less paying armed cops to stand around in schools doing nothing except scaring children 40 hours a week.

To say nothing of the efficiencies of scale.

About 6,000 police forces have ten or fewer officers. Imagine the duplication of resources in that.

Hell, there's a whole bunch of towns of less than 100k people with their own SWAT teams, who don't do patrols. And which are right next door to cities and towns who also have SWAT teams.

E.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... ood-start/

[Woodchopper]

From what I understand the increase in budgets is largely because of the expansion of what police do, and a large part of the defund the police objective is to reverse that expansion. Police are doing mental health checks, dealing with homelessness, dealing with people with disabilities, and all sorts of other jobs that aren't about law enforcement. And they're responding with deadly violence. Part of that response is because of a culture that has been engendered that police are in a war and need to be constantly prepared to use deadly force but arguably a larger part is because these are jobs that really shouldn't be performed by police. It's outside their remit and outside their training and so they don't know how to respond in any other way. Defund the police, aiui, is arguing that rather than giving police all these jobs it would be better to hive off their budget for specialists in other organisations or departments to deal with these cases and leave the police to deal with crime.

Certainly, but even if it has a narrow mandate focused upon crime prevention and public safety, creating a European style police force with officers who use force as a last resort etc will require years of training for each officer. For example, here's what it takes to be a police officer in Denmark:

Basic police training starts at the Police College with a course lasting approximately nine month. This is followed by an in-service training period of approximately 18 months in one of the police districts. The police officer then takes another approximately nine-month course, which is concluded by an examination. The final part of the basic training consists of service with the Tactical Support Unit of the Copenhagen Police.

That's 36 months. Skimp on that and you get what we see in the US.

ETA and this is poetry. Currently police training in Brigham Alabama takes 36 weeks (20 weeks in the academy and a minimum of 16 weeks field training). No wonder they're no good.

[Fishnut]

This piece offers a really good overview of police budgets. It notes that the majority of it goes to salaries (US police are paid more than other countries including the UK and France), equipment (including costly body cameras that have a mysterious tendency to not be turned on when people are being injured or killed) and lawsuits and settlement fees.

Around $230 million is spent per year on NYPD misconduct lawsuits alone, while in 2018 Chicago’s police department spent $113 million on settlements and legal fees to families of those killed or harmed by police.

The piece also references Alex Vitale's book The End Of Policing (currently available for free as an ebook) which argues that police are having to 'over-police' in order to justify their budgets. This can be clearly seen in the BBC3 documentary NYPD: The Biggest Gang in New York? where in some parts of the city (oddly enough, those with majority-black residents) even letting cigarette ash fall to the ground is treated as a criminal offence.