Defund the Police

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

We used to have a DPS officer as a neighbor. He always wore the "hat." He was pretty tall, built like a DB and when they moved he was close to retirement so he and the misses were moving out to a little place in the country. Our neighborhood had a large number of law enforcement types for awhile because it was in the middle of town but as the demographics started changing, they moved one by one. Weird to think that police are afraid of people in their community. The people that bought their houses have become great neighbors and we've enjoyed getting to know all of them.

[Horn Dogg 4278]

8 hours ago, FondrenRoad said:

That was donated to the LAPD.  Donations to PDs and unions should be outlawed as well.

Does Houston still have those bullshit HPD union donation rear windshield stickers?

I’ve never understood how those donation stickers were legal since it insinuates that you will get better treatment with a sticker on your rear window.

[F250 29181]

26 minutes ago, Horn Dogg said:

I’ve never understood how those donation stickers were legal since it insinuates that you will get better treatment with a sticker on your rear window.

I had a friend with one get popped by the cops twice despite having one of those stickers. He bitched about the donation being a waste of money because everytime he pointed it out the cops DNGAF. Granted, he blew a .15 BAL one time and the speeding ticket was for him doing 90 MPH on the highway.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Maybe you need the Super Gold Super Trooper Supporter sticker for 20 above mph allowances. Radar out front should've told you.

[Hank Scorpio 17924]

 

 

[406W30th 1111]

Great vid/panel

[bad_teammate 13483]

11 hours ago, Hank Scorpio said:

 

 

The moment his primary loss seemed inevitable was the moment to basically stop paying attention to him and looking to him to be a spearhead on everything is dumb. We have much better leaders to look at on this than the 78-year-old white man from Vermont.

Time for the "Us" in "Not Me, Us".

[HenryJames 67134]

 

[bad_teammate 13483]

Commendation medals and promotions incoming!

[wildcat09 29569]

Those were the good cops. The others were busy tear gassing and beating the shit out of peaceful protesters.

[Brisketexan 106678]

From that article linked above about "I was a bastard cop," this line in bold just leaps out.  It's effectively the entire point of the "defund the police" discussion:

Quote

Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people.

During my tenure in law enforcement, I protected women from domestic abusers, arrested cold-blooded murderers and child molesters, and comforted families who lost children to car accidents and other tragedies. I helped connect struggling people in my community with local resources for food, shelter, and counseling. I deescalated situations that could have turned violent and talked a lot of people down from making the biggest mistake of their lives. I worked with plenty of officers who were individually kind, bought food for homeless residents, or otherwise showed care for their community.

The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker. My good deeds were listening to people failed by the system and trying to unite them with any crumbs of resources the structure was currently denying them.

Shit, if we end up with nothing but breaking out these other responsibilities and allocating them to persons and entities who can actually handle them, instead of the cops, we'll dial down the chances for conflict so damned much.

[bad_teammate 13483]

 

[406W30th 1111]

Definitely got my mom onboard this week and I'm about *this* close from convincing my dad (a former Scott Walker donor and son of an FBI agent) that the police need a complete overhaul from the ground up. All it took was a spreadsheet of 500+ episodes of police brutality against protestors and a few Twitter threads.

He's getting a bundle of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi books for Father's Day.

 

 

[Hank Kingsley 21616]

24 minutes ago, 406W30th said:

Definitely got my mom onboard this week and I'm about *this* close from convincing my dad (a former Scott Walker donor and son of an FBI agent) that the police need a complete overhaul from the ground up. All it took was a spreadsheet of 500+ episodes of police brutality against protestors and a few Twitter threads.

He's getting a bundle of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi books for Father's Day.

 

 

Good for you. I got my dad to vote for Bernie in 2016. He's currently being corrupted by Facebook and re-posting pro-Trump memes that show up on his feed, and I had to cut him off immediately at a family lunch on Sunday when he started defending Trump regarding BLM/protests. Fucking infuriating. 

 

 

[elfenix 34662]

pod re: what does defund the police mean

https://www.marketplace.org/shows/make-me-smart-with-kai-and-molly/defund-police-then-what/

[Grade of D as in David 13255]

4 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Good for you. I got my dad to vote for Bernie in 2016. He's currently being corrupted by Facebook and re-posting pro-Trump memes that show up on his feed, and I had to cut him off immediately at a family lunch on Sunday when he started defending Trump regarding BLM/protests. Fucking infuriating. 

 

 

Just shove him backwards and hope he doesn't fall harder than he was pushed.

[406W30th 1111]

Lots of school districts around the country – Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Oakland, Milwaukee, and probably lots more that I'm missing – are removing cops, ripping up their contract w/ the police department, or at least pushing for the removal of police from their campuses, out of safety concerns for their students. New York City has stated that they will divert funds from police resources in schools to more proactive solutions like social workers or specially-trained guidance counselors.

This is a great move and it was the first shoe to drop in Minneapolis in terms of disbanding their terrible police department. Still a long way to go, and it's taken years of work to get here, but it's nice to see a model for communities to follow in terms of divesting/investing.

NY Times – Schools Move to Eliminate Campus Police Officers

 

 

 

[4th&Five 41909]

 

[406W30th 1111]

46 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

 

It's ironic, because the suburbs have essentially the policing model that cities want. Two white kids get in a fight on a basketball court in the exurbs – do the cops book either of them for assault? Hell no. A cop (who probably lives in the suburbs) sees that happen in the inner city? You better believe those kids are gonna end up in handcuffs and likely something on their record. 

The suburbs don't spend the bulk of their budget on policing. They properly fund things like schools, parks, their libraries, etc. They bend over backwards to make sure "good kids" don't get in trouble with the law and the cops treat them like actual human beings.

That is how cities would ideally be policed. Infrequent contact with an actual cop and allocating money toward actual public health & safety measures like safe housing, addiction recovery, social services, parks, etc.

Also – this isn't a national issue at all. The suburbs have no fucking right to tell cities how they should or shouldn't keep their community safe.  

[HenryJames 67134]

 

[406W30th 1111]

Mariame Kaba was the first person I heard talk about prison abolition. This is a Times op-ed from her about literally abolishing the police; as expected, it's fantastic.

Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police

Quote

The philosophy undergirding these reforms is that more rules will mean less violence. But police officers break rules all the time. Look what has happened over the past few weeks — police officers slashing tires, shoving old men on camera, and arresting and injuring journalists and protesters. These officers are not worried about repercussions any more than Daniel Pantaleo, the former New York City police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death; he waved to a camera filming the incident. He knew that the police union would back him up and he was right. He stayed on the job for five more years.

Minneapolis had instituted many of these “best practices” but failed to remove Derek Chauvin from the force despite 17 misconduct complaints over nearly two decades, culminating in the entire world watching as he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.

Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers.

 

[elfenix 34662]

conservatives: what good are the cops when seconds count and they're minutes away

also conservatives: how can you defund police!?!!?!

[bad_teammate 13483]

This is fucking infuriating.

Why the hell is this cop crying? Take off your tactical rig and put your fucking guns away if you want to approach a kid.

And don't fucking make it about yourself and your family and your feelings.  You terrified a little girl.

Quit your job.

[bad_teammate 13483]

- Disband all police departments
- Keep existing budgets, but rehire based on a ratio of something like... 85% unarmed peacekeeping force / 15% armed special response.
- Heavy mental health and attitude checks/requirements on the ASR
- Regular education on mental health and de-escalation for the PF (money taken from weapons/arms/militarization)
- Goal of minimum 40% women on PF
- Subsidies for in-community housing for all forces
- Higher pay for PF than ASR

[Mo Horn 8933]

Today I experienced the perfect example for this thread. I work for an agency that supports persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and I am the supervisor on call this weekend. I got a call about a group of individuals who were on an outing. When it came time for them to go back home, one individual refused to get back in the van. Staff are not allowed to physically force him to get in the van so they had no choice but to call the police.  Cops came and convinced him to get in the van, but when he got back home he was still upset and said he wanted to hurt himself, so police had to be called again. They took him to the ER, probably restrained, where he was released after he calmed down and said he didn't want to hurt himself anymore.

Defund the police and use the money to hire persons with the experience to work with these folks and they're the ones who respond to this type of situation. Instead they got uniformed cops, in all their gear, and squad car that probably contributed to the individual's anxiety and stress. Plus these cops weren't available if there had been an actual situation where they were needed.  Yea, I'm one of those radical libtards that support such efforts.

[Texas Jeff 1998]

On 6/12/2020 at 8:15 AM, 406W30th said:

Lots of school districts around the country – Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Oakland, Milwaukee, and probably lots more that I'm missing – are removing cops, ripping up their contract w/ the police department, or at least pushing for the removal of police from their campuses, out of safety concerns for their students. New York City has stated that they will divert funds from police resources in schools to more proactive solutions like social workers or specially-trained guidance counselors.

This is a great move and it was the first shoe to drop in Minneapolis in terms of disbanding their terrible police department. Still a long way to go, and it's taken years of work to get here, but it's nice to see a model for communities to follow in terms of divesting/investing.

NY Times – Schools Move to Eliminate Campus Police Officers

Here's a picture from the Austin ISD police department of some of their vehicles, I always though this was a little excessive for a school police department:

 

[Guest Lobo]

to be fair to Austin ISD, a lot of large ISD's need emergency response and tactical HQ vehicles like that because this is 'Murica and school shootings are part of our brand.  

Remember that in Texas, the land of all the badass pro marksmen with CHL and large gun collections, we are only 2 for 21 in private, armed citizens stopping mass shooters.  

I don't know that a dozen armed officers per campus is the solution.  But a quick strike response team that knows each campus inside and out, that is never very far from one campus to the other, is probably just a necessity these days.  Your photo has assets that make a helluva more sense to me than the armored vehicles and JSOC-level tactical gear that APD has in abundance.  And no matter the costs of the fleets, or the weapons, or the protective gear, or the comms gear, or any of that shit...every police officer in Texas has a bodycam made by a furloughed Radio Shack associate manager with the 3.5" floppy disk software update to match dick size.  

[Skyline 325]

There was a tweet a few days ago about Los Angeles USD returning grenade launchers due to the ongoing protests. I had to read it twice because I couldn't believe a school district thought it was a good idea to keep grenade launchers around. The fuck? I imagine it was something they got for free.

[Parliament 14572]

 

This seems pretty reasonable to me.

[GRHorn 105]

Lol. Siap on this thread.  It’s a couple days old. 
 

no wonder Surly CR seems so supportive. 

[Post Oak 20551]

Heroes. 

[406W30th 1111]

Milwaukee City Council has introduced a proposal to cut the police budget by 10%, and to reallocate that money ($30M) to other public health and safety programs. The proposal has 10 co-sponsors, making it 11/15 who support it. 

 

[Celery Man 21077]

 

[tantric superman 4668]

On 6/13/2020 at 2:46 PM, bad_teammate said:

- Disband all police departments
- Keep existing budgets, but rehire based on a ratio of something like... 85% unarmed peacekeeping force / 15% armed special response.
- Heavy mental health and attitude checks/requirements on the ASR
- Regular education on mental health and de-escalation for the PF (money taken from weapons/arms/militarization)
- Goal of minimum 40% women on PF
- Subsidies for in-community housing for all forces
- Higher pay for PF than ASR

So, don't disband police departments, but make 85% unarmed and institute programs as identified?

[BradInATX 9208]

On 6/13/2020 at 2:46 PM, bad_teammate said:

- Disband all police departments
- Keep existing budgets, but rehire based on a ratio of something like... 85% unarmed peacekeeping force / 15% armed special response.
- Heavy mental health and attitude checks/requirements on the ASR
- Regular education on mental health and de-escalation for the PF (money taken from weapons/arms/militarization)
- Goal of minimum 40% women on PF
- Subsidies for in-community housing for all forces
- Higher pay for PF than ASR

WIth you on all but the last one. I get the reasoning behind it but we want to attract better talent, particularly to the group that carries guns.

I want folks that can go get $150k/year jobs in the professional sector, or the ones that could be college professors to be the cops carrying the guns. If the "with guns" group gets paid less than the "without guns" group the only people that will self-select into the guns job are the nutjob steroid abuser tapout-shirt types.

 

Edited June 15, 2020 by BradInATX

[Hank Scorpio 17924]

 

 

[Anastasis 23705]

On 6/14/2020 at 1:48 PM, Texas Jeff said:

Here's a picture from the Austin ISD police department of some of their vehicles, I always though this was a little excessive for a school police department:

 

Honestly surprise there are not MRAPs.. 

[CooterBrown 18273]

[406W30th 1111]

Decent summary, though very abbreviated, of how three different situations could be handled in a world without police as first responders:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/us-without-police-reform-defund-trnd/index.html

 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by 406W30th

[406W30th 1111]

Putting this here before @Hank Scorpio does

 

[GRHorn 105]

Cross posting from DT thread 

I’m about 30 minutes in here. I heard Jocko a few times before. He’s an intense dude. Anyway, had some great ideas for how to address police force issues. For those that don’t know, he’s a former Navy Seal Commander 
 

1- defund the police is the exact opposite of what they need. But it’s not more cops, it’s more extensive training. He suggests every fifth day being set aside for it. Basically a bunch simulations running through all the different situations they may encounter, how to handle different types of citizens. A lot of reps. Like they do in the military. Not to militarize them, but so that when they’re in the field and encounter someone combative they are able to de escalate and neutralize in a more calm fashion. If you’re training is limited and someone lays their hands on you, people usually panic and then decision making suffers.

2- “community outreach”- my air quotes, but he likens it to counterinsurgency efforts.  You can’t just roll through town in your armored car with windows up and have people in community respect you or want to work with you. There need to be greater efforts to get to know citizens and vice versa.  Humanizes people more.  People on both sides have dehumanized each other to an extent and we see the result there.

3- continuous psych assessments- like on tours of duty, people burn out at different rates as cops.  It’s a stressful occupation and if you’re more on top of their mental health many of these incidents could be avoided.

anyway, enjoy.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272?i=1000478248532

[406W30th 1111]

Add Milwaukee to the list of cities whose public schools have cancelled their contract w/ the police department.

This has been a two-and-a-half year battle by activists, predominantly youth of color. They – like much of the abolitionist movement – have been organizing and preparing, and they were absolutely ready for this moment, which they capitalized on.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

 

[Brisketexan 106678]

34 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

 

MRAPs are really necessary to insure that cops get their McDonalds food right away.

Don't question their authority, just thank them for their heroism and move along, citizen.

[Pancho 46090]

Part of the defund the police argument is that police departments in America do not need shit like this 

Hugo be me to it but MY POINT STILL STANDS!

[maninblack 7975]

2 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

MRAPs are really necessary to insure that cops get their McDonalds food right away.

Don't question their authority, just thank them for their heroism and move along, citizen.

How fucking tone deaf do you have to be to do this now? Fucking morons

[HenryJames 67134]

 

[elfenix 34662]

re: MRAP

 

[elfenix 34662]

militarization of cops gets a good chunk of this discussion.  part of the problem isn't just the marines' cast off toys, it's also the marines' cast off guys.  policing gets learned in kabul and those lessons come home with the former military who enter the police force

 

 

Edited June 19, 2020 by elfenix

[Orale 1176]

Cross posting from DT thread 
I’m about 30 minutes in here. I heard Jocko a few times before. He’s an intense dude. Anyway, had some great ideas for how to address police force issues. For those that don’t know, he’s a former Navy Seal Commander 
 
1- defund the police is the exact opposite of what they need. But it’s not more cops, it’s more extensive training. He suggests every fifth day being set aside for it. Basically a bunch simulations running through all the different situations they may encounter, how to handle different types of citizens. A lot of reps. Like they do in the military. Not to militarize them, but so that when they’re in the field and encounter someone combative they are able to de escalate and neutralize in a more calm fashion. If you’re training is limited and someone lays their hands on you, people usually panic and then decision making suffers.
2- “community outreach”- my air quotes, but he likens it to counterinsurgency efforts.  You can’t just roll through town in your armored car with windows up and have people in community respect you or want to work with you. There need to be greater efforts to get to know citizens and vice versa.  Humanizes people more.  People on both sides have dehumanized each other to an extent and we see the result there.
3- continuous psych assessments- like on tours of duty, people burn out at different rates as cops.  It’s a stressful occupation and if you’re more on top of their mental health many of these incidents could be avoided.
anyway, enjoy.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-joe-rogan-experience/id360084272?i=1000478248532

But they receive a ton of training as it is and this shit is still occuring. There is something more insidious involved than a lack of training. Police should not be armed outside of a small armed response unit. If the 911 call is for a violent situation, send the armed unit like the Brits and a lot of nations do.