Defund the Police

not at all! Here's what I am saying: if you truly believe that ACAB or "fuck the police" then you should walk it like you talk it. You should have no voluntary contact with the police for any reason.
Somebody stole your car? I hope your auto insurance company doesn't need a police report! If it does (and they will) you stand by your principles and tell you think ACAB and never reported your car stolen.
Are you willing to do this? If not you value property over your principles - you're a fucking sellout, a hypocrite!

You child was kidnapped? Fuck the police! You'll handle it yourself. I'm sure they have a youtube tutorial on that.

I actually agree with this. I get why people go with sensationalism to draw attention, but it's too easy for others to co-op and twist the words if we're making up new meanings.

That said, I'm down for abolishing police anyway, lol Fuck all of 'em.

see post #451! If god forbid you are sexually assaulted, your home broken into, a mob has surrounded your home and is attempting to kill you, your car is stolen etc. I hope you don't sell out your principles by calling the cops! Fuck all of em' right?

What are the police going to fucking do? Take a report, ask if you might have lead them on, and then leave you behind? Maybe arrest you if you're black?
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/31/arrests-policing-vera-institute-of-justice/

So Amaris - when are you relocating to Somalia? I mean it's pretty much in a state of anarchy & chaos - it seems to be a good fit for you! You can see first-hand the benefits of anarchy.
Tell us how it works out for you!

The first thing they'd do with brony-boi in a muslim country is hang him or stone him for being either a suspected homosexual or child molester. Take yer pick.

And you'd be in the mob cheering them on. Because, like the Fundamentalist Islamists, you can't tolerate anyone who disagrees with you.

So like George Floyd in the US then?

Why?

Because OF cannot imagine a universe in which the police aren't exactly the way they are in his hometown, much less in the rest of the U.S., much less in the rest of the world, or anywhere that isn't within his own anecdotal experience.

and you missed the point. Here is my point - I'll type slowly so I don't lose you:
regardless of where I live (or K lives or Garamet lives etc) if ANYBODY thinks ACAB or have any kind of "FUCK ALL COPS!" attitude then they shouldn't have anything to do with them on general principle.
I refer you to post #451 as examples of why any average citizen may have to involve the cops. But if you hate cops that badly then you are a hypocrite if you benefit from a cordial or non-hostile manner in your treatment of them. But hey, if that's too much to contemplate then just put words in my mouth, it won't upset me because that's all you do anyway.

That's because our words are better, and much more coherent.

Where you go wrong is in applying your local, anecdotal experience to the entire world.

I've had a bunch of jobs over the years, and had many, many people say many, many awful things to me, and I've always done my job politely and professionally. Because I'm a fucking adult.

When I worked in a government mailroom one summer years and years ago, it was drilled into us during orientation that we were trusted to serve the public, and that meant treating every single person fairly and impartially. The supervisor doing the orientation proudly told us an anecdote about the day he was assigned to respond to a written service complaint from one of the most notorious and hated criminals in Canada, and how he put his personal feelings aside to respond to that complaint just as he would if it had come from anyone else. Because that's how responsible public servants do their jobs.

But of course you'd never expect a cop to live up to the same standard as young Ray sorting mail in the summer of 2011.

That works if and only if my doing so automatically means I no longer have to finance the police, I and anyone else I care for will no longer be threatened or murdered by the police, and I don't have to worry that they'll curtail my right to free speech, or drive me from public spaces, or generally persecute me. Unless that is given, we're all stuck with the police. So we have to reform it, not leave it alone.

OF does not care because it does not effect him. If a cop treated him or his kids poorly he could speak to a manager, or even feel free to speak to the cop in a friendly respectful way. Those are simply not options given to people of different color. I know what OF can do because I have done it. My father felt entitled enough to tear the CT state police a new asshole when they arrested me for getting punched in the face by a guy who had multiple assault charges in the past. The dude claimed I gave him the finger so I was arrested on a small misdemeanor charge and holy shitr you could hear him for fifteen minutes arguing in the office with the cops.

I have never even been on my knees in front of a cop. I have never been handcuffed unless I was under arrest, and I have been under arrest without being cuffed. For all the problems I have had with cops I have never laid down on the pavement in front of them. I used to think black people who got put on the pavement had to have done something to get themselves there until I saw lots of incidents and heard lots of stories about the reality that they can expect that treatment. I have never had to spread my arms on a police car, except one when I was a teenager and I was with a black friend.

You do not see it as a white person unless you look for it. That is because if you are with a black person the cops act differently. You look at all these incidents with the cops and one thing really seems to come out. Not only is the person they are harming black, but it is often only black people or kids around. You know why the old white dude in buffalo ended up not preparing himself to be shoved? That is because he did not expect to be pushed by the police. He walked up to them like a white guy expecting not to be abused and he got caught off guard. Another type of person would not have fallen so easily because they would have been prepared to be pushed. He did not purposefully fall, he was legitimately pushed off balance because he never took a stance to be pushed. People try to say he purposefully went down fast, but that is how you go down when you are not expecting to be hit.

What OF does not get is when the police actually end up drawing a line in these protests they started attacking white people. That is why the radical rigfht stayed in during the protests. When it was just white people storming buildings in the state the police never pushed anyone. When it came down to stay in your houses because of a riot the white nationalists knew to stay out of the way of the police because they were not on their side.

umm... if the insurance company requires the report, than my contact with cops (not too mention, the compulsory insurance) would be involuntary, non?

really? "All politics is local" - Tip O'Neill While this isn't politics per se my point is everything occurs at the local level (personal level) first. Doesn't everyone on wordforge filter things through their own filters & experiences & worldview? Just sayin'

Do you not realize a black man in south Atlanta (or anywhere) has a different worldview based on his experience? Of course you do. Try walking a mile in his shoes. just sayin'

no, you can tell your insurance company that ACAB and you won't be an enabler in their corrupt racist system. If they don't pay out you have the satisfaction of knowing that you value justice over property. Or maybe ACAB except when it benefits you - not judging!

so, thinking that cops shouldn't be brutal, are over equipped and under trained, lack accountability, need to be restructured/roles redefined, etc means I must reject all law, order, and obligation?

see, when you respond to a complex issue with a focus on a single absurd take, well... you look like an idiot.

Which is exactly why you need to look outside of your own direct experience if you want any real answers about the world.

“Look like?”

No reason to be bothered by a guy walking around wearing the uniform of a known terrorist organization, sheriff says.

He knows where he comes from.

Based on the headline, did anybody else expect to see that it was the dog wearing the Klucker robe?


Just me?


Okay.

So I would be interested if people have thought through the logistics of what defunding the police might look like.

For instance, how much should they be defunded by in the short-term (say, the next year or two), middle-term (4-6 ears) or long-term?

How will the new assortment of social workers, mental health counselors, drug treatment specialists, homeless advocates and so forth handle situations that currently fall to the police (traffic violations, accidents, patrolling of neighborhoods, domestic violence/child abuse cases, physical fights, ordinance violations, shootings/stabbings/rapes, drug sales, search warrants, demonstrations, public drunkenness). or would some number of cops still be around to do those? Or would we just not do those things going forward?

I would have thought that officers would be expected to re apply for their jobs in what essentially amounts to a new, stripped down department with a heavy emphasis on looking at their disciplinary records, performance, fitness, so on and so forth.

Beyond that the question becomes whether you look long term at recruiting professionals within those fields as public servants and how that could be made feasible. Would the budget allow the department to be competitive with the private sector in terms of wages? Are there enough trained people in circulation? Would funding be made available for training new practitioners?

Having been involved in the process of setting up a new service I can honestly say the scale of this would be mind boggling and I do wonder if it might make more sense to recruit a new generation of officers alongside those carried over from the existing force into a program whereby they would then train them to function in specific roles in the social work, community, mental health disciplines. It's a model which we've seen some success with here, with dual qualified nurse/social workers and police psyche liaisons. Perhaps the way forward would be an organisation which fulfils those commitments but does so with better trained and much more specialised officers than multiple smaller bodies.

So I'd picture someone who was a police officer but operates as a child social worker, someone in house who would handle referrals from other officers regarding concerns they had raised in the course of their regular duties.

The advantages seem obvious, clear lines of communication, dedicated departments and training, a referral process which is accessible to all officers, identifiable points of liaison with other services.