Defund the Police

I can buy a lot of individual cops resist de-escalation training, but I tend to doubt that many individual departments do in 2022.

Show me some.

Article is from 2017, but if you want to quibble over that, explain why there should be a logical difference. 2017 is still post-Ferguson.

https://www.apmreports.org/story/2017/05/05/police-de-escalation-training

I'm thinking in particular of an NPR story I heard a while back where one of the sources was a sheriff who insisted up and down that de-escalation training wasn't necessary because "the best training is experience."

The fact that that experience has to be gained in real life, with people's lives on the line, and that training can help compensate for the lack of experience that is inevitable because you're gonna have to hire new people sometime ... did not seem to occur to him.

I'll see if I can find the segment online.

I'm sure glad that for all the criticisms I could make, the military didn't have that kind of attitude about it's training. Especially re: the Navy and Coast Guard and onboard firefighting.

The question is whether lots of police departments are actively resisting having the training. That is what I doubt is happening. Not individual cops. Not police unions. Not whether law enforcement standards training boards are mandating de-escalation training or not.

From my read of the article, several points:
1. It asserts that there are police departments where chiefs say that such training is unnecessary but does not seem to quote a single one.
2. It does quote one chief who says that they already teach de-escalation in the standard training, so they don't need additional de-escalation training
3. It does say that a number of departments do have de-escalation training already but it's just relatively few hours compared to other training.

I don't think it's a quibble to think that people in 2022 are more mindful of problems with policing than they were in 2017, and more open to changing things post George Floyd (or at least, more under political pressure to change things).

An evergreen video:

Well, in the context of Michigan, Swahili is pretty obscure. But it shouldn't be hard to find Spanish-speaking correctional officers.

Breakdown of languages spoken in MI. If you want to pick a language more obscure than Swahili in MI, you can do it.

And if you're a native speaker of Spanish or Swahili, it can be handy to have access to things like dictionaries that tell you how to translate a word from your native language to English.

they don't want defunding... they want the funding so they can do an even less assed job than the cops already do(n't).

you likely know a lot more than me on this, but when is the last time a Public-Private Partnership ever (if?) worked out in the public's benefit?

I was pretty ticked off about this one too, but it turns out the body cam footage shows that she was indeed armed, and other evidence has come to light that says she was not pregnant.

This is why I have been trying (with mixed results) to not jump to judgment in cases like this.

Regardless, the failure to take questions at the initial press conference was fucking stupid. It breeds suspicion, and as we’ve seen with Uvalde, those suspicions can be warranted.

Where do they find these assholes?

It's probably worse than even this shows. Highly suggest clicking through to at least the QT thread.

@Chaos Descending is "happy about this.

Continues to be WBC lite, just with a veneer of respectability.

Fair enough, and that looks pretty definitive.

But the other part of it is often that when the police circle the wagons they are found out to be lying later on.

And frankly, they should be held to a higher standard. The fact that they are often the worst actors is why this is so problematic.

Cops actually defending life? Of course I am happy about it.

You pro-murder gang aren't going to be looked upon well by future generations.

Or maybe they'll just cherrypick which parts of their story are literal truth or allegory.

No one is pro murder asshole. and it's your side that will go down in history as completely in the wrong. Not surprised that a confederate sympathizer would be so wrong in their thinking.

The top 7 states with the highest murder rates are all deep red with lax gun laws.

You might be surprised at the conclusion future generations draw. Data being a thing.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality/homicide.htm

Perfect example of how anti abortion zealots stack the deck. Make the blanket statement that abortion is murder. After that, just proclaim that anyone who isn't on board with that thesis is "pro-murder." Easy peasy. By not allowing for nuance it's simple to dismiss any concerns about the social impact of forcing rape or incest victims to have children that are the result of crimes. After all murder is the ultimate crime isn't it? As for any concerns about desperate women seeking illegal and/or unsafe abortions, well they shouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place and they're just paying the price for their immoral behaviour. The same goes for concerns about helping those reluctant mothers with social safety nets, well it's not the state's place to help ease the burdens of immoral women who are too lazy and culturally handicapped women who have behaved improperly. As far as the question of why birth control and sex education aren't more available, everybody knows that just encourages immoral behaviour. It's why I don't engage with anti-abortion zealots anymore. They've given themselves (in their minds) the moral high ground and put everyone else in the position (in their mind) of defending murder.