Defund The police

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Yes, we should - by Francis Dickinson

Defund the Police doesn’t mean total defunding, it means cutting the budget. There are three basic reasons:

1. If you want to prevent crime then there are frequently a lot of better uses of money than simply spending it on more police

2. Police budgets are frequently spent on things that belong in the military not to protect and serve civilians. If the police want to waste their money on military toys clearly they have too much of it and it should be used to fund things of actual benefit to the community.

3. Some (but far from all) police departments are quite simply not fit for purpose. In these cases the best thing you can do is fire the entire department and rebuilt from scratch.

See picture posted above.

Spending money on the police is rarely the best way of lowering the crime rate. Especially if there is already police presence. There is a lot of research in what does lower the crime rate.

To pick one obvious example if you have dark areas putting in street lights can significantly lower the crime rate - and with each street light costing from memory in round terms $500 to put in and $100/year on power and maintenance you can get a lot of street lights for the cost of one single rookie cop and they will probably do a lot more to deter crime.

This means if money is a limited resource it’s frequently worth diverting money from the police budget to things that will more efficiently lower the crime rate - and if you’re looking at cuts, cutting police can frequently have a lot less of an impact on the crime rate than cuts elsewhere.

To pick one example of police defunding, Mayor Garcetti in LA has at least climbed down from his budget that would have made the LAPD cost over half the city’s general fund, actively increasing the LAPD budget while cutting everything else. The police are of course howling because they now need to do their share in cost savings rather than getting a large budget rise as everything making the city worth living in was cut.

There is literally militarized city police. Police don't need tanks, riot gear, and military vehicles.

There are plenty of things the police should not be given as toys - like an APC with a .50 calibre belt fed machine gun as in the case of Richland County South Carolina which the police department called “The Peacemaker”. That is not something that should be fired at people or outside a war zone.

There is no time the police should be using that thing - and they won’t be tempted to use it if they don’t have it, and not only can the entire thing be sold but its entire maintenance and running budget can safely be cut and it will only make the department better able to do its job. No department should have accepted it.

There’s even strong evidence that militarizing the police does nothing to reduce crime or increase safety, but makes the cops (understandably) less trusted and therefore less able to do their jobs.

This is, at least largely, the fault of the Pentagon who have given over $7 billion of military equipment to police departments this century.

Some of the odder purchases like a zamboni may be worthwhile. Fundamentally all the conservatives who claim that government waste is a problem and its budget should be cut should support defunding the police as we can see that budget to be wasteful.

Finally there are some police departments that are so not fit for purpose that the best thing you can do is fire everyone, shut the whole thing down, and start fresh.

A few rotten apples rot the barrel - and at that point the best thing may be to empty the barrel, abolish the entire police department, and start over with an entirely new one generally on a smaller budget. George Floyd was killed by one cop - but there were three others right there watching it happen and 100% of them didn’t even try to stop him.

This shows that there is something deeply wrong in the entire department. Even when we’re not talking about killing people in 2014 the value of property lost to the police via civil asset forfeiture exceeded the value of property lost to burglary and I believe it to have increased since.

Civil Asset Forfeiture does not, of course, require a conviction. Or, as some wag put it (slightly inaccurately) “Cops take more than robbers”.

If the police department is significantly funded by civil forfeiture without convictions, in other words taking property from members of the public and is more of a danger to public property than burglars are it needs major reform at the least.

So people want to cut police funding because there are more efficient ways of preventing crime, because budgets are inflated and spent on things that are either not useful or sometimes outright harmful to policing, and because some police departments are bad enough that the best thing is to start over.

Additionally, In most large cities in the US, the police are a corrupt organization.

In these place, the philosophy and “culture” of the department as a whole tends to prioritize the maintenance of control rather than the well-being of the community. Individual police often act unchecked by law or policy, and are protected from any consequences by an equally corrupt police union. They are generally put on “administrative leave”—a vacation at full pay—while “incidents” are being internally investigated. There is no effective accountability or external investigation. The DA will minimize as far as possible any situation that comes to his attention, since his position requires him to work with the police all the time. Any civil judgments against police officers are paid by the city itself, not the police, and sometimes these amounts are in the millions.

So if you were the CEO of a company that had a department that did not comply with company policy or goals, that was not accountable to anyone, whose personnel could not be fired or otherwise sanctioned, and that regularly cost you a ton on money in fines and legal fees, what would you do?

Maybe stop funding them?

In all these place, cities have been trying to control their police departments for YEARS. They have paid millions and millions in legal costs and judgments. In many places the police departments are under court orders that they have also failed to comply with for years.

We have practically exhausted all legal means. There seems to be no other recourse than to pull the plug.

Meanwhile, where the police are NOT corrupt, where no one is making tons of money off of vice or drugs or other mafia-style activities, many reforms are taking place. In those places, no one is calling to defund their police except people who wish their little town was as dramatic as the big city.

For all these places the BLM demonstrations are an enormous help in identifying, clarifying, obtaining, and securing the needed reforms.

But I fear the thugs will stop at nothing to protect their flow of profits from graft and illegal activities.

With our head of state so thug-like himself, and DHS, ICE, and Blackwater to back him, this is their year.

It’s terrifying. Every so called fiscal conservative who complains about government waste should be in favor of cutting funding for the police for these reasons.

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No, we should not - by Alex Mann

First, I guess, let’s look at the argument.

It breaks down into 2 camps.

• One camp says defund the police. This means downsizing the budget for the police and reallocating this money elsewhere.
• In addition, some cops will be replaced by mental health officers that help de-escalate certain situations and special traffic cops. This is actually used in many communities already and doesn’t require defunding.
• One camp says abolish the police and replace it with something new. This is what Minneapolis is doing.

This city councilwoman, Lisa Bender of Minneapolis has vowed to remove the police from her city. She has not explained what service will replace the police, or who people will call when they need the help of law enforcement. When asked who people will call with someone is breaking into your home Lisa Bender responded.

Yes I mean I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. I know that comes from a place of privilege because for those of us for whom this system is working I think we need to step back and live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.

She then goes on about community spending, infrastructure, etc.

Youtube video of the interview

There is no plan in place for this. She is not reforming the police, she is abolishing and replacing the police. They have not explained what this new era of law enforcement looks like, yet they proceed full steam ahead with dismantlement. I am not sure what Lisa knows that everyone else does not. She has figured out a better way to police large cities! Despite having zero experience in law enforcement she has somehow figured out how to build a better police force than the current one, built and ran by professionals.

Abolishment is a terrible idea. It is really easy to make an organization worse, it is very difficult to make an organization better.

On to defunding

Here is the thing- where is the money going to come from? Less money means

• Less equipment like - Bodycams, Guns
• Protective Equipment like kevlar vests and misc gear like tactical knives, tasers, and basic tools
• Fewer officers, Less training for those officers, and worse/less humane jails

Let’s look at where the money goes in a normal police department - SEE picture above.

Looking at this where do we take the money from?

If we lessen the budget for patrol we have fewer patrol officers which means longer response times. If we lessen the budget for the detective bureau that means more crimes go unsolved and that crimes cannot get the attention they need. If we lessen the budget for the support Bureau that means worse jails, and less officer training.

Do you see the problem? If we take money from any department we lose out on public safety.

We could take from each but that again leads to fewer officers, less training, worse jails, and a shortage of gear. Police are expensive- we need to pay the cop; he/she has a dangerous job that is not much fun. They need a salary plus retirement. In addition, we need to equip officers. Weapons, body-cams, kevlar, and special gear.

What piece of gear do we take away? No more tasers? No more kevlar? There are no good answers. Any cut to spending results in worse officers, worse response times, more dead police officers, and likely higher crime rates.

I will admit this though, we should reallocate funding from police departments in specific ways.

First, a bit of historical background.

In the U.S. after 9/11, the nation began to change radically in terms of defense. America produces weapons of war like tanks and APCs even when at peace. The skilled workers used to produce these incredibly expensive weapons of war are extremely rare and hard to come by. If they are lost the US loses its ability to produce weapons in a wartime scenario. In addition, any attempts to stop production have to be approved by the government- specifically representatives of the states that these factories are in. Therefore these representatives would be voting to lose good high paying jobs from their state- which is a bad move. For a long time, all of this equipment just sat in big warehouses and empty fields. Then 9/11 happened. Suddenly the US was concerned with combatting terrorism. Police forces were reformed slightly to deal with bigger problems. Police were trained in the use of military weaponry so that police could be deployed to combat terrorists or terrorist attacks if the need arose.

So the government allowed police agencies to purchase military hardware for extremely cheap prices, even giving it to them for free. There is an actual tank belonging to a police department in Middletown, Delaware, population 20,000. Middletown is a middle class, out of the way town with little crime. There is no world where a small-town police department needs a literal tank. If a scenario develops where such a weapon is needed- the situation already calls for more than what the police could ever do, even with a tank.

If a Sheriff ever has to ask “should I break out the tank” he really needs to be asking “where did I put the number for the national guard and why has nobody boarded up the windows”. I think logically speaking police departments have become a bit too militarized. We do not need to have military-grade hardware in the hands of law enforcement in every town across the country.

I think we could reasonably argue that funding directed to law enforcement for the purchase, maintenance, and munition for such weapons could be redirected to better sources. The police could use that money for more training or better gear- or the city could use the money elsewhere in the community.With the size and scope of the modern US military, we have more than enough physical might to combat any threat. There is no need to arm our police like an invasion is around the corner.

In Summary:

Defunding the police means the community is more at risk- there is no two ways about this. Abolishing and replacing the police means a far more ineffective, inefficient, and insufficient police force.

If we want to expand mental health services, incorporate more de-escalation training, or create a less hostile police force, this doesn’t mean we have to defund police. You can add these things and maintain the police department. If you find that mental health services have made police less necessary, then downsize. Don’t risk innocent lives in pursuit of a political agenda.

And that is what this is- this is political. It is not logical, it is not reasonable. It is 100% a political ideal put forth by people who have no idea how the system works. They want “no more cops” and think that this is ok. That a woman hiding from a rapist cannot call for help, that someone afraid for their life has to fight or do with no options- and that criminals face no justice. People are angry at police, and rightfully so- though 99% of police officers are great people who only want to help.

But there are criminals. There are violent people all around us and we need police to protect us from them. I am not willing to risk the safety of my family on some politically motivated progressive ideal with no grounding in reality. There is no proof defunding police does anything more than cause a less effective criminal justice system.

I am all for some reform, I am all for the creation of new services to perhaps lessen the necessity of police. But until we know that these new reforms work I do not want to see fewer police in my community.

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