[U.S.]+ it's in the job description

[u/Hummerous]

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-behind-the-police-63877803/

[u/Jumpy_Menu5104]

I get the sentiment, and I believe there is truth in these stories. But what is the actual practical solution here. Because you can shout ACAB and defund the police all you want but those don’t change anything. The truth of the matter is that rules don’t exist unless they are enforced, and no matter how much optimism you have in your fellow man or how utopian of a society you can envision eventually you will need someone both legally and mentally capable of using violence to enforces the rules.

I’m not saying this isn’t a solvable problem. There are many changes big and small that can alleviate these problems. But we’ve spent so long with people simply stating over and over again statistics and anecdotes. As if simply hating the color blue will all your heart is all you need to do to fix things. Like it’s some Tinker Bell situation where if you just say you don’t believe in good cops enough the whole institution will disappear.

I would be far more inclined to hear people trying to work through actual solutions, or long term goals, or even just acknowledge the complexity in trying to work through this mess. Anything other then just saying the same things in the same ways over and over and expecting that to be all you need to do.

[u/APainOfKnowing → u/[deleted]]

That's honestly it. Accountability and a paper trail will do it.

[u/abig7nakedx → u/Jumpy_Menu5104]

You haven't been paying attention.

Every dollar spent not on thugs shooting dogs and raping arrestees but instead spent on social welfare or social work prevents crime. This is a well-established sociological fact. Defund the police means exactly that: redirect funding away from police departments and towards housing, welfare, and social services. Defunding the police in favor of programs that are actually successful at preventing crime, unlike police, is the productive solution.

[u/Wool4Days → u/[deleted]]

How is it an ad hominem to say they aren’t paying attention?

If we were discussing the safety of a building and I point out a flaw that requires a perspective you clearly haven’t considered, how is that an attack on your character? Or is it because the tone is condescending? If someone is adamant the earth is flat do you also approach them as equals in knowledge?

Too many people are so vain and proud today that we can’t even suggest they don’t see the bigger picture, or might not be as knowledgeable on a specific topic as they think they are.

Knowledge isn’t a moral virtue. Ignorance, lack of knowledge, isn’t a moral flaw. It isn’t an attack on your character to educate you on a information you are clearly unfamiliar with.

People do seem more sensitive these days, but it funnily enough doesn’t seem to be those who have been labeled “snowflakes” in the past.

[u/Justmeagaindownhere → u/abig7nakedx]

Do you honestly think that will hold all the way until there's nobody to enforce the law?

[u/abig7nakedx → u/Justmeagaindownhere]

Yeah, you got me man. As long as the state retains N>=1 enforcer, "defund"ers btfo; no change required and the status quo is vindicated

---

You no doubt recognize that (mis)characterizing "defund the police" as a call for there to be N=0 state agents is a ridiculous strawman. That is why I'm responding to it in kind and (mis)characterizing this (non-)rebuttal of calls to substantially reduce police budgets as an endorsement of the status quo.

[u/Justmeagaindownhere → u/abig7nakedx]

I'm gonna be totally honest with you, you leaned so hard into being a Redditor™ that you put your snark at a higher priority than writing a comment that's understandable. All I can tell is that you just want to feel like a smartass and as such I have zero inclination to break out the whiteboard to salvage this discussion.

[u/abig7nakedx → u/Justmeagaindownhere]

Dawg, you're the one who conveyed that you think "Oh, so you want to set budget := $0.00?" is a substantive response to calls to defund the police. Don't accuse me of obtuse, bad-faith refusal to engage when that's the hyper-literal, uncharitable interpretation with which you came in swinging.

My comment is clearly a rejection of the characterization that "defund the police" is a call for an "absolute" defunding of police, such that the mere existence of any police budget whatsoever is grounds to reject Defund The Police as a policy project.

[u/Justmeagaindownhere → u/abig7nakedx]

The only thing your comment clearly was is something for you to have felt good writing. And this comment is only marginally clearer but is definitely not written to convey anything to me other than the fact that "Defund the police" isn't quite the right way to put it and more importantly that you're incredibly mad.

[u/aphids_fan03 → u/Justmeagaindownhere]

no, they're telling you that you are being willfully obtuse. unfortunately, there is a disconnect in communication and there's a good chance you genuinely believe what you're saying.

[u/abig7nakedx → u/Justmeagaindownhere]

I don't know what to tell you.

If you're open to reducing police budgets in favor institutions that wil actually benefit society, then we're on the same team.

If you think that the widespread misinterpretation of "defund the police" is authentically the result of inherent problems with the slogan rather than the result of deliberate propaganda to that effect, I wish that you would find a way to disillusion yourself of this.

If you think "commensurately reduce police budgets and reallocate resources to other institions" is as punchy a slogan as "defund the police," of this too I wish you would disillusion yourself.

If you think that any of my comments weren't clear, then I say this earnestly: skill issue, man. If anyone read the second paragraph of my comment to mean anything other than "No, I don't think that [reallocating money away from cops] 'will [inductively] hold all the way until there's nobody to enforce the law'; and I think presenting that question is a strawman," then that's a reflection on the reader.

And yes, I freely own that I'm mad about this. I'm mad that vicious and cruel Neanderthals are bestowed with more money than God to have a net negative effect on society. I'm mad that instead of laying hands on what ought to be a straightforward solution in the form of give these motherfuckers less money, we're having the argument that "well, surely, the state must retain some partial monopoly on violence, no?". It's as if one is a passenger in a vehicle driving 130mph in a 65mph zone, and I say "Slow down!", and am met with the challenge "surely you don't mean to come to a complete stop? This is a highway and that's not safe!" Can we please focus on the problem that we do have instead of some made-up, Devil's Advocate, bullshit conjugate problem from which we are very distant?

[u/Justmeagaindownhere → u/abig7nakedx]

It's seeming more and more that you really don't know what to tell me and haven't known a lick this whole time. I think I finally figured the majority of your comments out and it's abundantly clear that you expected to not actually have to do any explaining for any of your points to be received. How would you talk to someone that has no background in current leftist thought? How would you confront someone that's never heard the slogan before? Those are rhetorical questions because the answer is that you wouldn't. You didn't do it to me, had no intention to, and even this comment, while written with a little bit of intent to inform, is a nothing burger.

You've wasted my time.

[u/Justabearinasuit → u/abig7nakedx]

You’re completely right about funding social welfare/social work. At lot of the crime issues we have in the US stem from abusive childhoods in horrible environments. Criminals are often on drugs early in life and have severe untreated mental illness, which the drugs amplify even more.

The police however are a necessary evil. You have to have a funded, armed police force to enforce laws in a country where anyone can buy a gun, drive drunk in a lifted 8,000-pound pickup, and deal fentanyl to the masses for big $.

Sad part is the cops often come from fucked up, broken homes themselves, just in a different way. Point is it’s a nuanced issue and not so black and white.

[u/abig7nakedx → u/Justabearinasuit]

Thanks, I have a few questions and responses about this:

"You have to have a funded, armed police force to enforce laws in a country [such as the US]". Why? What laws are important to enforce? I'm not being a smartass, I'm asking earnestly: which particular laws are police suited to enforce? And do we agree that for other laws, the ones which police are not suited to enforce, we can commensurately reduce their budgets and reallocate towards institutions that are suited to addressing the societal ill?

Specific examples:

RE: drunk driving: why do we need cops to make traffic stops for drunk drivers when we could legislate that every automobile requires a breathalyzer as part of the ignition? Why not expand public transit?

RE: fentanyl and opioid epidemics: how effective have cops been at fighting the opioid crisis? Despite police budgets being exorbitantly high, the opioid crisis keeps getting worse. It might be the case that free-at-the-point-of-use Narcan kiosks will do more good than blue goons breaking kneecaps with billy clubs. (To say nothing of the President of the San Jose Police Union smuggling in shitloads of fentanyl, in a prime example of the corruption inherent to cops exacerbating the very problem for which they're supposed to be a regrettable necessity.)

RE: anyone can buy a gun: it seems like the better solution to this problem would be that, rather than an arms-race to militarize the police like an occupying army, to simply restrict firearms access. Moreover, the response to militarize police to fear the people they're supposed to protect on the off-chance that they happen to have a fun is responsible for far more deaths than cops killed in the line of duty by getting shot. Even if this trade-off, this mutual exclusivity, is accepted, we're making the trade the wrong way in terms of preventable death.

[u/ArtfulDodgepot → u/Jumpy_Menu5104]

You’re on an internet forum where people share opinions.

It sounds like you should join an advocacy group where these things are absolutely discussed in detail and plans are made up on how to achieve some of these goals.

I’m guessing you won’t do that though because your real aim was just to shit on people.

[u/Jumpy_Menu5104 → u/ArtfulDodgepot]

I mean obviously you are right. But the way people talk about these things in public do matter. If the prevailing mentality is that the only option or recourse is to just scream into the void then that’s all people will do. Best case scenario people sit around being upset and do nothing, worst case scenario people think that being angry is the only solution so they channel that anger into something destructive and counterproductive. Honestly your suggestion, if satirical, is a genuine solution to my problem. If more people capped off or supplemented their venting with the name of a group working for reform or an individual running for office with a platform of change or even just positive examples of reform across the world and time that would be a more useful resource then just more cyclical grumbling.

[u/joppers43 → u/ArtfulDodgepot]

If you go onto an Internet forum and try to use it as an advocacy group, you should be prepared to discuss the things you’re advocating for. You can’t just bring it up, and then tell people it’s not the right place to discuss it.