Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden proposed an additional $300 million be allotted to community policing across the nation in an opinion essay that appeared in USA Today on Wednesday.
This is an attempt to thread the needle, but has already infuriated the purity ponies. And I expect the right wing to characterize it as “tax and spend”.
GOP on Monday: “Biden will defund the police!”
GOP on Tuesday: “Biden will tax and spend on the police!”
GOP on Wednesday: “Biden will defund the police!”
GOP on Thursday; “Biden will tax and spend on the police!”
(Rinse, repeat. Forever.)
Savvy Republican members of Congress have also linked the phrase [(“defund the police”)] to their Democratic counterparts…
(Gee, I guess that that makes me “savvy.”)
The presidential candidate, who is now saddled with the challenge of courting more moderate voters,
“Saddled”? Really?
“Unfunded mandates” – state and federal – are decried by local government officials who are tasked from above with costly extra work with no money provided. Joe is saying the police-reform mandates that are coming will be funded.
Biden pretty much has the moderate vote sewn up.
It’s the purity types he has to court.
Not sure who this measure is going to please except police unions. New Yorkers like me pay taxes comparable to Europe. The get healthcare for their taxes, I get a $6 billion racist police force and a massive military. Biden has to start addressing this. It’s a gigantic right wing scam.
I’m told it’s beastly difficult to saddle a unicorn.
Yeah, but as John Oliver notes in his extraordinary piece on ‘Last Week Tonight’, it actuallywas at least significantly advanced by Bill Clinton, who for eight years drumbeatted Getting funding for putting 100,000 new police officers on the streets of distressed neighborhoods.
When he got those 100,000, he asked for additional funding for 50,000 more.
Dems are at least a part of the problem on this.
Cops hate the idea of community policing. It means they have to get out of their cars and actually have contact with the people in the neighborhoods where they work. Cops might still walk a beat in NYC, but everywhere else, they just speed from one call to the next, hop out of their cars, dispense justice, then hop back in with their windows rolled up. They are like an occupying force in enemy territory.
Community policing is a proven, effective way to reduce the conflict between cops and citizens. Police unions fight it tooth and nail. If that doesn’t prove its a good idea, I don’t know what could.
I am sensing a very common theme from your posts…
Any idea that does not start with dismantling police unions that consistently protect the ‘few bad apples’ should be a non-starter.
I don’t think it will work. The problem isn’t money. The problem is how the money is deployed. We have built police forces, especially urban police forces, based on an occupying army model that would be appropriate for a country invaded by the US Army. That is how police are equipped, that is how they are trained, and we recruit heavily from former service members who occupied Iraq.
What we need is a modern governance model that focuses policing resources on serious crime while turning a whole lot of other responsibilities over to non-police agencies. I would like a peace dividend. 