Elected officials in major cities are weighing cuts to their police departments’ budgets, a common demand from activists protesting the police killing of George Floyd.
Cut their budgets to buy military gear.
Oops. Beating on citizens may not be going as planned.
Well off to plan B, threaten to not do their jobs.
And they should. Turns out those big budgets just allow the cops to gang up on one black guy at a time.
I was say, good, but they need money to do a lot of retraining.
In the 2000s I learned that police took up ~75% of the City of Austin’s budget (not counting Austin Energy).
Every other city service shared the remaining 25%.
When businesses and people leave the cities,they’re gonna lose part of their tax base to fund their law enforcement agencies.
Regardless of how much is or isn’t cut from city PD budgets, the difficult task of addressing police abuse remains. Community groups and neighborhoods must lead, as their governments have repeatedly failed on this.
I’d say also tap in (heavily) to the Police Union assets.
Use it for extensive psychological review of their members.
This isn’t necessarily the right answer.
You get what you pay for. If we want better educated, more professional police, that costs money.
We got where we are in part by doing things on the cheap, thus making police work often only alluring to those high school grads who weren’t cut out for college.
My concern is that once again politicians will scapegoat minorities communities when cutting money from the police but not deliver a dime to those communities.
The problem is that after all that has happened, the cities and states will be broke.
That is after we are passed the current pandemic crisis, state and local governments are will have no choice but to slash their budgets barring a huge intervention from the federal government.
So well it is very possible we will see some big cuts to police budgets, I doubt the savings will be spent in the poorest communities let alone those of color as the money has already been spent several times over.
Rather, politicians and the media will be running stories on how cutting police budgets to help minority communities blaming those communities that in truth will not only be receiving no benefits but will actually experience greater cuts to education and other services that benefit those communities.
This is outstanding idea. Police are used for too many things, like school resource cops, opioid crisis intervention, mental illness. It would be far better to defund their budgets.
Basically Re-direct to community services to provide those needs. Unless there is violence 911 should not call police. They should use alternate emergency resources when the situation does not involve weapon/vilolence.
The warrior mentality the police have adopted is not conducive to community policing. There is no way that a traffic stop, moving violation, speeding or taillight out, should result in citizens being assaulted, dragged from their vehicles, handcuffed, body slammed, tazed nor dead.
Additionally, their threats of delayed response times should be managed by fewer needs. The Minneapolis police had audacity to walk away as security from Lynx game because they did not like black lives matter slogan. These folks believe they can intimidate the citizens by refusing to do their job based on politics! Who gets to do that on their job?
Strip their budgets develop other groups with specific skill sets to manage crisis situation at hand. They need not be armed & actually protect & serve.
Look at Camden, NJ. The city burned in 1968 and 1971. It was a hollowed out shell for decades. Besides the hospital, the only open storefronts were liquor stores and churches.
A few years ago they fired their entire police force and hired back only the good ones. They instituted strict use of force policies (and enforce them) and put the emphasis on community policing. For example, getting cops out of SUVs and onto walking beats.
So what happened this week? The cops marched with the protesters, and there was no looting or violence.
What works:
Strict use of force policies
No military equipment
Tougher union contracts
Analysis of use of force data
Alternatives to police (e.g., for mental health calls)
DOJ intervention
Source: https://twitter.com/samswey/status/1180655701271732224?s=21
It isn’t just police departments that will be cut and police unions need to buck up like all other city departments. Most cities are facing huge budget shortfalls due to Covid-19 and the economic collapse that resulted. The first place I’d start is with all the damn riot gear and armored vehicles.
LA is looking at 150 million out of a 1.86 Billion dollar budget. Could well come out of a military type equipment fund. Won’t know until the details come out. Community leaders want that to go to different ways to keep people safe in their neighborhoods.
And no, I do not know what those plans are, I haven’t lived in an inner city in 40 years, and my activism has been focused on my life’s issues, as is most of ours. To which Mr. Trump says today that we LGBT in same sex marriages should be able to be discriminated against when it comes to adoptions.
I am afraid “divide and concur” works in this fashion also.
It looks like the city council of Minneapolis has a veto proof majority that support shuttering the MPD.
The military transfer program provides that stuff free… Part of the reason it’s so popular.
This will drive the popo fucking nuts. I once handled a divorce for a sergeant in a big city. If people understood just how much these guys make soaking up insane hourly rates while doing overtime duty work like standing around for a Fenway game or construction site, they’d lose their minds. Are the rates probably justified, sure, but you know as well as I do that those multiple cops standing around while a branch overhanging a powerline gets cut down arent both necessary…maybe not necessary at all for some of it. If the budget increases, they soak it right up with that and military surplus purchases like nobodys business…SLURP. The union absolutely loves it and sucks up to law and order conservatives to get it. There is really no budget increase they cant or wont gobble up like PacMan. It’s long past time they be put on a leash.
Frankly, one might wonder whether causing riots with abuse isn’t to some extent understood as a method for justifying demands for more.
If it takes 6 of them standing around to detain one guy, they don’t stand a chance.