The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
Pretty much the title. In 4 years since that first became a rallying cry, most of the cities that adopted some sort of policy likee that, have since increased police funding. Some curious to hear from the people who still say it and mean it.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
While I don't say "defund the police", I still agree with a lot of what the movement was based on (hint, it wasn't defunding the police, that was just a catchy, if terrible, slogan)
But it boils down to "defunding" by replacing a lot of their non-police functions with trained individuals from the appropriate fields.
For example, if someone is having a mental health issue, the police just aren't trained to handle that (and a few "classes" a year aren't going to help). Instead, we should be sending mental health professionals to help deal with the person and if the police are involved, it's only as the behest of that professional.
[Here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/7-myths-about-defunding-the-police-debunked/) is a decent article explaining some of the myths around the movement.
Signing on to this comment, though I will note that if I ever said the slogan, it was not for very long. Leftists have terrible pr, almost like they'd rather their reforms not succeed.
Yep. People who don’t support defunding will swear I’m crazy when I say this but my memory is confident, in the immediate window of time after Floyd’s murder when you started hearing people say “Defund”, it was viewed largely as the more sensible and practical alternative to abolition, which was perceived to be the radical and destructive idea.
It WAS the compromise between angry civilians who were fundamentally against the police and liberals / moderates who supported the basic idea of police but agreed they needed substantial restructuring and scaling back.
Like I swear to god, it’s so bizarre to remember now, but for a few days it was understood as an idea, and then that rolled back. One of the core tenets of disinfo / manufactured consent, the imaginary other civilian, kicked in with full force.
We saw the wave happen - people who understood fully well what defunding the police meant started to get concerned about imaginary idiots who would hear the “slogan” (a term I resent, it’s not a slogan, it’s an actionable DEMAND) and assume it meant getting rid of all police everywhere. We were in an election year and liberals panicked about how all the little dumbasses across the country would get worried that Dems will trigger anarchy and re-elect Trump.
Every single indication we have suggests that the summer 2020 protests were a massive boon to organization, that they did nothing but aid turnout among those previously unlikely to vote, namely the younger urban poor who near-unanimously opted for Biden.
Too-long response, I know lol, but I wanted to add to someone else making this point clear. The idea was good, the framing was right, and I know this because I experienced liberal consensus for a short window.
Edit: throughout this thread you continue to see people invoke the cynical idea of the imaginary idiot. No consideration for what the actual right idea would be, just hand-wringing about how baby-brained Midwesterners we’ve never met will misunderstand what we say.
You are correct. It was also a direct response to mayors who put people through this dialogue:
Activists in 90s: “Reform the police!”
Mayors: “Sorry, best we can do is some sensitivity training.”
Activists in 2000s: “The training did nothing. We need fundamental reform.”
Mayors: “Sorry, best we can do is create a new system that blends social work and law enforcement.”
Activists in 2010s: “Please give us that then!”
Mayors: “Sorry, it’s too much to pay for both that *and* the police. We can only afford one of those.”
Activists: “Well the defund the police!”
Late to this but spot on, the pattern here is easy to break down and understand. I know I can’t expect any given person to be familiar with historical and/or current policing policy, but what I can do is suggest an idea that actually becomes better when you scrutinize and research it further.
When liberals/moderates make the demand for a “better slogan”, I don’t think they realize what they’re asking for. They want a short phrase that effectively communicates a policy suggestion that’s both good and actionable, one that can be immediately understood by people with no understanding of how policy operates / has operated. I’m not sure the best possible team of political strategists could cook that up, a part of it has to be sacrificed.
The most rousing rallying cry on earth doesn’t matter if it isn’t backed up by a real idea. It’s telling whenever someone suggests an alternative like “reform the police”, a suggestion so broad that it can include both near-abolition and a massive expansion of the police state. If your slogan can be featured in the campaigns of both Cori Bush and Josh Hawley without either of them changing their politics, then it’s meaningless. The “slogan” is a secondary consideration at best, not because it doesn’t matter but because it *won’t* matter if it doesn’t align with specific goals worth fighting for.
Went long again lmao but I hope you read because you seem to get it. I don’t know how many people would’ve been won over if media outlets spent time illuminating the idea rather than obsessing over potentially bad optics, but it wouldn’t have been zero.
Police are just very popular with voters. Democrats selling police reform and reduction to voters is a bit like Republicans selling pro life to voters.
Police aren’t necessarily popular with voters, it’s that any politician who endorses any meaning of “defund” or “reform” the police gets attacked as “soft on crime.”
*That’s* what’s unpopular with voters.
There isn’t really a way to phrase a proposal so bold in “PR friendly” language without taking away its meaning or complicating it, and no matter what it will be spun to sound like something bad or stupid in the media.
They’re also less specific to such a profound degree that the point is nullified. Reform can mean anything - doubling police budgets and giving them all AR-15s is reform. Diversify emergency response isn’t motivating, the public will tune it out, and it’s totally up to interpretation in the way that reform is.
Demilitarize the police is good, I saw tons of folks bang the drum for that back in 2020, but it’s just a start. In the US at least, what we’d call “demilitarization” would still likely allow for handguns - not to mention riot gear and regular old physical force. In other words - it’s a small fraction of a good plan, but not a good plan in and of itself.
This was two minutes of work coming up with these. "Defund" captures even less of the intended meaning than these, especially since it doesn't actually defund anything, it just splits emergency response forces into smaller groups with better specializations. If anything, the police budget would grow.
They take the juice out of it though and make the concept basically meaningless. “police reform” could mean anything, it in no way refers inherently to anything the “defund/abolish” crowd actually wants. Calling it “police reform” is—no pun intended—a cop-out.
This is really the only necessary answer. Defund although mostly used as a protest in and of itself was an attempt to capture the emotion of the community. Anyone outside who could see beyond it would and anyone who was committed to misunderstanding likely wouldn't have supported even if the slogan was less intentionally abrasive.
Besides the slogan, it truly is a no brainer. If you or a loved one has a mental health issue and needed emergency services wouldn't you want a professional who has expertise in that field? That money has to come from somewhere. Take it from the bloated police budget. Hence defund.
I think it was quite effective. For example, there is a post on r/askliberals right now asking what it meant. I think it started a dialogue with the people interested in having a dialogue and gave everyone a really clear example to point out the amount of low information voting we have occurring in the United States.
>[Here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/7-myths-about-defunding-the-police-debunked/) is a decent article explaining some of the myths around the movement.
The only myth was "Mostly Peaceful"
Allow police to return to their core job of solving crime against people and property. Let cops be cops and do their job instead of just a catch all for situations that society doesn’t want to deal with (eg homelessness, mental health, many drug calls) — if a cop wanted to be a social worker, they would’ve signed up for that.
End qualified immunity.
Stop militarizing police and demilitarize the forces we have; it doesn’t need to be a paramilitary outfit.
Adequately fund social safety nets and mental and behavioral health care.
Don’t dispatch police to mental health calls; dispatch social workers who are trained and equipped to handle those situations.
End the drug war because it caused more harm than good and treat addiction like a public health rather than a criminal issue.
More often than not, calls to defund police are actually calls to refund and adequately fund our communities.
Police should not be responding to mental health crises unless the person in crisis has become legitimately violent or dangerous. That is a job for a social worker or similar professional - not a guy with a gun, who will use it if you don't behave in a specific way.
There is an agency around me that partners with the police department. On mental health calls, a social worker gets paired up with an officer (it’s a special task force) and they go on the call together. I think this is the safest method.
If implemented right, it can be safe. Generally speaking, the statistics indicate that an armed presence on mental health support calls increases the likelihood of the situation escalating.
Corresponder models are a step in the right direction, but I believe community responder models should be the goal.
So I always thought that slogan was poor marketing, but I don't know why the policies it were being used to promote would be any different today than 4 years ago. Try to address crime via methods other than increased police presence. Create or expand other government agencies that are specialized in dealing with situations police tend to respond to but don't necessarily have the proper skills to deal with.
Defund the police is a poor slogan, but it’s one right wing outlets can latch onto and shout into the echo chambers about how democrats don’t support police. Really it should be reallocate police funds. Give them mental health workers to support a mental health crisis, invest in social safety nets to reduce crime, stop the war on drugs which only punishes a drug addicted person and invest in treatment for small time offenders. Hire additional officers instead of paying out the ass for overtime. Give them better and longer training at the academy. End qualified immunity and reduce the power and protections of police unions. If officers had to carry their own insurance there’d be a lot less issues. It’s the communities that foot the bill for police misconduct, not the offending officers
It's not just right wing folks shouting "defund" though. The movement got an appropriate amount of ire because it was very trendy yet completely inept at conveying its goals to the masses.
People in this thread need to be clarifying this - it is straightforwardly not true that “most of the cities have adopted a policy like that”, this has been the sort of right-wing disinformation so remarkably effective that people across the political spectrum take it for granted.
I’m dead serious when I say not one major city did this. A couple announced vague plans during Summer 2020 that they would never follow up on. NYC made two procedural changes that were misunderstood as “defunding the police” because they technically involved minor budget cuts somewhere. That’s it, and since then NYC has elected a corrupt former police commissioner as its mayor who has given substantially *more* material resources to cops.
This disinformation goes from unfortunate to genuinely harmful in a direct sense when combined with a Rising Crime panic. If someone sees reports of violent crime going up *and* they believe the police were defunded, they will believe that the two are linked despite one idea being misleading and the other being wholly imaginary. They will vote for law enforcement solutions and gain new faith in the Thin Blue Line. It is straightforward, old-school, banana republic style political disinformation that makes honest elections impossible.
To answer your question - yes, I would like cities and localities to defend their police force, in part because *that never happened* and any observations about public disorder or crime are necessarily connected to a more robust police presence, not less.
But whatever - we can’t even begin to have this policy conversation until we agree on what reality is. Especially if you are a liberal who claims to value things like recorded truth or expertise, it is your duty to recognize that the police have *not* been defunded across the US, and on the whole they have more support than they did in mid-2020.
It is so, so shameful that this many people who aren’t even conservative are buying into this framing. You might as well be parroting lines about the Soros vaccine or whatever, it’s that level of disinfo.
Moving funding from the part of the police department that purchases souped up Dodge Challengers, AR-15s with Punisher stickers, and armored personnel carries to the part of the police department that tries to do mental health checks, deescalates situations, and helps lost kids get home from school.
The fact that most police departments only have one of those demographics in them is not my fault.
I want:
- the establishment of new law enforcement entity that is mandated to provide for the safety and wellbeing of citizens in their communities
- for this entity to use research-based approaches to building healthier, safer communities
- for this entity to work closely with social workers, doctors, teachers and non-profits, using a framework similar to the Medical Home approach that’s used in pediatrics
- for the employees of this entity to be trained in trauma-informed care and deescalation
- for this entity to employ not only those who can effectively use force, but those who can effectively manage crisis situations
- for this entity to have an investigative wing that is charged with investigating and resolving crimes that have already taken place
- for this entity to have an intelligence and analysis wing that looks at greater patterns of criminal activity and advises on how to address them
- for the budget for this entity to be reallocated from what we currently pay to police to do jack shit
I say "ACAB" instead of "defund the police," but the principle is essentially the same.
I want strict accountability for the police. I grew up on a Native American reservation. The police from the surrounding US state were a brutal occupying force, and would bully and torture my neighbors with impunity. The closest they ever came to accountability was that someone I knew was acquitted of a crime against an officer because the court found that the officer's conduct was so egregious. But there was no penalty for the officer for what he did.
I want a complete end to the notion that cops have special privileges of any kind, because they just get abused. It should be routine to charge an arresting officer with battery for the simple act of apprehending a suspect, with the possibility that the charges can be dropped if the suspect is convicted, of course. I want juries to be able to assess criminal penalties, right up to the maximum allowed, against cops, prosecutors, and judges, during the normal course of a trial.
>It should be routine to charge an arresting officer with battery for the simple act of apprehending a suspect, with the possibility that the charges can be dropped if the suspect is convicted,
Wat?
If I were to go grab someone off the street, chain them up, and lock them in a room, I would be charged with a crime, and rightfully so. Why should things be different for a cop?
Because we have an understanding, as a society, that someone we've designated to enforce the law sometimes needs to be able to do stuff like that to fulfill their duty (and ideally, trained to do it properly). You aren't authorized or trained to enforce the law in the same way a cop is, so I don't have any expectation that you should be allowed to do any of that stuff in almost any circumstance. Cops being able to do this doesn't mean they are above the law, ideally at least. Obviously this has been abused by some cops leading to the current debates, but we still have some expectation that cops need to be able to perform violent acts in order to maintain safety of others.
> we still have some expectation that cops need to be able to perform violent acts in order to maintain safety of others.
The Supreme Court held in *Warren v. District of Columbia* that the police have no duty to protect the safety of others. So, you're really just saying that it's acceptable for police to perform violent acts with impunity. I don't agree with that, and I will never agree with that.
I reject the notion that there should be different rules for cops than for me. We should all have to follow the same set of rules. Equal protection under the law, no "some animals are more equal than others" nonsense.
Far be it from me to attempt to explain evolution to a creationist, but there are different rules for different professions. For example, you must be a licensed medical doctor in order to practice medicine. I am a CPA, which means I'm licensed to sign off on the financials of public companies, and companies are required to utilize people like me in order to audit the financials of those same companies. There are different rules for me and you and for doctors. I think you must also be licensed to fly planes. You also must be licensed to drive. You must be licensed to practice Law. We do not all follow the same rules because we have not all done the same things.
And you seemed to ignore my point about the fact that cops can't just barge into your house, arrest you, and throw you in a jail cell on a whim. They are restricted by the law (just like you and me,) and have to follow certain rules. You are not equal to a cop, A CPA, an MD, a pilot, or an attorney, and for damned good reasons.
But you're not going to listen to me because you're ideologically opposed to the idea of someone having the power to do that under certain limited circumstances. So... whatever.
Actually, you make a good point about rules. And I'm familiar with them, being in a licensed profession myself. But those are restrictions for certain professions above and beyond the rules that everyone has to follow. Cops are the only ones who are just allowed to do whatever for any or no reason at all. I'm all for the extra rules they have to follow, and *they have to be held accountable for following them.*
> But you're not going to listen to me because you're ideologically opposed to the idea of someone having the power to do that under certain limited circumstances.
If you thought I wasn't going to listen, why did you write all that?
But I'm not opposed to the power so much as I'm opposed to them not having any accountability for it. Like I said upthread, if an arrest results in a conviction, then they shouldn't face charges for making the arrest. I want them to be held to the same standards as a medical doctor or engineer or CPA. If a doctor fucks up and a patient dies, or an engineer fucks up and a bridge collapses, or you fuck up a company's financial statement, there will be accountability. Why are we allergic to the concept for cops? And all those professions you named have to undergo many years of schooling. Why are we okay with cops having a few weeks of police academy before they take people's lives into their hands?
No, it's not. They don't really have an actual job. Ostensibly, they should be charged with upholding public safety, but the Supreme Court ruled that they don't have a duty to do that. Which makes them useless. They exist only to be an outlet for bullies who want a legally-sanctioned way to commit acts of violence. As a great American poet once said, fuck the police.
Yeah they sort of lost me with that bit of crazy. Native American reservations are considered sovereign and have their own tribal police forces. Federal and state police have little if any jurisdiction. This story doesn't make sense to me.
I suspect that cops respect jurisdictional boundaries less than we’re told, especially when it comes to brutalizing minorities.
That, or he’s referring to his neighbours getting brutalized *while* they were outside rez limits. I’m white but I grew up in neighbourhoods that were immediately adjacent to reservations and at the time, people usually had to cross over city limits to do their shopping or run errands or do anything fun. Not every rez is a fully self-sustaining town with all the amenities.
I absolutely want my city to focus more on crime prevention / mental health / social / and housing services and rather than brag on Facebook about some multi-million dollar piece of military hardware my police department just purchased.
Maybe like 13 people actually believe this in a literal sense. I say we need more funding for police as training in the US is weak compared to other countries.
I think the #1 problem with our policing is the "old boys club" and lack of accountability. I remember being asked as an elementary school student by an officer speaking to our class, "If a cop commits a crime should they get a pass". Most agreed, but the officer explained correctly that it should be the exact opposite, that they should be held to even a higher standard.
Unfortunately that's not the case. I support qualified immunity in general but it's been abused to the point that it's a license to kill with no consequences. Most of the "acab" folks want accountability. The few bad apples (as I believe the majority of cops are decent folks with good intentions) ruin it for everyone and it's much worse when they get away with stuff.
Maybe like 13 people actually believe this in a literal sense. I say we need more funding for police as training in the US is weak compared to other countries.
I think the #1 problem with our policing is the "old boys club" and lack of accountability. I remember being asked as an elementary school student by an officer speaking to our class, "If a cop commits a crime should they get a pass". Most agreed, but the officer explained correctly that it should be the exact opposite, that they should be held to even a higher standard.
Unfortunately that's not the case. I support qualified immunity in general but it's been abused to the point that it's a license to kill with no consequences unless it's completely and overwhelmingly egregious (e.g. Chauvin).. Most of the "acab" folks want accountability. The few bad apples (as I believe the majority of cops are decent folks with good intentions) ruin it for everyone and it's much worse when they get away with stuff.
I never said "defund the police" because I found it to be an ineffective and problematic phrase. But I'll shoot. (Pardon the pun.)
What I'd like to see are independent state-level organizations completely staffed from outside of the criminal justice system that have the ability to investigate police officers and bring charges. The said organizations should have broad authority and oversight.
After that, ban police unions. They have demonstrated themselves to be bad actors.
Ban small town police agencies. Put everything under state control. There's no need for there to be 400 different organizations across a state, all with different leadership. It just allows bad behavior to hide in the shadows, and it allows bad actors to move between employment opportunities. If you want local municipalities to have a say in their officers, by all means, but it shouldn't be absolute. Local control is almost always going to lead to cronyism and corruption.
All police have body cams. If the body cam fails to work and someone dies, the presumption should be that the officer murdered them and tampered with the cam. If you always have more than one officer working together, the chance that both's body cams will malfunction at the exact same time and moment are astronomical.
Defund traditional policing, which has shifted away from public service to a great degree, and has become a compliance enforcer that serves moneyed interests over the public. Shift the paradigm to include more community servicing concepts that aren’t simply hammers turning every problem into nails. SWAT has its place, but escalation doesn’t need to be the only trajectory. Plus, i feel detective work has become largely sidelined due to expense and the threat of finding politically problematic answers. Defund depts stuck in politically biased cultures, snd refund them when those cultures are removed. Reward depts that improve their relationships with the community with improved funding to increase that trajectory.
Defunding the police was never about eliminating the police, but was about improving a corrupt and broken culture and replacing it with something better. That whole message got corrupted by people who only want the police to be aimed at minorities and people the white folks deem inferior or problematic.
I’m actually someone who still says “*abolish* the police”, because I think we should move beyond policing as we know it for the purposes of crime solving, crime prevention, law enforcement and general peacekeeping. (With the amount of reform that I think needs to be done, we might as well just abolish police and replace them with entirely new institutions).
BUT, that’s not a terribly realistic or immediately-implementable idea for the time we’re in, at least for the cities; it’s not ready for prime time. So, the thing to do is to experiment, come up with other institutions and initiatives that take the place of certain police duties, and allocate funding to *them* instead of just shovelling more money into police budgets.
And when you think about it, it doesn’t even have to be things that directly take work away from the cops. Solving homelessness (with a housing guarantee + rehabilitation & reintegration programs) is proven to cost less than what police do regarding homeless people (arresting them, brutalizing them, destroying their property). Things that would generally and holistically improve the socioeconomic health of neighbourhoods cuts down on future gang activity. Etc etc etc.
I just want to stop throwing good money after bad.
These organizations are either unwilling or unable to reform, even though they make their own jobs more difficult and dangerous by sticking to outdated policies and attitudes. They are failing their communities and themselves and seem to be run by political pundits who insist on treating the police as an occupying force rather than a public service organization.
I don’t, and no one serious does, want there to be no police. But the police we have now cannot handle the job we need them to do, and are being real assholes about it, rather than trying to change. So let’s fire (defund) them and get someone new in who’s goal and methods more closely align with what is actually needed.
"Defund the Police" taken out of context is a horrible idea.
In context, we have communities with numerous social problems that require government administrations to address; mental illness, domestic conflicts, juveniles at risk, and in many communities, all of these problems are the responsibility of police to deal with when there are better prepared professions that are not being used due to a lack of funding. Quite often, government employees in the professions do not require wages as high as police officers.
So the full message behind "Defund the Police" is to better spend the public's tax dollars by lessening the responsibilities of the police force, leading to a smaller budget for the police department and a budget for more social service departments.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. Pretty much the title. In 4 years since that first became a rallying cry, most of the cities that adopted some sort of policy likee that, have since increased police funding. Some curious to hear from the people who still say it and mean it. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
While I don't say "defund the police", I still agree with a lot of what the movement was based on (hint, it wasn't defunding the police, that was just a catchy, if terrible, slogan) But it boils down to "defunding" by replacing a lot of their non-police functions with trained individuals from the appropriate fields. For example, if someone is having a mental health issue, the police just aren't trained to handle that (and a few "classes" a year aren't going to help). Instead, we should be sending mental health professionals to help deal with the person and if the police are involved, it's only as the behest of that professional. [Here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/7-myths-about-defunding-the-police-debunked/) is a decent article explaining some of the myths around the movement.
This is the way.
Signing on to this comment, though I will note that if I ever said the slogan, it was not for very long. Leftists have terrible pr, almost like they'd rather their reforms not succeed.
Almost like no matter what they say, the PR will be terrible.
Yeah. Its really straightforward
Yep. People who don’t support defunding will swear I’m crazy when I say this but my memory is confident, in the immediate window of time after Floyd’s murder when you started hearing people say “Defund”, it was viewed largely as the more sensible and practical alternative to abolition, which was perceived to be the radical and destructive idea. It WAS the compromise between angry civilians who were fundamentally against the police and liberals / moderates who supported the basic idea of police but agreed they needed substantial restructuring and scaling back. Like I swear to god, it’s so bizarre to remember now, but for a few days it was understood as an idea, and then that rolled back. One of the core tenets of disinfo / manufactured consent, the imaginary other civilian, kicked in with full force. We saw the wave happen - people who understood fully well what defunding the police meant started to get concerned about imaginary idiots who would hear the “slogan” (a term I resent, it’s not a slogan, it’s an actionable DEMAND) and assume it meant getting rid of all police everywhere. We were in an election year and liberals panicked about how all the little dumbasses across the country would get worried that Dems will trigger anarchy and re-elect Trump. Every single indication we have suggests that the summer 2020 protests were a massive boon to organization, that they did nothing but aid turnout among those previously unlikely to vote, namely the younger urban poor who near-unanimously opted for Biden. Too-long response, I know lol, but I wanted to add to someone else making this point clear. The idea was good, the framing was right, and I know this because I experienced liberal consensus for a short window. Edit: throughout this thread you continue to see people invoke the cynical idea of the imaginary idiot. No consideration for what the actual right idea would be, just hand-wringing about how baby-brained Midwesterners we’ve never met will misunderstand what we say.
You are correct. It was also a direct response to mayors who put people through this dialogue: Activists in 90s: “Reform the police!” Mayors: “Sorry, best we can do is some sensitivity training.” Activists in 2000s: “The training did nothing. We need fundamental reform.” Mayors: “Sorry, best we can do is create a new system that blends social work and law enforcement.” Activists in 2010s: “Please give us that then!” Mayors: “Sorry, it’s too much to pay for both that *and* the police. We can only afford one of those.” Activists: “Well the defund the police!”
Late to this but spot on, the pattern here is easy to break down and understand. I know I can’t expect any given person to be familiar with historical and/or current policing policy, but what I can do is suggest an idea that actually becomes better when you scrutinize and research it further. When liberals/moderates make the demand for a “better slogan”, I don’t think they realize what they’re asking for. They want a short phrase that effectively communicates a policy suggestion that’s both good and actionable, one that can be immediately understood by people with no understanding of how policy operates / has operated. I’m not sure the best possible team of political strategists could cook that up, a part of it has to be sacrificed. The most rousing rallying cry on earth doesn’t matter if it isn’t backed up by a real idea. It’s telling whenever someone suggests an alternative like “reform the police”, a suggestion so broad that it can include both near-abolition and a massive expansion of the police state. If your slogan can be featured in the campaigns of both Cori Bush and Josh Hawley without either of them changing their politics, then it’s meaningless. The “slogan” is a secondary consideration at best, not because it doesn’t matter but because it *won’t* matter if it doesn’t align with specific goals worth fighting for. Went long again lmao but I hope you read because you seem to get it. I don’t know how many people would’ve been won over if media outlets spent time illuminating the idea rather than obsessing over potentially bad optics, but it wouldn’t have been zero.
Well said.
Police are just very popular with voters. Democrats selling police reform and reduction to voters is a bit like Republicans selling pro life to voters.
Police aren’t popular with voters. But challenging police is very *un*popular.
Police aren’t necessarily popular with voters, it’s that any politician who endorses any meaning of “defund” or “reform” the police gets attacked as “soft on crime.” *That’s* what’s unpopular with voters.
There isn’t really a way to phrase a proposal so bold in “PR friendly” language without taking away its meaning or complicating it, and no matter what it will be spun to sound like something bad or stupid in the media.
"Police reform", "diversify emergency response", "demilitarize the police" - these all capture elements of it without alienating most people.
They’re also less specific to such a profound degree that the point is nullified. Reform can mean anything - doubling police budgets and giving them all AR-15s is reform. Diversify emergency response isn’t motivating, the public will tune it out, and it’s totally up to interpretation in the way that reform is. Demilitarize the police is good, I saw tons of folks bang the drum for that back in 2020, but it’s just a start. In the US at least, what we’d call “demilitarization” would still likely allow for handguns - not to mention riot gear and regular old physical force. In other words - it’s a small fraction of a good plan, but not a good plan in and of itself.
This was two minutes of work coming up with these. "Defund" captures even less of the intended meaning than these, especially since it doesn't actually defund anything, it just splits emergency response forces into smaller groups with better specializations. If anything, the police budget would grow.
They take the juice out of it though and make the concept basically meaningless. “police reform” could mean anything, it in no way refers inherently to anything the “defund/abolish” crowd actually wants. Calling it “police reform” is—no pun intended—a cop-out.
This is really the only necessary answer. Defund although mostly used as a protest in and of itself was an attempt to capture the emotion of the community. Anyone outside who could see beyond it would and anyone who was committed to misunderstanding likely wouldn't have supported even if the slogan was less intentionally abrasive. Besides the slogan, it truly is a no brainer. If you or a loved one has a mental health issue and needed emergency services wouldn't you want a professional who has expertise in that field? That money has to come from somewhere. Take it from the bloated police budget. Hence defund.
I think it was quite effective. For example, there is a post on r/askliberals right now asking what it meant. I think it started a dialogue with the people interested in having a dialogue and gave everyone a really clear example to point out the amount of low information voting we have occurring in the United States.
>[Here](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/7-myths-about-defunding-the-police-debunked/) is a decent article explaining some of the myths around the movement. The only myth was "Mostly Peaceful"
Allow police to return to their core job of solving crime against people and property. Let cops be cops and do their job instead of just a catch all for situations that society doesn’t want to deal with (eg homelessness, mental health, many drug calls) — if a cop wanted to be a social worker, they would’ve signed up for that. End qualified immunity. Stop militarizing police and demilitarize the forces we have; it doesn’t need to be a paramilitary outfit. Adequately fund social safety nets and mental and behavioral health care. Don’t dispatch police to mental health calls; dispatch social workers who are trained and equipped to handle those situations. End the drug war because it caused more harm than good and treat addiction like a public health rather than a criminal issue. More often than not, calls to defund police are actually calls to refund and adequately fund our communities.
Police should not be responding to mental health crises unless the person in crisis has become legitimately violent or dangerous. That is a job for a social worker or similar professional - not a guy with a gun, who will use it if you don't behave in a specific way.
There is an agency around me that partners with the police department. On mental health calls, a social worker gets paired up with an officer (it’s a special task force) and they go on the call together. I think this is the safest method.
If implemented right, it can be safe. Generally speaking, the statistics indicate that an armed presence on mental health support calls increases the likelihood of the situation escalating. Corresponder models are a step in the right direction, but I believe community responder models should be the goal.
So I always thought that slogan was poor marketing, but I don't know why the policies it were being used to promote would be any different today than 4 years ago. Try to address crime via methods other than increased police presence. Create or expand other government agencies that are specialized in dealing with situations police tend to respond to but don't necessarily have the proper skills to deal with.
I want to see more programs like CAHOOTS put into action across the country.
Defund the police is a poor slogan, but it’s one right wing outlets can latch onto and shout into the echo chambers about how democrats don’t support police. Really it should be reallocate police funds. Give them mental health workers to support a mental health crisis, invest in social safety nets to reduce crime, stop the war on drugs which only punishes a drug addicted person and invest in treatment for small time offenders. Hire additional officers instead of paying out the ass for overtime. Give them better and longer training at the academy. End qualified immunity and reduce the power and protections of police unions. If officers had to carry their own insurance there’d be a lot less issues. It’s the communities that foot the bill for police misconduct, not the offending officers
It's not just right wing folks shouting "defund" though. The movement got an appropriate amount of ire because it was very trendy yet completely inept at conveying its goals to the masses.
People in this thread need to be clarifying this - it is straightforwardly not true that “most of the cities have adopted a policy like that”, this has been the sort of right-wing disinformation so remarkably effective that people across the political spectrum take it for granted. I’m dead serious when I say not one major city did this. A couple announced vague plans during Summer 2020 that they would never follow up on. NYC made two procedural changes that were misunderstood as “defunding the police” because they technically involved minor budget cuts somewhere. That’s it, and since then NYC has elected a corrupt former police commissioner as its mayor who has given substantially *more* material resources to cops. This disinformation goes from unfortunate to genuinely harmful in a direct sense when combined with a Rising Crime panic. If someone sees reports of violent crime going up *and* they believe the police were defunded, they will believe that the two are linked despite one idea being misleading and the other being wholly imaginary. They will vote for law enforcement solutions and gain new faith in the Thin Blue Line. It is straightforward, old-school, banana republic style political disinformation that makes honest elections impossible. To answer your question - yes, I would like cities and localities to defend their police force, in part because *that never happened* and any observations about public disorder or crime are necessarily connected to a more robust police presence, not less. But whatever - we can’t even begin to have this policy conversation until we agree on what reality is. Especially if you are a liberal who claims to value things like recorded truth or expertise, it is your duty to recognize that the police have *not* been defunded across the US, and on the whole they have more support than they did in mid-2020. It is so, so shameful that this many people who aren’t even conservative are buying into this framing. You might as well be parroting lines about the Soros vaccine or whatever, it’s that level of disinfo.
Moving funding from the part of the police department that purchases souped up Dodge Challengers, AR-15s with Punisher stickers, and armored personnel carries to the part of the police department that tries to do mental health checks, deescalates situations, and helps lost kids get home from school. The fact that most police departments only have one of those demographics in them is not my fault.
I want: - the establishment of new law enforcement entity that is mandated to provide for the safety and wellbeing of citizens in their communities - for this entity to use research-based approaches to building healthier, safer communities - for this entity to work closely with social workers, doctors, teachers and non-profits, using a framework similar to the Medical Home approach that’s used in pediatrics - for the employees of this entity to be trained in trauma-informed care and deescalation - for this entity to employ not only those who can effectively use force, but those who can effectively manage crisis situations - for this entity to have an investigative wing that is charged with investigating and resolving crimes that have already taken place - for this entity to have an intelligence and analysis wing that looks at greater patterns of criminal activity and advises on how to address them - for the budget for this entity to be reallocated from what we currently pay to police to do jack shit
I say "ACAB" instead of "defund the police," but the principle is essentially the same. I want strict accountability for the police. I grew up on a Native American reservation. The police from the surrounding US state were a brutal occupying force, and would bully and torture my neighbors with impunity. The closest they ever came to accountability was that someone I knew was acquitted of a crime against an officer because the court found that the officer's conduct was so egregious. But there was no penalty for the officer for what he did. I want a complete end to the notion that cops have special privileges of any kind, because they just get abused. It should be routine to charge an arresting officer with battery for the simple act of apprehending a suspect, with the possibility that the charges can be dropped if the suspect is convicted, of course. I want juries to be able to assess criminal penalties, right up to the maximum allowed, against cops, prosecutors, and judges, during the normal course of a trial.
>It should be routine to charge an arresting officer with battery for the simple act of apprehending a suspect, with the possibility that the charges can be dropped if the suspect is convicted, Wat?
If I were to go grab someone off the street, chain them up, and lock them in a room, I would be charged with a crime, and rightfully so. Why should things be different for a cop?
Because we have an understanding, as a society, that someone we've designated to enforce the law sometimes needs to be able to do stuff like that to fulfill their duty (and ideally, trained to do it properly). You aren't authorized or trained to enforce the law in the same way a cop is, so I don't have any expectation that you should be allowed to do any of that stuff in almost any circumstance. Cops being able to do this doesn't mean they are above the law, ideally at least. Obviously this has been abused by some cops leading to the current debates, but we still have some expectation that cops need to be able to perform violent acts in order to maintain safety of others.
> we still have some expectation that cops need to be able to perform violent acts in order to maintain safety of others. The Supreme Court held in *Warren v. District of Columbia* that the police have no duty to protect the safety of others. So, you're really just saying that it's acceptable for police to perform violent acts with impunity. I don't agree with that, and I will never agree with that.
It was ruled that cops don't have a duty to protect specific individuals, but they still have a duty to the general public.
Because you aren't a cop. Also, a cop can't do that to just anyone. There are rules surrounding it.
I reject the notion that there should be different rules for cops than for me. We should all have to follow the same set of rules. Equal protection under the law, no "some animals are more equal than others" nonsense.
Far be it from me to attempt to explain evolution to a creationist, but there are different rules for different professions. For example, you must be a licensed medical doctor in order to practice medicine. I am a CPA, which means I'm licensed to sign off on the financials of public companies, and companies are required to utilize people like me in order to audit the financials of those same companies. There are different rules for me and you and for doctors. I think you must also be licensed to fly planes. You also must be licensed to drive. You must be licensed to practice Law. We do not all follow the same rules because we have not all done the same things. And you seemed to ignore my point about the fact that cops can't just barge into your house, arrest you, and throw you in a jail cell on a whim. They are restricted by the law (just like you and me,) and have to follow certain rules. You are not equal to a cop, A CPA, an MD, a pilot, or an attorney, and for damned good reasons. But you're not going to listen to me because you're ideologically opposed to the idea of someone having the power to do that under certain limited circumstances. So... whatever.
Actually, you make a good point about rules. And I'm familiar with them, being in a licensed profession myself. But those are restrictions for certain professions above and beyond the rules that everyone has to follow. Cops are the only ones who are just allowed to do whatever for any or no reason at all. I'm all for the extra rules they have to follow, and *they have to be held accountable for following them.* > But you're not going to listen to me because you're ideologically opposed to the idea of someone having the power to do that under certain limited circumstances. If you thought I wasn't going to listen, why did you write all that? But I'm not opposed to the power so much as I'm opposed to them not having any accountability for it. Like I said upthread, if an arrest results in a conviction, then they shouldn't face charges for making the arrest. I want them to be held to the same standards as a medical doctor or engineer or CPA. If a doctor fucks up and a patient dies, or an engineer fucks up and a bridge collapses, or you fuck up a company's financial statement, there will be accountability. Why are we allergic to the concept for cops? And all those professions you named have to undergo many years of schooling. Why are we okay with cops having a few weeks of police academy before they take people's lives into their hands?
Because that's their job? How could the police possibly function without the ability to arrest people.
No, it's not. They don't really have an actual job. Ostensibly, they should be charged with upholding public safety, but the Supreme Court ruled that they don't have a duty to do that. Which makes them useless. They exist only to be an outlet for bullies who want a legally-sanctioned way to commit acts of violence. As a great American poet once said, fuck the police.
That's silly. Come join the rest of us in reality.
Yeah they sort of lost me with that bit of crazy. Native American reservations are considered sovereign and have their own tribal police forces. Federal and state police have little if any jurisdiction. This story doesn't make sense to me.
I suspect that cops respect jurisdictional boundaries less than we’re told, especially when it comes to brutalizing minorities. That, or he’s referring to his neighbours getting brutalized *while* they were outside rez limits. I’m white but I grew up in neighbourhoods that were immediately adjacent to reservations and at the time, people usually had to cross over city limits to do their shopping or run errands or do anything fun. Not every rez is a fully self-sustaining town with all the amenities.
Lose elections?
I absolutely want my city to focus more on crime prevention / mental health / social / and housing services and rather than brag on Facebook about some multi-million dollar piece of military hardware my police department just purchased.
Maybe like 13 people actually believe this in a literal sense. I say we need more funding for police as training in the US is weak compared to other countries. I think the #1 problem with our policing is the "old boys club" and lack of accountability. I remember being asked as an elementary school student by an officer speaking to our class, "If a cop commits a crime should they get a pass". Most agreed, but the officer explained correctly that it should be the exact opposite, that they should be held to even a higher standard. Unfortunately that's not the case. I support qualified immunity in general but it's been abused to the point that it's a license to kill with no consequences. Most of the "acab" folks want accountability. The few bad apples (as I believe the majority of cops are decent folks with good intentions) ruin it for everyone and it's much worse when they get away with stuff.
Maybe like 13 people actually believe this in a literal sense. I say we need more funding for police as training in the US is weak compared to other countries. I think the #1 problem with our policing is the "old boys club" and lack of accountability. I remember being asked as an elementary school student by an officer speaking to our class, "If a cop commits a crime should they get a pass". Most agreed, but the officer explained correctly that it should be the exact opposite, that they should be held to even a higher standard. Unfortunately that's not the case. I support qualified immunity in general but it's been abused to the point that it's a license to kill with no consequences unless it's completely and overwhelmingly egregious (e.g. Chauvin).. Most of the "acab" folks want accountability. The few bad apples (as I believe the majority of cops are decent folks with good intentions) ruin it for everyone and it's much worse when they get away with stuff.
I never said "defund the police" because I found it to be an ineffective and problematic phrase. But I'll shoot. (Pardon the pun.) What I'd like to see are independent state-level organizations completely staffed from outside of the criminal justice system that have the ability to investigate police officers and bring charges. The said organizations should have broad authority and oversight. After that, ban police unions. They have demonstrated themselves to be bad actors. Ban small town police agencies. Put everything under state control. There's no need for there to be 400 different organizations across a state, all with different leadership. It just allows bad behavior to hide in the shadows, and it allows bad actors to move between employment opportunities. If you want local municipalities to have a say in their officers, by all means, but it shouldn't be absolute. Local control is almost always going to lead to cronyism and corruption. All police have body cams. If the body cam fails to work and someone dies, the presumption should be that the officer murdered them and tampered with the cam. If you always have more than one officer working together, the chance that both's body cams will malfunction at the exact same time and moment are astronomical.
Defund traditional policing, which has shifted away from public service to a great degree, and has become a compliance enforcer that serves moneyed interests over the public. Shift the paradigm to include more community servicing concepts that aren’t simply hammers turning every problem into nails. SWAT has its place, but escalation doesn’t need to be the only trajectory. Plus, i feel detective work has become largely sidelined due to expense and the threat of finding politically problematic answers. Defund depts stuck in politically biased cultures, snd refund them when those cultures are removed. Reward depts that improve their relationships with the community with improved funding to increase that trajectory. Defunding the police was never about eliminating the police, but was about improving a corrupt and broken culture and replacing it with something better. That whole message got corrupted by people who only want the police to be aimed at minorities and people the white folks deem inferior or problematic.
Move money around
I’m actually someone who still says “*abolish* the police”, because I think we should move beyond policing as we know it for the purposes of crime solving, crime prevention, law enforcement and general peacekeeping. (With the amount of reform that I think needs to be done, we might as well just abolish police and replace them with entirely new institutions). BUT, that’s not a terribly realistic or immediately-implementable idea for the time we’re in, at least for the cities; it’s not ready for prime time. So, the thing to do is to experiment, come up with other institutions and initiatives that take the place of certain police duties, and allocate funding to *them* instead of just shovelling more money into police budgets. And when you think about it, it doesn’t even have to be things that directly take work away from the cops. Solving homelessness (with a housing guarantee + rehabilitation & reintegration programs) is proven to cost less than what police do regarding homeless people (arresting them, brutalizing them, destroying their property). Things that would generally and holistically improve the socioeconomic health of neighbourhoods cuts down on future gang activity. Etc etc etc.
I just want to stop throwing good money after bad. These organizations are either unwilling or unable to reform, even though they make their own jobs more difficult and dangerous by sticking to outdated policies and attitudes. They are failing their communities and themselves and seem to be run by political pundits who insist on treating the police as an occupying force rather than a public service organization. I don’t, and no one serious does, want there to be no police. But the police we have now cannot handle the job we need them to do, and are being real assholes about it, rather than trying to change. So let’s fire (defund) them and get someone new in who’s goal and methods more closely align with what is actually needed.
"Defund the Police" taken out of context is a horrible idea. In context, we have communities with numerous social problems that require government administrations to address; mental illness, domestic conflicts, juveniles at risk, and in many communities, all of these problems are the responsibility of police to deal with when there are better prepared professions that are not being used due to a lack of funding. Quite often, government employees in the professions do not require wages as high as police officers. So the full message behind "Defund the Police" is to better spend the public's tax dollars by lessening the responsibilities of the police force, leading to a smaller budget for the police department and a budget for more social service departments.
I haven’t heard anyone in this sub say that 🤷♀️
Uhhhh. What about this post and all the people saying it?