News of the Day III

[RSchmitz]

"I think the problem is one of incompetence, not maliciousness"

Where we have these serious, known, instances of malfeasance, I think there's an almost equal measure of both.

For example?

[RSchmitz]

Abolish the Police is a leftist fantasy.

Demilitarize, retrain and shift police funds to hire social workers is long overdue.

If there was any evidence that shifting funds from policing to social work was effective, the nation would have done it already. It's putting the cart before the horse to think that we can reduce the police force first before reducing the need for them. FYI it took police 12 minutes to respond to the Ma'Khia Bryant 911 call, and the police chief was very blunt in saying that they just didn't have the units available to go there immediately. I was a dispatch officer in college, I can't begin to describe to you what kind of nightmare you are asking for if you start cutting resources, it's already incredibly difficult for dispatchers to accurately send the right assets based on most eye witness phone calls, patrol vehicles are relied on heavily to request for additional help.

[the_narrow_way]

Well I just asked if we are going to balance the budget, not who spends more.

Per capita spending does not directly correlate to the balancing of the budget.

[the_narrow_way]

If there was any evidence that shifting funds from policing to social work was effective, the nation would have done it already. It's putting the cart before the horse to think that we can reduce the police force first before reducing the need for them. FYI it took police 12 minutes to respond to the Ma'Khia Bryant 911 call, and the police chief was very blunt in saying that they just didn't have the units available to go there immediately. I was a dispatch officer in college, I can't begin to describe to you what kind of nightmare you are asking for if you start cutting resources, it's already incredibly difficult for dispatchers to accurately send the right assets based on most eye witness phone calls, patrol vehicles are relied on heavily to request for additional help.

How is there going to be much evidence to show that shifting funding from the police to social workers is effective when it's just now becoming a thing in a few areas? And, 'the nation would have done it already'? C'mon, I'm sure we can all come with a list of things that most people think would be great for the population but it never happens because the powers that be are too locked-in to their rich overlords and won't support the popular initiatives. As for police funding, maybe they should stop spending so much money on military vehicles and equipment as a start and on ridiculous salaries and benefits for the 'executives'. If more of that money was actually allocated to the rank-and-file and support staff things would not be so dire. There not being enough officers to respond to everyday situations is at least partially a self-inflicted problem.

[ChaseSpace]

Abolish the Police is a leftist fantasy.

Demilitarize, retrain and shift police funds to hire social workers is long overdue.

Which is the intent behind 'Defund the Police' but, like always, the left has the worst branding department in the fucking world

[Puckhead]

For example?

C'mon. Like the cop that showed his partner the video where he "popped" a 73 year olds shoulder while restraining her...or how about the look on Chauvin's face as he strangled Floyd. There's two examples for you. Fear and loathing (you can call it 'maliciousness') are a part of most every PD in this country.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/national/2021/04/26/cop-accused-of-hurting-womans-arm-ready-for-the-pop/

https://www.comicsands.com/cop-brag-hit-protesters-bodycam-2649591680.html

[RSchmitz]

C'mon. Like the cop that showed his partner the video where he "popped" a 73 year olds shoulder while restraining her...or how about the look on Chauvin's face as he strangled Floyd. There's two examples for you. Fear and loathing (you can call it 'maliciousness') are a part of most every PD in this country.

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/...y-for-the-pop/
https://www.comicsands.com/cop-brag-...649591680.html

I misread what you said as that there is an equal number or both, not that the well known cases have an equal number of both. I agree with you, there are a lot of well known cases where cops are being malicious, they are well known for a reason. The vast majority of unnecessary police violence is not due to maliciousness though

[Bolthed]

You sure about that? Consider how much police violence isn’t caught on video, how many POCs are shot in the back. The definition of necessary and unnecessary varies greatly from a cop to you and to me.

I think it’s fair to question whether they are being trained to be malicious, belligerent and overly sensitive when policing their communities.

We need to take a long, hard look at why so many cops in riot gear show up to peaceful protests and go apeshit. Some of the videos from last summer revealed cops who clearly have mental problems, like being psychotic. I can’t think of any who lost their jobs even after documented unprovoked attacks that caused injury.

BTW, I never said I’m in favor of reducing the size or resources of the force (although cops and I would disagree on how necessary armored vehicles are). But they can sell a few tanks and command vehicles to pay for a couple of social workers as a damn experiment.

[RSchmitz]

How is there going to be much evidence to show that shifting funding from the police to social workers is effective when it's just now becoming a thing in a few areas? And, 'the nation would have done it already'? C'mon, I'm sure we can all come with a list of things that most people think would be great for the population but it never happens because the powers that be are too locked-in to their rich overlords and won't support the popular initiatives.

Social work isn't anything new, it doesn't suddenly become more effective when you start taking patrol cars off of the street. Again, doing a Hail Mary and arbitrarily getting rid of police units in favor of social workers is incredibly irresponsible, it's a populist idea that has no evidence of effectiveness to support it. The potential real life application of this idea is even clumsier, the vast majority of emergency calls is extremely vague and could be dangerous. You can't send social workers into those situations on their own, I mean you can, but it would be an incredibly short experiment when the inevitable result of that is a bunch of dead/injured social workers.

As for police funding, maybe they should stop spending so much money on military vehicles and equipment as a start and on ridiculous salaries and benefits for the 'executives'. If more of that money was actually allocated to the rank-and-file and support staff things would not be so dire. There not being enough officers to respond to everyday situations is at least partially a self-inflicted problem.

Police pay nothing for that equipment, it's decommissioned extras the military doesn't need anymore.

What do you consider a ridiculous salary? Grocery store managers make more than your average Chief of Police, and even in major cities it's not like their salary approaches anything you'd see from company executives.

[RSchmitz]

You sure about that? Consider how much police violence isn’t caught on video, how many POCs are shot in the back. The definition of necessary and unnecessary varies greatly from a cop to you and to me.

I think it’s fair to question whether they are being trained to be malicious, belligerent and overly sensitive when policing their communities.

We need to take a long, hard look at why so many cops in riot gear show up to peaceful protests and go apeshit. Some of the videos from last summer revealed cops who clearly have mental problems, like being psychotic. I can’t think of any who lost their jobs even after documented unprovoked attacks that caused injury.

BTW, I never said I’m in favor of reducing the size or resources of the force (although cops and I would disagree on how necessary armored vehicles are). But they can sell a few tanks and command vehicles to pay for a couple of social workers as a damn experiment.

They need accountability, right? I'm in favor of bodycams on every officer and an independent investigator(maybe a retired police officer from an outside precinct) to review every arrest. I also think bodycam footage should be publicly made available after a short period of time, after the necessary redactions are made to protect the privacy of minors etc.

The experiment you are suggesting, what are you expecting the social workers to do?

[Donnie D]

I've already told you how social workers worked with homeless individuals to get them off the streets in Sarasota. We've placed several hundred in permanent housing under the housing first concept. Do they all work the first time? No. But they have a much better success rate than get drunk, arrest, go to jail, go to court, get released, repeat. One example "Naked Michael". As one police officer told me, he'd seen Michael drunk and naked downtown so often, it wasn't even surprising anymore. Our social workers got him an apartment and furniture. After that he came to the social workers and said that he wanted something better. So they got him into rehab and eventually got him a job. He cost our community more than $80,000 the year before on jail costs, police time and emergency room visits. (That's what each chronic homeless person costs the community. For $15,000 a year we got him off the street (dressed) and productive. Milwaukee found that they saved $50,000 a person on police, jail, court and er costs every time they placed a homeless person in housing.

Everyone thinks people are homeless because they drink. It's actually more often the other way around. They drink because they are homeless.

What do you think might have happened if a social worker, instead of a police officer, had responded to the domestic in Kenosha? Do you think it would have gone confrontational? I doubt it.

The police are backups in each of these situations, but they aren't the primary point of contact with the person. It's no longer an experiment. It works. But the police union fights the hell out of it because they see fewer cops and fewer dues paying members.

[RSchmitz]

I've already told you how social workers worked with homeless individuals to get them off the streets in Sarasota. We've placed several hundred in permanent housing under the housing first concept. Do they all work the first time? No. But they have a much better success rate than get drunk, arrest, go to jail, go to court, get released, repeat. One example "Naked Michael". As one police officer told me, he'd seen Michael drunk and naked downtown so often, it wasn't even surprising anymore. Our social workers got him an apartment and furniture. After that he came to the social workers and said that he wanted something better. So they got him into rehab and eventually got him a job. He cost our community more than $80,000 the year before on jail costs, police time and emergency room visits. (That's what each chronic homeless person costs the community. For $15,000 a year we got him off the street (dressed) and productive. Milwaukee found that they saved $50,000 a person on police, jail, court and er costs every time they placed a homeless person in housing.

What percentage of homeless people does this work with? Sounds like a good use of resources, I think it would be great if patrol officers weren't the ones having to handle the homeless and if that is what "Defund the Police" is all about I could dig it. It's not though

What do you think might have happened if a social worker, instead of a police officer, had responded to the domestic in Kenosha? Do you think it would have gone confrontational? I doubt it.

The police are backups in each of these situations, but they aren't the primary point of contact with the person. It's no longer an experiment. It works. But the police union fights the hell out of it because they see fewer cops and fewer dues paying members. The police are backups in each of these situations, but they aren't the primary point of contact with the person. It's no longer an experiment. It works. But the police union fights the hell out of it because they see fewer cops and fewer dues paying members.

You can't be fucking serious with this, this expectation for the role of social workers is the problem. The caller to 911 said someone was trying to stab her grandmother. The situation was already confrontational, 4 seconds hadn't passed after the the cop stepped out of his car before a knife was drawn, he didn't even have enough time to assess the situation. You think social workers should be sent to these calls instead of armed police and you think there would have been a happy outcome if they had been? That's......I'm trying to think of a nicer word than delusional but it fits.

[Bolthed]

1. He didn’t say “instead” of police, he said with police on the scene as backup. Please stop exaggerating what we are saying in order to make your point sound stronger. Defund the police isn’t even in the same radical ballpark as Abolish the police.

2. He said Kenosha, WI and I believe you’re talking about the Bryant girl in Columbus, OH. Maybe DD meant Columbus and wrote Kenosha by mistake? It’s hard to keep track with so many Black folk murdered by cops ...

3. Oh yeah, are any of us Black? No? Then maybe we should consider how hard it is to have this conversation, because it doesn’t impact us personally. Not saying we shouldn’t have it. We absolutely should. But our whiteness is a hinderance. We are literally not able to empathize.

[Donnie D]

What percentage of homeless people does this work with? Sounds like a good use of resources, I think it would be great if patrol officers weren't the ones having to handle the homeless and if that is what "Defund the Police" is all about I could dig it. It's not though

That's exactly what defund the police is. No one is ever saying eliminate the police, they are saying to divert a portion of the resources from law enforcement to social work. You know solving the problem without the need to arrest the person.

You can't be fucking serious with this, this expectation for the role of social workers is the problem. The caller to 911 said someone was trying to stab her grandmother. The situation was already confrontational, 4 seconds hadn't passed after the the cop stepped out of his car before a knife was drawn, he didn't even have enough time to assess the situation. You think social workers should be sent to these calls instead of armed police and you think there would have been a happy outcome if they had been? That's......I'm trying to think of a nicer word than delusional but it fits.

I think you should read what I said. I said Kenosha. That was when the father and mother were fighting. There were 3 kids in the car and the cop shot him in the back trying to enter the vehicle. There was some confusion whether there was a knife. But he never made an attempt to lunge at the officer. I'm saying that if there was someone there to deescalate the situation, Blake may not be paralyzed from a cop shooting him. Oh and 2 other people might not have been murdered by Rittenhouse.

[RSchmitz]

1. He didn’t say “instead” of police.

He did, I quoted him and put it in bold, not sure how you missed it. I assumed he was being forgetful and meant Bryant since we hadn't brought up the Blake shooting, my mistake DD if that is what you meant. I still don't see how a social worker was appropriate there either.

You're advocating for a vague idea like "Defund the Police", you don't get to say I'm exaggerating what that could mean when you don't even know what that means yourself. The overwhelming majority of it's supporters want social workers to take over many traditional law enforcement roles in some capacity, but exactly how? Some make sense, but let's not kid ourselves, this movement spawned out of a want to reduce police interactions, not to take care of the homeless. It's dangerous when we start Monday morning quarterbacking which potentially violent domestic disputes only required social workers. It's such a silly angle that it doesn't even deserve a discussion.