City of Portland set to re-fund the police

[storyteller]

i've never seen it as a slogan, i've seen police reform as a concept...but that's neither here or there. but how has defund done anything to change the bolded? seems they had the same outcome - in fact, they have, cope been shooting black people for forever. if anything has been making a slight dent in changing things, i mean very slight, it's cell phone cameras & the ability to put footage on and organize via the internet

There's no way to draw conclusions from some slim budget cuts that happened at the same time as a pandemic and are already being reeled back. You'd need data to compare cities that reduced police budgets to cities that didn't or that increased the budgets; and you'd also need to look at where resources were spun to for any kinda actual measurable impact. Even then it'd be tough since we've had an abnormal past year and a half.

Where alternative response models have been tried on local levels, the results have been promising. But you need years to pilot, collect data, and expand these sorts of programs typically. You can't just look at one year that was chaotic in its own right and draw any real conclusions.

- CASE STUDY: CAHOOTS | Vera Institute

- Denver successfully sent mental health professionals, not police, to hundreds of calls

- Evaluation Reports Newark Community Street Team's Efforts are Effective in Crime Reduction

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

i don't know, people in here seem so passionate to defend a need for police reform - which we all agree on - that "defund" is being defended as 1) not problematic 2) doing something to elicit change, it hasn't...some cities did it, and then turned around and increased police budgets this year (Berkeley).

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

You are talking based on semantics. I am saying we have had "police reform" policies since at least Rodney King and it has led to people getting murdered by the police.

"Police reform" doesn't work. We need to reimagine law enforcement and the criminal justice system because you cannot reform what is broken.

edit: I should not have said police reform slogan, but that wasn't the point I was making. I should have been clearer. My apologies.

agreed when speaking on the entire justice system, but defund is still reform just packaged in a new slogan, it's aimed at policing.

re-making the justice system has been happening, albeit in small, and often undermined, steps, from getting rid of 3 strikes laws, to changing the scheduling and sentencing of drug offenses, to bail reforms, and voting rights for ex cons. but policing is just one part of the entire justice system, it needs reform - their tactics, training, equipment, responsibilities, screening & hiring, punishment for misconduct, etc.

 

[wire28]

i don't know, people in here seem so passionate to defend a need for police reform - which we all agree on - that "defund" is being defended as 1) not problematic 2) doing something to elicit change, it hasn't...some cities did it, and then turned around and increased police budgets this year (Berkeley).

It’s more fun to argue and belittle others on stuff we actually agree on

 

[Yehuda]

Petite-bourgeois-minded college students being unable to read the room and being out of touch with the working class as usual.

 

[mastermind]

agreed when speaking on the entire justice system, but defund is still reform just packaged in a new slogan, it's aimed at policing.

saying we need to remove police funding and give it to programs that help prevent crime and improve peoples lives isn't the same as reform in the context of how its been used in this country.

The idea has to be fewer people incarcerated, not band-aids that lead to at least similar carceral rates

re-making the justice system has been happening, albeit in small, and often undermined, steps, from getting rid of 3 strikes laws, to changing the scheduling and sentencing of drug offenses, to bail reforms, and voting rights for ex cons. but policing is just one part of the entire justice system, it needs reform - their tactics, training, equipment, responsibilities, screening & hiring, punishment for misconduct, etc.

Remember when I said we been clamoring for police reform since Rodney King. The bolded policies were inacted AFTER Rodney King's beating, only to be repealed today.

And states like California and New York have efforts to remove bail reform too.

This is reform.

Reimagining means we have to stop thinking about punishment and start doing things prevent that. I am prison and police abolitionist, but that shyt wont happen tomorrow. So its time to work towards that, instead of putting band-aids down which is what a lot of these reformists want.

 

[storyteller]

saying we need to remove police funding and give it to programs that help prevent crime and improve peoples lives isn't the same as reform in the context of how its been used in this country.

The idea has to be fewer people incarcerated, not band-aids that lead to at least similar carceral rates


Remember when I said we been clamoring for police reform since Rodney King. The bolded policies were inacted AFTER Rodney King's beating, only to be repealed today.

And states like California and New York have efforts to remove bail reform too.

This is reform.

Reimagining means we have to stop thinking about punishment and start doing things prevent that. I am prison and police abolitionist, but that shyt wont happen tomorrow. So its time to work towards that, instead of putting band-aids down which is what a lot of these reformists want.

Another big play is the key on DA races and get more progressive DA's in big roles. Larry Krasner seems like a good model.

 

[Absolut da poet ®]

Long story short

There's no hope for this country and most of the people in it have no idea just how bad it is until the situation hits their doorstep

 

[mastermind]

Petite-bourgeois-minded college students being unable to read the room and being out of touch with the working class as usual.

I actually agree with this. The only issue is the idea of police and prison abolishing has been around for a long time before college students heard of it. The Panthers, Angela Davis and many other have advocated for it.

But it needs to be reframed. We have to start talking about militarizing the police in a forceful way. We have to discuss what that means and share stories. Talk about police presence in poor communities versus affluent communities. Changing policing is how we will have a just society, but band-aids won't change it. Making the case to poor people that it is important that they are involved in the process and asking them what they need to win is important to me. Its gotta be a slow movement and broken down even more to bring more consensus, especially among poor people who are the only victims of this shyt..

 

[mastermind]

Another big play is the key on DA races and get more progressive DA's in big roles. Larry Krasner seems like a good model.

definitely a good start

 

[CrimsonTider]

saying we need to remove police funding and give it to programs that help prevent crime and improve peoples lives isn't the same as reform in the context of how its been used in this country.

The idea has to be fewer people incarcerated, not band-aids that lead to at least similar carceral rates


Remember when I said we been clamoring for police reform since Rodney King. The bolded policies were inacted AFTER Rodney King's beating, only to be repealed today.

And states like California and New York have efforts to remove bail reform too.

This is reform.

Reimagining means we have to stop thinking about punishment and start doing things prevent that. I am prison and police abolitionist, but that shyt wont happen tomorrow. So its time to work towards that, instead of putting band-aids down which is what a lot of these reformists want.

so what do you plan to do about crime?

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

It’s more fun to argue and belittle others on stuff we actually agree on

that's exactly where this convo is going...semantics circles, and goal post moving. whatever

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

Another big play is the key on DA races and get more progressive DA's in big roles. Larry Krasner seems like a good model.

did that in SF - Chesa Boudin - and citizens have rapidly turned on his "restitution justice" approach...

The truth about Chesa Boudin and San Francisco crime
San Francisco’s Top Prosecutor Will Face a Recall Election

 

[storyteller]

did that in SF - Chesa Boudin - and citizens have rapidly turned on his "restitution justice" approach...

The truth about Chesa Boudin and San Francisco crime
San Francisco’s Top Prosecutor Will Face a Recall Election

The first article seems like a fair look at the two angles on him and the complexity of the situation. I’d stress that it also points at what I mentioned to you before, the pandemic has made crime data difficult to analyze over the past year and half while also becoming a focal point of attacks on progressive justice reform (before there’s been enough time to analyze what impact lockdowns and financial burdens had on that data). I gotta get home to login so I can read the Times article on the recall effort, I’m not familiar with it but that newsome one has me generally skeptical of those sorts of things until actual changes are enforced by the ensuing vote.

did you check out any of my examples of alternative response approaches to crime? One is recent, one has years of data, and one goes back decades; they have similar but different approaches. But they all show promising results and at least the CAHOOTS example is being piloted elsewhere (it helped the Denver example).

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

There's no way to draw conclusions from some slim budget cuts that happened at the same time as a pandemic and are already being reeled back. You'd need data to compare cities that reduced police budgets to cities that didn't or that increased the budgets; and you'd also need to look at where resources were spun to for any kinda actual measurable impact. Even then it'd be tough since we've had an abnormal past year and a half.

Where alternative response models have been tried on local levels, the results have been promising. But you need years to pilot, collect data, and expand these sorts of programs typically. You can't just look at one year that was chaotic in its own right and draw any real conclusions.

- CASE STUDY: CAHOOTS | Vera Institute

- Denver successfully sent mental health professionals, not police, to hundreds of calls

- Evaluation Reports Newark Community Street Team's Efforts are Effective in Crime Reduction

read the first two...and i agree that we can't draw conclusions about the effectiveness of budget cuts that were rapidly reversed. i think programs like this can work and that we should remove social service-oriented calls from police.

that said, the uptick in property crime, robbery (and assault) and vandalism were happening in the bay pre-pandemic, so, at least for the bay area - i can't speak on all parts of the country - it's unfair to wash away the citizen desires to refund as a response to a pandemic induced crime surge. London Breed's approval ratings were under pressure prior to the pandemic. but i will say that bay has a few different issues making this all so tenuous - the homeless, rising crime, and the amount people pay to live there and their demands that that cost comes with safe, usable spaces.