Are there ever any good optics with anything involving Trump? The guy can’t even stand straight.
Problem is we’ve seen what happens when you do that around here locally and it’s a nightmare - crime spikes horrendously. It’s not like the police aren’t providing essential services when they’re not randomly murdering people.
I’m not familiar with what you’re referring to here, but the defund the police movement is a bit more thoughtful and robust than just ‘stop funding them’. A good part of it revolves around deciding what the essential services actually are. It’s more or less compatible with the idea that we reinvent what ‘policing’ is; that we start over.
Oh, sorry, wasn’t familiar with the term as a political position, just took it literally! Yes, I’d agree wholeheartedly that parsing the essential services from the problematic ones is exactly the way to go here. Was in fact just reading up on that idea here:
I think this is generally the best approach.
They need a better name for that, because “defund the police” is going to be taken as (and deliberately contorted into) don’t pay cops for essential services. Branding matters with these things.
KevinC
4055
Imagine how many problems we could address if we just decided to treat drug addiction as a health issue instead of a law enforcement issue. That’s just one change that could have a massive impact.
Yes, and take funding from law enforcement — far and away the largest budget item for any city — and spend it on health service for drug users. Or on housing for homeless people, rather than paying cops to harass them.
And get rid of guns. So the cops don’t need to be so scared they fire through the windshield of their own car as soon as they see a tool handle sticking out from someone’s back pocket.
Worked around here in Portugal.
And the defund movement, watching a John Oliver show from I think 5 years ago, just removing all the military toys would go a long way, you don’t need tanks to protect your pumpkin festival.
Beautiful.
I love that the city government is just actively trolling the president, at this point.
President Trump to announce he’s relocating the White House to Mar A Lago.
Lolmygod!
She had fucking street signs made!
CraigM
4064
Mayor Bowser is the hero we need.
Does this mean that Mario is the bad guy, defending and supporting an entrenched monarchy?
Mayor Bowser going for that Mayor4Life cheevo.
Thrag
4066
Wow. Cuomo at his press conference just now showed the video of the guy getting pushed by police and his head cracking on the pavement and criticized the police for it. Asking how did we get here and now talking about reforms.
I’ve listened to Cuomo’s pressers, I think he has been avoiding the issue (IIRC the reporter asked him the question at the very end of the presser and he walked off). It smells like he doesn’t want to antagonize the red counties. Those people are at breaking point and annoyed they have to wear masks and whatever.
This is the presser from 2 days ago. He started with short COVID numbers. Then he spent a good amount of time expressing the difference between looters + legitimate protesters. I do not recall if he spoke much, or if at all, about brutality. He castigated the NYPD for being incompetent at stopping the looting. He said something like police are there to protect community (and property?).
Then he does his political thing and claims he offered the guard, but it’s not a good idea, it’s not bad enough, and that deblasio already declined. That the huge NYPD could handle the job. That’s when he mentioned that to deploy national guard would be to “displace” the mayor in effect.
I suspect he will turn around and do something else after grampa in buffalo was hurt, cuz that will get the reds to care more about police brutality. We will see.
(One point raised by many NYT reporters who were angry about the editorial was that Cotton’s opinion hack piece cited and relied upon a number of disproven theories, non-facts, and outright lies.)
Saw this yesterday.
I think it’s because we have already accepted we can do nothing about the GOP… which is a sad realization.
