They “may” stop hiring cops with a seriously bad record, Jesus. What a mess.
To be fair, I would argue that too, but I think that proposal might not get as much traction with the general population. Given that most police are wearing or have access to stuff like helmets and bulletproof vests, it’s perfectly reasonable to say they should act in a way that preserves others’ safety at the expense of their own.
I don’t have solid numbers for this, but it seems that in many cases when police are shot, they are shot with their own sidearm, stripped out of their hands or holsters in a scuffle. In other cases, police shoot people because they see that they are trying to go for their sidearm, or believe they are trying to go for their side arm or, wink wink they were trying to go for their sidearm.
So in those cases, if fewer cops are armed with handguns in their basic kit, I can see a chance that both fewer police and fewer civilians are shot. (I should put civilians in air quotes as both police and non-police are supposed to by non-military.)
I don’t know if I believe that the police should be abolished in my city, Minneapolis. But this website has been making some persuasive points in the “defund the police” direction.
Finally, our riots have calmed down and the outside agitators/arsonists may have been arrested or got bored and drifted home. We have stopped taking precautions like bringing our trash bins inside (because they were believed to be soft targets to be set ablaze and moved against houses). Many windows on storefronts still have plywood up, but many of them have been transformed into murals. For instance, these were taken in a quasi-ritzy area that was looted on one of those first nights and then has been quiet:
I usually don’t wade in here, but there seems to be a lot of information missing here regarding specific proposals which have been made for police reform:
You guys talked about #8cantwait not including major funding changes. However, if you read the top of their site, it’s right there as what I interpret as a later goal after the initial simpler measure they urge people to tell their municipalites to adopt (the thing that can’t wait.)
The site is low on details, However, this initiative is from Campaign Zero. If you click through and read the expanded info there, they have plenty of additional goals and discussion about the topic of how to deal with militarization and funding.
All of this was provided a week ago in Obama’s foundation’s town hall discussion. They talked about a lot different approaches, and talked about these organizations since they are loosely affiliated with initiatives the Obama administration started 5 years ago, but got no traction in most local communities.
This appears to me to be the civil rights leadership people here are calling for. However, I hardly saw anything in most media or this discussion about any details of this or of the town hall discussion despite it’s high-profile members. I guess it was too calm, thoughtful, and lengthy to catch the media cycle.
I get that, but e.g. demilitarization of police is under the control of city governments right now, and they could act on it right now, and IMO it is far more urgent and concrete a move than some of the 8 that can’t wait. We are not going to solve police violence with better training or more unenforceable rules. Take away the tools of police violence and you will get less police violence.
O.O
There’s something wrong in this country with regards to guns and gun violence, surely I don’t have to make that case. Other countries with the same number of firearms don’t have even a remote fraction of the shooting deaths. Treating Americans like Icelanders of New Zealanders on this topic obviously doesn’t work.
Menzo
4583
What excuse will McConnell use to not bring this up for a vote in the Senate?
The angry loser gamer dude linked earlier in this thread has been catching heat all weekend, so he started a list of people and entities that he calls a “traitor list” and keeps it updated. It’s not going well.
magnet
4585
We have a lot of shooting deaths, but the vast majority are suicides. Our homicide rate is pretty middle-of-the-road by global standards.
Also, if you really think police need ways to deal with “people saying make me”, then there are always non-lethal options like tasers and chemical sprays. The intersection of armed criminals, people who are deterred by police open carry, people who are not deterred by police with radios, and people who are immune to tasers is probably vanishingly small.
The homicide rate in Canada is ~1/3rd that of the US, and the rest of the first world is lower than that even, often by quite a lot.
The US is an outlier.
magnet
4587
Compared to Western Europe, it is an outlier. Compared to the entire world, it is not.
It’s nice to assume that the US should only be compared to “first world” countries, but in many ways it doesn’t fit in.
And if you suspect that there may be a link between homicide and (say) inequality, education, or health care access, then the US doesn’t seem like such an outlier any more. For example, the US is right next to Argentina on global rankings of both homicide and inequality.
This, from Charles Pierce, seems to me the right take:
The real tragedy in all of this is that the whole “defund” framing is necessary because we’ve seen almost 50 years of debate about police “reform” only to see all the problems get worse.
The people at the sharp end of the stick see “reform” as a temporizing dodge to get politicians past the most recent public atrocity. That pretty much leaves you without an easy description for what you want to do to solve the genuine crisis in law enforcement.
Systemic reform—of which a serious reallocation of public resources is a necessary part—is more urgent than it’s ever been. Fighting over a verb is a horrible waste of time and energy. Worrying about powerful Republican Jedi mind-tricks is bungling a historic opportunity. Stop sucking your thumbs about “messaging” and “framing.” Do the damn job, and leave the extraneous noise outside. Be as serious about the work of reform as the protestors have been about demanding it. Reform the reform itself.
The left has good ideas, but one of their bad ideas, one they perennially have, is a tremendous fear that the right will mock their good ideas.
Heh, I was just about to post on the word “reform” but Charles Pierce beat me to it.
In theory “reform” is the perfect English word for what people want to do: re-form, start from scratch and build anew. Which is indeed what it meant when it first started being used in politics 200 years ago. In the 1820s, a “reformer” was a radical.
But the phrase has been overused over the centuries and applied so many times to cases where nothing substantial was done that the word has lost its original meaning. Indeed, it’s acquired the connotations of the opposite.
In 2020 everyone knows exactly what the phrase “police reform” means in practice: write a giant report and then then do nothing. Which is why we need a new term.
Nesrie
4591
That’s that little weirdo with a measuring stick, trying to pose in front of his collection and recite his age like it’s some sort of barometer to really tell the industry what they’re missing out on…
Yeah, but hey let’s take it on so we can have another did nothing to change anything movement.
Anyone who says whelp you didn’t cross your T, so I’m out. I don’t care about police brutality and murder anymore… wasn’t looking to join the movement or be part of change anyway. They just wanted an out to begin with.
Feel free to elaborate on that. Is the US not a first world country? Why should it not be compared to its peers?
What justifies the US being on par with Angola for homicides?
magnet
4594
Because “first world” is an artificial categorization based on GDP and industrialization, which may be irrelevant to homicide.
If we instead categorized countries according to something else, say into “Fair world” and “Unfair world” using inequality, then the US would be in the second group. So would Argentina and Angola, both of which have inequality and homicide rates that are similar to the US.
Menzo
4595
Compared to Somalia we’re awesome!
Just gotta find the right place for the goalposts.
I don’t really think the US should be let off the hook like that.
I know that’s not what you meant but the US should compared to it’s peers.
