Sometimes I think Americans need to take a look outside their country on some issues. Mask wearing is definitely one of those. People didn't start wearing masks in other countries because of some political statement. And the evidence, so far, indicates their use has been helpful.
I think some American conservatives especially would do well to practice this on issues that have a scientific basis. Climate change isn't politically controversial in most other countries. Mask wearing isn't politically controversial in most other countries. The reason these became politically controversial in the US, is because of conservatives. I think it's quite accurate for a news outlet to lay the blame on leaders of that movement for stoking controversy when there isn't one.
Laying blame doesn't win votes. Sorry, I'm a poker player. Sometimes you need to use a little subterfuge to sell your ideas. Liberals suck at that.
On "defunding" I agree that the roles played by police should be stripped back a bit, so they are not acting as gatekeepers for things like mental health and housing. However, I think probably even more important is to change the culture of policing. While I'm certainly not arguing there is no racism in the police, that's not the only explanation for excessive use of force. There also seems to be a strong element of 'us against them', a glorification of military style policing and a skewed understanding of the real risks faced by the police.
This article is about the changes in Camden policing, after the abolition of the previous police force in 2012. As I understand it, a major objective of the change was to destroy the power of the police union. That wasn't done though with the objective of changing the culture, but as a way to allow the employment of cheaper police officers. Following the change, there was no immediate alteration in police tactics - so no shift to community policing and a continuation of a zero-tolerance approach. It's only since about 2015 that's changed - and it's the cultural change, not the structural one, that's resulted in huge reductions in complaints about the police (though you can certainly argue that the structural change was a necessary pre-requisite for the cultural change).
Sometimes I think Americans need to take a look outside their country on some issues. Mask wearing is definitely one of those. People didn't start wearing masks in other countries because of some political statement. And the evidence, so far, indicates their use has been helpful.
I think some American conservatives especially would do well to practice this on issues that have a scientific basis. Climate change isn't politically controversial in most other countries. Mask wearing isn't politically controversial in most other countries. The reason these became politically controversial in the US, is because of conservatives. I think it's quite accurate for a news outlet to lay the blame on leaders of that movement for stoking controversy when there isn't one.
Laying blame doesn't win votes. Sorry, I'm a poker player. Sometimes you need to use a little subterfuge to sell your ideas. Liberals suck at that.
Despite what some conservatives think, it's not CNN's job to win votes. Or to persuade people. They do run opinion pieces regularly, and perhaps you could make that argument in those cases. But this is not an opinion piece. It is their job to tell the truth. And Trump is an extreme outlier among world leaders in refusing to fully embrace mask wearing. It is perfectly acceptable, straight up journalism to report that fact.
@jjstraka34
I would feel much better about Trump not being elected again if the Dems had picked Sanders rather than Biden. Sorry, I was totally ready to vote for Bernie as the outsider on the other side of the spectrum. Maybe I just like outsiders, but I'm not the only one. I'm quite sure most, if not all, of the liberals in this forum would have voted for Bernie. A fair amount of conservatives on this forum also leaned his way. I think a historic election might have been sunk by the DNC. Just sayin'...
Again, the polling, the best available empirical evidence, indicates that this is the opposite of reality.
Sometimes I think Americans need to take a look outside their country on some issues. Mask wearing is definitely one of those. People didn't start wearing masks in other countries because of some political statement. And the evidence, so far, indicates their use has been helpful.
I think some American conservatives especially would do well to practice this on issues that have a scientific basis. Climate change isn't politically controversial in most other countries. Mask wearing isn't politically controversial in most other countries. The reason these became politically controversial in the US, is because of conservatives. I think it's quite accurate for a news outlet to lay the blame on leaders of that movement for stoking controversy when there isn't one.
Laying blame doesn't win votes. Sorry, I'm a poker player. Sometimes you need to use a little subterfuge to sell your ideas. Liberals suck at that.
Despite what some conservatives think, it's not CNN's job to win votes. Or to persuade people. They do run opinion pieces regularly, and perhaps you could make that argument in those cases. But this is not an opinion piece. It is their job to tell the truth. And Trump is an extreme outlier among world leaders in refusing to fully embrace mask wearing. It is perfectly acceptable, straight up journalism to report that fact.
No it's not their job to win votes. It's their job to influence people to do the right thing. Their influence stops when they lose their objectivity. Facts can influence people, opinions, not so much. 24 hour news has wrecked objectivity in my opinion. On both sides...
@jjstraka34
I would feel much better about Trump not being elected again if the Dems had picked Sanders rather than Biden. Sorry, I was totally ready to vote for Bernie as the outsider on the other side of the spectrum. Maybe I just like outsiders, but I'm not the only one. I'm quite sure most, if not all, of the liberals in this forum would have voted for Bernie. A fair amount of conservatives on this forum also leaned his way. I think a historic election might have been sunk by the DNC. Just sayin'...
Again, the polling, the best available empirical evidence, indicates that this is the opposite of reality.
I hope you're right. I really do. My family is full of 'facts' and 'polls' from the other side of the spectrum. Only time will tell who's side is correct...
I get what you guys are saying and I don't think we're terribly at odds. Two things need to be said though. One is that above, someone did call for abolishing the police. That needs to be pushed back on. Second, another called for removing a pretty core responsibility of the police imo (speeding violations).
No, instead of pushing back just abolish the police.
Defund them until they have no funding left.
Take their guns, badges, military gear, and jobs.
Also, we do not need police to enforce speeding violations. We do not need institutionally irresponsible, unaccountable, heavily armed, poorly trained police who wrongly believe their job is so dangerous they need to be prepared to extrajudicially execute people at the drop of a dime. We do not need state-sanctioned murderers to deal with automobile safety. They have murdered people during traffic stops. Speeding is a problem, but it's one we can find a way to handle without handing guns and badges to a glorified street gang.
Come on. You've got to be at least somewhat concerned about whether the polls are reality or not after 2016. This is going to be the real test of polling in the 21st century as far as I'm concerned.
I saw someone point out just how how out of control LA's police budget is, and compared it to how poorly supported and supplied firefighters are despite the yearly wildfires.
I get what you guys are saying and I don't think we're terribly at odds. Two things need to be said though. One is that above, someone did call for abolishing the police. That needs to be pushed back on. Second, another called for removing a pretty core responsibility of the police imo (speeding violations).
No, instead of pushing back just abolish the police.
Defund them until they have no funding left.
Take their guns, badges, military gear, and jobs.
Also, we do not need police to enforce speeding violations. We do not need institutionally irresponsible, unaccountable, heavily armed, poorly trained police who wrongly believe their job is so dangerous they need to be prepared to extrajudicially execute people at the drop of a dime. We do not need state-sanctioned murderers to deal with automobile safety. They have murdered people during traffic stops. Speeding is a problem, but it's one we can find a way to handle without handing guns and badges to a glorified street gang.
Careful, don't espouse beliefs that will get you banned. Just kidding (sort of). I actually believe that reform somewhat short of what you're championing might be necessary. However, I think if you got what you want you wouldn't like the result. Without your viewpoint, however, the middle ground would be skewed so thank you!
Hmm... I disagree that the status quo isn't working. Again, people need to check how much violent crime has declined from its highs in the 80s and 90s. The idea that our criminal justice system is a complete failure falls apart with even a cursory look at the overall crime numbers over time. That doesn't preclude reform. But it can be true that the police have been both 1. racially biased and 2. somewhat effective at reducing crime rates.
Edit to add: Also disagree that the police are purely reactionary. Again, the simple example of traffic violations. Yes the work of police enforcing traffic laws is reactionary. But their presence is unarguably preventative. A similar dynamic exists in other police work. I think some folks are sinking into a black & white thinking on this issue, which, frankly is often the province of extreme anti-government conservatives and libertarians.
I know people who have reported death threats to the police, and their response was largely "Call us when you've been murdered." The police have no obligation to protect you.
We do not need to maintain a heavily armed trained to be lethally violent police force who are told they could be violently killed at any moment to deal with these issues. It's not "the police or nothing," but the police really need to go, period.
I saw someone point out just how how out of control LA's police budget is, and compared it to how poorly supported and supplied firefighters are despite the yearly wildfires.
LA is a big city with a lot of crime problems. I'm not entirely sure wildfires are much of a problem within their city limits. How exactly is that relevant?
Come on. You've got to be at least somewhat concerned about whether the polls are reality or not after 2016. This is going to be the real test of polling in the 21st century as far as I'm concerned.
No, I really don't have to be concerned. Because I know the degree to which the polls were off in 2016 and I know the difference in polling between Biden and Clinton. This is an average of reputable polls, not just one poll, collected by a site run by political conservatives fwiw.
People also mistakenly seem to think that polling is somehow only put to the test every four years and only in the presidential contest. Dozens if not hundreds of political races are polled, from congress, to senators to governors to ballot initiatives. Hanging your hat on *one* striking error, an error that was still within the statistical margin of error, is not empirically grounded thinking.
Edit to add: Polling takes place in other democracies too! We'd know if there was some systematic problem in pollsters methodologies.
Come on. You've got to be at least somewhat concerned about whether the polls are reality or not after 2016. This is going to be the real test of polling in the 21st century as far as I'm concerned.
No, I really don't have to be concerned. Because I know the degree to which the polls were off in 2016 and I know the difference in polling between Biden and Clinton. This is an average of reputable polls, collected by a site run by political conservatives fwiw.
Again, I hope you're right. My faith in polls is more sceptical. Results will sway my opinion of them, nothing more...
Edit: Didn't see your edit until I posted so have to say, the smaller the sampled size (geographically) the more I tend to believe polls. On a smaller scale, say, my national or state representative, or a ballot initoative, the more the polls seem to be more true.
Also, we do not need police to enforce speeding violations.
40,000+ people die in automobile accidents every year.
15,000-17,000 homicides every year.
~1,000 people die in officer involved incidents every year, many of them uncontroversial btw
Frankly, I have to say this is absurd radical posturing. It does nothing to account for the magnitude of different issues in our society.
Also, we do not need police to enforce speeding violations.
40,000+ people die in automobile accidents every year.
15,000-17,000 homicides every year.
~1,000 people die in officer involved incidents every year, many of them uncontroversial btw
Frankly, I have to say this is absurd radical posturing. It does nothing to account for the magnitude of different issues in our society.
Dont try to use statistics on an emotional topic. That never works...
Come on. You've got to be at least somewhat concerned about whether the polls are reality or not after 2016. This is going to be the real test of polling in the 21st century as far as I'm concerned.
No, I really don't have to be concerned. Because I know the degree to which the polls were off in 2016 and I know the difference in polling between Biden and Clinton. This is an average of reputable polls, collected by a site run by political conservatives fwiw.
Again, I hope you're right. My faith in polls is more sceptical. Results will sway my opinion of them, nothing more...
Edit: Didn't see your edit until I posted so have to say, the smaller the sampled size (geographically) the more I tend to believe polls. On a smaller scale, say, my national or state representative, or a ballot initoative, the more the polls seem to be more true.
One of the reasons 2016 failed to predict the winner is that the Electoral College winner hinged on three very narrowly decided elections in MI, PA and WI. Especially in WI there was a lack of polling done. But national polling did accurately predict the popular vote winner, and within ~1% iirc. It's much, much harder to pull of an Electoral College / popular vote split if you're losing the national vote by Trump's current margin. In fact, it's almost impossible.
I saw someone point out just how how out of control LA's police budget is, and compared it to how poorly supported and supplied firefighters are despite the yearly wildfires.
LA is a big city with a lot of crime problems. I'm not entirely sure wildfires are much of a problem within their city limits. How exactly is that relevant?
They've literally had wildfires within the city limits, as well as wildfires in greater LA county that the LA fire department could help fight.
It's relevant as so much money is spent on the LAPD that it chokes out other priorities to a large degree. This isn't only true of LA, but it is a significant problem that limits spending on social programs that may have a greater impact that is also actually positive than simply pouring more money into police coffers.
You can't give a steak paid time off while the restaurant pretends to investigate the death and then reinstates the steak.
This is a pointless comparison at any rate. The reality is that we should prevent preventable death and every time a police officer murders someone, that is in fact preventable. Or that police officers are given unnecessary "qualified immunity" to break the law in the line of duty. Or that police brutality extends well beyond killing people. Or that police are used to enforce laws that exist solely to justify budgets and not justice. Like, say, the entire war on drugs. Or that Federal prisons are required to be kept at maximum capacity. Or that police departments fund themselves through asset forfeiture and fines.
The fact is, the military surplus from the war on terror, for-profit prisons, asset forfeiture, and a culture that goes all the way back to the slave patrols has created an alchemy that is completely toxic. I don't know how you reasonably abolish police departments, but they have to be systematically dismantled and restructured at a bare minimum. But I don't know how you do that either with the power the police unions hold. As I've mentioned before, in Minneapolis, the Mayor and Police Chief already implemented pretty substantial changes. The union basically told the rank and file to ignore the Mayor and the Chief (which would be like the US Military rank and file ignoring the President and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs). Police unions have basically circumvented civilian control of their departments. Their are autonomous forces.
This one thing, not politics but why I jumped in to begin with. I said before that the police did less than nothing, seems I should be against them then right? So why am I so adamant for them, well one... kinda have a brain here and understand what is not only possible but likely without police. Not a good picture. Two, I was very sure that I was going to die once, my whole life was just repeated explosions of pain that would not end, there was no way out. Then it stopped and the sirens were so loud and the lights so bright, and my sister-in-law was saying it was okay, I would be okay. Probably I am alive today because the useless police showed up. They were horrible in every way, rough with me, never did anything to catch the guys that did it but they showed up. For me and my life, that has made all the difference. They are a deterrent, if nothing else, they are a deterrent to abhorrent human behavior.
I have dated a cop since, had his friends make fun of him because of me( know when you know you are less than everyone else, people use you to make fun of the people you are with ), have even had two of those that made fun ask me out later. Yeah, gonna pass on that. Thank you though. Having been through a lot with the breed, good and bad, I still know we are better off with them. I get to wake up every day in a crappy COVID world because some really terrible police showed up.
I essentially view the police at this point the same way I view the Catholic Church because of the pedophilia scandal. Rather than any of those priests being held to account, they were shuffled around from parish to parish, excused, money was paid to families to be silent, for decades upon decades until the systematic covering up for the most rotten elements destroyed the whole institution, regardless of the guilt or innocence of any individual priests. Everyone KNEW there was a problem. Everyone just refused to talk about it because it was too hard to face.
I'm glad the police played an important role in your life, @_Nightfall_. God knows what my life would be like today if I hadn't had you in it.
I'm actually very dissatisfied with my last encounter with the police. I called the police to report an imminent suicide for a friend of mine (I mentioned this in the "unhappiness" thread), and even though I gave them extended details--down to the evening of a specific day, the girl's full legal name and date of birth, and even the method, her father's gun--they didn't intervene. All they did was send an officer over to a then-empty house, wait an entire day before going back to knock on the door again, and then briefly speaking with the family on the final day before immediately leaving.
I told them that there was a very high chance that she would kill herself if they visited her without actually trying to remove her access to the gun, and they did nothing, even with all the information I gave them, even when I called them back twice to check on the case and ask them to take it seriously. Unless the problem was simply sheer laziness or apathy rather than incompetence, the local police weren't trained to handle this situation (and personally my guess is that the problem was all of those things).
It wasn't the police that kept her alive. It was some jobless cripple and a few Internet friends hundreds of miles away. It's pathetic that the police did such a half-assed job when I gave them everything they needed to keep my friend safe.
At the end of the day, a police officer is just another person working a job. The amount of trust we place in the police should be the same we place in an EMT, a firefighter, a cashier, a schoolteacher, or a secretary. None of them is inherently more responsible or ethical or wiser than the others.
It's not obvious to me that our best interests come from the police force being heavily-armed and unaccountable to their communities or even the law itself. We have a situation where people are given lethal ammunition and the ability to use it however they wish, and it's simply not in human nature to use power responsibly unless you're required to.
No, we can't live in a world without law enforcement, because ordinary citizens will break the law when they know they can get away with it.
No, we can't live in a world with an unaccountable police force, because police officers will break the law when they know they can get away with it.
We've already seen this dynamic many times. Police officers are human beings and no better or worse than the average person. We have given people absolute power--you literally have power over life and death as a police officer--and they have exploited it. That won't change until their power is no longer absolute.
And for what it's worth, a cop doesn't need absolute power to do their job in the first place. Making the police accountable to the law doesn't mean weakening law enforcement; it means strengthening the rule of law.
This one thing, not politics but why I jumped in to begin with. I said before that the police did less than nothing, seems I should be against them then right? So why am I so adamant for them, well one... kinda have a brain here and understand what is not only possible but likely without police. Not a good picture. Two, I was very sure that I was going to die once, my whole life was just repeated explosions of pain that would not end, there was no way out. Then it stopped and the sirens were so loud and the lights so bright, and my sister-in-law was saying it was okay, I would be okay. Probably I am alive today because the useless police showed up. They were horrible in every way, rough with me, never did anything to catch the guys that did it but they showed up. For me and my life, that has made all the difference. They are a deterrent, if nothing else, they are a deterrent to abhorrent human behavior.
I have dated a cop since, had his friends make fun of him because of me( know when you know you are less than everyone else, people use you to make fun of the people you are with ), have even had two of those that made fun ask me out later. Yeah, gonna pass on that. Thank you though. Having been through a lot with the breed, good and bad, I still know we are better off with them. I get to wake up every day in a crappy COVID world because some really terrible police showed up.
Going to go back to not talking anymore. Laters.
Even if the police were abolished in their current form, that doesn't mean that there would be no form of emergency response in future. Whether you believe that the current system can be reformed, or that things are so far gone that a more radical alternative is needed, I think there's common ground in this discussion that there are significant problems with the existing arrangements.
Perhaps a way of proceeding from that common ground would be to consider what responsibilities and operational methods would be appropriate for the police service, before moving on to how you would best get to that situation from the current one.
Hmm... I disagree that the status quo isn't working. Again, people need to check how much violent crime has declined from its highs in the 80s and 90s. The idea that our criminal justice system is a complete failure falls apart with even a cursory look at the overall crime numbers over time. That doesn't preclude reform. But it can be true that the police have been both 1. racially biased and 2. somewhat effective at reducing crime rates.
Edit to add: Also disagree that the police are purely reactionary. Again, the simple example of traffic violations. Yes the work of police enforcing traffic laws is reactionary. But their presence is unarguably preventative. A similar dynamic exists in other police work. I think some folks are sinking into a black & white thinking on this issue, which, frankly is often the province of extreme anti-government conservatives and libertarians.
Then I am sorry to say that you are only focusing on one minor thing that helped bring violent crimes down. Science (such as forensics) have greatly improved allowing those that might have been repeat offenders be caught sooner. Social programs such as Woman’s shelters also helped with violent crime rate deteriorating as they helped move victims away from their predators. Those are two off the top of my head, but if I had time to research it properly I would probably be able to find more direct causes than just having police, because that has been a constant throughout the history of the United States.
You know what else works for traffic violations as a preventive measure? Traffic cameras, stationary radar, roundabouts, speed bumps, drive programs and public transportation are much more preventive to traffic accidents than police. Not saying police don’t have a role on the road, but those that are really don’t need to have holstered weapon for doing that particular job.
The three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided the trial judge, Sullivan, didn't have enough reason to question the DOJ's prosecution decisions in this case. They also said Sullivan having a third-party attorney weigh in on Flynn's case, the former judge John Gleeson, isn't needed anymore.
Sullivan "fails to justify the district court's unprecedented intrusions on individual liberty and the Executive's charging authority," DC appeals court Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in the majority opinion.
It is semantics at this point. "Defund the Police" really should be read as "Restructure how municipalities allocate funds directed at preventing crimes."
It is semantics at this point. "Defund the Police" really should be read as "Restructure how municipalities allocate funds directed at preventing crimes."
Yeah, because that rolls right off the tongues of the average American. Again, Liberals need to study psychology. Sorry, but it should be a prerequisite to liberal studies...
I do know that if we rebranded it from 'defund the police' to "super long complicated series of words" it would be much easier to ignore and move on from.
We'd get a "oh yeah, long thing is bad, thoughts and prayers, anyway, about school choice..."
"Defund the police" works and it keeps the topic where it can't be so easily dismissed.
The three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided the trial judge, Sullivan, didn't have enough reason to question the DOJ's prosecution decisions in this case. They also said Sullivan having a third-party attorney weigh in on Flynn's case, the former judge John Gleeson, isn't needed anymore.
Sullivan "fails to justify the district court's unprecedented intrusions on individual liberty and the Executive's charging authority," DC appeals court Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in the majority opinion.
This whole situation is corruption at its finest.
Yeah. This is corruption. Now Trump doesn't have to waste a pardon Flynn and Stone. He'll just pardon Stone if he has to. Of course he doesn't "have to" be a corrupt asshole, but he's determined to be one and Conservatives are determined to be corrupt and personally loyal to the man and not to America.
Sometimes I think Americans need to take a look outside their country on some issues. Mask wearing is definitely one of those. People didn't start wearing masks in other countries because of some political statement. And the evidence, so far, indicates their use has been helpful.
I think some American conservatives especially would do well to practice this on issues that have a scientific basis. Climate change isn't politically controversial in most other countries. Mask wearing isn't politically controversial in most other countries. The reason these became politically controversial in the US, is because of conservatives. I think it's quite accurate for a news outlet to lay the blame on leaders of that movement for stoking controversy when there isn't one.
Laying blame doesn't win votes. Sorry, I'm a poker player. Sometimes you need to use a little subterfuge to sell your ideas. Liberals suck at that.
Despite what some conservatives think, it's not CNN's job to win votes. Or to persuade people. They do run opinion pieces regularly, and perhaps you could make that argument in those cases. But this is not an opinion piece. It is their job to tell the truth. And Trump is an extreme outlier among world leaders in refusing to fully embrace mask wearing. It is perfectly acceptable, straight up journalism to report that fact.
No it's not their job to win votes. It's their job to influence people to do the right thing. Their influence stops when they lose their objectivity. Facts can influence people, opinions, not so much. 24 hour news has wrecked objectivity in my opinion. On both sides...
No, that's not their job either. As a new source, CNN's job is to report the news. Nothing more.
Also, we do not need police to enforce speeding violations.
40,000+ people die in automobile accidents every year.
15,000-17,000 homicides every year.
~1,000 people die in officer involved incidents every year, many of them uncontroversial btw
Frankly, I have to say this is absurd radical posturing. It does nothing to account for the magnitude of different issues in our society.
"many not controversial"??? How so? Have you missed all the protests in the last month specifically AGAINST all these deaths caused by the police?
Comments
Laying blame doesn't win votes. Sorry, I'm a poker player. Sometimes you need to use a little subterfuge to sell your ideas. Liberals suck at that.
This article is about the changes in Camden policing, after the abolition of the previous police force in 2012. As I understand it, a major objective of the change was to destroy the power of the police union. That wasn't done though with the objective of changing the culture, but as a way to allow the employment of cheaper police officers. Following the change, there was no immediate alteration in police tactics - so no shift to community policing and a continuation of a zero-tolerance approach. It's only since about 2015 that's changed - and it's the cultural change, not the structural one, that's resulted in huge reductions in complaints about the police (though you can certainly argue that the structural change was a necessary pre-requisite for the cultural change).
Despite what some conservatives think, it's not CNN's job to win votes. Or to persuade people. They do run opinion pieces regularly, and perhaps you could make that argument in those cases. But this is not an opinion piece. It is their job to tell the truth. And Trump is an extreme outlier among world leaders in refusing to fully embrace mask wearing. It is perfectly acceptable, straight up journalism to report that fact.
Again, the polling, the best available empirical evidence, indicates that this is the opposite of reality.
I hope you're right. I really do. My family is full of 'facts' and 'polls' from the other side of the spectrum. Only time will tell who's side is correct...
No, instead of pushing back just abolish the police.
Defund them until they have no funding left.
Take their guns, badges, military gear, and jobs.
Also, we do not need police to enforce speeding violations. We do not need institutionally irresponsible, unaccountable, heavily armed, poorly trained police who wrongly believe their job is so dangerous they need to be prepared to extrajudicially execute people at the drop of a dime. We do not need state-sanctioned murderers to deal with automobile safety. They have murdered people during traffic stops. Speeding is a problem, but it's one we can find a way to handle without handing guns and badges to a glorified street gang.
And also, abolish the police. And the prisons.
Yes we literally mean abolish the police. Reform is worthless, and defunding will never be enough.
Oh, yeah: Put a stop to Dave Grossman's antics.
Come on. You've got to be at least somewhat concerned about whether the polls are reality or not after 2016. This is going to be the real test of polling in the 21st century as far as I'm concerned.
Careful, don't espouse beliefs that will get you banned. Just kidding (sort of). I actually believe that reform somewhat short of what you're championing might be necessary. However, I think if you got what you want you wouldn't like the result. Without your viewpoint, however, the middle ground would be skewed so thank you!
I know people who have reported death threats to the police, and their response was largely "Call us when you've been murdered." The police have no obligation to protect you.
Besides, most crimes aren't reported to the police, and most of those reported aren't solved.
We do not need to maintain a heavily armed trained to be lethally violent police force who are told they could be violently killed at any moment to deal with these issues. It's not "the police or nothing," but the police really need to go, period.
An entire list of books about police brutality and why police abolition is necessary.
LA is a big city with a lot of crime problems. I'm not entirely sure wildfires are much of a problem within their city limits. How exactly is that relevant?
No, I really don't have to be concerned. Because I know the degree to which the polls were off in 2016 and I know the difference in polling between Biden and Clinton. This is an average of reputable polls, not just one poll, collected by a site run by political conservatives fwiw.
People also mistakenly seem to think that polling is somehow only put to the test every four years and only in the presidential contest. Dozens if not hundreds of political races are polled, from congress, to senators to governors to ballot initiatives. Hanging your hat on *one* striking error, an error that was still within the statistical margin of error, is not empirically grounded thinking.
Edit to add: Polling takes place in other democracies too! We'd know if there was some systematic problem in pollsters methodologies.
Again, I hope you're right. My faith in polls is more sceptical. Results will sway my opinion of them, nothing more...
Edit: Didn't see your edit until I posted so have to say, the smaller the sampled size (geographically) the more I tend to believe polls. On a smaller scale, say, my national or state representative, or a ballot initoative, the more the polls seem to be more true.
40,000+ people die in automobile accidents every year.
15,000-17,000 homicides every year.
~1,000 people die in officer involved incidents every year, many of them uncontroversial btw
Frankly, I have to say this is absurd radical posturing. It does nothing to account for the magnitude of different issues in our society.
Dont try to use statistics on an emotional topic. That never works...
One of the reasons 2016 failed to predict the winner is that the Electoral College winner hinged on three very narrowly decided elections in MI, PA and WI. Especially in WI there was a lack of polling done. But national polling did accurately predict the popular vote winner, and within ~1% iirc. It's much, much harder to pull of an Electoral College / popular vote split if you're losing the national vote by Trump's current margin. In fact, it's almost impossible.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57d8525ee4b09d7a68803278/amp
They've literally had wildfires within the city limits, as well as wildfires in greater LA county that the LA fire department could help fight.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41143987
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/50-000-ordered-evacuate-wildfire-spreads-north-los-angeles-n1071736
It's relevant as so much money is spent on the LAPD that it chokes out other priorities to a large degree. This isn't only true of LA, but it is a significant problem that limits spending on social programs that may have a greater impact that is also actually positive than simply pouring more money into police coffers.
You can't give a steak paid time off while the restaurant pretends to investigate the death and then reinstates the steak.
This is a pointless comparison at any rate. The reality is that we should prevent preventable death and every time a police officer murders someone, that is in fact preventable. Or that police officers are given unnecessary "qualified immunity" to break the law in the line of duty. Or that police brutality extends well beyond killing people. Or that police are used to enforce laws that exist solely to justify budgets and not justice. Like, say, the entire war on drugs. Or that Federal prisons are required to be kept at maximum capacity. Or that police departments fund themselves through asset forfeiture and fines.
I have dated a cop since, had his friends make fun of him because of me( know when you know you are less than everyone else, people use you to make fun of the people you are with ), have even had two of those that made fun ask me out later. Yeah, gonna pass on that. Thank you though. Having been through a lot with the breed, good and bad, I still know we are better off with them. I get to wake up every day in a crappy COVID world because some really terrible police showed up.
Going to go back to not talking anymore. Laters.
I'm actually very dissatisfied with my last encounter with the police. I called the police to report an imminent suicide for a friend of mine (I mentioned this in the "unhappiness" thread), and even though I gave them extended details--down to the evening of a specific day, the girl's full legal name and date of birth, and even the method, her father's gun--they didn't intervene. All they did was send an officer over to a then-empty house, wait an entire day before going back to knock on the door again, and then briefly speaking with the family on the final day before immediately leaving.
I told them that there was a very high chance that she would kill herself if they visited her without actually trying to remove her access to the gun, and they did nothing, even with all the information I gave them, even when I called them back twice to check on the case and ask them to take it seriously. Unless the problem was simply sheer laziness or apathy rather than incompetence, the local police weren't trained to handle this situation (and personally my guess is that the problem was all of those things).
It wasn't the police that kept her alive. It was some jobless cripple and a few Internet friends hundreds of miles away. It's pathetic that the police did such a half-assed job when I gave them everything they needed to keep my friend safe.
At the end of the day, a police officer is just another person working a job. The amount of trust we place in the police should be the same we place in an EMT, a firefighter, a cashier, a schoolteacher, or a secretary. None of them is inherently more responsible or ethical or wiser than the others.
It's not obvious to me that our best interests come from the police force being heavily-armed and unaccountable to their communities or even the law itself. We have a situation where people are given lethal ammunition and the ability to use it however they wish, and it's simply not in human nature to use power responsibly unless you're required to.
No, we can't live in a world without law enforcement, because ordinary citizens will break the law when they know they can get away with it.
No, we can't live in a world with an unaccountable police force, because police officers will break the law when they know they can get away with it.
We've already seen this dynamic many times. Police officers are human beings and no better or worse than the average person. We have given people absolute power--you literally have power over life and death as a police officer--and they have exploited it. That won't change until their power is no longer absolute.
And for what it's worth, a cop doesn't need absolute power to do their job in the first place. Making the police accountable to the law doesn't mean weakening law enforcement; it means strengthening the rule of law.
Even if the police were abolished in their current form, that doesn't mean that there would be no form of emergency response in future. Whether you believe that the current system can be reformed, or that things are so far gone that a more radical alternative is needed, I think there's common ground in this discussion that there are significant problems with the existing arrangements.
Perhaps a way of proceeding from that common ground would be to consider what responsibilities and operational methods would be appropriate for the police service, before moving on to how you would best get to that situation from the current one.
Then I am sorry to say that you are only focusing on one minor thing that helped bring violent crimes down. Science (such as forensics) have greatly improved allowing those that might have been repeat offenders be caught sooner. Social programs such as Woman’s shelters also helped with violent crime rate deteriorating as they helped move victims away from their predators. Those are two off the top of my head, but if I had time to research it properly I would probably be able to find more direct causes than just having police, because that has been a constant throughout the history of the United States.
You know what else works for traffic violations as a preventive measure? Traffic cameras, stationary radar, roundabouts, speed bumps, drive programs and public transportation are much more preventive to traffic accidents than police. Not saying police don’t have a role on the road, but those that are really don’t need to have holstered weapon for doing that particular job.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/politics/michael-flynn-dismiss/index.html
The three-judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided the trial judge, Sullivan, didn't have enough reason to question the DOJ's prosecution decisions in this case. They also said Sullivan having a third-party attorney weigh in on Flynn's case, the former judge John Gleeson, isn't needed anymore.
Sullivan "fails to justify the district court's unprecedented intrusions on individual liberty and the Executive's charging authority," DC appeals court Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in the majority opinion.
This whole situation is corruption at its finest.
I do know that if we rebranded it from 'defund the police' to "super long complicated series of words" it would be much easier to ignore and move on from.
We'd get a "oh yeah, long thing is bad, thoughts and prayers, anyway, about school choice..."
"Defund the police" works and it keeps the topic where it can't be so easily dismissed.
Yeah. This is corruption. Now Trump doesn't have to waste a pardon Flynn and Stone. He'll just pardon Stone if he has to. Of course he doesn't "have to" be a corrupt asshole, but he's determined to be one and Conservatives are determined to be corrupt and personally loyal to the man and not to America.
No, that's not their job either. As a new source, CNN's job is to report the news. Nothing more.
"many not controversial"??? How so? Have you missed all the protests in the last month specifically AGAINST all these deaths caused by the police?