By now, we all know that "Defund the Police" doesn't actually mean that. It merely means reducing funding a bit. Also, we're told, anyone who thinks this slogan might have hurt Democrats in the 2020 election is an idiot. There's precisely zero evidence it had any effect. Zero, by God.
Anything is possible, I suppose, though common sense suggests otherwise. But let's look in on public opinion to be sure:
Back at the height of the George Floyd protests, there was a brief moment when decreasing police funding was relatively popular among some groups. But it didn't last long. There is currently not a single demographic group—not Black adults, not Hispanic adults, not Democrats, not young people, not anybody—who favors a cut in police funding. That's some nice Overton windowing there.
Having trouble understanding why anyone who thinks that Defund even *might* have hurt Dems in 2020 is an idiot, just because there hasn't been hard evidence of it. Has there been evidence to the contrary that I missed? Absent contradictory evidence, it doesn't seem particularly idiotic to presume that just like the right fringe helps Democrats fundraise and turn out voters, the left fringe does the same for Republicans.
Also, do we really *all* know that Defund doesn't mean defund? In the lefty circles where I run, it certainly seems to still mean that - both to self-identified supporters and opponents - or something quite close (and the prison abolitionists very much mean to abolish prisons).
Actually there was talk among many extremists that police could be completely replaced and this was widely played up in the media. In fact expulsion of police seems to have happened in the "Capitol Hill autonomous zone" in Seattle, with fairly disastrous results. There was also discussion in the MSM about replacing a large part of the police with alternative responders. Of course Biden explicitly repudiated defund the police.
On June 14, 2020, the NYT ran a guest column in the Sunday Review headlined, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police."
It was written by Mariame Kaba, IDed as "an organizer against criminalization."
For some, the slogan meant "reduce police funding a bit." For others, it meant what it had initially seemed to mean in the literal sense.
Mariame Kaba has no actual power to implement anything that she advocates for, so I’m not sure why citing her as an example of “Democrats Who Mean It When They Say Defund” matters at all.
In a country of >330M, there is somebody that can be found advocating for absolutely every and any conceivable idea. Marrying your cat? Check. Shoveling the homeless into furnaces? Check. Giving condoms to preschoolers? Check. Giving guns to preschoolers? Check.
Not sure why one random person advocating a half-baked idea is indicative of an entire political party’s views on anything, but here we are.
A columnist for the NYT is not a random person. And those who pushed the "Defund" idea were extraordinarily visible, if not influential. At least that's my impression.
Exactly. The editor of the Times was fired for running a piece by Sen. Cotton, whereas whoever greenlighted Kaba was not, so clearly she is more respected among Times staffers and readers than a Republican senator; therefore ipso facto she is not "one random person."
You say “Republican senator “ as if cotton is a respected Republican senator. The homeless guy yelling on a street corner deserves respect more than cotton.
They were extraordinarily visible because the media obsessed over them just the way they hyped AOC who won a deep blue district but ignored more moderate ones like Katie Porter who turned traditionally red districts blue. That fit the media’s preferred narrative that Democrats are becoming more “extreme” too. Bothsiderism
I didn't cite her as an example of "Democrats Who Mean It When They Say Defund." I didn't say that her column (in the Sunday NYT) was somehow "indicative of an entire political party’s views."
Beyond that I don't think I can help you.
I haven't seen any columns in the NY Times promoting people marrying cats. It doesn't matter if the people advocating defund the police are elected officials or not. People know they are progressive democrats. No one is mistaking them for anything else. And their views get enough love from the Squad and other elected lefties to make them relevent.
I completely disagree with Kevin. All those Hispanic and other middle of the road voters didn't wander over into TrumpLand by themselves.
Defund really means Demilitarize the police. It means destroy the police unions protecting bad apples.
And demilitarize the police means stop recruiting and training police to be an occupying army and start treating everyone with respect. I’ve posted this link before, It’s the Newport Beach Police Department recruiting video:
https://youtu.be/w_rKA6ROAVk
And this is the Decatur Police Department recruiting video:
https://youtu.be/cIgt8pmh7CU
What kind of personality do you think is attracted to the Newport Beach video? My hope would be that the people who join the police would be the ones attracted by the Decatur video. And they should be trained to act exactly as the Decatur video indicates.
As far as I can tell, the single most common interpretation of Defund to its supporters in 2020 was: take a decent chunk from public safety budgets and plow it into community initiatives (summer jobs, worker training, housing and so forth).
Which, yes, during a crime wave, was a politically stupid stance to take and likely also a bad stance in terms of policy (would the amounts in question really have made a difference?).
And sure, naturally there was a fringe that literally wanted to abolish police departments (this may or may not have eventually led to re-establishment of brand new public safety bureaus as replacements), which also, quite naturally, non-stupid GOP operatives ceased upon to inflict political harm on the Democratic brand.
If the meaning was to "Demilitarize the Police", then why the heck didn't somebody actually SAY that? Why wasn't that the slogan? And don't tell me libz can't spell "demilitarize" or that it's too long to fit on a sign or bumper sticker.
The Democrats -- hey, the whole Left wing -- desperately needs some Mad Ave types who know how to use their words. Sure, I know the advertising types gravitate towards Republicanism. But they can't ALL have become trumpists, which is where the Party of Lincoln is now. Didn't there used to be The Lincoln Project?
But in no way representative of most Democrats (from the data I have seen) who should be getting the most attention from the media.
There still is a Lincoln Project, and its scorched-earth, grab-'em-by-the-balls rhetoric is marvelously cleansing for the palette. They know how it's done. I can't recommend them highly enough, though one nurtures a troubling thought: At some point after the current danger has passed, one has to wrestle with the fact that these guys supported for instance GWB, bad enough on every level. That reckoning awaits a safer harbor to be unpacked. For now, we are all allies.
I certainly wish that everyone understood it to mean that & also wish that more people had read "Rise of the Warrior Cop." Even killing non-violent family dogs seems SOP.
You & iamr4man are definitely on the right track.
And when we demilitarize the police, we need to be certain that the gung-ho Park Police are included, to prevent another case like that of Bijan Ghaisar.
yeah, kevin's statement is pretty absurd, as is the post title the "everyone" is now in favor of increasing police funding when his own cited data shows 47% favor it and 52% say it should stay the same or be cut.
Have you looked at the Republican campaign vis a vis Critical Race Theory? The "Democrats will get you killed by defunding the police" narrative in 2020 was exactly the same tactic as the anti-CRT folderol we are seeing this year and will see next year. For Republicans, the truth of a matter is not important, all that matters is if they can get a few more of the faithful out to vote by scaring the bejeebus out of them.
To see this all you have to do is look at the current Youngkin broadside aimed at a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by a Nobel Prize winning author. Because of course we have to protect college bound high school seniors from reading such a work, they might get a realistic idea of what slavery was all about.
The anti-history mob at school board meetings & those following teachers, threatening them, saying "we know where you live," might take part of the state back to the days of massive resistance, five years of closed public schools - nearly the "Virginia that I grew up in" to which Youngkin alludes.
For a young trying to present as a rich dude as affable as Northam or Mister Roger's, his pretense of wanting unity while uttering "the future is ours, not theirs," gave away his divisive intent.
And now, with the death of the great Linwood Holton, I'm really hoping for a McAuliffe victory next week across the board.
Man, there are a lot of people who critically failed in recognizing the sarcasm of Kevin's first paragraph.
Indeed, this is a subject where baldly asserting no impact for something that probably would have 2ndary impacts seems quite... bold.
Absent really contradictory data that is clear evidence, not idiotic at all to retain a hypothesis of impact.
And also indeed, while post-facto explanations kept trying to walk back the Defund doesn't really mean Defund, contemporary rhetoric among Left activists rather suggests that something as you say very close to how one ordinarily would understand the phrase was indeed meant.
Any slogan that has to be explained is beyond stupid, it’s damaging. Ditto for terms like “socialism” when you don’t really advocate the government owning the means of production—the dictionary definition of that term. What they want is for us to become more of a “social” democracy.
Emphatically agree. The progressive cause faces enough challenges without these own-goals!
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I'd love to see polling on Defund the IRS
The only people who want to Defund the IRS are rich people and corporations, and they pretty much do that anyway with lawyers, accountants, and tax loopholes so big you can drive a Trump sized fortune through them.
Idk… a lot of middle class people who have to dick around with the complexity involved in filing their taxes also don’t really see a need for a fully funded IRS. I’ve met lots of non rich people who really resent the IRS for making things too complicated, all the while also expressing views like “all government benefits should be means tested” which generally introduces more complexity into the tax code. (Logical consistency isn’t strong with most Americans.)
It's not the IRS, it's Republicans who like to make income tax forms complex. Bush changed the withdrawal rates so that instead of a refund, many people would have to pay something in April. The amount of tax didn't change, it just intentionally made it more painful.
Defund the police vs Beat them to death with flagpoles. No wonder the GOP, which promotes the second option, wants to keep us talking about the first.
Or the polling on "Defund the ATF"
Good point, but my subtle point - too subtle, my bad - is that the IRS is the police for rich people and the GOP has been defunding them, for real, big time, for decades.
I’d like to see the police around me take their traffic enforcement money and spend on more important shit.
I’m not saying let traffic scofflaws get off scot free. I’m saying photo enforcement.
I don’t. Far more people in my city get killed in traffic accidents than by criminal acts, most caused by reckless driving. Public safety requires strict enforcement. Dead is dead.
But there's good and bad enforcement there has to be guardrails on how a city can implement it else it's a naked money grab. DC has been using speed cameras and red light cameras for years but has been taken to task on some really bad ones that don't appear to be about safety and are more about trickery, like at the bottom of a hill and speed limit signs being hard to see.
But that said they do save lives, I support them but only if they aren't part of some public/private money grab.
I want to add my (fake) name to the others in strong disagreement with Kevin. Only my impression here, but, my god, every time I heard a Trumpster speak during the past year, they were decrying "Defund the Police". Or railing about the riots, which is related -- really the same issue. Again, my strong impression was that this issue was front of mind for virtually all R voters, whether they abandoned Trump or not.
And don't get me wrong: I'd love to see new ways of policing, and I think loads of police pack their Gestapo mindsets around with them everywhere they go. Likewise, if I were a bit younger I might don a helmet and shield and go out to smash some windows and some heads too. But electorally, that's nothing but counterproductive!!!! I can't see how anyone could think that this kind of rhetoric, in the midst of these kinds of newsreels, is not a net loser, and a big one.
You do realize that the first sentence of the second paragraph explicitly says that the whole first paragraph was sarcasm, right?
I did not. Wow. I thought Kevin sounded a little over the top, but his point was too subtle for me. I think I'm not alone in this thread. This is a recurrent problem with written, as opposed to spoken, comms.
I thought the sarcasm was really, really obvious.
Defund the Police is a very unfortunate slogan. What should have been done was to proclaim that we want better policing. We don't need police to come when a homeless person is suffering some sort of condition, or when our neighbors play the radio too loud. We already changed it so that non-police give out parking tickets. We need more of this. Save the police for dealing with burglars, rapes, car theft and such.
Unfortunately, Defund the Police has been tossed into a grab bag that includes the BLM protests and the increased homicide rate. The media's focus on the few violent incidents at the protests and their love of "if it bleeds it leads" means that a lot folks believe that police forces were actually defunded and now predators roam the streets of every major city randomly shooting people.
I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with police funding.
I think there is something drastically wrong with police culture. That has to be fixed, even if it means firing and replacing entire departments. And in some cases, that is exactly what it means.
In my little neck of the woods, the police union talked with mayoral candidate Felicia Moore about an endorsement. She said that of course she supported police, but that a public endorsement might do more harm than good in this city so she'd like to poll test it first.
The police union went off in a huff and endorsed Kasim Reed. Kasim Reed was mayor four years ago. He ran a criminally corrupt administration.
But that is today's police, such babies that unless you continually admire and praise them, they'll support outright criminals instead. Policing, especially in the form of police unions, and law are not really related any more, if they ever were.
Police are the last man.
What is needed in many American cities is better policing, and that won't come free. Better selection, better training, especially focusing on de-escalation, hiring people with specialized skills. Many departments should actually hire more personnel - unions often seek to keep staffing levels low so that members can earn lots of overtime, though the public is ill-served by officers on long shifts, as alertness and judgment degrade, and training hours are often cut to fill duty assignments.
I strongly favor increases in funding for social welfare programs. We are a wealthy country and can afford to ensure that everyone here is fed, housed and kept healthy, mentally as well as physically. But we should do that because it's the morally right thing to do, not because it will end crime - it won't.
The police don’t prevent crime.
“On the night of February 9th, the defendant entered the home of the Nikki Metcalf, Margarett Moon, and Jane Doe with the permission of several of the minors in the home. Sometime during the night, after most of the occupants were asleep, Nikki discovered the defendant and Jane Doe together in Jane Doe’s bedroom and began to struggle with the defendant. When confronted by Nikki, the defendant pulled a firearm out of his backpack and shot Nikki. The defendant then shot Margarett and Jane Doe. Nikki and Jane Doe died at the scene, and Margarett died shortly after.“
https://humboldtgov.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=4310
They just clean up the mess.
LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – New information has been released tonight involving the man accused of killing three people in his family. Court documents show 23-year-old Daniel Sougstad has a history of mental health issues.
https://www.wlns.com/news/triple-homicide-suspect-has-history-of-mental-illness/
Triple murders are a thing now.
“MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) —Police say a suspect is in custody after a triple homicide in Farmington. Just before 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, officers were called to the 5400 block of 183rd Street West to check on the welfare of a person visiting the home. That’s when they found the victims and the suspect.”
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/10/28/police-report-triple-homicide-in-farmington-house/
No one really cares.
“ "One of the disturbing trends we’re seeing is the age of our shooting victims and suspects continues to get younger," Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Deputy Chief Dave Boysen said. "In the last six shootings, the average age of our victims is 17-years-old.” Boysen said teens as young as 15 are getting involved in gun violence. On Oct. 12, two teens were gunned down while walking near a Kalamazoo school in broad daylight.”
https://wwmt.com/news/local/2021-on-track-to-be-record-breaking-year-for-gun-violence-in-kalamazoo
Black lives definitely don’t matter one bit. The police can’t stop this. They are useless. These kids are enjoying themselves. Plenty of money available for prevention. It won’t make any difference.
Based on my history, white male lives don't matter either.
Defund hurt in smaller towns. Democrats heavy handed covid crap hurt in the big cities and cost Dems votes. Just a bunch of morons who run this party. FDR, Wison and Bryan weep.
Meanwhile: https://news.yahoo.com/minneapolis-police-ballot-divides-black-001900080.html
And off to the side, side effects from a California proposition: https://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-big-box-retailers-wont-risk-stopping-shoplifters/
Not sure how that’s a “side effect” from Prop. 47. Prop. 47 reclassified shoplifting under $950 worth of merchandise from a felony to a misdemeanor. Are you saying a misdemeanor is not still a crime? The linked story talks about people stealing stuff worth more than $950 and that is still considered burglary, not shoplifting. The story also indicates that the store employees don’t try to stop the criminals based on safety issues. Sounds smart to me.
A misdemeanor is still a crime, but if cops have to prioritize finding some guy who just ran out of a store with a pair of Nikes versus investigating a drive-by shooting or some other felony, they're not going to bother with the stolen sneakers. Crooks know this, which is why this kind of theft has skyrocketed in places like SF and NYC. They target stuff you can easily fence on Amazon, ebay or other online marketplace.
Whether it is classified as a misdemeanor or a felony randomly stealing a pair of shoes is never going to receive high priority. Organized theft rings are the problem and those are felony crimes.
You've shown, pretty convincingly, that "defund the police" is a very unpopular policy. I'm not happy about this result, but you've convinced me that it's true.
You claim, entirely without evidence, that "everyone" understands that "defund the police" doesn't actually mean "defund the police." This seems less clear. It doesn't mean "defund the police" to ME, but I've gotten the sense that many of the people who use the slogan mean it exactly as it sounds. Some of them have written in high-circulation outlets to clearly state exactly this.
This slogan was, for better or worse, very strongly identified with Democrats in the last election cycle. I heard it. You heard it. My idiot acquaintances who don't have coherent thoughts about politics heard it.
It seems implausible that being strongly identified with this extremely unpopular policy didn't hurt Democrats. I get that you're not familiar with any evidence that it did, but are you sure you've looked hard enough?
Getting excess military equipment for reduced cost is a very bad deal for most LEO organizations. Our county got several deuce and a halfs from the Dod. Very lighly used. Everyone applauded
Until the following years maintenance budget exploded. Tires were 3X the cost of the trucks currently used. They had to be painted etc and the Fleet Maint supervisor said parts had to be stocked.
But the REAL rub is this. these vehicles are normally used only during weather emergencies and we haven't had a bad emergency in a number of years.
So just how effective is this program? Is it just better than saying we scrapped all the un-necessary equipment? We ae a city of 100+K people. We have a river on one side and the ocean on the other.
But to get these vehicles for sporadic use and costly maintenance seems nonsensical to me. The County Commission is looking at this but they have suspended any immediate purchases from DoD until they look at the true cost.
I'm not sure how you prove a negative, like there's "no evidence" that GOP attacks over police funding *weren't* effective. To be sure, no Democrat (that I'm aware of -- maybe some marginal third-party candidate in a real left-leaning city did) formally ran on an outright "defund the police" platform and lost specifically because of it, but that doesn't mean that the attacks didn't move the needle when it came to things like turnout, fundraising, etc. at various levels. IMHO, crime and border control remain the two greatest vulnderabilities for Democrats heading into midterms next year. There's another massive migrant caravan expected to arrive at the southern border in the next few weeks. Fox News producers are already salivating at the thought.
That caravan has been stopped aka the Haitian one. This is a multicountry effort to stop traffickers now bud. You need a finger snap for this post. Keep up on things.
The whole question is a category error. Police have nowhere near the resources that they would need to do their job -- if they knew what their job was, which they don't, and if they could be trusted to do it, which they can't. Those are the problems. Under present circumstances, every dollar spent on them is net harm.
Idolatry of the police is universal in the US so it is not surprising very few subjects of capital favor disarming the successors of the slave patrols.The public's focus should be on the policy to allow the police to use lethal weapons, which are used to allow summary execution of alleged suspects.
People are dumb as fucking rocks.
Forget defund the police. How about “set all police on fire”, that’s more of where I am with it.
"Back at the height of the George Floyd protests, there was a brief moment when decreasing police funding was relatively popular among some groups. But it didn't last long.
It didn't last long because crime rates began to explode, especially in large cities after years and years of declines since the 1990s with a spike or two here and there. Not all crimes (some declined) but homicides, car jackings and violent assaults and shootings began taking place in greater numbers than they had in recent memory and these are crimes that also generate the most headlines as well but they also generate the most trauma and tragedy.
Some of this I imagine was due to the Ferguson Affect in aftermath of the protests. Some of it was due to proliferation of guns in our society. Gun sales went crazy the past two years and you can't have that many guns in circulation without them trickling down to criminals who either steal them on get sold to them on the black market. But the biggest reason which underlies everything in my opinion is the pandemic. Cities are where COVID-19 impacted residents the most because lots of people live in close quarters and thus where the restrictions were more stringent. The loss of so many programs and activities and schools due to the virus and the fact that cities and such programs are the basic safety net for lots of people and loss of it has caused a social disruption that we're just beginning to understand and one of the effects of it has been the rise of crime.
Thus, you can't expirament with significant police reforms because people are afraid of what comes next, especially in the middle of a crime wave. That's what's happening in Minneapolis. If the measure to end the Minneapolis Police Department succeeds it only be because enough white liberals voted for it, it won't be on the strength of of the votes of persons of color that's for sure. Had those advocating for reform used terms like "Budget Reform" or Jimmy Carter idea of zero-based budgeting, such terms are politically neutral enough to proceed without political recriminations. Unfortunately, like so much that happened after Memorial Day 2020, a lot people went crazy in the middle of a frenzy and coming back from that in the aftermath has proven to be too difficult and problematic because they're anchored down by the rhetoric they chose to employ in those crazy days, one of them being "Defund the Police".
Meanwhile in NYC the everyone in support of more police funding have elected a new Mayor:
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/02/1051678758/new-york-elects-eric-adams-as-its-second-black-mayor