Current Events > Should the police be reformed, defunded, or abolished?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Be honest.

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yes

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Reformed obviously. Look at the huge spikes in crime and murder since last year.

Abolished & replaced

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Americans need to dismantle every police station, and then we need to build our own police station... with blackjack and hookers.

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Keith_Valentine posted...

Reformed obviously. Look at the huge spikes in crime and murder since last year.

abolition is the end goal. cutting funding is a good first step towards that

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Blue_Dream87 posted...

Abolished & replaced

To say we don't need police is bad. But saying there's nothing wrong with American policing is a dumber arguement. What they need is reform and an entire culture change, that won't happen until many of the leaders of police and unions retire.

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We need the super police. They are like regular police except they can shoot anyone being violent, no repercussions. That way both criminals and bad cops will behave. Oh but we need someone to stop the super police just in case. So we'll need the mega police, armed with missile launchers.

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DoomsSD posted...

I think there has to be a fundamental, grass roots renewal for how the police are trained and instructed. Way too many forms of fucked up behaviour, that's not only highly illegal but often kills or leaves people maimed with grievous injuries.

I also think the mental profiling for who can even become a police officer has to become a lot stricter. Too many malcontented psychopaths get past the radar and abuse their power so that also needs to be a top priority alongside a training reform.

lol more like they specifically go after the job because its a powerful position with zero accountability and therefore the job is staffed by people like that and many forces have literal gangs in them where killing someone is seen as a rite of passage.

I think its amazing people rarely mention how incredibly violent and criminal minded large parts of the US population are. There seems to be little sympathy for what its like when cops go out and watch drug dealers get away with poisoning their community every day, people shooting each other in the face, the cops show up to a house where three skinny kids are huddled in the corner and moms all black eyed and bloody cuz drunk daddy didnt wana hear any shit. And you think a little therapy or anger management can fix that. You send people into urban warzones and condemn them when a statistical few get ptsd and crack up under pressure and life threatening conditions.

Yes, yes and yes.

Reformed

defuneded sends the wrong message and hurtful

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Squidkids posted...

Reformed

defuneded sends the wrong message and hurtful

if your goal is the same as the goal of defund, the reformed branding is even worse to get what you actually want, even if it may poll better. Reform will just be coopted by bad actors (look at the pathetic bill they are already discussing) into toothless shit that wont change anything.

Reforming the police is part of defunding the police

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99% of cops need to be fired and it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up

fuming posted...

if your goal is the same as the goal of defund, the reformed branding is even worse to get what you actually want, even if it may poll better. Reform will just be coopted by bad actors (look at the pathetic bill they are already discussing) into toothless shit that wont change anything.

Actually, reformed doesnt send the right message either. Too harsh. We should just ask them in a friendly letter to please be more nicey wicey.

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Keith_Valentine posted...

You send people into urban warzones and condemn them when a statistical few get ptsd and crack up under pressure and life threatening conditions.

Mental health and screening would be very important to a reform, yes.

I doubt the racist cops who beat that guy to death were the PTSD kind. Not that PTSD would be an excuse.

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Reformation + a decrease in funding

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WibbleWobbleWok posted...

Reformation + a decrease in funding

I don't think I've seen anyone else say it, but if, by some miracle, reforms actually get us an ideal police system, I would say refunding is in order, funds specified to get higher quality police. It seems like they're not screened for any sort of empathy, or local social investments.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2020/04/23/police-officer-salary-state/amp/

https://apnews.com/article/473cd4468c7749469af6a99d9cbe7fb3

Police are fairly compensated for a job that doesn't require a degree, has less accountability than retail, and is less dangerous than driving trucks.

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DoomsSD posted...

I think there has to be a fundamental, grass roots renewal for how the police are trained and instructed. Way too many forms of fucked up behaviour, that's not only highly illegal but often kills or leaves people maimed with grievous injuries.

I also think the mental profiling for who can even become a police officer has to become a lot stricter. Too many malcontented psychopaths get past the radar and abuse their power so that also needs to be a top priority alongside a training reform.

there's literally nothing to suggest that that will make any meaningful difference.

to reduce police violence, you have to reduce the amount that police interact with the public. reducing funding + the number of officers is a good starting point

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While there are some national changes that can be made on overall training and accountability issues, this is something that needs to be investigated on a county by county level. There is nothing that can be done on a broad level to inherently fix local corruption. There are some areas that are going to have relatively no issues and there are some areas where the entire local government likely needs to be purged and charged for miscarriages of justice.

Nemu posted...

There is nothing that can be done on a broad level to inherently fix local corruption.

Corruption is not the primary problem with policing.

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deanshow posted...

To say we don't need police is bad.

Its not just bad, its fucking insane. Do these people just watch The Purge and think "yeah this seems good, but all the time."
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Antifar posted...

Corruption is not the primary problem with policing.

Outside of cases where it's just one insane shitbag cop, local corruption is what leads to tolerance/encouragement of brutality and other shady practices. You aren't going to find the same issues in every station or town or county across the board. That's just silly thinking if you're treating this like a completely uniform problem across the country.

Antifar posted...

Corruption is not the primary problem with policing.

it's definitely high up there. because a corrupt police department results in zero accountability, and with zero accountability, they can get away with anything because there is no counterbalance to their power. like...the amount of police departments that are legitimately run as gangs and actually work with organized crime is astounding.

Duncanwii posted...

Its not just bad, its fucking insane. Do these people just watch The Purge and think "yeah this seems good, but all the time."

thats a fucking movie

i believe they should be properly trained to uphold the law. not every situation they face requires extreme agressiveness like most of the cases of police brutality i heard about...

no wonder people lose their trust in them when you got assholes who go on a power trip just cause they got a fucking gun and a badge. sounds like they were bullied in school and now are taking advantage of that position just so they can dish out on everyone else and feel good about it.

demilitarized.

fuming posted...

it's definitely high up there. because a corrupt police department results in zero accountability, and with zero accountability, they can get away with anything because there is no counterbalance to their power. like...the amount of police departments that are legitimately run as gangs and actually work with organized crime is astounding.

thats a fucking movie

It's a glimpse into what life would be like without a police force upholding the law. Itd be terror and anarchy.
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Police abolitionists are probably the only people that are more stupid than Tankies

They should be reformed though, and iirc some districts have already passed some decent legislation in a step towards that direction

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Duncanwii posted...

It's a glimpse into what life would be like without a police force upholding the law. Itd be terror and anarchy.

its a fucking movie

I say we replace them with an army of batmen.

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fuming posted...

its a fucking movie

Hes not wrong though. Law enforcement is a good deterrent to crime

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In America? All three tbh. Many parts that need reform, and vast parts of it that just need outright abolishing, and then many that need severe cuts and removal of military hardware.

In many places/other countries they are very much underfunded though, but still rife with problems.

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Samurontai posted...

Hes not wrong though. Law enforcement is a good deterrent to crime

I am not even in favor of having no law enforcement, I just think that saying "HAVEN'T YOU GUYS SEEN THE PURGE?" is a really dumb argument.

Though I will say that most crime is caused by poverty, and 'law enforcement' is not really the most important piece of solving that kind of crime, having a society where it isn't massively unequal and everyone left on their own is a way better deterrent to most crime than law enforcement. Law enforcement is definitely necessary though, in some capacity.

fuming posted...

I am not even in favor of having no law enforcement, I just think that saying "HAVEN'T YOU GUYS SEEN THE PURGE?" is a really dumb argument.

Though I will say that most crime is caused by poverty, and 'law enforcement' is not really the most important piece of solving that kind of crime, having a society where it isn't massively unequal and everyone left on their own is a way better deterrent to most crime than law enforcement. Law enforcement is definitely necessary though, in some capacity.

Yeah I agree with all that tbh

And yeah the movie take is always kind of dumb


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Nemu posted...

Outside of cases where it's just one insane shitbag cop, local corruption is what leads to tolerance/encouragement of brutality and other shady practices. You aren't going to find the same issues in every station or town or county across the board. That's just silly thinking if you're treating this like a completely uniform problem across the country.

no one is suggesting that the problem is completely uniform across the country. but the problem is policing itself, and with the laws that police are inherently tasked with upholding.

sure, corruption is a problem, but it's secondary at best. and focusing on it, rather than the actual problems, causes people to completely miss what those actual problems are.

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Reformed obviously lol all the other options are stupid

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Samurontai posted...

Hes not wrong though. Law enforcement is a good deterrent to crime

[citation needed]

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Reformed/defunded
Like they create separate departments that take care of certain duties type of defunded. Not just slash the budget for no reason type thing. Like I dont need an armed guard to take an accident report. It can be a whole different guy.

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Just retrained imo

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Sweeping, oppressive legal consequences for the crimes committed by the old guard is a must.

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More funded and given better training and equipment to deal with unruly people in a faster and safer manner.

If higher tech less than lethal solutions were easier to get and train with, there would be much lees fatal police encounters.

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defund police unions. until you take the political power away from the police you're never going to fix anything.

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averagejoel posted...

abolition is the end goal. cutting funding is a good first step towards that

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Adequate material conditions are the only true deterrent to crime. Sending in state agents to use violence against people looking to improve their conditions illegally because they cannot find another way to do so is just a backwards, non-solution.

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