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[wierd]

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-supremacists-in-law-enforcement

(note, article is FOUR FUCKING YEARS OLD.)

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-investigated-white-supremacist-infiltration-of-law-enforcement/

[Max™]

Dwarf_Fever, you say take on the military budget first, you say fix plutocrats.

The military doesn't casually murder people on the street here, and the military doesn't keep people from dismantling the plutocracy directly. Cops do both.

Nobody is saying "execute all the cops, burn their stations, see what happens" nobody is talking about a scenario where there is a sudden power vacuum because police just fucked off to canada or something.

That medium article by the ex-cop goes over this, he even says explicitly "I'm not doing this to defend or justify anything police do, I am telling you how we are made in the hopes that it can help you unmake us" and mentions numerous times how the best work he did as a cop was when he was serving as a half-assed social worker or relationship counselor.

You're seeing "defund police" and jumping straight to "but organized crime" and ignoring everyone saying "use the funding to do what police should do, improve communities, help those who need help, stop people from considering crime by improving their situation overall" because nobody wakes up one day thinking "my teeth are healthy, my aches and pains are gone, I'm well fed, well educated, have a roof over my head and good clothes on my back, time to go rape somebody!" besides literal psychopaths who are a tiny fraction of the population and who cops are not trained to identify and assist with anyways (I know this first hand, remember) so we need someone to handle them right now anyways.

Perhaps in the future when you talk about organized crime setting up shop in a community without cops, try to imagine it in a healthy happy community where people know who to call for help if needed, know how to solve problems if encountered, and aren't kept desperate and afraid of slipping into poverty at any moment?

[SalmonGod]

Imagine not being able to tell the difference between white supremacy groups and police. Granted, I can sort of understand your confusion, but yeah. Still not the same thing.

Yeah, it's genuinely pretty fucking hard sometimes.  Like when police allow right-wing militia groups to help them patrol the streets to enforce a curfew on everyone else, which is a thing that has actually happened in some U.S. cities in the past few weeks.  Or when black people start getting hanged in public places all over the country, and every single case is immediately ruled a suicide without investigation.  Or when an officer is heard calling "$100 for every n$$$$$ and $50 for every Mexican!" over scanners and there's no response from other officers on at the time except jovial banter.

[Superdorf]

The Onion - ‘So, It Means Making The Police Lose Their Homes And Forcing Them To Get A Divorce?’ Says Nation Still Struggling To Understand How Defunding The Police Works

[Dwarf_Fever]

The military doesn't casually murder people on the street here, and the military doesn't keep people from dismantling the plutocracy directly. Cops do both.

You're taking isolated cases and going with a questionable assumption that every cop is a murderous baby eater.

You're seeing "defund police" and jumping straight to "but organized crime" and ignoring everyone saying "use the funding to do what police should do, improve communities, help those who need help, stop people from considering crime by improving their situation overall"

It's not that I'm ignoring that, it's that timing is important and you have to address the root of the problem before the symptoms. Police deal with problems they shouldn't have to, but they don't magically go away when you defund the police. If you don't have that stuff in place first, shit is really going to hit the fan, because people will still call the cops for it, except now there's even less training and personnel to deal with it. Then rioting will crank up to 10, and authoritarians like Trump will have their reason for martial law.

Yeah, it's genuinely pretty fucking hard sometimes.  Like when police allow right-wing militia groups to help them patrol the streets to enforce a curfew on everyone else, which is a thing that has actually happened in some U.S. cities in the past few weeks.  Or when black people start getting hanged in public places all over the country, and every single case is immediately ruled a suicide without investigation.  Or when an officer is heard calling "$100 for every n$$$$$ and $50 for every Mexican!" over scanners and there's no response from other officers on at the time except jovial banter.

I'm sure when you hear, say, ten alleged (totally unbiased) reports like that, you go "omg it's all over the place, this is insane," but unfortunate as these acts are, any given police officer is 0.00014% of the whole. Bad apples don't mean the system itself is bad, just that you need a system to watch the watchmen.

Let's say that Minneapolis had in place a great program for housing and social work, taken from the police budget. What makes anyone think this would have kept George Floyd from dying tragically?

What Minneapolis needed was for the 2 other cops that were watching on to have the training and presence of mind to recognize what was going on and tap Derek Chauvin on the shoulder and say "I got this man, go fill out the paperwork." And later let the chief know the man is in need of some chill time, counselling or whatever.

You look at marine or seal teams, and they might train up to over a year to go do a mission for 6 months, then go back for decompression, deal with PTSD, and do more training. Cops get a measly few weeks of training when they start, and for most of them that's it.

[Cthulhu]

What Minneapolis needed was for the 2 other cops that were watching on to have the training and presence of mind to recognize what was going on and tap Derek Chauvin on the shoulder and say "I got this man, go fill out the paperwork." And later let the chief know the man is in need of some chill time, counselling or whatever.

This is what happens to cops who do that.  The rest of the NYPD was so on board with it they made a commemorative coin.

And even if every good cop reported every bad cop and was thrown a parade and the key to the city, the fundamental structure of the carceral system in the US is designed to disrupt and prey on poor primarily black communities.  These are not isolated incidents, it's not something better training will fix (the wendy's cops had finished a de-escalation course the week before they shot a guy in the back while he ran away), it is baked into the system. 

Point out the good apples in this 500+ video thread of police brutalizing protesters

[Dwarf_Fever]

Yeah, I didn't say you need an undercover snitch/investigator to get your coworkers in trouble, I said training to recognize PTSD/decompress/watch your buddies.

Then I said you need a system to watch the watchers, and obviously that has to be an outside agency, so again, that decade old example is not relevant here. Doing that stuff internally always ends up badly.

As for the videos, to find the good apples, look for the 700,000 cops not featured in them. While you're at it, explain how exactly anything is "baked into the system" so we can discuss the matter in detail... assuming you're not just parroting propaganda. Is there a special 30 minute training video, "How To Discriminate" that all cops watch? Maybe something like "evil fast-rise flour" is literally baked into the badge?

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, I didn't say you need an undercover snitch/investigator to get your coworkers in trouble, I said training to recognize PTSD/decompress/watch your buddies.

Have you ever heard the term "whistleblower?"  His coworkers were using the power they were given to ruin people's lives, they deserve a lot more than to get in trouble.  Instead they illegally raided his house and threw him in a mental hospital and made an inside joke about it to share with their friends.

If you're actually interested in the information you asked for, which you're very obviously not, you can google it.  It's not hard to find.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The funny thing is there pretty much really is a "how to discriminate and murder then get away with it" course at police academies. Killology, sheepdog rhetoric, etc.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Have you ever

Yeah, whistleblowing to the organization you're blowing the whistle on is a terrible idea, which is why I said there needs to be external oversight, but I guess you didn't really think before responding.

The funny thing is there pretty much really is a "how to discriminate and murder then get away with it" course at police academies.

Sounds real legit, got any actual course names?

[Max™]

We can't parrot propaganda, but you can?

Police departments are massively overfunded, trained for a narrow fraction of their actual roles, and their culture perpetuates an us vs them mentality where they view every citizen they encounter as a potentially lethal threat.

What exactly is the benefit of this system?

Prior to the protests spreading all over the damn place you had local governments looking at the budget crunches they were facing due to the pandemic hitting damn near every bit of consumer spending they usually tax to get the revenue needed for funding, and the mindset across the country was "what non-police departments can we slash a few more bucks from to get by for now" and that has been the norm for the vast majority of our lives (or entirety for those much younger than me) if not longer.

Columbus Ohio had a 2020 budget proposal.

Before you click that, take a guess what chunk of the ~500+ million expenditures these three were:
$359 million for _______
$26 million for _______
$6 million for _______

Did you guess Health, Education, Police?

Try Police, Health, Education.

What pressing need is there for a city with a half a billion dollar budget to spend over two thirds on the police?

What is wrong with us that until enough people finally got pissed off enough, nobody really seemed to mind that it isn't unusual for your city to have spent around $2 on education for every $100 on the cops?

How much could a community be improved for just a third of that massive budget, just take $120 million a year and invest it back into health, education, housing, transportation, infrastructure... are things going to end up worse than if that money was used to buy some more APC's and riot armor?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sounds real legit, got any actual course names?

Joke's on you buddy, it's really called Killology.

[delphonso]

Dwarf_Fever, again the point isn't to abolish the police. Better training is one of the things we're asking for, including recognition of PTSD in both officers and civilians. One of the excellerants to violence is that police are handed military vehicles and weapons when there are protests instead of training on de-escalation. Both require funding, but the US has made the choice to go with one over the other.

[Cthulhu]

Yeah, whistleblowing to the organization you're blowing the whistle on is a terrible idea, which is why I said there needs to be external oversight, but I guess you didn't really think before responding.

Wait, what about the good cops though?  I thought it was just a few bad apples, why can't he tell the rest of the good cops about it?

[Dwarf_Fever]

Police departments
What exactly is the benefit of this system?

Police enforce the laws of a society. That is the benefit of a law enforcement agency.

their culture perpetuates an us vs them mentality

Please explain the mechanic by which you claim this happens.

Before you click that, take a guess what chunk of the ~500+ million expenditures these three were:
$359 million for _______
$26 million for _______
$6 million for _______

Guess what, the police only got 30% more than the second-place list item, the fire department in that proposal, an organization with a much more narrow focus. Way to deceptively omit information in order to mislead people and spin your point.

And while these really really big numbers (ooooooh) might sound impressive to the average citizen, even if you cut that police budget in half, you could maybe barely run one hospital instead. That's not going to do anything to reduce the "systemic" problems leading to issues like George Floyd, and you've just killed any chance the cops will get better training to deal with future George Floyds.