Minneapolis PD Suffocate Unarmed Black Man Who Later Dies in Hospital

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by getbak

That article is 2 years old, but I found this with numbers up to date through the end of 2019: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden...er-past-decade

Across the board, 2019's overall crime numbers were down from 2017's, except for 2 more murders, which were still less than half of 2012 and 2013's totals.

The more recent article notes though that the Camden force got much bigger, contradicting the first article:

In the immediate, the shift meant the hiring of more officers, and thus a heavier presence in local neighborhoods. That year the force went from 268 officers to 418.
Today, that figure rounds out at about the same.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

For clarification, because I've seen a ridiculous amount of misinformation about this over the past few days, what Minneapolis is proposing isn't anarchy and lawlessness. It's not a return to the Wild West. Someone from the government will still answer the phone and send help if you call 911. What they're planning to do is replace their existing police force with a new citizen-centric model of public safety and law enforcement.

They need to break their Police Union. The blind defence these Unions provide for so many of these blatant offences are sickening.

This strikes home even here in Calgary, where our own force voted in that POS Les Kaminski. It’s systemic, and not exclusive to the States.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by accord1999

The more recent article notes though that the Camden force got much bigger, contradicting the first article:

The original article (when you click the link) actually says the same thing. Not sure how the quote got messed up. This is what the first article actually says:

So what’s happening in this city, which for many years has been deemed among the dangerous in America? Thomson, who took the helm of the Camden police force in 2008, says the biggest factor may have been the change in structure of the department itself. In 2013, the Camden Police Department was disbanded, reimagined, and born again as the Camden County Police Department, with more officers at lower pay—and a strategic shift toward “community policing.”

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

For clarification, because I've seen a ridiculous amount of misinformation about this over the past few days, what Minneapolis is proposing isn't anarchy and lawlessness. It's not a return to the Wild West. Someone from the government will still answer the phone and send help if you call 911. What they're planning to do is replace their existing police force with a new citizen-centric model of public safety and law enforcement.

And nobody has been able to define what this buzz phrase actually means.


How about instead of looking at silly concepts like defund the police, that they look at the balance of funding between enforcement arming, training and recruiting.


I think a big part of the issue with the police lies in recruiting and training. They are getting the wrong mix of people in and the training seems to be piss poor. You can also recalibrate funds in terms of policing the police.


But throwing out buzz words without meaning when we're talking about defunding the police is going to create worse situation and create greater levels of mistrust.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

And nobody has been able to define what this buzz phrase actually means.


How about instead of looking at silly concepts like defund the police, that they look at the balance of funding between enforcement arming, training and recruiting.


I think a big part of the issue with the police lies in recruiting and training. They are getting the wrong mix of people in and the training seems to be piss poor. You can also recalibrate funds in terms of policing the police.


But throwing out buzz words without meaning when we're talking about defunding the police is going to create worse situation and create greater levels of mistrust.

Read through the information here for what it means.

https://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision

Here is a nice summary

https://static1.squarespace.com/stat...o+Policing.pdf

There are policy ideas backed by research and data which have been shown to reduce both civilian and police harm. It includes your ideas on recruiting and training amoungst many others.

In the de-funding concept would be the cal to end broken windows policing

Only 5% of all arrests made in America are for violent crimes. Meanwhile, the vast majority of arrests are for low level offenses that pose no threat to public safety. Police departments should decriminalize or de-prioritize enforcement of these issues. And cities should begin scaling up the role of mental health providers, substance abuse counselors and other community-based responses to these issues that are more effective and that do not risk exposing communities to police violence.
• Decriminalize or de-prioritize enforcement of low-level offenses, including drug possession, public intoxication, loitering, jaywalking, disorderly conduct and prostitution.
• Establish enforceable bans on police racial profiling as well as bans on the use of consent searches, pretext stops and stop-and-frisk. (Examples of these policies include the
NYC Racial Profiling ban, NYC Stop-and-Frisk reform, Rhode Island consent search ban)
• Establish alternative responses to mental health crises and issues like homelessness and substance abuse, including by deploying first responser teams of mental health providers and community intervention workers to the scene to handle these issues instead of police officers. (Eugene Oregon "Cahoots" First Responder Program)
• Reduce police budgets in accordance with the reduction in policing that results from ending the enforcement of low-level offenses and redistribute these funds into scaling up community-based alternatives.

[jar_e]

Police are unfortunately the lowest and cheapest common denominator. The requests made for police are far from “law” related. Mental health, addiction issues, checks on welfare, etc. Patrol work has become this catch all and jack of all trades, master of none.

People want a mental health professional to deal with mental health calls? Sure. Enjoy paying a psych nurse/psychologist and all associates costs. Want a counsellor to help with a domestic situation? Sure, pony up with tax dollars. IMO, there is a TON of work that could be taken away from policing in a heartbeat that would eliminate a ton of unnecessary police interactions. Obviously training, etc is always an issue but unfortunately that requires funding as well.

In the last rounds of budget cuts with CPS, numerous multi agency units have been disbanded and just rolls to patrol. These things are complex and come at a cost.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Majority of Minneapolis city council is looking at dismantling the police force.



I'd expect the gun shops and manufacturers are looking at record sales over the next few weeks.

When they say dismantle the force has it been specified as exactly what that means? Could mean completely restructure it in a different form, not get rid of everyone entirely.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by accord1999

The more recent article notes though that the Camden force got much bigger, contradicting the first article:

Yeah, I'm not sure what the deal is there.

Here's a new story on the subject from this week, from the same writer as the original 2018 story: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ice-department

[getbak]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

The original article (when you click the link) actually says the same thing. Not sure how the quote got messed up. This is what the first article actually says:

It looks like they corrected the story because it has been getting shared around a lot today. When I first quoted it, it did say fewer officers.

At the bottom:

CORRECTION: This story has been amended to correct the change in officer count after the police department was disbanded and rebuilt. The new department had more officers, not fewer.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by jar_e

Police are unfortunately the lowest and cheapest common denominator. The requests made for police are far from “law” related. Mental health, addiction issues, checks on welfare, etc. Patrol work has become this catch all and jack of all trades, master of none.

People want a mental health professional to deal with mental health calls? Sure. Enjoy paying a psych nurse/psychologist and all associates costs. Want a counsellor to help with a domestic situation? Sure, pony up with tax dollars. IMO, there is a TON of work that could be taken away from policing in a heartbeat that would eliminate a ton of unnecessary police interactions. Obviously training, etc is always an issue but unfortunately that requires funding as well.

In the last rounds of budget cuts with CPS, numerous multi agency units have been disbanded and just rolls to patrol. These things are complex and come at a cost.

Yep, we need far greater funding in a number of mental health and addiction services, but as society starts to crumble with jobs being lost to automation and globalization taking over, things will only get worse and more reliant on policing. Which as you point out is also losing funding.

[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by jar_e

Police are unfortunately the lowest and cheapest common denominator. The requests made for police are far from “law” related. Mental health, addiction issues, checks on welfare, etc. Patrol work has become this catch all and jack of all trades, master of none.

People want a mental health professional to deal with mental health calls? Sure. Enjoy paying a psych nurse/psychologist and all associates costs. Want a counsellor to help with a domestic situation? Sure, pony up with tax dollars. IMO, there is a TON of work that could be taken away from policing in a heartbeat that would eliminate a ton of unnecessary police interactions. Obviously training, etc is always an issue but unfortunately that requires funding as well.

In the last rounds of budget cuts with CPS, numerous multi agency units have been disbanded and just rolls to patrol. These things are complex and come at a cost.

In the city of Pittsburgh, the police budget is over 18% of all public funding. The NYPD has a budget of $6 billion.

I've said again and again. The police have the budget to make these changes. Cities have the budgets to make these changes.

Police unions don't want to make these changes.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

In the city of Pittsburgh, the police budget is over 18% of all public funding. The NYPD has a budget of $6 billion.

I've said again and again. The police have the budget to make these changes. Cities have the budgets to make these changes.

Police unions don't want to make these changes.

That surprises me as anecdotally I see so many Canadian cities like Calgary starting officers at 70k give or take with full benefits and pension, while I see many examples in the US of officers being paid like walmart employees in the $13-$20/hr range.

[FlamesAddiction]

I don't think anyone endorses going from zero to rioting as the first step. But when peaceful protests are met with police violence and arrests, what other choice are people left with? Just give up?

A protest without disruptions and inconveniences is pointless. But Trump and the police state he is fostering are not allowing anything peaceful that would also be effective.

[jar_e]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

In the city of Pittsburgh, the police budget is over 18% of all public funding. The NYPD has a budget of $6 billion.

I've said again and again. The police have the budget to make these changes. Cities have the budgets to make these changes.

Police unions don't want to make these changes.

I mean 80-85% of police budget is salary. Is there an argument for relocating officers into roles? Sure. But it’s not like they have six billion to decide how to spend every year. I imagine like everywhere else every dollar is spoken for.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

And nobody has been able to define what this buzz phrase actually means.


How about instead of looking at silly concepts like defund the police, that they look at the balance of funding between enforcement arming, training and recruiting.


I think a big part of the issue with the police lies in recruiting and training. They are getting the wrong mix of people in and the training seems to be piss poor. You can also recalibrate funds in terms of policing the police.


But throwing out buzz words without meaning when we're talking about defunding the police is going to create worse situation and create greater levels of mistrust.

“Nobody knows what this means so here’s my issues with what it means.”

As entertaining as I’m finding the interpretations of “disband the current police department” as “COMPLETE ANARCHY AND CHAOS, MURDER IN THE STREETS, EVERYONE WILL NEED TO BE ARMED” it’s probably worth just looking at other examples where this has worked, examples that conveniently do centre highly around re-training and putting the right people in the right positions (instead of having an inexperienced beat cop deal with someone having a mental health crisis, for example). What it doesn’t mean, which is pretty clear, is chaos.

How about instead of calling the concepts silly, we wait to see what the concept is. Just a thought.

And hey, if you’re worried about the Minneapolis Police Department creating mistrust and terrible situations, boy have I got a couple weeks worth of news for you.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

And nobody has been able to define what this buzz phrase actually means.

It's not a buzz phrase. It's an actual policing model called Community Oriented Policing. It is a dramatic change from the Professional Policing model that relies on type A personalities who harbor authoritarian tendencies, and instead relies on more individuals with type B personalities who rely on empathy, communication, and cooperation as tenets to their practices. The community participates in the policing function and has much more influence and guidance on policy because they are partners in enterprise. The police are much more engaged with the community and reliant on the community to protect themselves by allowing them to be active participants in the whole mechanism.

How about instead of looking at silly concepts like defund the police, that they look at the balance of funding between enforcement arming, training and recruiting.

Defunding the police is a solid practice to counter corruption of power and authority in the service. It is better to burn it down, rely on the county sheriff for a year or two, and start a fresh with new leadership and a new force.

I think a big part of the issue with the police lies in recruiting and training. They are getting the wrong mix of people in and the training seems to be piss poor. You can also recalibrate funds in terms of policing the police.

Recalibrate funds? Speaking of a buzz phrase. That sounds exactly like defunding.

The police definitely have to start recruiting and training better. Stop recruiting ex-military. For the most part those recruits are broken and untrainable for the job of working in the civilian world. They come in and rely way too heavily on the training they received while they were "in" and are incapable of turning that training off. They are better to make systemic changes and start fresh.

Another really big problem with the police today is the militarization of the police services. Since the Patriot Act went into play state and local law enforcement agencies have been given access to military hardware and training. This is a tragic mistake as when you train someone on a system, and given them access to certain weapons, they are inclined to use that equipment and tactics when opportunity arises. There is no reason for a police service to be driving around in armored vehicles and employing urban warfare tactics against the citizens they serve. This is a massive issue that needs to be addressed.

More importantly, you have a full generation of leadership that have grown up in this environment, with these weapons and tactics, and this is what they know. These are the tools they rely upon and this is what they know. To make significant change you have to clean house of leadership from the past 20 years. Let that sink in. This is why burning it down and starting over is the most attractive scenario for many jurisdictions.

But throwing out buzz words without meaning when we're talking about defunding the police is going to create worse situation and create greater levels of mistrust.

Just because you don't understand the terms or how the process works does not mean they have no meaning. The whole idea behind defunding and replacing the service with a different model is to establish higher levels of trust. The current system is broken. Dramatic change is needed.

[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by jar_e

I mean 80-85% of police budget is salary. Is there an argument for relocating officers into roles? Sure. But it’s not like they have six billion to decide how to spend every year. I imagine like everywhere else every dollar is spoken for.

I'm not saying I know exactly how to reallocate funding, I just feel like if you have a budget in the billions, you can likely find ways to readjust that spending to allow for less confrontational and dangerous officer interactions. Have officers trained for conflict management, with specialized training to manage civilians with mental health issues, train them for deescalation, etc.

And given that it cost NYC nearly $70 million for NYPD lawsuits, you could probably use some of that money in other ways.

We constantly tell teachers to tighten their belts, we cut education funding, we cut community development funding, but we give police departments carte blanche.

Police are held to an entirely different standard than other public services.

[icecube]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Defund the police? And replace it with what? Anarchy?

You forgot to alternate between capital letters and small letters. Too bad CP doesn’t have a crayon font either.

Oh wait, you were serious. *facepalm*

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

In the city of Pittsburgh, the police budget is over 18% of all public funding. The NYPD has a budget of $6 billion.

I've said again and again. The police have the budget to make these changes. Cities have the budgets to make these changes.

Police unions don't want to make these changes.

The $89.3 billion Executive Budget is balanced and was crafted in light of immense fiscal hardship. Facing a $7.4 billion tax revenue hit across FY20 and FY21, the Administration achieved an unprecedented level of savings and took down reserves.


That's 6% of their overall budget.


The mental health aspect is interesting but it's expensive and requires buy in from the patient, which, can be very hard. Policing is just cheaper. That's not to say we should or shouldn't do it, but it's going require money.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

The mental health aspect is interesting but it's expensive and requires buy in from the patient, which, can be very hard. Policing is just cheaper. That's not to say we should or shouldn't do it, but it's going require money.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and wondering if this is a even problem that we CAN 'just throw money at'. I mean...it's not like we have tons of mental health professionals sitting around with nothing to do with their time wishing they had clients. Where are we going to find these folks who are going to go out into our communities to help folks in need, all hours of every day?