The philosophy behind the police not having guns in the UK is interesting, the police there do not want guns, it is felt giving a policeman a gun does two things, it changes the way he or she responds to a situation, tends to make them more reckless and prone to making fast decisions based on the sense of security the weapon gives them but it also changes how the criminal responds, if a policeman doesn't have a gun the police in the UK think there is less reason for them to be shot at, that by making the police less of a mortal threat it reduces the chances of the criminal escalating the violence towards the policeman.
Whether that is true I don't know
It seems like the US Police forces are caught up in an arms race.
One more reason tighter gun laws would be a good thing in the USA.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
Interesting that the discussion about defunding police looks at what tasks to cut back whereas the same discussion about doctors, nurses and teachers goes straight to pay, pension, and vacation. It’s like we respect one of those more than the others....even post-covid and Floyd.
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VPD runs several specialist cars, one for youth one for mental health, where the car has a policemen and a nurse or a social worker, the 'specialist' is there to do the talking and the policeman is there to protect them, I would think a massive increase in that kind of policing might help, when I worked in a jail I found the vast majority of Correctional Officers that were too heavy handed had no understanding of the prisoners back grounds at all, no insight into why the worst most troubled kid on the wing was the way they were, when I explained 'well you know he watched his mum get beaten to death 5 months age' or he was systematically raped by mums boyfriend until he was 7 their whole approach changed and generally made the correctional officers better at what they did and their job easier at the same time.
Actually that was the first post I’d made in months, and the post I was quoting certainly wasn’t the only anti-Union post made on the forum in that time. Are you sure you weren’t being sarcastic?
In any event I kinda get a kick out of the anti-Union posters who can’t be bothered to comment on the content of my posts and instead resort to these kinds of silly personal attacks. So thanks, you really showed me.
Nope, I genuinely enjoy your passion on the issue even though I don’t agree with it.
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I don’t have a link but Last Week Tonight was amazing. He goes off on Police Unions and the fact they’re complicit in all this. It’s not just the Police brotherhood that’s basically a criminal empire, it’s the Unions.
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You can say culture or unions all you want. One common thing all police protect are the rich, either Democrat or Republican. There are protests and rioting and people are supporting right now to look good. We see all the cute coporate BLM message but is anything going to change? Are the rich going to give this up or will it be more of the same. Again, all this protesting is great but it's all downtown. People aren't protesting and rioting into the suburbs where the rich are. Police is the only public service the rich need. They don't need public funded schools or hospitals. I don't see them giving that up freely. They will continue to use the police to hold the poor down.
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Last edited by GirlySports; 06-08-2020 at 08:00 PM.
I don’t have a link but Last Week Tonight was amazing. He goes off on Police Unions and the fact they’re complicit in all this. It’s not just the Police brotherhood that’s basically a criminal empire, it’s the Unions.
Here's the full video from the woman at the end of the episode. Any privledged white person who just can't possibly understand why people riot or loot in situations like these really needs to watch this
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You can say culture or unions all you want. One common thing all police protect are the rich, either Democrat or Republican. There are protests and rioting and people are supporting right now to look good. We see all the cute coporate BLM message but is anything going to change? Are the rich going to give this up or will it be more of the same. Again, all this protesting is great but it's all downtown. People aren't protesting and rioting into the suburbs where the rich are. Police is the only public service the rich need. They don't need public funded schools or hospitals. I don't see them giving that up freely. They will continue to use the police to hold the poor down.
This very little in this post that makes any sense.
The budget in your link is wrong, or education is covered elsewhere. Most US municipalities spend far more on education than anything else. Columbus education budget is 1.5 billion this year.
5x the police budget. Not 1%! https://go.boarddocs.com/oh/columbus...d=BCUFYM416BB3
It's pretty tough to have an impactful protest in sprawling suburbs, but we've had a quite a few around here. Even one where a kkk guy tried to drive through the crowd.
Last edited by nfotiu; 06-08-2020 at 08:48 PM.
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I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.
But enough is enough.
The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.
American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.
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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
The website above goes into a lot of detail with references to results in current areas of the country where it is applied. A major area to change focus would be Drug Policy and Mental Health.
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Interesting that the discussion about defunding police looks at what tasks to cut back whereas the same discussion about doctors, nurses and teachers goes straight to pay, pension, and vacation. It’s like we respect one of those more than the others....even post-covid and Floyd.
That’s because we think teachers, nurses and Doctors do a good job we just want to pay less. The fact it’s about pay and not job quality shows which one we respect more. People are discussing reducing the scope of police because people have concerns with how they execute their job
I don’t think your post ellipses comment makes sense
Are we sure it’s real? It nails every key word currently in use by those proposing to defund police. So it could be a former officer turned activist or fake.
Politicians reigning down on Police officers is ironic in a lot of these areas.
Many Police forces are forced to fund themselves thru asset forfeiture, and tickets. As politicians have slowly defunded them in a lot of areas. Or used other sexier ways of saying de-fund. To save on costs or spend otherwise.
Sheri Forde wrote a moving piece today on growing up in a racist family in a racist town near Brooks, Alberta, to marrying and having a child with a black man.
“This land used to belong to John Ware. They called him “###### John”…but the times being what they are, we can’t use that word any more”. Those were the exact words that came out of my father’s mouth as he proudly parked his truck at the edge of the coulee of his newly purchased ranch in Southern Alberta. These jarring words were among the first spoken by my father to my future husband, Duane Forde. Yes, that Duane Forde — 12-year CFL veteran, national television commentator, owner of two university degrees, son of a high school principal…and a black man.
...
One day in eighth grade, my son was riding the school bus home when a couple of white kids in the seat in front of him were listening and singing along to rap music on an iPod. Every time the N word came up, they would point tauntingly at my son. We, as concerned parents, addressed this issue with the school’s administrators, who expressed how “unfortunate” it was and assured us that they would deal with it. Their version of “dealing with it” didn’t require the kids to acknowledge any wrongdoing, let alone apologize. Their version of dealing with it didn’t involve a detention, let alone a suspension. Their version of “dealing with it” didn’t include any loss of bus privileges whatsoever…at least not for the offending parties. My son, on the other hand — the victim in this case — was moved to a different bus that picked him up and dropped him off farther from our house.
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I also grew up in a village near Brooks. I remember there being a large Sundanese community there, many of whom worked at the Lakeside meat packing plant.
My uncle was in the process of converting a man from that community to his religion, and for some reason I was with them at a Safeway in Brooks when a random redneck approached us and made racist remarks towards him. My uncle, despite his flaws with alcohol and abuse, got in the guys face and just said something like "this is my friend". I couldn't imagine growing up facing that hatred every day. They certainly did face this in small town Alberta when I lived there.
I don't know if de-funding the police is the answer, because it's obvious imo that the issues are systemic, and I don't think things are going to be fixed unless police forces are completely overhauled, including getting rid of a good number of officers, as well as completely revamping recruitment, training, and procedures.
Obviously that's a very complex thing to do and can't be done overnight, but it has to be done.
I mean, others in this thread have pointed out how police official statements are just often complete BS.
Cops in Minneapolis were caught purposely deflating tires on cars in parking lots. The police department response?
Quote:
Video and photo images posted on the news outlet Mother Jones show officers in military-style uniforms puncturing tires in the Kmart parking lot at Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue on May 30.
Images from South Washington Avenue at Interstate 35W also showed officers with knives deflating the tires of two unoccupied cars with repeated jabs on May 31. Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bruce Gordon confirmed that tires were cut in “a few locations.” “State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires ... in order to stop behaviours such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement,” Gordon said.
Deputies from Anoka County followed state orders and joined the patrol and also cut the tires on vehicles on Washington Avenue, Anoka County Sheriff’s Lt. Andy Knotz said.
