Hacker News Reader

Comment by pixelpoet | Hacker News Reader

Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police.

I think it would be much more productive and realistic to have a really deep study of how policing in America is different from other countries, and what can be done to normalise it. America is pretty gun crazy, and that doesn't make a cop's life any easier. The flip side of that is that some gun crazy people become cops, and shoot people on their knees with weapons engraved with "you're fucked": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver

View on HN

> Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police.

This is a classic example of bad / misleading marketing on behalf of a reform movement. The "Defund the Police" movement has been poorly named. Yes, there are absolutely some folks on the extreme who truly want to disband the police and live in a place without police, but by and large, the major of people who are supporting this movement mean something else:

Defund == defund the CURRENT police organizational structure (militarized, etc.), reallocate funding for things like homeless support, domestic checks, etc. to other departments better suited to handle them, and KEEP a policing organization which is responsible for a much narrower scope of duty with a reformatted training program, etc.

It should be branded "Reboot the Police", not "Defund the Police"...

If that's really what it is, calling it "Defund" is like marketing Coke by calling it "Shitty Sugar Water" and then issuing a 10 page explainer that says "Shit not included".

It's not quite that, but it does sound like cutting all funding. How about "the police have too much money"? It's not an imperative statement though. "Cut police budgets" has the same problem as "defund the police." Any better slogans? Something snappy like "we send the EU £350 million a week. let's fund our NHS instead."

Something like "Rethink" is way better. You can't sell "Abolish" or "Defund" without explaining what comes next.

The demand to defund the police the claim that policing is too much of the budget. The demand to disarm the police us the claim that not all cops need to carry a gun. Neither of these is a demand to get rid of police.

> Defunding police because of police brutality is swallowing a spider to catch the fly. You do NOT want to live in a place without police.

False dichotomy.

You can defund the police, by not sending armed, militarized police to do the bullshit parts of their jobs, while still responding to violent incidents.

For 99% of police calls, you don't need an armed gunman to show up. Of the 1% that you currently do, more often than not, that armed officer won't even show up in time.

In the UK if police need guns on scene, they clear the area and call a specialized sharpshooter team.

At least where I live in the UK half the police have guns, they're just locked in their car 99.999% of the time. A lot more UK police have guns than most people think. Any car with a 5 point star (orange in my area) is an armed response vehicle.

Maybe US cops need to just leave their guns in their cars more often?

Example: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/HXD0AX/windsor-uk-27th-march-2017-...

Great idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com