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Comment by dorian-graph | Hacker News Reader

> “Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public”

Is this what people advocating for abolish the police are advocating for? Removal of health services? Isn't it literally the opposite, to have more and more varied health (and social) services, that people are advocating for?

"Abolish the police" is a scale where there is an extreme end where they may call for completely removing police from across the USA. From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.

The more common level I've seen is advocating for replacing parts of policing for more appropriate systems and services.

I'd call this article a straw-man argument, but there are those on the extreme end of the scale, apparently.

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> “Abolish the police” is a scale

Words have meaning though. No one on the political board is against reforms but “abolish”, “defund”, or “shut down” mean what it means.

Well, yes, duh? In what movements are there not scales attached to pithy lines? I even said:

> Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.

I don’t think it necessarily is a bad choice for some: many people who do use that word want what we call “policing” to be abandoned completely and replaced with something far less punitive in its reactions to emergencies.

Sure, and sometimes different people have different understandings of the meaning of a particular word. Someone can say "abolish the police" and mean that there should be no one with monopoly on violence. Another one can say "abolish the police" and refer the to current state/situation with the police in the US, and simply want the police to stop shooting people at sight and instead act like police in other countries, where they try to de-escalate instead of using their guns.

So while it's easy to try to put everyone in one bucket, it's hardy useful to do so in reality.

Right. Compare "Occupy Wall Street". Snappy slogan; lots of public visibility; many groups coming together under that umbrella; no coherent policy agenda; no lasting impact.

> "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

> "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abolish :

> to end the observance or effect of (something, such as a law) : to completely do away with (something)

"Let's move funds from police departments to public health infrastructure, and additionally, use remaining funding on accountability mechanisms"

doesn't exactly roll off the tongue at a protest.

"Reform public safety" works though

Has less punch, and we're not talking about restructuring fire departments.

Is the goal to be as polarizing as possible, or to persuade people on the fence to come over to the party?

How many people, at this point in the first four years of the Trump administration, are still on the fence?

Pretty much everyone who matters if you're trying to convince people of something.

I suspect we're well past the time of convincing and into the time of doing.

Is this post advocating for domestic terrorism? (i.e. committing acts of violence to instill fear in political opponents)

It is not, and I don't see where you're seeing that it is. People marching around chanting "defund the police" isn't domestic terrorism.

Domestic terrorism looks a lot more like rolling troops in camo into a city in unmarked vans to abduct citizens off the street to a location unknown to them.

I guess it was just that the way it was worded caught me off guard. It seems odd to commit to unilateral actions without consent, especially in the context of recent shootings/bombings/arson.

In the 7 or 8 swing states that matter, you think the election is already decided in each of them? I would expect a bunch more defectors if the economy is still in ruin by then, and a bunch of 'moderates' who end up deciding based on how recent foreign policy turns out.

Remember, most people are single issue voters. The rest of everything he does, doesnt matter.

Possibly, but this administration has been so polarizing that at this point, I think it's a lot more about getting like-minded people out of their chairs and to the polls than it is finding more like-minded people.

It's been year after year of polarizing decisions and rhetoric. At this point, basically everyone's dug in on how they feel about this direction for America.

So true. lol

However, many at the protest are meaning exactly what the words mean.

The dichotomy between what rolls off the tongue at a protest and what is an implementable policy is exactly the problem.

"Fund social services" does.

You've either been deceived, or are consciously playing the game: Abolish the police means exactly what they want it to mean: no more police.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16181/black-lives-matter

They want to replace the police with militias they control.

Yes, defunding means literally that, take money away. The way that governments keep doing to health care and schooling. However, typically you'll find that unlike those cases, the people advocating defunding have very good ideas of what to do with that money to help the communities better than the current arrangements. (Which... isn't hard. US policing is almost uniquely expensive and ineffective in the western world.)

"Shut down" means something too. The Royal Ulster Constabulary got shut down. Does it mean Northern Ireland doesn't have police? No, but it means it's got far fewer bad cops.

Abolish means something different again. Trying to pretend these are the same proposals is nonsense.

Why should an ambulance driver have to respond to a call in a dangerous neighborhood without a police escort? I wouldn’t. Fuck that, you don’t want police, good luck.

This comment I will call a straw-man argument.

It's a valid argument. No police, no protection. I wouldn't respond either.

Not sure if this could have been more perfectly executed to discredit the idea of abolishing/defunding the police, which in my understanding has always been proposed as a structured, intentional shift away from heavily militarized policing toward a system of robust social services. I've seen others use the language of divest/invest to make clear that it's a shift in resources. Reading a little bit of abolitionist literature (because this stems out of a much larger, ongoing conversation about the prison industrial complex), it seems even full abolitionists see it as a process that involves building new systems and drastically shifting the American mindset around punitive retribution.

Instead, you have a situation where the police to abandon a precinct all at once and not long after, far-right groups start showing up at night to stoke violence. Hard not to read that as intentional.

> Instead, you have a situation where the police to abandon a precinct all at once and not long after, far-right groups start showing up at night to stoke violence.

Do you have any references to support that? It flies in the face of everything I've observed so far but in all sincerely, given the extreme polarisation in how these events are being reported by seemingly all parties, I'd not be at all surprised to find I've missed something important and would appreciate a source to clear things up for me.

> "Abolish the police" is a scale where there is an extreme end where they may call for completely removing police from across the USA. From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.

It's not "Abolish the police" by itself. The same people also say "All Cops Are Bastards" and "Policing is a racist institution". It would be unreasonable to take these words as supporting anything other than doing away with police entirely.

> I'd call this article a straw-man argument, but there are those on the extreme end of the scale, apparently.

I too found it hard to believe that such people exist, but my own wife said she agrees with the statement "I believe police cause overall more harm than good in the USA, and it would be better to have no police at all than policing in its current form."

And yes, she believes that all police, except for investigating detectives, could be replaced by social workers and the like. Many of her friends believe similarly. So it isn't a straw man, these people really exist.

As you suggest, "defunding the police" is a motte and bailey argument, in that "defund" CAN equal abolish, if the defunding is 100%. On the other hand, a 5% shifting of funds would be a minor reform. So advocates, if they are unscrupulous -- and not all of them are -- can simultaneously advocate for a radical change in policing and assert it will have modest impact, by equivocating on the meaning of the word "defund".

>>>And yes, she believes that all police, except for investigating detectives, could be replaced by social workers and the like. Many of her friends believe similarly. So it isn't a straw man, these people really exist.

Show them content like this and ask them how a "social worker" is supposed to handle it (graphic warning?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRF4yOIY00I

For those of you who were not here when this happened: The police decided not to respond the actual 911 calls in or _near_ the CHOP (the auto shop was a block _away_, not within) was a retaliatory tactic they employed out of spite. Knowing full and well that it would look bad on the protesters and those who created the CHOP. Denying health services and aide is NOT what people who are advocating for defunding the police are advocating for.

I agree, this is absolutely a straw-man argument.

>>From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for.

The problem is a large number of people calling for for abolishing the police do not have an actual plan on what to replace them with, saying things like "Something will rise up to replace it"

There is also a over riding belief that criminality is 100% related to systemic racism and poverty which is not really the case, Some of it is sure and we should address that with reform but a large part of criminality is not and abolishing the police is not a solution to that crime

We need massive reform and demilitarization of the police, and abolish police unions, but abolish police is crazy town

I think you're falling for the straw man here. A quick Google of the phrase yields many nuanced results with plans that sound very much in line with your prescriptions:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/12/21283813/g...

I dont think I am, and reading thought the that story reinforced my statement "There is also a over riding belief that criminality is 100% related to systemic racism and poverty " as most of the commentary is about defunding the police and replacing that with some kind of social programs (aka socialism) under the belief that the reason people commit crime is solely do to economic hardship

There belief is if we give people free stuff they will stop harming people. I disagree with this position

We can eliminate militarization of police and decriminalize society with out adopting socialism

I am 100% pro-capitalism and libertarian solutions to the problem, the "Abolish Police" movement seems to be just a reformation of democratic socialism under a new banner

This is incredible stretching + straw man to frame this as a political boogey-man (socialism).

Do you consider EMT's socialist? They are non-police first responders. Why not make more departments like this to address the massive over-jurisdiction of police responsibility?

>>This is incredible stretching + straw man to frame this as a political boogey-man (socialism).

It is not through when you expand the inquiry to writings and positions the same advocates and politicians have on other issues and topics. A clear pattern emerges .

>>Do you consider EMT's socialist?

That depends, since there is a large number of private EMT services who bill for their services directly no that would be socialism

For government run Police, Fire and EMT service that boils down to how the funding for those services are collected on if they are socialist in nature or not. Here we would get in a public finance debate.

That discussion however is not really at the heart of the matter, police respond to situations where there is an eliminate of physical danger, this includes medical emergencies. This is often desired by the EMT's themselves because situations people suffering a medical or metal issue can often turn violent.

Again the solution IMO is not eliminating the police from responding to these calls, but to provide proper tools, training and resources to he police to understand the situations better. If you want to send along a medical person or a counselor that is something worth looking into but I do not believe replacing the police as the first line respondors defending the police, abolishing the police, or is the solution here

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