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Comment by dx87 | Hacker News Reader

This shouldn't be a suprise. Some people like to pretend that higher crime rates in some areas is strictly due to higher police presence, but it's clearly not the case. I remember after the protests in Baltimore from FreddIe Gray, the police were told to have a much smaller presence, and not do as much proactive policing. It wasn't long before the people who actually live in those neighborhoods were complaining about the increasing crime rate due to a smaller police presence.

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Well you can't just remove police and think everything is going to be okay.

The police abolitionist movement is calling for removing untrained, armed, and oftentimes extremely racist individuals from the streets and replacing them with social programs, housing, education, healthcare.

You can't just do 10% of the ask here and then be surprised when shit doesn't magically get better.

There are many people who are apologists for the police abolition movement (or whatever it should be called).

I’m sorry but it is quite obvious that a whole lot of people carrying around ACAB (all cops are bad) and “defund the police” signs don’t go along with the this-is-what-they-actually-mean explanations. They mean to have their message taken at face value.

I saw myself spraypainted on a Minneapolis building “actually defund the police”. it is hard to reinterpret all cops are bad as anything but the obvious, and it is quite popular.

ACAB stands for All Cops Are Bastards. Urban Dictionary is always a good source for this kind of thing: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ACAB

Urban Dictionary can say what it wants, I saw many signs in protests, in media coverage of protests, and on social media with All Cops Are Bad and zero with Bastards. Both in first hand experience seeing with my own eyes the messaging people who are saying it and through various means of showing someone else's message.

It's definitely All Cops Are Bastards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C.A.B.

Everything is vastly more complex than those signs. Sure that's the effort and motivation, end goal of protesters but that isn't a plan to accomplish it. Protest leaders and linked organizations need to draft those plans and lobby local/state/federal officials to pass such legislation and create change via compromise. At some point that change will satisfy the bulk of protesters and the movement will slow until momentum is built back up.

It's a compromise and likely won't come easy or fast given current federal government setup. But other than generational change (ie old people who are heavily conservative die off so younger, more liberal people become the voting base) likely combined with removing money from Us politics (no easy fight there) I doubt it will happen soon.

>replacing them with social programs, housing, education, healthcare.

Unfortunately, this part is extremely vague and is missing a track record. So how it ends up in the real human world, is police funding gets cut and the funds get diverted into corrupt politicians' pockets. Like the Chicago mayor that successfully reduced police funding only to have a separate police detachment placed near her home.

> Unfortunately, this part is extremely vague and is missing a track record.

Literally any other first country has these, how is this vague and missing track records ?

Would it be accurate, then, to say that the "police abolitionist movement" does not want to abolish the police? If that is the case, why call it the police abolitionist movement? It seems like all that does is generate ill-will from people who are potential allies.

Re-read the person you're responding to, I think you'll see your response makes no sense. They didn't say "replacing them with nicer cops", they said: replacing them with social programs, housing, education, healthcare.

None of these require cops. Yes, you likely need some form of police force for the very, very edge case scenarios where the others won't do, but abolish police means abolish the police.

Unless you assume all cops are "untrained, armed, and oftentimes extremely racist individuals", simply removing those who are would not "abolish the police", which is why I asked.

Police abolitionist is about two things.

* Dissolving existing police departments and making officers reapply as a way to eliminate the worst offenders that are currently protected by the blue line of silence.

* Re-establishing the police as a much smaller operation where their duties are limited to situations where deadly/coercive force is needed.

Things that would become police “adjacent” and would be handled by other government officials.

- detective work

- calls about the homeless

- all non-violent offenses like noise complaints, property disputes, drug possession, moving violations, shoplifting, etc.

The hope being that many people who are currently officers would actually rather be part of the non-violent operation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

You cannot replace the police with social programs. What are you going to do when somebody breaks into your house, assaults you, robs you, kills someone? Call your social worker?

Canada had an experiment of removing policing for just one day. It did not go well at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot

> Police were motivated to strike because of difficult working conditions caused by disarming FLQ-planted bombs

Montreal in 1969 was on the brink of civil war. The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) was basically the Canadian version of the IRA. Having police on the streets wasn't enough. The situation continued to escalate until the Canadian Armed Forces were deployed to police Montreal in 1970.

I don't think that time and place is representative of any Canadian city today. As such, it's rather hard to draw any conclusions from your example.

What are the police going to do? You’re already robbed/dead.

Police abolition is asking for a change to the socioeconomic systems that lead people to rob in the first place. The threat of police locking you up surely isn’t doing it.

They will arrest the perpetrator. Or maybe they will get to you in time, if they are close enough.

> The threat of police locking you up surely isn’t doing it.

Because the criminals keep getting released, especially for political reasons.

Increased policing does work. Crime rates have been going down.

Decreased policing doesn't work - crime rates go up, just see what's happening in NYC, Chicago, Seattle.

> They will arrest the perpetrator.

Maybe. Yet this crime still happened, in spite of all the perps got arrested before.

> Or maybe they will get to you in time

Unlikely.

> Because the criminals keep getting released, especially for political reasons.

Like most states, NY, IL, and WA have each eliminated parole for violent offenders, so that’s not it.

You’re going to have to be more specific with your stats. Crime rates continue to decrease in those cities - even in Chicago. The 2016 spike in homicides is an interesting topic if you care learn the driving forces behind it. There wasn’t a mass release of criminals as you suggest, but there was a series of gun laws invalidated by the courts.

> Yet this crime still happened

Or it might not, because the prison is a deterrent.

> You’re going to have to be more specific with your stats.

People shot in NYC: up 206% compared to last year.

https://abc7ny.com/nyc-crime-increase-in-violence-gun/630297...

https://www.amny.com/police-fire/crime-stats-show-that-shoot...

Chicago: murders more than double compared to 2019

https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/08/03/chicago-sees-its-mos...

https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-crime-shootings-weekend-viol...

Seattle's CHAZ/CHOP zone (the left-wing socialist anti-police project, "summer of love", as the mayor describes it): 525% rise in crime.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1073428/chop-zone-seattle-rise-...

Strange that in all those NYC/Chicago links, none of the police quoted blamed the surge on the release of criminals from prison, a lack of policing, or a lack of police resources.

If your focusing on policing, you're missing the point. The point is to direct funding away from enforcement and towards prevention.

Haven't democrats been trying this for decades? Throwing tons of resources at the black communities? And yet their crime rates are still sky-high.

Crime rates across the board have dropped by huge amounts in the past 30 years. The recent uptick hasn't gotten us anywhere near the crime rate of the 90s. It's difficult to attribute any particular program as having been helpful or not but we know that a lot of fundamental issues like health care and wages are still very problematic. Most anti-poverty programs are means-tested and go to more white citizens than minority. It's hard to say why crime gas dropped precipitously in NYC but not as much in Chicago. But we do know that aggressive police tactics like Stop and Frisk have been proven to not be part of that success.

How do we know that? Anecdotally I am friends with leaders in my local police department and they think proactive policing works.

When NYC ended Stop and Frisk, crime kept going down. It's been studied and there's many potential factors but no conclusive answers.

That has more to do with access to abortion and lower water lead levels than anything else.

The thing is they need more support for enforcement. The complaints you get from police are that a big chunk of the job is just racing from one call to the next, and flat out ignoring calls that don’t seem important enough because they’re forced to triage.

and yet we see budgets spent on tanks and assault rifles instead of personnel and training?

The military equipment is generally dumped on departments for low or no cost because the actual military didn’t need it any more.

MRAPs don’t drive and maintain themselves for free.

Slogans are no place for subtleties and pragmatism. Slogans build a crowd, but they dumb-down the conversation.

Speakingof dumbing down, why didn't you addressed any of the points made in the post you're replying to,and instead chose to go on a non-sequitur?

None of that was a slogan.

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