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Comment by war1025 | Hacker News Reader

> It seems to me that reinvesting budgets spent on surplus humvees on more/better school counselors is a perfectly reasonable goal.

The level of "defund" people are advocating for varies pretty wildly.

Yes, reallocating budget is perhaps a reasonable thing.

A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though.

Oddly enough, I'd expect the widespread riots that have continued all summer long will have the exact opposite effect in the medium to long term.

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> A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though.

That's certainly what the conservative news outlets are reporting, but is it actually true?

Judge for yourself:

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

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/how-i-beca...

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minne...

The point of disbanding the Minneapolis Police Department (your 3rd link) is to work around police protections like minimum force size and union protections that are codified in the city's charter. The plan is to remove and replace, not just remove [0].

As for the other two - two is not a "non trivial number" regardless of who gives them a platform. This YouGov poll [1] shows 11% support (and ~20% support among blacks and hispanics) for abolishing the police as of June, which is a non trivial number. But framing it as a yes/no question loses a lot of granularity - I bet most of those people would advocate replacing the current police force with something that materially resembles a (more community-based, less militarized) police force.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racia...

[1] https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/vgqowgynze/econTabReport.pdf

Sure, I don't disagree. The implication though was that this was a story mainly/entirely coming out of so-called conservative media, so I posted a small sampling of links from other places.

Makes sense, thanks for clarifying.

Here's an article from the New York Times stating that defund actually means abolish. Do you consider them a conservative news outlet?

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

I would consider them a vehicle of capital that tends to do a terrible job covering these things. Conservative-adjascent.

> but is it actually true?

Perception is all that matters, and a large chunk of the country follows conservative media.

Unfortunately the country is doing a great job of lining up behind their preferred propaganda outlets rather than looking for truth. This is true for both Liberals and Conservatives.

We hear what we want to hear.

You were the one who brought it up to support your argument. Your argument doesn't seem to rest on what the public preception is but in what is actually happening.

So yes i would say the veracity of the statement is relavent here.

> A non trivial number of the protesters are advocating for complete elimination of the police though.

This categorically isn't defunding police, this is police abolition, and getting them confused is likely why you think it's a luxury belief because I fail to see what's luxurious about getting tear gassed every Friday/Saturday night or having the cops stand aside letting groups like the Proud Boys brutalize protestors and journalists. There's nothing luxurious about getting tear gassed for 3 months straight, it's a genuine struggle.

What's luxurious is you and I.

>There's nothing luxurious about getting tear gassed for 3 months straight

Why are you being tear gassed so often? I've been in US many times, for many months, I have never been tear gassed by police.

Have you gone to any protests?

I got teargassed holding my hands up and chanting. Twice.

Were you gassed before or after the protest was deemed an unlawful assembly?

If the protest was deemed an unlawful assembly you were participating in civil disobedience where a police response should be expected.

If not, you should file a civil rights lawsuit.

SPD routinely started firing into crowds prior to making any such announcements, including the first time I was hit. The second time, they announced it and then immediately started firing at the crowd.

Announcing an unlawful assembly is not carte blanche to dole out collective punishment or violence, either.

There's already lawsuits ongoing. They won't go anywhere in terms of reforms because individual cops are virtually always indemnified, difficult to identify in these situations (many covered their badge numbers and nametags with tape), and the city will absorb the cost without the department taking any real hits.

There are people who absolutely mean "defund the police" as "defund the police to 0:"

https://www.8toabolition.com/defund-the-police

Now, do they represent the majority of the people calling for defunding the police? I don't know. But it's not "categorically" different.

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