Some sure. Certainly not all. I don't even think most. If I'm wrong, then the meme itself needs better phrasing.
The meme lives in the gray space of non-specifism, where every person for or against imposes their preferred meaning
If you go to a somewhat authoritative source such as https://blacklivesmatter.com/defundthepolice/ then you get
> We call for a national defunding of police. We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive.
But what does it mean to have “resources to … survive [and] thrive”? I would argue it implies a rethinking and rebuilding of policing based on the needs of the community, like GP claims. Another leftist might think it’s the anarchical approach. It’s vague, more or less intentionally
The answer, like to most of these kinds of issues, is to avoid arguing against internet memes. Have a debate with a singular person on an agreed upon position, or don’t debate at all.
An arguer conflates two positions that share similarities,
one modest and easy to defend.. and one much more controversial....
The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged,
they insist that they are only advancing the more modest position.
It seems like the right in the USA are being deliberately pedantic about the phrase "defund the police", to make it sound like those on the left are crazy.
The left hold up the opinions of the far right/right lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the right is"
The right hold up the opinions of the far left/left lunatics and say "see? this is how insane everyone on the left is"
The moderate left and the moderate right have far more in common with each other than they do with the extremes at either end, yet somehow each is convinced that the other is represented most accurately by the extreme edge.
Just because you're a centrist on <an arbitrary political spectrum, that spans a single country's politics> doesn't mean that the things you believe in aren't crazy or horrifying.
We give them absolute power over life and death, and zero accountability. The justice system is in theory, supposed to be a leash on that dog, but in practice, it's the other way around.
In particular, it stands to reason that increasing spending for social services isn’t going to pay dividends for many years, but following policing reductions, crime surges immediately and significantly. So again, the rest of us are puzzled by the folks who emphasize “depolicing” rather than some more reasonable policy of “increase social spending while also maintaining a robust police element, at least for the short term”.
How do police prevent homicides? Are people really out there thinking "the police department is 10% smaller than last year (but has a larger budget), I bet I could off my neighbor and get away with it"?
They don't, they clean up after the fact, and convict someone for ~50% of them. Unless it's one of their own that's responsible, then the entire country needs to riot for a week, before anyone even thinks of pressing charges.
A better explanation is that underlying social safety nets have been ripped out from under people for the past couple of years putting way more people in rough, quasi legal situations to get by that make them trend towards extralegal forms of dispute resolution like personal application of violence. Additionally suicides count as a homicide (it's technically a person killing a person), which has made the numbers go up over the past couple years.
Misdemeanor arrests, searches, and foot patrols, etc. See my various other comments for more details and links.
> A better explanation is that underlying social safety nets have been ripped out from under people for the past couple of years
These effects predate the pandemic and correlate with the BLM protests in time and space (crime surges immediately after and in the vicinity of BLM protests). That said, I don’t doubt the pandemic contributed since 2020.
That doesn't track though. _Why_ would misdemeanor arrests result in less murders. I don't agree with Charles Fain Lehman's analysis in your post, and believe that while he thinks that because violent crime arrests when misdemeanors dropped that somehow proves that police aren't to blame I see the opposite in that data. As I argued above, that says to me that a drop in public acceptance of the role of police and the justice system leads to self directed dispute resolution, which more often turns violent. His gotcha that's supposed to be a nail in the coffin of this argument appears to me to actually be a point in favor of it.
> These effects predate the pandemic and correlate with the BLM protests in time and space (crime surges immediately after and in the vicinity of BLM protests). That said, I don’t doubt the pandemic contributed since 2020.
The idea that cities reaching a boiling point in distrust of the justice system, followed by no meaningful reform continue down the road of self directed and often violent dispute resolution is consistent with the model I've presented.
That's an unanswered question (crime is complicated), but there are probably many factors, not least of all that people get arrested for misdemeanors and then they're found with felony amounts of drugs or weapons and thus removed from the street.
> I don't agree with Charles Fain Lehman's analysis in your post
It's not his analysis, he's reporting on the findings of studies.
> while he thinks that because violent crime arrests when misdemeanors dropped that somehow proves that police aren't to blame I see the opposite in that data.
He doesn't profess that belief in the article.
> As I argued above, that says to me that a drop in public acceptance of the role of police and the justice system leads to self directed dispute resolution, which more often turns violent.
The article posits that as a factor as well (specifically that loss of trust in policing leads to less cooperation from the community).
> The idea that cities reaching a boiling point in distrust of the justice system, followed by no meaningful reform continue down the road of self directed and often violent dispute resolution is consistent with the model I've presented.
"Your" model also requires us to believe that the evidence of decreased proactive policing is merely a coincidence, which is hard for me to stomach. I don't doubt that the loss of trust contributed, but I only think this is the "fault" of policing as an institution to the extent that the activist and media narrative is accurate (which is to say, "not very").
Being in jail doesn't stop homicides. In fact they have more homicides than the general population.
> It's not his analysis, he's reporting on the findings of studies.
It's both. If you read the studies, while in the abstract they purport to establish a causal link, they don't back that up in their methodology. Lehman combines this into a greater analysis.
> He doesn't profess that belief in the article.
He professes a causal link between police _protests_ and increased homicides, finishing his article with "But it does give support to those who propose a relationship between 2020’s wave of anti-police protests and the ensuing homicide wave still sweeping the country—and to those who believe that continued hostility to the police will lead to more bloodshed."
> The article posits that as a factor as well (specifically that loss of trust in policing leads to less cooperation from the community).
While calling out protests specifically as being causal wrt to homicide rate.
> "Your" model also requires us to believe that the evidence of decreased proactive policing is merely a coincidence, which is hard for me to stomach. I don't doubt that the loss of trust contributed, but I only think this is the "fault" of policing as an institution to the extent that the activist and media narrative is accurate (which is to say, "not very").
No, police not doing the basics of their job while still overall increasing their budgets, and particularly arbitrarily and capriciously enforcing the law would be a major factor in loss of confidence in the justice system. I'm not saying that it's a coincidence; I'm saying that it's part of the model. If you can't rely on police to respond reported crime, then you start handling disputes person to person. Meanwhile with budgets continuing to increase _and_ police not doing their jobs, any semblance of social safety nets disappear. That's the point of "defund the police", noticing that they refuse to do the basics of their job, and in fact the goal of using them as a catchall for all sorts of social services failed, so put that portion of the budget back into more productive uses.
So politicians in particular get very good at making the other side look extremely insane, evil and stupid.
The better they are at that (lying) the better they do in elections.
So...the politicians who would be good for us tend to have integrity and strong personal beliefs about lying, and so tend to do poorly in elections.
Which leaves us with everyone else.
Perhaps they didn’t literally mean “do away with all police”, but no one was very explicit about what the slogan actually meant. And when the media tried to rationalize it as a metaphor (because it was so damaging to Democrats), many leftists corrected them, clarifying that they literally wanted police abolished.
In whichever case, we’re presently suffering the effects of these anti-police protests as homicides have surged to levels not seen in 30 years (whether due to official “depolicing” policies or soft pressure for police to minimize proactive policing or due to reduced cooperation from the community or so on). Whether they literally meant “no police” or some other policy, it’s pretty clear that all of this leads to more crime, and the communities who pay are predominantly poor and/or minorities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
They are under no such requirement as shown by the citation.
Your original full claim
> Unless your job requires you to forcibly intervene between armed, violent offenders and their victims, I don’t see how this is relevant.
doesn't hold water when police are also not required to forcibly intervene between armed, violent offenders and their victims.
That is the kind of thing the police force was designed to handle. Sometimes killing someone is the right thing to do when your job is dealing with situations like that.
https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-pr...
"In fiscal 2020-2021, the Austin police budget was $292.9 million, down from $434.5 million the previous year. The City Council slashed $31.5 million directly from the police budget last year.
It also put $121.7 million in a reserve fund that was intended to 'decouple or reimagine some public-safety functions' from the police department but which ended up funding police operations, says Alicia Dean, a spokesperson for the city. The City Council also canceled three cadet classes and cut 150 officers from the budget last year, says City Councilor Mackenzie Kelly, an outspoken supporter of the police."
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/austin-texas-defund-the-police-...
The homicide rate went from 4.7 to 6.2. Yes, I know that doesn't prove causation. But if the homicide rate is going up 32% year over year I want more cops on the street not fewer.
> whether due to official “depolicing” policies or soft pressure for police to minimize proactive policing or due to reduced cooperation from the community or so on
Note these findings regarding the St. Louis police department following the shooting of Michael Brown:
> In the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, self-initiated arrests fell 62 percent. Similar declines are seen across nine out of 11 categories of self-initiated activities, including foot patrol (down 82 percent) and pedestrian checks (76 percent). Notably, the decline in arrests is concentrated among misdemeanor arrests (more discretionary than felonies) and among arrests of blacks (rather than whites). This reduction in police activity persisted for at least the next two years. In the same period, the city experienced a significant rise in homicide and aggravated assault.
https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-pr...
Crime does rise and fall over time and the reasons are notoriously complex and difficult to understand as it's happening. The police are certainly confident that anti-police sentiment leads to rising crime, but I don't have any reason to accept that evaluation right now.
1. Crime rarely surges so dramatically as it has in the last 6 years. Note that before 2014, crime had been trending down consistently for decades.
2. Homicides spiked all over the country following major BLM protests.
3. The counties with the largest BLM activity saw the largest decreases in proactive policing and commensurate increases in homicides.
How much more evidence is required (and how many additional thousands need to die) before we get folks on board to reverse these trends?
My recollection is that there have been almost no depolicing policies actually made in effect. Not even the Minneapolis complete dissolution of the police by whatever whatever time. Several big cities even increased their police funding. The argument that homicides have surged because of depolicing first needs to prove that depolicing actually happened.
I would instead argue that an increase in homicides might be caused by an decrease in the general wellbeing of people when dealing with a pandemic. We're getting to the point where many people either know someone who has died or knows someone who knows someone who has died.
> In the immediate aftermath of Brown’s death, self-initiated arrests fell 62 percent. Similar declines are seen across nine out of 11 categories of self-initiated activities, including foot patrol (down 82 percent) and pedestrian checks (76 percent). Notably, the decline in arrests is concentrated among misdemeanor arrests (more discretionary than felonies) and among arrests of blacks (rather than whites). This reduction in police activity persisted for at least the next two years. In the same period, the city experienced a significant rise in homicide and aggravated assault.
> The multicity analysis shows a similar pattern. Cheng and Long assume that a Ferguson Effect will be more common in cities with higher black population shares, so they compare those in the top quartile of black population against the other cities as a control. They identify the same phenomenon as in St. Louis: the blackest cities saw larger declines in arrests relative to those with smaller black populations, driven by a decline in misdemeanor arrests, and a simultaneous large (10 percent) increase in homicide.
> Both studies not only identify a decline in police activity and an increase in homicide after a high-profile incident but also argue that the nature of the decline in activity supports a “public scrutiny” mechanism for the effect. In particular, a drop in police activity for minor offenses drives the overall policing pullback. This fact supports a theory (as articulated by Premkumar) whereby officers reduce arrests that they deem “less important” in order to minimize public contact. That differs from a competing theory under which a loss of police “legitimacy”—which, in turn, reduces community engagement with the cops—drives the Ferguson Effect. If the competing theory were borne out, the study should have found reductions in arrests for offenses of all kinds.
https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-connects-police-pr...
I'll concede that it's a small minority, though.
The problem is that it's a really stupid slogan. A natural, unbiased reading of it says something that 95% of the supporters don't mean. That's not the fault of the people interpreting it, it's the fault of those saying it.
Importantly, and I do think this is worth pointing out, those people have zero political power & zero input on any budgets, legislation, etc. Situations like those described in the article are actually happening.
It seems like the right in the USA are being deliberately pedantic about the phrase "defund the police", to make it sound like those on the left are crazy.
Conservatives have been gaslighting the electorate for as long as I've been a voter. This is no different.
Why do you think the New York Times was publishing opinions that you believe were only held by 3 people?
You of course also remember that when the New York Times published the opinion piece titled "Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops" arguing that the military should be sent in to stop riots and looting, there was a massive backlash and the editor for the opinion page resigned. This even though the opinion expressed by Tom Cotton was fairly popular.
I would think if the New York Times was publishing opinions that had no popular support at all, there would have been a backlash about that, wouldn't you?
"For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson called out the military to disperse mobs that prevented school desegregation or threatened innocent lives and property. This happened in my own state. Gov. Orval Faubus, a racist Democrat, mobilized our National Guard in 1957 to obstruct desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and called in the 101st Airborne in response. The failure to do so, he said, 'would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy.'
More recently, President George H.W. Bush ordered the Army’s Seventh Infantry and 1,500 Marines to protect Los Angeles during race riots in 1992."
What Cotton suggested is expressly permitted by an act of Congress and that act has been invoked many times over more than two centuries. It's been used half a dozen times to suppress riots since the 1960's. Not one of those actions has ever been found to be unconstitutional.
Second, if Tom Cotton and only two other people in the entire US want habeas corpus suspended, than no, I would not want the Times to print an opinion column suggesting that. A poll had 52% of Americans agreeing with sending in troops to stop the riots. If Tom Cotton and 52% of Americans want habeas corpus suspended, then I think a paper that calls itself the "paper of record" is exactly where that case should be made.
Just as it would have been appropriate to make the case in those opinion pages for why we would send the 101st Airborne into Little Rock and Detroit, the 197th Infantry into Baltimore, the 1st Marines Division into Los Angeles, and military police to the Virgin Islands.
Like, do any research at all into the history of criminal justice, you will find we live in a very contingent situation now, one that has other options.
Like, do you all really think that police have been around forever? Do you really all think we would be violent state-of-nature monsters without them? That civilization is assured by them? Are we really so historically shortsighted that we see the existence of police as exactly corollary to law and order?
Can we imagine for a second that just because something is sufficient doesn't mean that it is necessary? Can we think about this rationally at all?
And then look at cost of the status quo... I don't know, its just so sad this is how we talk about it: the police (specifically, its unions/fraternities) truly have won the cultural battle. Doesn't even matter if there are some radicals out there, because the only way we can talk about these things means they will always win.
Call those people naive if you like, but "crazy" is just disheartening to hear for people who are mostly just angry and wanting it to stop.
Also, you're throwing up a lot of extreme straw man arguments like that's what is being said.
> Like, do you all really think that police have been around forever?
I believe in dinosaurs, so no.
> Do you really all think we would be violent state-of-nature monsters without them?
No. I think more people would be without them than with them. Even if the difference between the two is 1%, that's a pretty serious change for the worse.
> That civilization is assured by them?
No, it's assured by faith in the system. Much like money. If everyone decided the law didn't matter there is very little the police force could do about that.
> Are we really so historically shortsighted that we see the existence of police as exactly corollary to law and order?
No. I certainly don't believe that. It's a component, but a small piece of the pie.
> Can we imagine for a second that just because something is sufficient doesn't mean that it is necessary?
Sure. Totally on board for that. It is sufficient to drive a monster truck to get where I want to go, but certainly not necessary. Not really a hard thing to imagine.
I can run counter to basically every argument you lay and still believe that a police force is necessary without there being any logical inconsistency in my beliefs...
> And then look at cost of the status quo
Look at the cost of social security. Look at the cost of public school. There is so much tangible and intangible value locked up on those institutions that if anyone said "we can do better" you'd be hesitant to throw them out whether or not you agreed.
> the police (specifically, its unions/fraternities) truly have won the cultural battle
it's not a culture battle. We're in an equilibrium, and people are rightfully hesitant to leave it behind for promises of utopian glory. It's fine to think there is a better way, and it's fine to test that out. Looking at the places running such tests, the 'better ways' so far proposed are far short of actually better.
> Call those people naive if you like
It's a good term for how I see it.
> but "crazy" is just disheartening to hear for people who are mostly just angry and wanting it to stop.
It's subjective. If I saw someone saw off their own foot, I'd call them crazy. If I see someone do something, or advocate doing something, that I think would be extremely damaging, I call that crazy. It's not crazy to want to do better, it's not crazy to be upset that things aren't getting better fast enough. Only another set of crazies are calling that crazy.