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Comment by yterdy | Hacker News Reader

And, for the record, this embodies what most people meant when they said, "Defund the police." Not, "Get rid of the institution of law enforcement." Instead, "Lower funding so that the remainder is forced to be put towards necessary tasks which the police are actually effective at," reducing their ability to engage in the kind of paid apathy or harassment the GGP describes, and freeing up funding for preventative social programs. If you believed it was the former, well, you are not immune to propaganda. And no one in their right mind, even on the ACAB side, wants police to go away entirely. You don't delete a containment board.

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You can't lower the funding.

1. They self-fund. All confiscated cash is for keeps. If they're not allowed to keep it by state law, they're welcome to call in feds who will do the bust and give them 80% as a finders fee. 2. They extort cities into not "defunding". They don't want it, and they play hardball.

> nd no one in their right mind, even on the ACAB side, wants police to go away entirely.

No one's ever accused me of being in my right mind, but I am asking quite seriously... what would happen if they did? I have reason to believe "not much, good or bad".

In the places where things are horrible, they'd remain horrible. When SF has no retail stores because they can't handle the shoplifting, that'd remain true. And in the suburbs where things are boring, things would stay boring. If your car is stolen, you'd still never get it back. If your bike was stolen, same. If your home was broken into, no one would be caught. And if you were murdered, your murder would go unsolved just like before.

And I don't know how anyone can not see that.

I just told you about a case of a murder in a suburb that was solved. Murderers are caught all the time in the US. Are you claiming that because police don't solve 100% of murders in the US, we should consider police fundamentally useless?

Some people are so privileged they think the police do nothing, the prisons are only filled with the wrongfully convicted, and crime isn’t really a problem.

That being said, I’m all for attempting the experiment, preferably far from me.

> Some people are so privileged they think the police do nothing

They do plenty of things. And I'm glad I'm privileged enough that I never suffer them doing things.

No, I started the conversation out talking specifically about "the things they do what we would actually want them to do".

This is because, were they gone, we wouldn't have to worry about them doing "the things they do that we never want done to ourselves, or to anyone else".

You're just confused. It's a confusing subject. You're not used to thinking about these things, no one wants you to contemplate them too carefully.

You must live a sheltered life to think this. Viewing an entire group of people as evil or inherently bad. People like you are the reason why progress in the area is so hard. You don't understand the reality of the job.

You actually need the sheltered life to not think this. You've only had the smallest interactions with them, in the circumstances where you had the slightest little misfortune to get a traffic ticket or where they were feeling generous that day.

It's bizarre. "Why can't that internet weirdo see that the police are awesome and society would fall apart if they were gone?" only works if you've not paid attention to what the police are doing because you get to be 50 miles away when they're doing it.

Are you a troll account? I can't imagine someone being so obtuse, this must be a joke. You continue to paint any pushback as some bad faith, exaggerated caricature in order to support your silly ideas. The fact of the matter is most people trust most police, that is evidenced in polls after polls, in every community.

The people who are most affected by reduced policing are the marginalized communities where crime is rampant.

He's correct that if you remove police from a well-off suburb not much will happen, because they mainly do tickets and domestics, and who really cares if a couple is fighting?

But when police are removed from neighborhoods where crime is an issue, it immediately and directly affects those who live there, and not in a good way.

Like in San Francisco, where the chief of police states publicly that having your window broken and your parked car trashed is just the price of living there?

Like when those big inner cities become food deserts because the retail stores start locking up the toothpaste and cans of soup behind glass cabinets a few months before they close down entirely and move out?

You think that those places could get worse than they are, and that the cops (who don't do anything to stop any of these crimes as they happen, or to deter them in any way because they're too busy concentrating on the drug war that brings in confiscated cash they get to keep) somehow prevent things from becoming even worse?

It's difficult to reconcile the idea that you live on the same planet that I do, and that (presumably) you have done so for many years.

Do you actually think most police aren't chasing thieves because they have to go bust some drug dealers in order to steal their cash?

Like, you really believe that? Please tell me you don't. This must be a joke.

SF basically told their police to stop going after small time thieves after 2020. The result has been mass mobs of stores and a huge increase in theft. They voted for these polices to raise the bar at which someone can be prosecuted, so police do nothing.

Jesus, do your research (and not on left wing Twitter lol)

I've made sarcastic posts before, go through my comment history.

But this is one of my most sincere postings, I'm being serious, and I'm trying to point out something that others have trouble discerning and recognizing.

I can see how it would be more comfortable for you if you could think me a troll.

> You continue to paint any pushback as some bad faith,

You should ask yourself why your good faith is so bad for everyone. "I'm just doing what I've always done" is lame.

I've taught my children from a young age that we must never come to the attention of the police. That they are not friends or heroes. That, should they show up and we can't just disappear back into the background... whatever bad things might have been happening are likely to get worse.

That if, for instance, someone is trying to murder them, they must handle it themselves. That if we are stolen from, our belongings are gone for good.

You though, you're welcome to continue to live in your illusions, and god help you if those ever melt away like fog on a sunny day.

> The fact of the matter is most people trust most police,

Most birds think the spider-tailed viper is a convenient meal. Their consensus in the matter isn't very inspiring though.

Lol you are a troll account. No other way. Thanks for the laugh!

I don't disagree with most of this. The answer is definitely not simply, "Lower the budget," least of all because, as you say, they have other sources of funding. The loss of LEOs on corners probably wouldn't do much for crime rates, either, true.

But I will also answer the question you posed (in the form of an unfinished short story from a few years ago that I dropped because I realized I was doing more telling than showing (also because it's kind of terrible):

https://pastebin.com/QW6nHTGr

Last paragraph is the most important part. Hence, "containment board."

Dude, nobody expects a random cop to spend a month trying to track down a $200 bicycle. That's not their job.

Your views are extremely myopic. Low-income neighborhoods around me are asking for MORE police because of how things have gotten. It's literally only suburban people who are insulated from crime that are saying dumb things like "defund the police"

This guy literally won't reply to me. I think there's something pathological going on.

If "defund the police" actually means "reform the police" then why not just say reform the police? And also why burn down police stations?

I think most people who want to "defund the police" plan to live in a place where the police haven't actually been defunded. "Defund the police" is a luxury belief.

Because people have been saying, "Reform the police," for decades, and what generally happens when a "reform the police" candidate gets in office is that the police get more money for "training." So, it's not an unconsidered slogan: the problem with "reform" was that it was resulting in wealthier law enforcement that was still corrupt. Time to be more explicit about what needs to happen: do not "reform." Defund.

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