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Comment by slowin | Hacker News Reader

I know "defund the police" brings extreme ire from the neo-liberals to the conservatives in the US, but I don't know how you can look at this, and think anything else. These guys are decked out in fully blown war paraphernalia (despite roofers and garbage men being much more dangerous professions). They have drones, helicopters, humvees, all kinds of tactical war tech...

100% of that money should go toward investing in the community and it will provide better results, I'm sure it will lower crime too.

Has anyone ever called the police? I have, a couple of times. They did nothing and seemed to have sub-highschool education when I interacted with them.

I also knew police families growing up. Every single one of them was a raging racist. Something is dangerously wrong with policing in the US (we have the largest prison population in the world). Cutting their funding seems like a great step 1.

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A non-extreme position is that we do need the police… but not like this. We need systemic reform from the ground up, but punitive measures wouldn’t do that.

I agree, I think this is a conversation we need to be having with a focus on reallocating most of the money currently spent on police back to community infrastructure.

People hate crime than they hate any of these faults of police.

With modern surveillance technology, you could probably get rid of a fair number of cops, but you’d still need some muscle to actually enforce the law. The other option is regulatory penalties, but those tend to work best on middle-class people, not on the classes that commit physical theft and violence, which people hate most of all.

The argument for defunding the police (that I agree with) is that crime goes down when you address the root cause: poverty. The money spent on policing could more effectively lower crime by being used for building healthier communities.

I just don't agree that poverty explains a lot of crime, particularly in developed nations. There's probably some explained by legitimate need, but a rational person would probably find welfare and other benefits easier to use and less risky. Some is due to "poverty", but really envy for luxuries that others have.

I think the largest part is either due to being caught up in a bad social set, or straight up because they think crime is fine. Poverty doesn't cause this, at least not primarily - it's rather that personal characteristics such as lack of impulse control and high time preference lead to both poverty and a propensity to crime.

Poverty absolutely causes crime. Much crime is committed by the homeless for instance. People growing up in poverty also have many situations that can cause them to develop mental health issues.

> I know "defund the police" brings extreme ire from the neo-liberals to the conservatives in the US, but I don't know how you can look at this, and think anything else

In my area, the "Defund the Police" folks on the city council have directly caused a massive increase in overtime by actively thwarting efforts by the mayor and police chief to help improve work conditions and recruiting for the police force.

I look at this and see what I see when I look at any government agency: mismanagement and government worker unions with too much power.

> These guys are decked out in fully blown war paraphernalia

What "guys" are? I see cops every day and none of them are dressed like that.

> Has anyone ever called the police? I have, a couple of times.

Yep, they've been very responsive and helpful.

> I also knew police families growing up. Every single one of them was a raging racist.

Sounds like you surrounded yourself with bad people?

> In my area, the "Defund the Police" folks on the city council have directly caused a massive increase in overtime by actively thwarting efforts by the mayor and police chief to help improve work conditions and recruiting for the police force.

Paying cops overtime is not defunding the police. If they were defunded, they wouldn't be getting overtime.

> What "guys" are? I see cops every day and none of them are dressed like that.

I see cops standing around the mall in full body armor. In the 1980s they didn't even have bullet proof vests, now every cop looks like they're cosplaying Call of Duty.

> Yep, they've been very responsive and helpful.

I've never heard anyone ever say this. Also cops come after a crime has been committed. It's almost by definition useless to call them.

> Sounds like you surrounded yourself with bad people?

Sadly I didn't get to decide where I lived as a child and I lived in a cop heavy area, so yeah, I was surrounded by bad people but not by choice.

> "I've never heard anyone ever say this."

Congrats, now you have. Police aren't just there for crimes you know. Wounded animals, car accidents, health emergencies, etc etc etc.

> I see cops standing around the mall in full body armor.

A vest != "full body armor".

Again, you've just said you were surrounded by bad cops. I'm not. There's hundreds of thousands of them across the country. You seem to think that your experience is the one true experience.

> Wounded animals, car accidents, health emergencies, etc etc etc.

People with guns should not be handling any of these jobs. Invest in healthcare, animal control... great use of the defunded police budget!

> You seem to think that your experience is the one true experience.

The US has the world's largest prison population in the world, by far. It's not just my opinion, it's an objective reality. We basically live in police state.

Here you try to shift blame. Is it really the fault of the defund-the-police folks that a single cop gets almost 500k paid per year? How were this the case? Something is fundamentally broken if cops are paid so much more than regular people.

I don't live where cops get paid $500k a year. And you're acting like the exception here is the rule.

Again, where I live the city has struggled hiring police. The mayor and police chief have repeatedly agreed on plans to help recruiting and retainment. The city council has voted them all down, with the "Defund the Police" crowd having a slight majority on the city council. 100% of the people are of the same party btw, so this isn't a GOP vs Dem thing.

Because of that, they are understaffed, but we still need police to respond to crimes, so they rack up lots of overtime. I am arguing for cops to be paid less, not more!

Do they need to spell it out for you? 'Defund the Police' mentality in politicians means they don't try to improve police staffing -> number of police stays stagnant, even while population is increasing, crime may be increasing w/ the population -> the work doesn't magically disappear, each cop works more hours -> higher pay per-cop, especially with overtime rates Sure, you can dislike the specific numbers here in the bay area (your OP didn't say anything specifically about that btw), but the general principle is very easy to understand

That's not what defund the police means. It means cutting most or all funding from police departments and redirecting it toward crime lowering initiatives like universal childcare. It's 100% not "higher pay per-cop" or even keeping the number of police stagnant. It's letting them go altogether.

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