⬤ "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
⬤ "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
That's the problem with "defund the police". "We'd all love to see the plan", as John Lennon once put it.
Camden NJ did do this. They fired their entire police department and started over. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you just need to fire the bottom 1-10%. Maybe give randomly-chosen civil grand juries the power to fire cops. Not just for criminal offenses, just for being subpar at being a cop.
Except that's not really what happened. They fired the existing police force at the time but most were hired back (155 of the 220 that reapplied), and then they expanded to a complement of 401 officers (it was 370 before). Then they built a gigantic surveillance apparatus that tracks pretty much everything. So, more police, more surveillance.
Homicides have apparently declined 63% since they did this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_County_Police_Departmen...
>Thomson announced that officers would no longer be judged on how many tickets they wrote or arrests they made but on relationships they developed in the community and whether citizens felt safe enough to sit on their front steps or allow their children to ride their bikes in the street. Thomson told the New York Times in 2017 that "aggressive ticket writing" was a sign that officers weren't understanding the new department, saying "handing a $250 ticket to someone who is making $13,000 a year can be life altering." On new recruits' first day, they knock on doors in the neighborhood they're assigned to and introduce themselves.
If police "reform" amounts to a prohibition on juicing the stats a la The Wire, increasing the size of the force by 25-30%, and adding a measured and deeply considered surveillance regime then great.
Haven't seen any of the activists ask for that though.