zlacker

>>pseudo+(OP)
The last 40 years of austerity politics in the US have starved the beast [0] so greatly that the only remaining public infrastructure that functions as it's intended to is policing. For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD.

For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc. It's something I've thought about a lot in the last few weeks.

On top of that, there is some research that suggests communities rate smaller police forces better than larger ones [1].

> To test this, Ostrom worked with the Indianapolis government and her students to measure the quality of policing. Surprisingly, against common assumptions, they found that the smaller the police force, the more positively residents evaluated the police services they got.

> "Increasing the size of [the police force] consistently had a negative impact on the level of output generated as well as on efficiency of service provision… smaller police departments … consistently outperformed their better trained and better financed larger neighbors.”

> But why did this happen? To explain this, Elinor Ostrom argued that in small communities with small police forces, citizens are more active in community safety. Officers in smaller police forces also have more knowledge of the local area & more trust from people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

[1] https://twitter.com/a_vansi/status/1270406823158468614

>>pizza+At
And this is exactly where the "Defund the Police" movement comes from and seems like an extremely good movement to pursue - shift that budget balance back in favor of specialized agencies that can better support social needs rather than forcing it all onto the police force. I really just wish it had gotten a better name since that title for the idea really divides people before they even open their minds.

>>munk-a+Vu
The US actually spends a low amount of money on policing compared to the EU, where police kill fewer people. Further, the US also has a low number of police officers.

https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2019/01/09/charts-poli...?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

The defund the police narrative isn’t based on any actual examination of US police spending, or general public spending. The key issues are instead police unions, lack of police training in the US, impunity for police abuses, etc

Cambridge NJ is often cited as a model of reform. But I am not sure they reduced spending. Instead they disbanded and reformed their police.

>>graeme+2K
> The key issues are instead police unions, lack of police training in the US, impunity for police abuses, etc

Police unions, poor training and qualified immunity are really serious issues - but ones that are intractable to fight for on the national stage due to political gridlock. Just breaking up the unions as they stand right now and enforcing transparent employment history for law enforcement would make worlds of difference, but the action can't be taken unilaterally by a particular district - that district can ensure that incident reports are preserved but officers moving into the district may have had their employment history purged.

Defunding the police is an actual policy decision that can be made on a local scale to address issues of over policing and start reinvesting in crime prevention rather than punishment.