⬤ "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...
Camden made all members apply for jobs as if coming from another police department, but they had the files of the old department and could look directly at an applicant's job history and see how many complaints of excessive force were present, etc. They purged the worst 25% in starting over and that seemed to make a very large difference.
>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.
'hiring more police' well that can be argued as exactly what the activists want. if you define police as individuals who help the community with their issues without violence. making sure homeless people get food/shelter, mental health issues are resolved non violently etc.
I'd be all for hiring more of those 'police'.
As for surveillance, depends on the kind. I'd be all for surveillance used for detecting gunshots throughout a region. less okay for audio/video surveillance on every street corner.
i guess i might be in a minority but the large scale protests led to these outcomes.
most politicians don’t give a flying forest for an isolated protest that happens all the way across the country. now if this happens in your backyard you pay attention.
so i would say that the protests in Seattle and the emergence of CHAZ did contribute to some of the outcomes (present and future ones). it’s really easy to be cynic and write off the efforts of people that are, in a sense, helping to write history.
Have you actually gone out and talked to these people?
Theres relatively little reason to think that the law will change that. Other stuff might, but in isolation, officers could continue to ignore the law.
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.
> i guess i might be in a minority but the large scale protests led to these outcomes.
> most politicians don’t give a flying forest for an isolated protest that happens all the way across the country. now if this happens in your backyard you pay attention.
Could you clear that up?
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I'm not saying protests in other cities didn't contribute to governments in different cities taking action. I do think the nation-wide aspect of the protests helped move things along in Minneapolis/Lousiville/etc. I do think it's mostly indirect, though: I think protests across the country _indirectly_ increased the confidence and voices of protestors in other cities.
You seem to be conflating CHAZ–a very unique form of protest–with all protests. I think without CHAZ, the outcomes in the cities mentioned above would be the same.
Can you cite anyone in a position of power, or even a prominent voice leading the protests, in KY, MN, etc. that directly cite CHAZ?