Does this mean that people just do not care, or there is only some minority who thinks that the police is too violent and the rest is ok with that?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/07/poll-pr...
> Does this mean that people just do not care, or there is only some minority who thinks that the police is too violent and the rest is ok with that?
Yeah, basically. Especially that last part.
The efforts to "defund police" would solve some of the same problems that police currently address through other means. This would weaken the influence of police unions. For example, spending more to treat drug addiction as a disease rather than paying police to address possession as a crime.
https://time.com/5848705/disband-and-replace-minneapolis-pol...
I am just curious at this choice of word that seems to be the clarion call, which means entirely different in the dictionary than what is being implied! :-/
Just as a synopsis, systemic racism became a more subtle segregation. POC (People or Person of Color) were systematically made to appear more violent and criminal-like over time. Combine that notion with an idealized notion of the police as hero figures and you have a recipe for rationalizing violence against POC.
Mobile phone videos allowed us to see from the victim's perspective just how brutal police have become.
"How it happens that all those mayors and sheriffs are still in the office if police brutality is such a big issue?"
To this point, you need to understand about voting districts and how POC voting power has been diluted and prevented over decades.
(BTW some people actually do want to eliminate the police)
"Defund the police" in the 'mainstream' such as there is one, means to reduce funding for law enforcement and shift that funding to public health, social workers, and community programs, in a way that reduces the scope of calls police will get, and reduce the number of calls police are required to respond to.
Police Unions are not publicly funded, so defunding them doesn't make sense. Renegotiating collective bargaining agreements with unions does. "Smash Police Unions" has a nice ring to it.
On top of that they're a fairly politically active group, so they have an outsized influence on policies, including those that affect them.
But the biggest issue, as you note, is the sheer disparity in who interacts with the police at all.
From a 2015 Bureau of Justic Statistics report
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp15.pdf
Only about 10% of Americans had police-initiated, non-traffic stop contacts.
So 9 out of 10 Americans never see the police, much less have insight as to whether they're too violent.
Blacks 50% more likely than Whites to be subjected to a street stop by police.
Blacks 120% (!) more likely than Whites to be subjected to police force.
And, every single respondent who indicated they were Tasered by police felt it was "excessive" force.
So, yes, fundamentally this is a "rights of the minority" problem - and the minority in this case are younger, poorer, less politically connected, and therefore are underrepresented in discussions about police brutality, effective law enforcement, police training, and other policies which impact them.
I am now genuinely curious to know how this is to be achieved, and what safeguards/guarantees are to be encoded so the new org does not devolve into the existing police.