zlacker

Does defunding the police mean stop having a police force in the country?

>>trinsi+(OP)
"Defunding" has unfortunately become a vague word that means different things to different activists. To me, it means removing the "military tools" that OP mentions, removing their incentives to escalate to violence and otherwise violate people's rights (or providing financial disincentives), and ideally, ultimately disarming them. Stop the money flow from taxpayers that encourages, enables, and results in all the bad behavior.

>>trinsi+(OP)
No. Further, the only people (with any serious power) really bringing up this idea are opponents of police reform trying to poison the well on the idea that police reform is needed.

These people may even benefit from over policing wrt kickbacks from private prisons. For example, Marco Rubio [0] is a top recipient of money from the private prison lobby, and he's run attack ads wrongfully saying that his political opponents want to abolish police, and he himself ran on a platform pushing for larger police budgets.

0 - https://www.opensecrets.org/industries./indus.php?ind=G7000

>>trinsi+(OP)
No. That would be abolishing the police.

Perhaps defunding eventually reveals that we should abolish the police. Perhaps not.