zlacker

The police is where you can get obvious, overwhelming evidence of abuse. It literally takes a man being murdered on video to move the needle, and even then you get a ton of pushback.

There are many prison reform movements, but none of them get any traction without such visceral, concrete, and shocking symbols. You hear about defunding the police because it's the only one with even a shred of a chance to accomplish anything at all.

People might agree with other improvements if a pollster asked them, but only because it's abstract. If they got any serious traction there would be an equivalent objection using the same tactics to defame and harass the people who were trying. And since it doesn't involve a death it will get chalked up to "both sides are bad" and dropped.

I'd love to see politics work on something more coherent and beneficial but we're way, way past that.