Defund is not actually a bad idea. The police are tasked with handling the fallout of failing or non-existent social systems and have been scaled respectively - in fact police funding is growing every year, and not insubstantially.
If you work in tech you should know what happens if you transfer too many responsibilities to one bloated team.
These funds would be better invested in actual support systems. Homeless shelters. Drug rehabilitation. Fixing subpar education funding in poor school districts.
Yeah, but calling it "defund" sounds a lot like "no more police, anywhere".
I think a lot of the insanity here could have been avoided if this was presented as what it was intended to be—a reallocation of resources based on a desire to more effectively address deep-seated problems that make society worse for everyone—and not as, you know, anarchy.
If you were making that argument about "abolish", I'd agree, but defund? I guess you'd need to know the massive funding increases the police has gotten over the past 20 years. Even abolish acknowledges there needs to be some form of community policing, it's just that the current model is militaristic, has little accountability, incentivizes the wrong things (arrest quotas) and (re-)hires the wrong people.
I don't think anarchy is what you think it is. It wrongfully has picked up the entire Mad Max vibe. Any Chomsky talk on anarchism or the book of the same name ("On Anarchism") are a bit more nuanced introductions. Anarchism and police are "natural enemies" because anarchists believe the power police hold right now is unproportionate and unjustifiable. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24025920
What does "abolish" mean, you mean? The 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution "abolished" slavery. It means get rid of completely, and make sure it never comes back.
Tough question actually, because I know what it is intended to mean, and I also know what a lot of its most passionate devotees want it to mean.
I didn't disagree with any of the thinking behind it: shifting more funding and responsibility to social support/health professionals, and focusing more on the conditions that spawn crime rather than just stamping it out as it shows up. Seems like the difference between actually fixing the holes in your house vs. putting all your money into duct tape and basins. The first step towards fixing a broken system is identifying the root causes.
But there's that, and there's the vast majority of people I know who say every cop is an evil fascist and society would be better with no law enforcement at all. Given how many people think—and want—"abolish the police" to mean abolition in the most literal sense, it is hard to look past that definition, even if it's not the intended one.
It's simple: Radicalism breeds radicalism. I don't like those redneck survivalist guys with all the guns either, but it's getting a lot harder to tell them their doomsday fantasies are stupid when so many on the left sound like they consider CHOP to be a blueprint for a better society.
I know you may be unwilling to entertain the opposite point of view, but it doesn't necessarily sound like a "stupid idea" to friends/families/cultures who have lost members to murder by police (at varying points on the scale from negligence to depraved heart to purposeful to premeditated), especially in the case for mere "defunding", which is thoughtless to call a "stupid idea" out of hand, since the argument that some police have too much firepower is one that can be formed reasonably, and not just a "stupid idea" to be dismissed without engaging. Also, most victims don't even go as far as literal and unqualified abolishment, and say they want complete reform. But even the ones desperate enough to call for abolishment, which I find hard to blame them for, are usually talking about specific extremely corrupt and violent jurisdictions, and further, they admit that something must come after - abolish "the current" police in "some" places, before they kill again, and replace them. And of course, I'm sure there are some who have been driven to want only to "abolish police" without further qualification, and you are encouraged to engage them respectfully and explain that it's unrealistic despite their emotional suffering and outrage, and engage them in the context of the more fleshed-out options I've listed above.
Don't just call it a "stupid idea". That doesn't belong on HN.
Reforming policing and law enforcement is not a stupid idea, but the “Defund the police” messaging shuts down thoughtful conversation and alienates allies.
As an outsider looking in, it seems to me like reducing the scope of responsibility , and increasing accountability, of your police forces would be a boon to public safety.
It really should. But in a highly polarized, incredibly litigious society like the US, that would likely lead to more trench-digging, and sadly the opposite of an increase to public safety.
Obviously the details would be contentions but I think reducing the scope of policing in abstract is widely supported across America. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who can't think of an entire category of behavior the government is currently in, and should not be, in the business of micromanaging with violence.
But when people say "abolish the police" they do not come across as meaning "reduce the scope of policing in a careful manner" to a sizeable fraction of the other people in the country.
>But when people say "abolish the police" they do not come across as meaning "reduce the scope of policing".
Some people, sure, but that's understandable given their extremely dire situation. Regardless, in my experience, most people do in fact flesh out reasonable ideas while using the phrase. Further, by far most "phrases" I've heard in person are of the "defund/reform" variety. But of course "abolishment" gets disproportionate attention, and there's always the trap of just listening to news sources and online forums where the phrase "abolish the police" is quoted with no chance given to the people for more context.
I agree that the ideas put forth are generally reasonable but a national political slogan shouldn't require "but wait I don't mean that in the literal sense" explanation. You can't have a catch phrase and then complain when it's taken literally. A phrase like that was a marketing disaster waiting to happen.
I agree - it's perfectly reasonable to take it literally. It's not equivalent to the mostly-willing-misinterpretation of the phrase "black lives matter". However, I don't think it's as simple as "complaining when taken literally". My point is that people should be more charitable - this phrase didn't originate from a committee's meditations. The situation it arose from is terrifying, disastrous, intolerable, an emergency, etc. On scales smaller than the national one, e.g. at community level, it's quite literally a fight for life and civilization. The extremity of the phrase is commensurate with the extremity of the circumstances - this is a spontaneous cry, not a diplomatic thought. We should talk about this situation with that reality in mind. Of course despite all this qualification, the phrase is used, if far from ubiquitously, and if you add onto that the way news and human drama naturally works, then the phrase never had a chance to not be a widespread part of the image of the national movement. We should not allow people to attempt to literally abolish the police, but we should try to understand why that has become one of their slogans, and not use it as a catch-all for dismissing the movement in a single repeated sentence (e.g. how the root post of this thread has done - not something you've done).
We've tried to hold police accountable for murder. Charging them results in incidents like the entire police force rallying behind the one and just not doing their job anymore. And nearby police refusing to do their duty as well.
This happened in Atlanta. You can't even bring charges against a cop, let alone make it to a trial, without horrendous outcry and mass refusal to do their job.
It's mostly terrible messaging. Defund and Abolish are both absolute terms (i.e., people try to defund planned parenthood, and we abolished slavery) but, for the most part, what's being asked for is just to scale back the police and their funding.
I agree it's unfortunate. "Defund", though, I can defend as colloquially non-absolute. Literally it means "remove all funds", but people often use it to mean "reduce funds", I've found.
Edit: Of course, that's not to say there are no people using it absolutely in this case.
Spend some time looking at the nuanced proposals for policing reform that go by the name "defund the police" and I am guessing that you agree with them a lot more than you think you do.
Having seen the bodycam footage from the police that has emerged recently, I think everyone supporting BLM have been falling for a strawman. George Floyd appears to be high as a kite, does practically nothing the police ask him to. The police appear to be pretty reasonable.
There is no excuse for holding your knee on a person's neck for eight minutes and fourty six seconds. There is no excuse for doing it after he says that he can't breathe. There is no excuse for doing it after those around you tell you to cut it out. There is especially no excuse for continuing to do it for minutes after he became motionless.
Honestly, I'm not sure how else to explain to you that you should care about other human lives even when those people are high or not in the best place in life. George Floyd was murdered by a police officer pinning him in a choke hold for eight minutes and fourty six seconds and "he did drugs" or "he didn't listen to the police" is not a sane explanation.
I'm really not sure what else to tell you when you believe that it's "reasonable" for the police to choke a man to death for eight minutes and fourty six seconds because he was "high as a kite".
I really hate that in typical US manner this issue gets pushed to the extreme so in the end a reasonable discussion can’t be had but it’s only a fight with everybody digging in and not listening to each other.
Abolishing the police was always nonsense but there are plenty of areas where police is overused and too aggressive. In my view there shouldn’t be police in schools or hospitals. The drug war causes a lot of unnecessary arrests and aggravation with a lot of neighborhoods. Bad cops often stay in the force without consequences for clearly bad behavior. Cops don’t have enough training so they aren’t prepared for difficult situation . The list goes on and on.
Addressing these issues would be good for cops, citizens and also public budgets. But instead the country chooses to have this stupid fight where the interested parties spend a lot of time distorting other views. Reminds me of the typical healthcare discussions. It’s very sad.
Issues have to get pushed to the extreme because politicians drag their heels otherwise.
Corruption is the best business to be in. Police departments have no interest in oversight, beyond the amount necessary for leadership to protect their positions of power. And Police Unions are generally very powerful and dominate local politics.
I think the thing you're missing here is that the distortion (see the use of the word abolish here, the proposal is defunding) is completely deliberate.
This divide didn't happen by accident, it's the product of decades of deliberate political choices.
Totally that this is manufactured and a lot of people see problems only as something that’s related to winning an election. Still a sad state of affairs.
Social media algorithms amplify the most engaging content, and extreme versions of political statements are very engaging. I don't think it takes deliberate messaging tactics by one side or another for our current political climate to emerge.
You need police in hospitals to maintain security for the patients in there. It's not uncommon to have incidents with people from the outside trying to assault/murder someone they know in the hospital. Criminals shot on the street still have to go to the hospital and this leaves an opportunity for their would-be-murderer to come in and finish the job.
Schools, it's sad but I'm in favor of school resource officers. Those people were good to have around and can serve as a role model.
You can call them “school resource officers”, but that doesn’t magically make them good. They are typically a role model for high school bullies who want to continue to bully after graduation (aka be a police officer).
They were not. The school resource officer when I was in high school used to tailgate student to get them to speed then write tickets. Entertainingly, his son was quite the cocaine enthusiast in high school. Now his son is the resource officer. Cops in schools is a waste of time and money.
It wasn't like this a few years ago. Outraged responses are a feature of outrage culture, which is pretty recent. Media have been pushing it to drive clicks, and sell ads on cable TV, for years. Grifters push their instagrams, their vlogs, their books.
I think the decline started when University produced generation after generation of supposedly educated people that had no skill other than fanning the flames.
And social media has been the A-bomb against rational, paused discourse.
> I really hate that in typical US manner this issue gets pushed to the extreme so in the end a reasonable discussion can’t be had
That's kind of the intention. It's easy to argue against "Abolish the police! Anarchy for everyone!". Not so much against "maybe we shouldn't send people with guns drawn to respond to unarmed individuals going through a mental health crisis" [1].
None of the real proposals for policing reform that have come out the protests are calling to get rid of the police. Pretending that they want that is a political fearmongering tactic.
> “Seattle’s unprecedented decision to abandon and close off an entire city neighborhood, leaving it unchecked by the police, unserved by fire and emergency health services, and inaccessible to the public”
Is this what people advocating for abolish the police are advocating for? Removal of health services? Isn't it literally the opposite, to have more and more varied health (and social) services, that people are advocating for?
"Abolish the police" is a scale where there is an extreme end where they may call for completely removing police from across the USA. From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.
The more common level I've seen is advocating for replacing parts of policing for more appropriate systems and services.
I'd call this article a straw-man argument, but there are those on the extreme end of the scale, apparently.
I don’t think it necessarily is a bad choice for some: many people who do use that word want what we call “policing” to be abandoned completely and replaced with something far less punitive in its reactions to emergencies.
Sure, and sometimes different people have different understandings of the meaning of a particular word. Someone can say "abolish the police" and mean that there should be no one with monopoly on violence. Another one can say "abolish the police" and refer the to current state/situation with the police in the US, and simply want the police to stop shooting people at sight and instead act like police in other countries, where they try to de-escalate instead of using their guns.
So while it's easy to try to put everyone in one bucket, it's hardy useful to do so in reality.
Right. Compare "Occupy Wall Street". Snappy slogan; lots of public visibility; many groups coming together under that umbrella; no coherent policy agenda; no lasting impact.
It is not, and I don't see where you're seeing that it is. People marching around chanting "defund the police" isn't domestic terrorism.
Domestic terrorism looks a lot more like rolling troops in camo into a city in unmarked vans to abduct citizens off the street to a location unknown to them.
I guess it was just that the way it was worded caught me off guard. It seems odd to commit to unilateral actions without consent, especially in the context of recent shootings/bombings/arson.
In the 7 or 8 swing states that matter, you think the election is already decided in each of them? I would expect a bunch more defectors if the economy is still in ruin by then, and a bunch of 'moderates' who end up deciding based on how recent foreign policy turns out.
Remember, most people are single issue voters. The rest of everything he does, doesnt matter.
Possibly, but this administration has been so polarizing that at this point, I think it's a lot more about getting like-minded people out of their chairs and to the polls than it is finding more like-minded people.
It's been year after year of polarizing decisions and rhetoric. At this point, basically everyone's dug in on how they feel about this direction for America.
Yes, defunding means literally that, take money away. The way that governments keep doing to health care and schooling. However, typically you'll find that unlike those cases, the people advocating defunding have very good ideas of what to do with that money to help the communities better than the current arrangements. (Which... isn't hard. US policing is almost uniquely expensive and ineffective in the western world.)
"Shut down" means something too. The Royal Ulster Constabulary got shut down. Does it mean Northern Ireland doesn't have police? No, but it means it's got far fewer bad cops.
Abolish means something different again. Trying to pretend these are the same proposals is nonsense.
>>From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for.
The problem is a large number of people calling for for abolishing the police do not have an actual plan on what to replace them with, saying things like "Something will rise up to replace it"
There is also a over riding belief that criminality is 100% related to systemic racism and poverty which is not really the case, Some of it is sure and we should address that with reform but a large part of criminality is not and abolishing the police is not a solution to that crime
We need massive reform and demilitarization of the police, and abolish police unions, but abolish police is crazy town
I think you're falling for the straw man here. A quick Google of the phrase yields many nuanced results with plans that sound very much in line with your prescriptions:
I dont think I am, and reading thought the that story reinforced my statement "There is also a over riding belief that criminality is 100% related to systemic racism and poverty " as most of the commentary is about defunding the police and replacing that with some kind of social programs (aka socialism) under the belief that the reason people commit crime is solely do to economic hardship
There belief is if we give people free stuff they will stop harming people. I disagree with this position
We can eliminate militarization of police and decriminalize society with out adopting socialism
I am 100% pro-capitalism and libertarian solutions to the problem, the "Abolish Police" movement seems to be just a reformation of democratic socialism under a new banner
This is incredible stretching + straw man to frame this as a political boogey-man (socialism).
Do you consider EMT's socialist? They are non-police first responders. Why not make more departments like this to address the massive over-jurisdiction of police responsibility?
>>This is incredible stretching + straw man to frame this as a political boogey-man (socialism).
It is not through when you expand the inquiry to writings and positions the same advocates and politicians have on other issues and topics. A clear pattern emerges .
>>Do you consider EMT's socialist?
That depends, since there is a large number of private EMT services who bill for their services directly no that would be socialism
For government run Police, Fire and EMT service that boils down to how the funding for those services are collected on if they are socialist in nature or not. Here we would get in a public finance debate.
That discussion however is not really at the heart of the matter, police respond to situations where there is an eliminate of physical danger, this includes medical emergencies. This is often desired by the EMT's themselves because situations people suffering a medical or metal issue can often turn violent.
Again the solution IMO is not eliminating the police from responding to these calls, but to provide proper tools, training and resources to he police to understand the situations better. If you want to send along a medical person or a counselor that is something worth looking into but I do not believe replacing the police as the first line respondors defending the police, abolishing the police, or is the solution here
Why should an ambulance driver have to respond to a call in a dangerous neighborhood without a police escort? I wouldn’t. Fuck that, you don’t want police, good luck.
Not sure if this could have been more perfectly executed to discredit the idea of abolishing/defunding the police, which in my understanding has always been proposed as a structured, intentional shift away from heavily militarized policing toward a system of robust social services. I've seen others use the language of divest/invest to make clear that it's a shift in resources. Reading a little bit of abolitionist literature (because this stems out of a much larger, ongoing conversation about the prison industrial complex), it seems even full abolitionists see it as a process that involves building new systems and drastically shifting the American mindset around punitive retribution.
Instead, you have a situation where the police to abandon a precinct all at once and not long after, far-right groups start showing up at night to stoke violence. Hard not to read that as intentional.
> Instead, you have a situation where the police to abandon a precinct all at once and not long after, far-right groups start showing up at night to stoke violence.
Do you have any references to support that? It flies in the face of everything I've observed so far but in all sincerely, given the extreme polarisation in how these events are being reported by seemingly all parties, I'd not be at all surprised to find I've missed something important and would appreciate a source to clear things up for me.
> "Abolish the police" is a scale where there is an extreme end where they may call for completely removing police from across the USA. From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.
It's not "Abolish the police" by itself. The same people also say "All Cops Are Bastards" and "Policing is a racist institution". It would be unreasonable to take these words as supporting anything other than doing away with police entirely.
For those of you who were not here when this happened: The police decided not to respond the actual 911 calls in or _near_ the CHOP (the auto shop was a block _away_, not within) was a retaliatory tactic they employed out of spite. Knowing full and well that it would look bad on the protesters and those who created the CHOP. Denying health services and aide is NOT what people who are advocating for defunding the police are advocating for.
> I'd call this article a straw-man argument, but there are those on the extreme end of the scale, apparently.
I too found it hard to believe that such people exist, but my own wife said she agrees with the statement "I believe police cause overall more harm than good in the USA, and it would be better to have no police at all than policing in its current form."
And yes, she believes that all police, except for investigating detectives, could be replaced by social workers and the like. Many of her friends believe similarly. So it isn't a straw man, these people really exist.
As you suggest, "defunding the police" is a motte and bailey argument, in that "defund" CAN equal abolish, if the defunding is 100%. On the other hand, a 5% shifting of funds would be a minor reform. So advocates, if they are unscrupulous -- and not all of them are -- can simultaneously advocate for a radical change in policing and assert it will have modest impact, by equivocating on the meaning of the word "defund".
>>>And yes, she believes that all police, except for investigating detectives, could be replaced by social workers and the like. Many of her friends believe similarly. So it isn't a straw man, these people really exist.
Human ego seems to be the most powerful thing in the Universe.
Whole communities commit "suicide" just to fuel the delusions of a handful and the self-preservation of another handful. How many injustices have been perpetrated in the name of justice?
No one comes out of this looking good, certainly not the police too.
“Business owners describe a harrowing experience of calling for help and being left all alone.”
No one advocating defunding the police was saying it would be good for business owners. The point of the whole movement is that police protect the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
Then the businesses will leave and the local economy will suffer. Those with little will have less. Those with enough to start over elsewhere will leave. This phenomenon is called "blight".
That this article is written by someone who isn't from Seattle, and posted by someone on hacker news who isn't from Seattle, really amuses some of us who live on the hill.
Here in Minneapolis the feeling is similar. Suburban and rural folks seem awfully concerned about crime in the city, while those of us who actually live in the city just want the cops’ boots off our damn necks.
I would argue that small business owners with few employees would hardly meet the generalized popular definition of "rich," and that their inability to operate would directly harm those employees who are also not "rich." This country runs on small business owners, and it's baffling that there are those who exclude that fact from their worldview.
If you're looking at what happened to the business owners in the article and thinking that that's a step in the right direction, I think there are a lot of criminal-justice/police reform folks who would prefer that you did not try to associate yourself with what they're fighting for.
Telling America that the coffee-shop guy deserved to get harassed by a violent mob because he's a wealthy fatcat is the surest way to discredit any cause you're advocating for. And I'm saying this as someone who thought the ideas underlying DTP made a fair amount of sense.
"Aren't so sure" from reading the article seems like an understatement. Many of the people featured in this article are suing the city for not doing it's responsibility.
I get that police treatment is often inequitable, but I think we've had some experiments this summer showing that some of the radical changes being proposed have their own problems.
> the radical changes being proposed have their own problems
I'd like to point out that none of said changes have been implemented anywhere in the US in any meaningful way. Save some minor defunding, I know of no locale who has transferred any responsibility away from the police, which is one of the main roads to abolition. As another poster said, this is a very clear straw man. CHAZ was a result of protesting and an incredibly aggressive Seattle PD, not an ideal people are looking to recreate everywhere.
Fair point - you're right that the suggested policies have not been implemented in a meaningful way.
My point was that some relatively minor changes (de facto abandoning neighborhoods as in CHAZ, changes to bail laws in NY being two examples) have led to some pretty drastic (negative) changes to safety.
Where have bail laws caused any issue in NY? As a resident I haven't encountered any such issues.
I wouldn't call "abandoning a neighborhood" a minor change either. It seems clear to me it's very much a calculated political move to do that so people can do exactly what you did - point and say "well we need police, look what happened without them". This should have no bearing on reform laws and abolition steps.
That's based on one month (January 2020) with clear political motivations directly discussed by NYT in the article If you look at NYC crime YTD, it's down 3% [1]. I don't see how thats a drastic or even minor change to public safety.
Per your own link:
> "Law enforcement experts say crime statistics can rise or fall in any given month for numerous reasons and explain that it is far more important to track trends over longer periods of time."
One month just isn't representative of if a policy worked or not. Take March 2020 [2]. Crime down overall, including for assaults, something the NYPD blamed the bail law on in January. I specifically cherry-picked March on purpose - you can see if you look around that months go up and down. I'm not saying it's an open and shut case in either direction, but there's no macro rise as again evidenced on the YTD stats in the first source.
When CHAZ was first created, it was definitely being praised as a model for the rest of the country. People here were saying that any criticism of it was right-wing propaganda, and that it was a self-organized, peaceful neighborhood, and proof that we didn't need a police force to maintain peace.
What experiments? None of the proposals for policing reform have been implemented. The only thing we've seen are the police refusing to respond to calls and do their job in a political move. Nobody asked for that and none of the serious reform proposals consider anything like that.
It's possible to have a world where the police do their job and are accountable when they commit horrible acts as we've seen over the past few months. Talking about the subject as if we can either have the police and look the other way at their abuse, or get rid of them completely is a terrible false dichotomy.
Abolishing the police combined with the protests (or riots) and the move against the NRA creates a very uncomfortable environment for probably half of the United States.
All in an election year no less.
Does no one remember 2000,2004 and 2016? Perhaps the DNC could write a book called “How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”
But it's an uncomfortable environment happening on the incumbent's watch. That doesn't say much positive about the incumbent's ability to lead, and suggests new leadership is in order.
The next few (Texas 8,817, Massachusetts 8,709, Florida 8,051) are Republican, then Democratic governors of Illinois 7,822, Pennsylvania 7,364, and Michigan 6,524 put it over 50% of US deaths so far, and then some more Democrats, then more Republicans.
As opposed to the absurdity of claiming the deaths are from "our president and his sycophant governors"?
But I wouldn't equate them - the goal of the early policy was to flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming the health care system.
That appears to have been accomplished - it looks like these later surges will not match the deaths-per-detected-case or deaths-per-population seen in the New York area.
Part of that is better testing and treatment available now, but another large part is better policy - such as not sending covid-positive patients back to nursing homes.
If NY had such a terrible response, that's all the more reason why tens of thousands of additional people didn't have to die, if all the Republicans who hate Democrats had learned from it, rather than following leadership engaged in gaslighting people.
Saying the states run by non-sycophants did terribly is an indictment of the Republicans, particularly the ones at the top, because of the chronology.
You can say Newsom as well, should have learned, but that doesn't make it better for anyone else.
Thank your for recognizing that California and Newsom fit in the same general pattern as the widely derided, Republican-governed, late-surging states.
I think the data above show that neither an R nor a D by the governor's name is significantly predictive of a state's performance, (but may be predictive of media coverage).
Instead, mistakes have been made. But we've learned some things (but not really very much yet). Flattening the curve worked to delay infections and, well, _flatten_ the curve - not reduce total infections. We also seem to be getting some benefit from partial herd immunity at lower percentages of exposure than expected - probably because people are isolating and social distancing more, and possibly partial immunity from exposure to previous coronaviruses, and better treatments and policies are helping.
These things are all helping states experiencing this later surge have a more moderate experience (and helping early states keep things controlled), and are much more significant than the governor's political party.
So demonizing "sycophants" and "gaslighting" is not productive. Focus on behaviors and results, not politics.
>Thank your for recognizing that California and Newsom fit in the same general pattern as the widely derided, Republican-governed, late-surging states.
I was acknowledging that having cases grow later indicates they also did something wrong, not that they did the same thing wrong as others nor for the same reasons.
CA nor NY can not absolve the Republicans, no amount of failure by their enemies can absolve them of leading their own people to destruction.
Yesterday, there were 9 deaths in NY from COVID-19, compared to 77 in Florida and 103 in Texas. Positive % for tests is way down too.
Something like 50,000 people have died nationally since NY got things under control in early June.
That didn't have to happen. It wouldn't have happened if, say, Cuomo was running the country. Because whatever mistakes were made in NY, it was turned around starting in early April. At that point, the national death toll was about 150,000 less than now.
> It wouldn't have happened if, say, Cuomo was running the country
That's an amazing contention, especially if you look back at Cuomo's statements and policies over the course of the epidemic (Lunar New Year, nursing homes, etc.). He's so much wiser than 3-6 months ago?
I think you give the governors' actions both too much credit and too much blame and an apparent partisan difference on who gets which (apologies if that's not intended).
My view of the data is that NY's density as well as mistakes allowed unmitigated & rapid spread of the virus, until the exposure and immunity reached levels at which the transmission is less likely & the most vulnerable population has been exposed/infected/died/recovered, making our efforts to limit propagation more effective. See https://coronavirusbellcurve.com/estimating-the-herd-immunit... and https://coronavirusbellcurve.com/#statesherd
The virus continues to spread throughout the country, but the curve is flattened, minimizing the death toll from the infections (though it is still high!) More drastic interventions can slow that spread, but won't stop it.
And remember that the collateral death toll (as well as non-fatal cost) of the mitigation actions is increasing as well - CDC/NYT reported on approx 50k (37%) "excess deaths" beyond covid-reported deaths - possibly from delayed medical care, despair, etc., as well as possible misreporting. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronaviru...
Right after Texas and Massachusetts in descending order. Where did you think it should be?
And it looks like Florida has turned the corner on this later surge - new cases 14 day trend is dramatically down: https://coronavirusbellcurve.com/#fl new deaths is still trending upward, as would be expected for a lagging indicator of the case trend. It appears unlikely to get close to the results of New York, which has a similar (but less elderly) population. https://covid19-projections.com/us-fl
You should be aware that I've talked to liberals in rural areas who feel physically threatened by far-right rhetoric. I.e. the "the only good democrat is a dead democrat" video, conservatives guarding voting locations with guns, the president encouraging both these examples, etc. A couple of them have taken up gun ownership specifically because of this fear. I absolutely sympathize with both sides, but being "very uncomfortable" is nowhere near one-sided.
He retweeted a supporter video in which the person clearly said "Dead Politically" that was taken out of context by the media and other perpetually offended left wing people ironically in the exact way the person in the video said it would.
The cancel culture of the perpetually offended is simply insane
Sorry, what cancel culture? Who got cancelled here? Did you "never" hear him say the words "the only good democrat is a dead democrat," or are you actually familiar with the video that was originally mentioned that you previously denied the existence of?
And what does "politically dead" mean, anyway? Does it have anything to do with cancellation?
I know you're forming a rational argument, but of course what it "means" is obvious from the video: It's just the arbitrary punchline in the typical bit: "I'm going to support [murder|violence|hatred|oppression|racism|sexism] against my political enemy - but it's just a joke! If you criticize me you're dumb!" He could have chosen anything for the "it's just a joke!" part - he happened to choose a strained analogy.
However, note well that, aside from his obviously being immoral, it doesn't ultimately matter what he "meant" as much as what his crowd heard, and how they reacted. This particular crowd's lust for killing democrats is above board, and this may be a tiny sample, but it mirrors the stream of hatred and desire for violence that we normally only hear in such undisguised words on the internet - and occasionally in person - from "normal people" (i.e. not leaders or other speaking personalities).
I sometimes wonder if there are leaders who, upon doing or saying something evil, hear the reaction of their constituents, and feel any remorse/disillusionment when they realize exactly how "not a joke" the hatred is. Another example was the guy who viciously attacked the journalist who was persisting aggressively - did he feel any guilt inside? What about when he saw his constituents explicitly applaud his violence in the following days?
That's the point... Nobody is seriously considering getting rid of the police. Calling it that is a fearmongering technique from the political right.
Biden doesn't even support the defund the police movement [1] which is the real goal of most of these protests. If you look beyond the media's reality distortion bubble, the defund the police movement is about diversifying how we respond to crises, not getting rid of the police as some claim.
People want security. That means different things to different people. Law enforcement is not necessarily the same thing as security. Law enforcement means just that, and the laws themselves may not be what many would consider just. The laws are likely to reflect the prejudices of those in power, which may lend itself to why we're seeing the clashes we're seeing in the US right now.
Those with the resources to do so have on-site security. This ranges from gated communities, to some condo/apartment buildings, and even shopping malls. Even this isn't necessarily free of problems, but it needs to be seen as something fundamentally different from law enforcement. So when we talk about "abolishing" the police, we have to ask what we really want in its stead.
> Law enforcement is not necessarily the same thing as security
I'm having difficulty finding my source right now, but it appears that in cases of homicide by someone unknown to the victim, a police officer is the perpetrator in between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 incidents. These statistics don't consider whether the killing is justified; they just observe that if people know of someone who was killed by a stranger, there's a 1-in-3 or 1-in-4 chance that stranger has a uniform.
And as we know, people's perceptions of safety are more important than actual statistics. We rewrote the nature of air travel in response to 9/11.
How would that imply lack of security? Wouldn't it be perfect if every single homicide by a stranger was by a cop? It would mean that a cop was there every time to stop the criminal before they hurt someone.
Innocent in the eyes of the law, meaning what? No prior convictions? Not convicted of the crime for which the police officer is looking for the perpetrator? Of course they're not; they haven't even been arrested yet. And once they're dead, nobody's going to bother to prosecute and convict them.
For example, we recently had an armed robbery outside a bar here. Police came looking for the perpetrator. They found a man who they suspected might be the robber. He ran from them. They chased him. He turned around with a gun in his hand. They shot and killed him.
Now: Was he innocent in the eyes of the law? He wasn't convicted of that robbery. He wasn't even arrested for it. They would have arrested him (or at least detained him), but he fled, and then turned around with a gun.
So I'm not sure that "innocent in the eyes of the law" says very much. Other than escaped prisoners, everyone the police encounter is innocent in the eyes of the law, at least on the issue for which the police are confronting them.
> I'm not sure that "innocent in the eyes of the law" says very much.
It says that we still believe in the rule of law, not in just allowing cops to be judge, jury, and executioner on our streets. To be sure, shootings due to self defense happen, but we have entire protests and riots in the United States right now over how often cops kill innocent civilians without justification, and are protected by the system from any consequences.
Am I the only one under impression that the article is chaotic and it's hard to tell from it what is the extend of the damage done and who and to what degree contributed to it?
The reform movements of the last ~15 years have consistently failed to learn one lesson: pick a simple, easy to understand slogan that leads to simple, actionable goals. Occupy had the exact same problem and ultimately accomplished nothing.
Obama and Trump both understood this and both chose slogans that virtually no one can disagree with (“Change / Yes We Can” and “Make America Great Again.”) Pretty easy to understand.
“Abolish the police” seems almost designed to fail as a slogan right from the beginning.
The NYT is bootlicking with this article; they entirely left out that Seattle did defund their police, cutting their budget by about half. So did Portland. But NYT would rather focus on how scared business owners feel, because that's their target audience.
Remember back when people had such issue with the language and phrasing of "Black Lives Matter" until people (over 50%, according to recent polls) finally came around after George Floyd? "Abolish the police" is going to be the same scenario in time.
Please, do your research on what abolition actually looks like. This article does not describe abolition, it describes a PR tactic the Seattle PD decided to pull as punishment to protestors. Linked below is one with actual interest and nuance.
If you look around and see incredible injustice, great. Don't spend your time policing the language and methodology the oppressed use to argue for their rights, go do things and help them be more effective. This is a classic white liberal issue of "I support the ideas but not the way to them" that has been around for centuries.
>>>This is a classic white liberal issue of "I support the ideas but not the way to them" that has been around for centuries.
"The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man....The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro..." - Malcom X
Was looking for this when I was typing that post up! Should have known it would be Malcom X. There's another great quote along the lines of "those concerned with how something is said than what is said" that I can't seem to remember the source on either that is very relevant here too.
We can split hairs about 'defunding' vs 'abolishing', but I just get the distinct impression that many people have got no real idea about the threat that crime poses to the prosperity of a community (or city or state), and the effort that is required to keep it in check. The occasional misbehaviour of police officers is a small price to pay compared to the oppression and privation wrought by widespread crime.
Most of the examples that spurred this movement are killings that are disproportionately either negligent or depraved heart at the very least (let's pretend we can't form an argument that any of them were purposeful murders that were not necessary to save the officer). Even given this benefit of the doubt, it is still reasonable for independent citizens of a free nation to fight tooth and nail against such an assault on a tenant of civilization: That the state never kills you in the streets, if they can at all help it. Further, I can't see from any angle how allowing these instances to continue is a necessary price for preventing widespread crime.
>I just get the distinct impression that many people have got no real idea about the threat that crime poses to the prosperity of a community
I can't disagree more strongly.
>... and the effort that is required to keep it in check
This I agree with. But this is a weak argument against people who live with a constant background, and sometimes foreground, fear for their lives from their own government.
You have to consider the stochastic nature of crime and policing. The size of the population, the size of the force, behaviour altered by substance abuse, the prevalence of deadly weapons, the mental toll of dealing with criminals every day, the presence of organised crime, the antagonism, the heat of the moment, the type of personality needed to want to do the job: of course you are going to end up with some bad encounters. That is the price of having police.
The price of not having police is the constant and imminent danger and cost of crime. We all have to avoid certain parts of our cities. Women can’t walk safely at night even in the “safe” parts. Children can’t be left unattended. Public goods are ruined by vandalism. The stabilising effect of family households is lost as many flee to safer locations. Property values languish. Nobody can invest in the area, lenders and insurers aren’t interested. Innocent people are brutalised and they can’t rely on the police to protect them. Violent criminals operate with impunity. These aren’t isolated incidents, this is a trend of misery.
And this will be the legacy of many of these BLM protests/riots. More misery heaped on the poorest communities. That’s why I say that many people seem to have no real idea about the trade-off.
> of course you are going to end up with some bad encounters. That is the price of having police.
> The price of not having police is the constant and imminent danger and cost of crime. We all have to avoid certain parts of our cities. Women can’t walk safely at night even in the “safe” parts.
And yet many countries don't have police forces that are pathologically violent, and don't have no-go zones in their cities.
If you look up "Gun Ownership" on Wikipedia, it claims there are around 850 million guns owned by civilians in the world, around 400 million of those 850 million are in the US.
Whatever your politics are, you can't begin to understand crime and policing in the US until you internalize those numbers.
The point is that all of those bad things you cite are already the case for "the poorest communities". To the people who live there, the police are worse than useless - not only do they manifestly fail to prevent crime, but more people die when they turn up. That is where "defund the police" comes from.
Funding a massive police force to curb what essential amounts to socioeconomic issues is highly inefficient. Putting that funding towards building better communities, alleviating the factors associated with crime directly, rather than just trying to patch it by putting public workers in danger.
“Abolish the police” isn't “abolish law enforcement”. It's “abolish the centralized, generalist paramilitary model of local law enforcement.”
The ability of a blanket law enforcement withdrawal from selected neighborhoods, is largely a product of, and historically has been applied as a negotiating tactic by, exactly the model of law enforcement targeted for abolition by people who Say “Abolish the police”.
Among the alternatives: dividing law enforcement among domain-specific agencies that that have law enforcement within their domain as part, but not usually all, of their remit. You might have relatively pure enforcement in a central criminal investigation service, traffic enforcement enforcement within the agency responsible for roads and transit; truancy and school resources officers organizationally within the education office rather than assigned to them by a separate law enforcement agency, etc.
Cutting the Seattle police departments budget by 50% would be the perfect way to provide an argument for Trump Republicans that the alt-left/Antifa are out to get you .
This combined with the portland protests will get Trump re-elected and keep the GOP majority in the senate.
This is what you call a diversion from the real issue which is COVID, that republicans have not managed well at all.
The CHOP was a nightmare that was not shut down soon enough. There were armed gangs patrolling the entire thing who would try and make you delete cellphone footage. There was also rape/Iv drug usage/trash all over. I was literally there back in June.
That is NOT what I want to deal with on a daily basis.
We need to hire more police and private security to stop the crazies, make cal Anderson a gun free Zone and stop the chaos.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 287 ms ] threadIf you work in tech you should know what happens if you transfer too many responsibilities to one bloated team.
These funds would be better invested in actual support systems. Homeless shelters. Drug rehabilitation. Fixing subpar education funding in poor school districts.
I think a lot of the insanity here could have been avoided if this was presented as what it was intended to be—a reallocation of resources based on a desire to more effectively address deep-seated problems that make society worse for everyone—and not as, you know, anarchy.
I don't think anarchy is what you think it is. It wrongfully has picked up the entire Mad Max vibe. Any Chomsky talk on anarchism or the book of the same name ("On Anarchism") are a bit more nuanced introductions. Anarchism and police are "natural enemies" because anarchists believe the power police hold right now is unproportionate and unjustifiable. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24025920
What does this mean to you?
I didn't disagree with any of the thinking behind it: shifting more funding and responsibility to social support/health professionals, and focusing more on the conditions that spawn crime rather than just stamping it out as it shows up. Seems like the difference between actually fixing the holes in your house vs. putting all your money into duct tape and basins. The first step towards fixing a broken system is identifying the root causes.
But there's that, and there's the vast majority of people I know who say every cop is an evil fascist and society would be better with no law enforcement at all. Given how many people think—and want—"abolish the police" to mean abolition in the most literal sense, it is hard to look past that definition, even if it's not the intended one.
It's simple: Radicalism breeds radicalism. I don't like those redneck survivalist guys with all the guns either, but it's getting a lot harder to tell them their doomsday fantasies are stupid when so many on the left sound like they consider CHOP to be a blueprint for a better society.
Abolish: verb - formally put an end to (a system, practice, or institution).
Don't just call it a "stupid idea". That doesn't belong on HN.
But when people say "abolish the police" they do not come across as meaning "reduce the scope of policing in a careful manner" to a sizeable fraction of the other people in the country.
Some people, sure, but that's understandable given their extremely dire situation. Regardless, in my experience, most people do in fact flesh out reasonable ideas while using the phrase. Further, by far most "phrases" I've heard in person are of the "defund/reform" variety. But of course "abolishment" gets disproportionate attention, and there's always the trap of just listening to news sources and online forums where the phrase "abolish the police" is quoted with no chance given to the people for more context.
This happened in Atlanta. You can't even bring charges against a cop, let alone make it to a trial, without horrendous outcry and mass refusal to do their job.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/17/us/rayshard-brooks-atlanta-po...
... which could be considered a win for the section of America that the police oppress.
Ie, bylaws are enforced by armed and armoured officers who have full power to arrest.
Is that true? It seems to me that dividing the forces would help to break their unified defensive behaviour.
Edit: Of course, that's not to say there are no people using it absolutely in this case.
Spend some time looking at the nuanced proposals for policing reform that go by the name "defund the police" and I am guessing that you agree with them a lot more than you think you do.
There is no excuse for holding your knee on a person's neck for eight minutes and fourty six seconds. There is no excuse for doing it after he says that he can't breathe. There is no excuse for doing it after those around you tell you to cut it out. There is especially no excuse for continuing to do it for minutes after he became motionless.
Honestly, I'm not sure how else to explain to you that you should care about other human lives even when those people are high or not in the best place in life. George Floyd was murdered by a police officer pinning him in a choke hold for eight minutes and fourty six seconds and "he did drugs" or "he didn't listen to the police" is not a sane explanation.
I'm really not sure what else to tell you when you believe that it's "reasonable" for the police to choke a man to death for eight minutes and fourty six seconds because he was "high as a kite".
Abolishing the police was always nonsense but there are plenty of areas where police is overused and too aggressive. In my view there shouldn’t be police in schools or hospitals. The drug war causes a lot of unnecessary arrests and aggravation with a lot of neighborhoods. Bad cops often stay in the force without consequences for clearly bad behavior. Cops don’t have enough training so they aren’t prepared for difficult situation . The list goes on and on.
Addressing these issues would be good for cops, citizens and also public budgets. But instead the country chooses to have this stupid fight where the interested parties spend a lot of time distorting other views. Reminds me of the typical healthcare discussions. It’s very sad.
Corruption is the best business to be in. Police departments have no interest in oversight, beyond the amount necessary for leadership to protect their positions of power. And Police Unions are generally very powerful and dominate local politics.
This divide didn't happen by accident, it's the product of decades of deliberate political choices.
Schools, it's sad but I'm in favor of school resource officers. Those people were good to have around and can serve as a role model.
Are you saying that bullies are more likely to become cops if there's an SRO around? I'd really, really like to see a source for that.
I think the decline started when University produced generation after generation of supposedly educated people that had no skill other than fanning the flames.
And social media has been the A-bomb against rational, paused discourse.
That's kind of the intention. It's easy to argue against "Abolish the police! Anarchy for everyone!". Not so much against "maybe we shouldn't send people with guns drawn to respond to unarmed individuals going through a mental health crisis" [1].
None of the real proposals for policing reform that have come out the protests are calling to get rid of the police. Pretending that they want that is a political fearmongering tactic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Charles_Kinsey
Is this what people advocating for abolish the police are advocating for? Removal of health services? Isn't it literally the opposite, to have more and more varied health (and social) services, that people are advocating for?
"Abolish the police" is a scale where there is an extreme end where they may call for completely removing police from across the USA. From what I've seen, that isn't what the majority who are calling for abolishment are aiming for. Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.
The more common level I've seen is advocating for replacing parts of policing for more appropriate systems and services.
I'd call this article a straw-man argument, but there are those on the extreme end of the scale, apparently.
Words have meaning though. No one on the political board is against reforms but “abolish”, “defund”, or “shut down” mean what it means.
> Maybe "abolish" was a poor choice of a word.
So while it's easy to try to put everyone in one bucket, it's hardy useful to do so in reality.
> "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abolish :
> to end the observance or effect of (something, such as a law) : to completely do away with (something)
doesn't exactly roll off the tongue at a protest.
Domestic terrorism looks a lot more like rolling troops in camo into a city in unmarked vans to abduct citizens off the street to a location unknown to them.
Remember, most people are single issue voters. The rest of everything he does, doesnt matter.
It's been year after year of polarizing decisions and rhetoric. At this point, basically everyone's dug in on how they feel about this direction for America.
However, many at the protest are meaning exactly what the words mean.
You've either been deceived, or are consciously playing the game: Abolish the police means exactly what they want it to mean: no more police.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16181/black-lives-matter
They want to replace the police with militias they control.
"Shut down" means something too. The Royal Ulster Constabulary got shut down. Does it mean Northern Ireland doesn't have police? No, but it means it's got far fewer bad cops.
Abolish means something different again. Trying to pretend these are the same proposals is nonsense.
The problem is a large number of people calling for for abolishing the police do not have an actual plan on what to replace them with, saying things like "Something will rise up to replace it"
There is also a over riding belief that criminality is 100% related to systemic racism and poverty which is not really the case, Some of it is sure and we should address that with reform but a large part of criminality is not and abolishing the police is not a solution to that crime
We need massive reform and demilitarization of the police, and abolish police unions, but abolish police is crazy town
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/12/21283813/g...
There belief is if we give people free stuff they will stop harming people. I disagree with this position
We can eliminate militarization of police and decriminalize society with out adopting socialism
I am 100% pro-capitalism and libertarian solutions to the problem, the "Abolish Police" movement seems to be just a reformation of democratic socialism under a new banner
Do you consider EMT's socialist? They are non-police first responders. Why not make more departments like this to address the massive over-jurisdiction of police responsibility?
It is not through when you expand the inquiry to writings and positions the same advocates and politicians have on other issues and topics. A clear pattern emerges .
>>Do you consider EMT's socialist?
That depends, since there is a large number of private EMT services who bill for their services directly no that would be socialism
For government run Police, Fire and EMT service that boils down to how the funding for those services are collected on if they are socialist in nature or not. Here we would get in a public finance debate.
That discussion however is not really at the heart of the matter, police respond to situations where there is an eliminate of physical danger, this includes medical emergencies. This is often desired by the EMT's themselves because situations people suffering a medical or metal issue can often turn violent.
Again the solution IMO is not eliminating the police from responding to these calls, but to provide proper tools, training and resources to he police to understand the situations better. If you want to send along a medical person or a counselor that is something worth looking into but I do not believe replacing the police as the first line respondors defending the police, abolishing the police, or is the solution here
Instead, you have a situation where the police to abandon a precinct all at once and not long after, far-right groups start showing up at night to stoke violence. Hard not to read that as intentional.
Do you have any references to support that? It flies in the face of everything I've observed so far but in all sincerely, given the extreme polarisation in how these events are being reported by seemingly all parties, I'd not be at all surprised to find I've missed something important and would appreciate a source to clear things up for me.
It's not "Abolish the police" by itself. The same people also say "All Cops Are Bastards" and "Policing is a racist institution". It would be unreasonable to take these words as supporting anything other than doing away with police entirely.
I agree, this is absolutely a straw-man argument.
I too found it hard to believe that such people exist, but my own wife said she agrees with the statement "I believe police cause overall more harm than good in the USA, and it would be better to have no police at all than policing in its current form."
And yes, she believes that all police, except for investigating detectives, could be replaced by social workers and the like. Many of her friends believe similarly. So it isn't a straw man, these people really exist.
As you suggest, "defunding the police" is a motte and bailey argument, in that "defund" CAN equal abolish, if the defunding is 100%. On the other hand, a 5% shifting of funds would be a minor reform. So advocates, if they are unscrupulous -- and not all of them are -- can simultaneously advocate for a radical change in policing and assert it will have modest impact, by equivocating on the meaning of the word "defund".
Show them content like this and ask them how a "social worker" is supposed to handle it (graphic warning?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRF4yOIY00I
Whole communities commit "suicide" just to fuel the delusions of a handful and the self-preservation of another handful. How many injustices have been perpetrated in the name of justice?
No one comes out of this looking good, certainly not the police too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
No one advocating defunding the police was saying it would be good for business owners. The point of the whole movement is that police protect the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
Good luck Seattle.
Telling America that the coffee-shop guy deserved to get harassed by a violent mob because he's a wealthy fatcat is the surest way to discredit any cause you're advocating for. And I'm saying this as someone who thought the ideas underlying DTP made a fair amount of sense.
I get that police treatment is often inequitable, but I think we've had some experiments this summer showing that some of the radical changes being proposed have their own problems.
I'd like to point out that none of said changes have been implemented anywhere in the US in any meaningful way. Save some minor defunding, I know of no locale who has transferred any responsibility away from the police, which is one of the main roads to abolition. As another poster said, this is a very clear straw man. CHAZ was a result of protesting and an incredibly aggressive Seattle PD, not an ideal people are looking to recreate everywhere.
My point was that some relatively minor changes (de facto abandoning neighborhoods as in CHAZ, changes to bail laws in NY being two examples) have led to some pretty drastic (negative) changes to safety.
I wouldn't call "abandoning a neighborhood" a minor change either. It seems clear to me it's very much a calculated political move to do that so people can do exactly what you did - point and say "well we need police, look what happened without them". This should have no bearing on reform laws and abolition steps.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/nyregion/crime-stats-nyc-...
Per your own link:
> "Law enforcement experts say crime statistics can rise or fall in any given month for numerous reasons and explain that it is far more important to track trends over longer periods of time."
One month just isn't representative of if a policy worked or not. Take March 2020 [2]. Crime down overall, including for assaults, something the NYPD blamed the bail law on in January. I specifically cherry-picked March on purpose - you can see if you look around that months go up and down. I'm not saying it's an open and shut case in either direction, but there's no macro rise as again evidenced on the YTD stats in the first source.
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist...
[2] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p0402b/nypd-citywide-cri...
It's possible to have a world where the police do their job and are accountable when they commit horrible acts as we've seen over the past few months. Talking about the subject as if we can either have the police and look the other way at their abuse, or get rid of them completely is a terrible false dichotomy.
All in an election year no less.
Does no one remember 2000,2004 and 2016? Perhaps the DNC could write a book called “How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory”
https://covid19info.live/us/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_...
The next few (Texas 8,817, Massachusetts 8,709, Florida 8,051) are Republican, then Democratic governors of Illinois 7,822, Pennsylvania 7,364, and Michigan 6,524 put it over 50% of US deaths so far, and then some more Democrats, then more Republicans.
Plenty of blame to go around.
But I wouldn't equate them - the goal of the early policy was to flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming the health care system.
That appears to have been accomplished - it looks like these later surges will not match the deaths-per-detected-case or deaths-per-population seen in the New York area.
Part of that is better testing and treatment available now, but another large part is better policy - such as not sending covid-positive patients back to nursing homes.
Saying the states run by non-sycophants did terribly is an indictment of the Republicans, particularly the ones at the top, because of the chronology.
You can say Newsom as well, should have learned, but that doesn't make it better for anyone else.
I think the data above show that neither an R nor a D by the governor's name is significantly predictive of a state's performance, (but may be predictive of media coverage).
Instead, mistakes have been made. But we've learned some things (but not really very much yet). Flattening the curve worked to delay infections and, well, _flatten_ the curve - not reduce total infections. We also seem to be getting some benefit from partial herd immunity at lower percentages of exposure than expected - probably because people are isolating and social distancing more, and possibly partial immunity from exposure to previous coronaviruses, and better treatments and policies are helping.
These things are all helping states experiencing this later surge have a more moderate experience (and helping early states keep things controlled), and are much more significant than the governor's political party.
So demonizing "sycophants" and "gaslighting" is not productive. Focus on behaviors and results, not politics.
I was acknowledging that having cases grow later indicates they also did something wrong, not that they did the same thing wrong as others nor for the same reasons.
CA nor NY can not absolve the Republicans, no amount of failure by their enemies can absolve them of leading their own people to destruction.
The more important thing is that these later surges, which are not unexpected, are looking less deadly https://covid19-projections.com/estimating-true-infections/#...
Something like 50,000 people have died nationally since NY got things under control in early June.
That didn't have to happen. It wouldn't have happened if, say, Cuomo was running the country. Because whatever mistakes were made in NY, it was turned around starting in early April. At that point, the national death toll was about 150,000 less than now.
That's an amazing contention, especially if you look back at Cuomo's statements and policies over the course of the epidemic (Lunar New Year, nursing homes, etc.). He's so much wiser than 3-6 months ago?
How many of those 50,000 deaths throughout the country since June are because NYC was "the primary source of new infections in the United States" by May? (New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/new-york-city-coronavi...)
I think you give the governors' actions both too much credit and too much blame and an apparent partisan difference on who gets which (apologies if that's not intended).
My view of the data is that NY's density as well as mistakes allowed unmitigated & rapid spread of the virus, until the exposure and immunity reached levels at which the transmission is less likely & the most vulnerable population has been exposed/infected/died/recovered, making our efforts to limit propagation more effective. See https://coronavirusbellcurve.com/estimating-the-herd-immunit... and https://coronavirusbellcurve.com/#statesherd
The virus continues to spread throughout the country, but the curve is flattened, minimizing the death toll from the infections (though it is still high!) More drastic interventions can slow that spread, but won't stop it.
And remember that the collateral death toll (as well as non-fatal cost) of the mitigation actions is increasing as well - CDC/NYT reported on approx 50k (37%) "excess deaths" beyond covid-reported deaths - possibly from delayed medical care, despair, etc., as well as possible misreporting. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/05/us/coronaviru...
And it looks like Florida has turned the corner on this later surge - new cases 14 day trend is dramatically down: https://coronavirusbellcurve.com/#fl new deaths is still trending upward, as would be expected for a lagging indicator of the case trend. It appears unlikely to get close to the results of New York, which has a similar (but less elderly) population. https://covid19-projections.com/us-fl
The cancel culture of the perpetually offended is simply insane
And what does "politically dead" mean, anyway? Does it have anything to do with cancellation?
However, note well that, aside from his obviously being immoral, it doesn't ultimately matter what he "meant" as much as what his crowd heard, and how they reacted. This particular crowd's lust for killing democrats is above board, and this may be a tiny sample, but it mirrors the stream of hatred and desire for violence that we normally only hear in such undisguised words on the internet - and occasionally in person - from "normal people" (i.e. not leaders or other speaking personalities).
I sometimes wonder if there are leaders who, upon doing or saying something evil, hear the reaction of their constituents, and feel any remorse/disillusionment when they realize exactly how "not a joke" the hatred is. Another example was the guy who viciously attacked the journalist who was persisting aggressively - did he feel any guilt inside? What about when he saw his constituents explicitly applaud his violence in the following days?
Biden doesn't even support the defund the police movement [1] which is the real goal of most of these protests. If you look beyond the media's reality distortion bubble, the defund the police movement is about diversifying how we respond to crises, not getting rid of the police as some claim.
[1] https://www.factcheck.org/2020/07/trumps-false-recurring-cla...
Those with the resources to do so have on-site security. This ranges from gated communities, to some condo/apartment buildings, and even shopping malls. Even this isn't necessarily free of problems, but it needs to be seen as something fundamentally different from law enforcement. So when we talk about "abolishing" the police, we have to ask what we really want in its stead.
I'm having difficulty finding my source right now, but it appears that in cases of homicide by someone unknown to the victim, a police officer is the perpetrator in between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 incidents. These statistics don't consider whether the killing is justified; they just observe that if people know of someone who was killed by a stranger, there's a 1-in-3 or 1-in-4 chance that stranger has a uniform.
And as we know, people's perceptions of safety are more important than actual statistics. We rewrote the nature of air travel in response to 9/11.
in point of fact, legally, almost everyone the cops shoot are innocent people in the eyes of the law.
For example, we recently had an armed robbery outside a bar here. Police came looking for the perpetrator. They found a man who they suspected might be the robber. He ran from them. They chased him. He turned around with a gun in his hand. They shot and killed him.
Now: Was he innocent in the eyes of the law? He wasn't convicted of that robbery. He wasn't even arrested for it. They would have arrested him (or at least detained him), but he fled, and then turned around with a gun.
So I'm not sure that "innocent in the eyes of the law" says very much. Other than escaped prisoners, everyone the police encounter is innocent in the eyes of the law, at least on the issue for which the police are confronting them.
Yes.
> I'm not sure that "innocent in the eyes of the law" says very much.
It says that we still believe in the rule of law, not in just allowing cops to be judge, jury, and executioner on our streets. To be sure, shootings due to self defense happen, but we have entire protests and riots in the United States right now over how often cops kill innocent civilians without justification, and are protected by the system from any consequences.
Obama and Trump both understood this and both chose slogans that virtually no one can disagree with (“Change / Yes We Can” and “Make America Great Again.”) Pretty easy to understand.
“Abolish the police” seems almost designed to fail as a slogan right from the beginning.
[1] https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/06/17/28550006...
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-c...
- abolish the police [1]
- banning crowd control munitions on peaceful protesters [2] who peacefully throw bombs of peace [3] and start fires of peace [4]
- prosecute those who attempt to defend themselves from said peaceful protesters [5]
- selectively fire white cops, civil rights laws be damned [6]
I'm tired of this.
[1] https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/17/black-lives-matte...
[2] https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-police-deployed-crow...
[3] https://www.q13fox.com/news/seattle-police-declare-riot-afte...
[4] https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/07/groups-smash-glas...
[5] https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/mcclosk...
[6] https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/seattle-police-chief-fires-...
Truly bizarre
I'm not even sure you're wrong; I just think you can't conclusively say how black people feel about an issue.
Please, do your research on what abolition actually looks like. This article does not describe abolition, it describes a PR tactic the Seattle PD decided to pull as punishment to protestors. Linked below is one with actual interest and nuance.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/12/21283813/g...
If you look around and see incredible injustice, great. Don't spend your time policing the language and methodology the oppressed use to argue for their rights, go do things and help them be more effective. This is a classic white liberal issue of "I support the ideas but not the way to them" that has been around for centuries.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin-luth...
"We do not need allies who are more devoted to order than to justice" - MLK
"The white liberal is the worst enemy to America, and the worst enemy to the black man....The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro..." - Malcom X
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8869214-the-white-liberal-i...
>I just get the distinct impression that many people have got no real idea about the threat that crime poses to the prosperity of a community
I can't disagree more strongly.
>... and the effort that is required to keep it in check
This I agree with. But this is a weak argument against people who live with a constant background, and sometimes foreground, fear for their lives from their own government.
The price of not having police is the constant and imminent danger and cost of crime. We all have to avoid certain parts of our cities. Women can’t walk safely at night even in the “safe” parts. Children can’t be left unattended. Public goods are ruined by vandalism. The stabilising effect of family households is lost as many flee to safer locations. Property values languish. Nobody can invest in the area, lenders and insurers aren’t interested. Innocent people are brutalised and they can’t rely on the police to protect them. Violent criminals operate with impunity. These aren’t isolated incidents, this is a trend of misery.
And this will be the legacy of many of these BLM protests/riots. More misery heaped on the poorest communities. That’s why I say that many people seem to have no real idea about the trade-off.
> The price of not having police is the constant and imminent danger and cost of crime. We all have to avoid certain parts of our cities. Women can’t walk safely at night even in the “safe” parts.
And yet many countries don't have police forces that are pathologically violent, and don't have no-go zones in their cities.
Whatever your politics are, you can't begin to understand crime and policing in the US until you internalize those numbers.
What's the going conversion rate on that? How many thefts should we expect the police to prevent for every person we allow them to rough up?
We can live in a society where police are held accountable for their actions and where they do their job. Pretending otherwise is a false dichotomy.
The ability of a blanket law enforcement withdrawal from selected neighborhoods, is largely a product of, and historically has been applied as a negotiating tactic by, exactly the model of law enforcement targeted for abolition by people who Say “Abolish the police”.
This combined with the portland protests will get Trump re-elected and keep the GOP majority in the senate.
This is what you call a diversion from the real issue which is COVID, that republicans have not managed well at all.
The CHOP was a nightmare that was not shut down soon enough. There were armed gangs patrolling the entire thing who would try and make you delete cellphone footage. There was also rape/Iv drug usage/trash all over. I was literally there back in June.
That is NOT what I want to deal with on a daily basis.
We need to hire more police and private security to stop the crazies, make cal Anderson a gun free Zone and stop the chaos.