Law Enforcement Reform Thread (formerly Defund the Police) (4 Viewers)

[First Time Poster]

So I got busy the other day with the intention to revisit this topic and answer some of the responses put forward but I realized the thread was deleted. But, I felt we had good dialogue happening before I left so I wanted to restart the topic to get the conversation going again. We started some dialogue about it on the liberal board but I feel this topic transcends party lines so I'm making a MCB thread. Post #2, or my next post, is the post I made on the liberal board when asked to elaborate how I felt.

 

[Lapaz]

I think you're completely misreading those numbers. The 9% figure isn't the percent of impoverished people who are white -- it's the poverty rate for whites. The 9% doesn't mean that if there are 100 million people in poverty only 9 million are white. It means that 9% of the entire white population is in poverty.

You can view this in action at https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/

Change from percent to number in the menu on the left.

Doing so shows that whites are actually 43.42% of the impoverished population, and blacks are 20.77%. (I'm going to not rant about this putting "Hispanic" as a race when Hispanic is NOT a race... sheesh. If "Hispanic" were broken out to White Hispanic and Black Hispanic, the "Whites" number would grow a lot more.)

Now to a criticism of the UCR -- it is just a sample, not a total. It is a voluntary reporting, and not every jurisiction reports to the UCR, Additionally, every jurisdiction might have its own method of classification of crimes, so that numbers from one place to another can be wildly different if they used the other's methodology. There are numerous studies that show the UCR data might be as much as 50% under-reported for crimes. It's useful, but it isn't complete.

You're right that the 9% of poverty was a percent, and I misread the chart. The numbers are about 18M whites to 8.65M blacks for 2018. I don't count Hispanics, because that isn't a race, so don't blame me for that being on the KFF chart. I recognize that there are plenty of Hispanics that would pass for white. The point I made still stands regarding blacks not being targeted, if in fact most crime is related to poverty. I wasn't the one that made the assertion (hypothesized) that most crime is due to poverty. I was responding to UncleTrvlingJim's post #176 in which he said when you control for poverty, there are studies that show that blacks are targeted more than whites. So using numbers, rather than the percentages, the ratio of impoverished whites to impoverished blacks is 18M/8.65M = 2.08. The ratio of arrests of whites to arrests of blacks from 2015 was 5.753M/2.197M = 2.62. Whites are arrested 2.62 times more than blacks, yet are only 2.08 times more likely to be impoverished. If most crime is linked to poverty, then why are whites arrested more than 2.62 times more than blacks, rather than about 2.08 times as much as blacks? It seems to me that this is not an indication of targeting of blacks.

 

[Ayo]

This is becoming a Public Service Announcement for the Perils of Modernism and Positivism.

Once again I’ll refer to the Bill James’s claim that we’ve become so obsessed with the quantifiably statistical that we’ve lost our way. Too many of us have been “numbed by the numbers.”

to think that an entire social system that deals with abstracts like law and morality and ethics and has a long racialized history in the country that was long held up by “science” when it comes to race and intersects things like education and urban planning and class and a whole host of other things can be easily explained in a single line of misunderstood, cherry-picked “stats” and “data” and then delivered with such simple sentence certainty is mind boggling.

 

[Ayo]

Had a conversation with a police officer up here this morning, who is entirely behind the 'Defund the Police' movement. He explained his rationale, and it primarily came down to mental health.

Generally, he said that police officers have become the person people call on for lots of things, too many things. They aren't trained for them, and yet they get funded for it. They shouldn't be doing it.

He is an officer in Hamilton, which is the biggest city outside of Toronto. It's a lot of blue collar industry and a lot of poverty, especially relative to places around here that are more affluent.

I've done a bit of work there at a youth facility, and poverty and homelessness and mental health issues are rampant.

Their police force has *TWO* squads for mental health issues. One is a 2-person squad, with a nurse and a plainclothes officer and they handle lower level cases, where there is no threat of violence. The other squad is a 3-person team with one nurse and two police officers who are uniformed and the nurse is in kevlar and other body armor.

A single case, with all of the turn around time and paperwork and getting them to the hospital can be 12 hours. The officers are trained in de-escalation and mental health issues. The nurse is usually the one on point.

But the officer was telling me how he's tired of getting calls for homelessness and drug addiction, because he doesn't know what to do. He wants there to be social workers and nurses making these calls. The responsibilities of the police need to be actual policing.

And there's so much they do that they don't need to do.

And he thinks the budget should be cut accordingly, and the funds siphoned off to the respective professions that can handle it. Homelessnes, mental health, addiction, family disputes, and others need to be handled by nurses and therapists and social workers - they should be budgeted for these things, not the cops.

It was an illuminating perspective, which I agree with - and it was good to hear him agree. And it was also good to hear how much he didn't enjoy doing the non-police work and explain how he knows he's not certified to do much of the work he's actually asked to do.

 

[Lapaz]

Had a conversation with a police officer up here this morning, who is entirely behind the 'Defund the Police' movement. He explained his rationale, and it primarily came down to mental health.

Generally, he said that police officers have become the person people call on for lots of things, too many things. They aren't trained for them, and yet they get funded for it. They shouldn't be doing it.

He is an officer in Hamilton, which is the biggest city outside of Toronto. It's a lot of blue collar industry and a lot of poverty, especially relative to places around here that are more affluent.

I've done a bit of work there at a youth facility, and poverty and homelessness and mental health issues are rampant.

Their police force has *TWO* squads for mental health issues. One is a 2-person squad, with a nurse and a plainclothes officer and they handle lower level cases, where there is no threat of violence. The other squad is a 3-person team with one nurse and two police officers who are uniformed and the nurse is in kevlar and other body armor.

A single case, with all of the turn around time and paperwork and getting them to the hospital can be 12 hours. The officers are trained in de-escalation and mental health issues. The nurse is usually the one on point.

But the officer was telling me how he's tired of getting calls for homelessness and drug addiction, because he doesn't know what to do. He wants there to be social workers and nurses making these calls. The responsibilities of the police need to be actual policing.

And there's so much they do that they don't need to do.

And he thinks the budget should be cut accordingly, and the funds siphoned off to the respective professions that can handle it. Homelessnes, mental health, addiction, family disputes, and others need to be handled by nurses and therapists and social workers - they should be budgeted for these things, not the cops.

It was an illuminating perspective, which I agree with - and it was good to hear him agree. And it was also good to hear how much he didn't enjoy doing the non-police work and explain how he knows he's not certified to do much of the work he's actually asked to do.

I would ask the police chief if he has enough money to train the cops he has, before calling for defunding. I would ask if they stopped having to deal with people that should be dealt with by social workers, is the police force adequately funded. I would ask if they have enough funds to provide raises to their good cops. If the jurisdiction is adequately funded, then it’s fine to shift funding to social workers. The answer is going to be different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Some may answer this affirmatively, while others say they are already underfunded even without doing social work. It makes sense to augment social workers to handle many more cases, but we need to make sure we’re not undermining police forces. I would advocate for more social workers to aid the police in the underfunded jurisdictions, and keep the police funded

 

[Ayo]

You can tell the cop, yourself.

But as with most everything else in this thread, you may get told you don’t really understand what you’re talking about when it comes to the staffing and funding model he is talking about.

 

[Farb]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/minn...ll-cops-is-now-overrun-by-homeless-encampment

Another resident was forced to confront his own white privilege when he called the cops on teenage boys who tried to rob him of his car at gunpoint. After accidentally giving them house keys, they abandoned their attempt and stole a different neighbors car. He ended up dialing 911 — a move he now regrets because it was just “instinct,” and it likely put the would-be carjackers in danger.

“Been thinking more about it,” that resident told the NYT. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”

“t was scary but the cops didn’t really have much to add after I called them,” he added. “I haven’t been forced to think like this before. So I would have lost my car. So what? At least no one would have been killed.”

I had to double check if this was satire. It wasn't, it is from a NYT article. If it wasn't so sad, it would be comical.

 

[DaveXA]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/minn...ll-cops-is-now-overrun-by-homeless-encampment

Another resident was forced to confront his own white privilege when he called the cops on teenage boys who tried to rob him of his car at gunpoint. After accidentally giving them house keys, they abandoned their attempt and stole a different neighbors car. He ended up dialing 911 — a move he now regrets because it was just “instinct,” and it likely put the would-be carjackers in danger.

“Been thinking more about it,” that resident told the NYT. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”

“t was scary but the cops didn’t really have much to add after I called them,” he added. “I haven’t been forced to think like this before. So I would have lost my car. So what? At least no one would have been killed.”

I had to double check if this was satire. It wasn't, it is from a NYT article. If it wasn't so sad, it would be comical.

Getting robbed (carjacked) at gunpoint and calling the police is white privilege? I think what we have is a failure to communicate.

 

[Ayo]

Getting robbed (carjacked) at gunpoint and calling the police is white privilege? I think what we have is a failure to communicate.

Daily Wire, the title, and the first line would have been enough to send off alarms for me. I wouldn't have made it past that.

 

[DaveXA]

Daily Wire, the title, and the first line would have been enough to send off alarms for me. I wouldn't have made it past that.

Agreed.

 

[Ayo]

Agreed.

They have really embraced the bigotry, xenophobia, racism angle. Their online media presence on Facebook is, imo, *hugely* problematic and contributes mightily to Facebook becoming the cess pool it's becoming.

And just today, Unilever pulled it funding.

I would love to see more companies boycott Facebook until they actually do something about the rampant proliferation of actual fake news, racism, etc. And the only thing Zuckerberg understands is money, and it's already led to a response, within the same day.

 

[Lapaz]

https://www.dailywire.com/news/minn...ll-cops-is-now-overrun-by-homeless-encampment

Another resident was forced to confront his own white privilege when he called the cops on teenage boys who tried to rob him of his car at gunpoint. After accidentally giving them house keys, they abandoned their attempt and stole a different neighbors car. He ended up dialing 911 — a move he now regrets because it was just “instinct,” and it likely put the would-be carjackers in danger.

“Been thinking more about it,” that resident told the NYT. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”

“t was scary but the cops didn’t really have much to add after I called them,” he added. “I haven’t been forced to think like this before. So I would have lost my car. So what? At least no one would have been killed.”

I had to double check if this was satire. It wasn't, it is from a NYT article. If it wasn't so sad, it would be comical.

That article is very vague about the community residents that were making the comments, and I also don't trust the Daily Wire, so I doubted its validity. The NYT article has the names of the residents in it, and it lines up well with the NYT article. Most of the comments made by the residents of that community are ludicrous. Most are willing to allow crimes because they are convinced that the police are on the warpath. Most probably have no idea how few people are actually killed by the police annually, and that whites are killed about equally, and that almost all of the people killed are alleged to have committed violent crimes. Do they really expect the Indian organization to handle violent criminals? The kids may have been in some danger, since they were committing a robbery, which is a violent crime, but to regret calling the cops over an armed car jacking is still crazy. It was over, but the kids stole another car, and what makes this man think those kids will stop there? Also, how will he feel if the next person gets shot and killed? Those kids need to be caught and sent to juvenile detention centers. I hope they can be rehabilitated, but they're obviously dangerous, and need to be caught before they hurt someone. The sad thing is these people care, but they're guilty about white privilege, so they're doing a disservice to their community. I predict that those ladies that were crying about their fears will soon become the norm in that community, and that encampment will be removed. Had they not taken such an extreme position, and perhaps created a safe place with cooperation with the police, then they could've made a difference. I doubt even the residents of the encampment will want to stay there much longer if they think cops won't be called to handle criminals, particularly violent criminals.

Here is the NYT article.

A Minneapolis Neighborhood Vowed to Check Its Privilege. It’s Already Being Tested.

Blocks from where George Floyd drew his last breaths, residents have vowed to avoid the police to protect people of color. The commitment is hard to keep.

www.nytimes.com

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

That article is very vague about the community residents that were making the comments, and I also don't trust the Daily Wire, so I doubted its validity. The NYT article has the names of the residents in it, and it lines up well with the NYT article. Most of the comments made by the residents of that community are ludicrous. Most are willing to allow crimes because they are convinced that the police are on the warpath. Most probably have no idea how few people are actually killed by the police annually, and that whites are killed about equally, and that almost all of the people killed are alleged to have committed violent crimes. Do they really expect the Indian organization to handle violent criminals? The kids may have been in some danger, since they were committing a robbery, which is a violent crime, but to regret calling the cops over an armed car jacking is still crazy. It was over, but the kids stole another car, and what makes this man think those kids will stop there? Also, how will he feel if the next person gets shot and killed? Those kids need to be caught and sent to juvenile detention centers. I hope they can be rehabilitated, but they're obviously dangerous, and need to be caught before they hurt someone. The sad thing is these people care, but they're guilty about white privilege, so they're doing a disservice to their community. I predict that those ladies that were crying about their fears will soon become the norm in that community, and that encampment will be removed. Had they not taken such an extreme position, and perhaps created a safe place with cooperation with the police, then they could've made a difference. I doubt even the residents of the encampment will want to stay there much longer if they think cops won't be called to handle criminals, particularly violent criminals.

Here is the NYT article.

A Minneapolis Neighborhood Vowed to Check Its Privilege. It’s Already Being Tested.

Blocks from where George Floyd drew his last breaths, residents have vowed to avoid the police to protect people of color. The commitment is hard to keep.

www.nytimes.com

So, you think the police should start aggressively patrolling the area and start detaining random black teens in the hopes of capturing them? Because that has been the current practice that you appear to be defending. Because the crime is being committed by black teens, you seem to be saying that all black teens are acceptable suspects for the police to target. And if a black teen takes exception to being detained and reacts with anger, you seem to be saying that it is acceptable for the police to ramp up the pressure and escalate it. Because that is basically the forest you seem to be missing.

Or, just maybe we should have a better way of responding than just more violence. Your recommended solution of violently capturing the juveniles to send them to juvenile detention has a horrible track record in this country. Over 80% of juvenile offenders who are sent to our incarceration centers go on to recommit offenses. Compare to say 45% in Australia or 38% in Sweden, or anywhere else.

Our current practice produces bad results. I'm not sure why you think we should continue them.

 

[Lapaz]

So, you think the police should start aggressively patrolling the area and start detaining random black teens in the hopes of capturing them? Because that has been the current practice that you appear to be defending. Because the crime is being committed by black teens, you seem to be saying that all black teens are acceptable suspects for the police to target. And if a black teen takes exception to being detained and reacts with anger, you seem to be saying that it is acceptable for the police to ramp up the pressure and escalate it. Because that is basically the forest you seem to be missing.

Or, just maybe we should have a better way of responding than just more violence. Your recommended solution of violently capturing the juveniles to send them to juvenile detention has a horrible track record in this country. Over 80% of juvenile offenders who are sent to our incarceration centers go on to recommit offenses. Compare to say 45% in Australia or 38% in Sweden, or anywhere else.

Our current practice produces bad results. I'm not sure why you think we should continue them.

I didn’t say anything you said I said. I wouldn’t randomly detain. I wouldn’t aggressively patrol. Almost everything you said was made up. I said it is ludicrous not to call the police. Kids that steal a car at gun point are dangerous and need to be sent to detention. The reason detention has a record of producing bad kids is that the kids they get are already bad. It has nothing to do with whether they are black or white. If there is aby better place for them, I would support it, but they are hazards to this community. Are you okay with doing nothing about kids that steal at gun point?

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

I didn’t say anything you said I said. I wouldn’t randomly detain. I wouldn’t aggressively patrol. Almost everything you said was made up. I said it is ludicrous not to call the police. Kids that steal a car at gun point are dangerous and need to be sent to detention. The reason detention has a record of producing bad kids is that the kids they get are already bad. It has nothing to do with whether they are black or white. If there is aby better place for them, I would support it, but they are hazards to this community. Are you okay with doing nothing about kids that steal at gun point?

I think I would prefer to reform the way we do policing and detention at this point. Because what we are doing isn't working.

At this point, in large sections of the country, police have lost the confidence of the population. If they want people to trust them again, they're going to have to work to get it back.

 

[Ayo]

So, you think the police should start aggressively patrolling the area and start detaining random black teens in the hopes of capturing them? Because that has been the current practice that you appear to be defending.

This is literally what was happening in NYC, with hundreds of officers manipulating the system - messing with the lives of poor black kids - so they could get overtime.

Or, just maybe we should have a better way of responding than just more violence. Your recommended solution of violently capturing the juveniles to send them to juvenile detention has a horrible track record in this country. Over 80% of juvenile offenders who are sent to our incarceration centers go on to recommit offenses. Compare to say 45% in Australia or 38% in Sweden, or anywhere else.

Our current practice produces bad results. I'm not sure why you think we should continue them.

The juvenile system is abhorrent in many areas and institutions in the US. Canada has implemented the Youth Offenders Act in the early 80s in an attempt to police juveniles in a different way. It saw marginal success, and around 2000 they passed the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

When I worked in facilities here, the difference in the 'typical' incarcerated youth was *much* different. Fewer detainees. Crimes were much more serious. The country essentially said we don't want to lock kids up unless the reasons actually merit removel from school, society, family.

The US, generally speaking, does *not* have that approach. And the recidivism of minor to adult in the system is much higher in the US as a result. Which, as you point out, is a considerable difference.

We orient a lot of young black kids to a life behind bars. They get an education there, for sure. I've seen it time and time again.

The school to prison pipeline is another racialized elements of our system, where school discipline, policing and law enforcement, the legal system, and the penal institutions intersect.

And it's quite upsetting. The biggest push has come from activists, researchers/academics, and stakeholders who are demanding more be done. The cops, themselves, have generally exempted themselves from the dialogue, so it's gone on in spite of them.

One example that stands in contrast to that is something I was approached to be a part of, but was unable to to do because of other obligations and commitments at the time. But in eastern Toronto, there are a lot of black families and black and brown immigrant communities and families. The police force is largely white.

Well, they were having a problem policing these black kids and they were told - by the parents and the kids themselves - that they didn't know them, didn't even know how to talk to them. And they hadn't earned their trust.

The police department reached out to me, from the work I'd done, to be a go-between, facilitating dialogue needed between the cops and the youth that didn't trust them and wouldn't/couldn't talk to them. The police administration recognized their error and shortcoming and realized there was a historical, generational trust being handed down and it wasn't going to improve if they couldn't communicate. And the neighborhoods weren't going to be receptive, if there wasn't demonstrable improvement.

It was a rare instance in my experience of a police force identifying and reflecting on their error and their not-so-great reputation in these communities of color. Props to them. I think it needs to happen more and more.

But the officers need to first recognize that they are in the wrong. And when they put up such feeble defenses as "I'm just doing my job" or "Don't blame me, blame the laws" they make themselves seem like automatons and the 'professional expertise' of their jobs gets undermined as merely an uncritical, unthinking tool in a racialized, brutal power structure.

That's not good for anyone.

 

[Lapaz]

I think I would prefer to reform the way we do policing and detention at this point. Because what we are doing isn't working.

At this point, in large sections of the country, police have lost the confidence of the population. If they want people to trust them again, they're going to have to work to get it back.

They’ve lost confidence in large part due to an invalid narrative that police are killing blacks indiscriminately. That perception is not the reality. The guy quoted thought the kids would be killed because of that narrative. Instead of thinking of the risks to his community of an armed gunman continuing to commit crimes and possibly killing innocent people in his community. I support reforming police and detention, but people willing to commit armed crimes have to be removed from society. It is ludicrous to feel so guilty about your white privilege that you allow a dangerous criminal to keep committing crimes.

 

[Ayo]

They’ve lost confidence in large part due to an invalid narrative that police are killing indiscriminately blacks.

What are you basing this on? To whom have you talked? What communities and neighborhoods have you worked in? In what capacities have you engaged black people authentically on this topic? What history of policing in this country have you read?

Are you going to tell Ralph Ellison or MLK or Fres Hampton or James Baldwin that they are wrong? You gonna tell entire families who have witnessed brutality that they are wrong? We have a system that ours 1/3 of black males in prisons and you want to tell their families that their ideas about equality under the law is a lie?

you, once again, only amplify your ignorance with statements like this.

watch The 13th. Read The New Jim Crow. Start there.

th narrative you are pushing is so demonstrably incorrect and your insistence to believe it requires the ignorance and dismissiveness of so much.

With each successive post, you are only amplifying how little you know and understand, the inversely proportional relationship between your knowledge and your confidence, and your absolute unwillingness to learn.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

They’ve lost confidence in large part due to an invalid narrative that police are killing indiscriminately blacks. That perception is not the reality. The guy quoted thought the kids would be killed because of that narrative. Instead of thinking of the risks to his community of an armed gunman continuing to commit crimes and possibly killing innocent people in his community. I support reforming police and detention, but people willing to commit armed crimes have to be removed from society. It is ludicrous to feel so guilty about your white privilege that you allow a dangerous criminal to keep committing crimes.

No, the police have lost the confidence of the public because of aggressive policing tactics that asks them to prevent future crime.

Take a step back for a second. Basically you are saying that black Americans are either lying, are stupid or are criminals themselves. I know that isn't what you probably meant, but that is the net effect. Take a random sample of black Americans (particularly black men), and ask them if they believe they've ever been unfairly targeted by police. And then take a random sample of white Americans and ask them if they've ever been unfairly targeted by police. How do you think that will turn out?

You keep narrowly focusing on statistics that show black Americans are not killed by cops at a higher rate per encounter than white Americans (statistics that aren't actually really complete b/c the per encounter are not well recorded). Missing the number of encounters the average black American has to face in this country.

I only have a few close black friends, but all of them have told me about times they were aggressively detained by cops (including being shoved and yelled at), often while their white friends who they were with were not questioned at all. I haven't surveyed my black acquaintances but just perusing their twitter feeds and other social media posts indicates that this is a common occurrence for them.

Are they liars or crazy? Or maybe they are actually experiencing something you aren't?