If you're anti-"defund the police", you can still use it as a wake-up call for accountability

[ck4829]

"Fund the police" should mean:

Don't have a backlog of rape test kits, with their sourcing and storage paid for by taxpayers
Don't have drug test field kits with their sourcing paid for by taxpayers that generate false positives
Instead of drug test kits in general with their sourcing paid for by taxpayers that detect poppy seeds as heroin, why not use BETTER drug tests?
Use your body cams, don't leave them on your desk when you go to execute a warrant
Use better hiring practices, maybe have routine psychological exams and examinations of abilities and competence
Don't keep "bad apples" around

"I'm not for defunding you guys, but it does look like you are on thin ice!"

[The Magistrate]

1. 'Police The Police!' Is The Better Slogan, Sir

It does not need explanation in the present climate, and reflects accurately the will of the mass of people in the streets, and lending them support from homes.

[redstatebluegirl]

2. Yes! If we keep saying defund the police we are going to lose in November.

[dixiechiken1]

4. Agreed...

Words matter, right now more than ever. We have to find a better way to phrase the reforms we want.

[samnsara]

7. i agree! Its suicidal to be chanting this...

[Hortensis]

3. No progressives are against improving police and social services.

CK, "defunding" is a technical word that means shifting functions that police are not best suited for, like dealing with the mentally ill, to programs that are, in the process shifting the funding for them also.

Since the end of the liberal progressive era at the end of the 1970s, a lot has been piled on police willy-nilly as programs and funding were closed and gutted by conservatives. The idea is to get back to doing it right.

[Sherman A1]

5. We certainly need some type of police to control crime and protect us

That said, there are a whole lot of reforms that need to be instituted.

[marmar]

6. "Defund" is bad phraseology no doubt.

Many of the people using it are actually talking about something much more nuanced, but America doesn't do nuance well, so phraseology is important.

[gratuitous]

8. The concept seems to have gotten the police's attention

In ways that the recorded beating of Rodney King and hundreds of atrocities since then never did, defunding the police seems to have gotten the attention of the police at long last. The Today Show was just interviewing the chief of police in Houston (Acevedo, I think?), and he was double-talking and tap-dancing at high speed to justify police tactics. He claimed that the system isn't broken, and he put the hat on Congress to develop a uniform set of rules for police departments across the country regarding use of force and the like. I'll give him this: He sounded very reasonable as he put forth these fatuous ideas.

Okay, folks don't want to talk about de-funding the police; what do folks want to talk about? Can we even get to consensus or agreement that citizens shouldn't be choked to death on the street in front of a crowd of witnesses? Or is even that too controversial?