This is why we say "defund the police"

[jorgevlorgan]

Link to tweet

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Link to tweet

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I don't know if many people know how genuinely disproportionate and skewed our overall funding for police is in most major cities. I certainly didn't until recently.


LA recently said it will cut it's police budget by 100-150 million. It sounded like a lot at first, but if you look at that chart, you can tell we can do a lot better than that. Cities should not just be entire police departments with some minor services on the side.

Oh and here's a picture of an LAPD Lamborghini parked in a disabled spot:

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Los Angeles Times: "LA Schools Will Return Grenade Launchers, Keep Rifles"

Los Angeles Unified school police officials said Tuesday that the department will relinquish some of the military weaponry it acquired through a federal program that furnishes local law enforcement with surplus equipment. The move comes as education and civil rights groups have called on the U.S. Department of Defense to halt the practice for schools.

The Los Angeles School Police Department, which serves the nation’s second-largest school system, will return three grenade launchers but intends to keep 61 rifles and a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle it received through the program.

[PoliticAverse]

1. How much revenue do those departments bring in via fines, tickets and asset forfeiture ? n/t

[cayugafalls]

2. That is an entire subject on its own. eom

[intheflow]

4. I'm sure not enough to cover the lawsuits

from killing innocent black people, and all other misconduct they get sued for.

[JHB]

5. You might be mistaken there

Depending on the locality, it can bring in quite a bit. And the locals love the fact that their taxes don't go up to support a bloated police force.

[jorgevlorgan]

6. Question:If you are teaching in an LA school and you hear a 14 yo student talk about how he and

his friends were beaten up by police, and had his house searched without a warrant, and showed you the marks the police left on him. What the hell do you do? Call CPS? Tell the school counselor/ social worker? Call the police??

[intheflow]

10. First, ask the student if they want you to do anything.

At 14 the kid can make their own judgement call. Talk to the kid directly about the incident. Do they want to report it to the police? Do they want counseling? Do they want any kind of intercession? If yes, I’d start with the school counselor, but if that person’s first response is to call the cops (entirely possible given the school-to-prison pipeline) you may need to go outside the school system to other groups working on the issue of police brutality.

[jorgevlorgan]

12. this situation happened maybe 4 years ago

I think the main thing was the student didnt want to do anything. I told a couple other teachers and the counselor, and I think the consensus was that if they didnt want to take action or talk about it more with anybody else, then there wasn't much that can be done....


Edit to add I really, really appreciate your thoughtful response, and hindsight 2020 an outside group would ja e been a great place to start.

[FM123]

3. Yep!

Defunding the police does not mean stripping a department entirely of its budget, or abolishing it altogether. It’s just about scaling police budgets back and reallocating those resources to other agencies.

[Proud liberal 80]

7. I bet the same can be said about the federal budget

And military spending vs other spending

[jorgevlorgan]

8. I feel like this is even worse

Which is in itself hard to believe.

[AlexSFCA]

9. Most of those are deep blue jurisdictions. Eye opening.

This is our party’s problem and we need to solve this. For the first time, in a long time, we can’t really blame gop for this. We have unlimited political power in most of those cities. City council can make changes overnight.

[boston bean]

11. Just stop saying it is my political opinion.

Say fund social service. Police the police. Anything but defund the police.

Just stop saying something so ridiculous, please people. Police are needed. They need reform.

[Hav]

13. I have no idea why people are so stubborn about this

Defund has a very clear definition. So what's the point about deliberately using a term that doesn't convey what it is supposed to mean?
It's almost comparable to the behavior of the other side. The more one asks to rethink the framing of that issue, the more stubborn they get about using it.

[boston bean]

14. Because it is a political loser. Unforced error.

Defunding police means stop paying them. No one in their right minds thinks that is a good idea.

It is too broad. Easily hijacked and used as a spear against us.

[Hav]

16. No, I agree with you, it's political suicide

My point was, leaving aside the extreme position of some who argue for literally getting rid of the police, when you ask what they mean with defunding, it's not defunding at all. So why use this term?
Some of the ideas brought forward are actually worthwhile reforms that might find support from both sides. But defund as the slogan doesn't even remotely convey that part of the discussion and it actually harms the effort to change the current system.

[BannonsLiver]

15. " Someone quick, ask me where we'll get the money for Medicare"

Well, not from cutting municipal police budgets. There are many failures within our educational system but basic civics has to be among the biggest. We have legions of people who have no idea how their government works.

[jorgevlorgan]

17. I prefer local budgets go towards local projects

Agreed. Federal budgets are not local budgets and should not be treated as such. This whole situation just shows how much more involved people need to be I'll n their local governments, and how that lack of involvement has resulted in a pretty fucked up situation.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

18. If there ever was a phrase that originated in Russia, this would be it.

Please stop using that phrase. It's buying votes for Trump at no cost to him. Republicans will beat the public to death this fall with it and probably at least one new one per week from Russia or Fox until November.

"Truck driver won't deliver" is another phrase almost certainly planted by Russians into the social media chatter to scare the shit out of Americans on behalf of Trump.

The charts you have presented have been doctored to emphasize the disparity between police expenditures and only others that are very small in cost.

One question: Why didn't you include fire and rescue in those charts?

KY.........

[wellst0nev0ter]

19. This is the status quo the detractors are sticking up for

Face it, the cops are useless except for causing trouble.

Link to tweet

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[jorgevlorgan]

20. police were not even formed to stop most crime

But rather for the purpose of crowd control, protecting property, and evolving from slave patrols into enforcers of the black codes. Solving murders, etc, had nothing to do with why we created them.