Frix t1_je947k9 wrote on March 30, 2023 at 9:20 AM

I'll try to ELI5 it:

A police officer is basically "a guy with a gun". So the question we, as a society, need to ask ourselves is "when do we need a guy with a gun and when are we better served with a different solution."

for things like a bank robbery or a hostage situation, a guy with a gun is great person to have. This is the kind of thing police are good for. Nobody wants to stop police officers from stopping dangerous criminals and people who say otherwise are lying to you.
But for things like "a homeless person who is addicted to drugs". WTF is a guy with a gun going to do to help this situation?? We need trained social workers and paramedics to handle this issue, not police officers.
Even for smaller criminal issues like a kid doing vandalism due to a bad homelife, I would argue that sending in armed forces with guns is a major overreaction that won't help anyone. We would be better served by helping these kids get a better life instead of punishing them for small misdemeanors.

The problem in the USA is that the police is currently the only solution to every problem, no matter how ill-equipped they are to handle it. We would be better served to defund them, use them for serious issues only and use those newly freed funds to invest in better healthcare, education and social workers to prevent problems in the first place.

Gibsorz t1_je97mnp wrote on March 30, 2023 at 10:08 AM

The problem you run into is needing to front load the resources. You cant remove those funds from the police, and then start spending it on social workers/crises intervention specialists, medical, education, because the gap will be too great. That reduced funding to the police will translate to less police, then because the solution isn't in place, the police will still be relied on as the catch all, but with less of them, they will be more likely to use force, which will lead to more lethal force use.

First you need to provide extensive national standardised training for crises intervention and de-escalation to police so they have the resources to better intervene with persons in crises (they will do a lot of this intervention even in the new world order of defunding, because no social worker is going to talk down a guy in crises with a bat without a guy with a gun making it safe first, so it won't be wasted).

Then you need to fund these new resources and allow them to take effect before removing resources from police.

Unfortunately immediately cutting millions of dollars and giving it to social programs and medical field, won't have the desired effect because those fields face significant shortages of employees with their current staffing levels. If you suddenly make thousands of more positions available, you won't have anymore people to go into the job.

Frix t1_je9ayqv wrote on March 30, 2023 at 10:51 AM

I will absolutely grant you that there are a lot of practical things to take into consideration to manage the transition. And it would indeed require for there to be an overlap-period where we pay for both.

But those are merely practical issues to work with. Not insurmountable problems that should stop this altogether from even getting started.

Gibsorz t1_je9bxil wrote on March 30, 2023 at 11:02 AM

I totally agree. I don't think any cop is signing up to spend half their time trying to manage the social issue of how we treat our homeless without being given proper education and inadequate training in the matter because no one else will do it. But that's what they are doing, because no one else will. So they will be more than happy to have things like that be transitioned to a better service. Im sure the term defund has a negative connotation in their circles, but that could be attributed to fear of being downsized (job loss), concern that this transition wouldn't be done right (because when, with a judicial system as fractured and varied as that of the USA is anything done right on a large scale) and they'll die because of it, believing that defund means remove funds in order to start the new programs - not start the new programs then scale back.

Like Afghanistan would have been a multiple generation operation if we truly wanted woman to keep their newfound rights, the defund movement will be as well. I don't think anyone has the appetite or attention for that in today's society - which is why I don't think it will happen.