If you're gonna make an example out of me, at least try to understand my point.

So the fact that this occurred the way that it did is meant to invalidate the idea that police need to be defunded and other programs need the resources to combat the social problems that lead to violent outcomes?

Yeah, not like there are systemic barriers to a lot of the aid people need or anything

Right back at ya

Your glibness aside, rape is absolutely about power and is usually perpetrated against people who do not have the necessary support structures to leave the situation. Speaking of which, you ever look up the stats on how many sex crimes cops have solved and how often people who go to them for protection against these sorts of things are dismissed by the people who are supposedly there to protect and serve? How 'bout that 40% statistic about cops, since we're on the subject?

>They’re just mismanaged.

That's a pretty good reason to reallocate resources.

What does his profession have to do specifically with my original post?

Respectfully, I think that essentializing people to "bad down to their roots" a cop-out to avoid having to ask the questions that it would take to legitimately address questions concerning justice and the treatment of criminals in general (even down to the non-violent offenders bc lets be honest when ppl think criminal, they think the "bad to the root" kind of person).

Like, I'm not about to say that people aren't capable of brutal and heinous things, given the wrong situation, I'm sure everyone can be. That said, basing foundational building blocks of our society on just punishing the worst people we can think of leaves the imagination blank for providing help for victims and, again, just preventing these tragedies from occurring in the first place. When all you have is a hammer (cops and prisons) every problem looks like a nail (criminal).

It is, however, being gutted.

I'd argue that the two are mutually exclusive bc cops are fiercely protective of the power that they have (ex. The time the police went on strike bc greater oversight was on the table) and a lot of what it would take to prevent crime would mean, at the very least, a large-scale reallocation of resources from police to a variety of other needed public services (like housing, mental health, education/extra cirricular activities for kids). At least, if the goal is prevention of crime and rehabilitation after the fact, as opposed to just outright punishment, which the cops are quite well-equipped to do

Education is among the most consistently underfunded social services. Teachers are certainly not nearly as well-paid/well-compensated as cops and they serve a variety of critically necessary roles.

>Has it occurred to you that when a young man or woman are being encouraged to contribute to a crime (shoplifting / raiding a store) or joining a gang, you know, before they have ever committed a crime aka the "root", if the message is "you will be caught and go to jail" and not "people don't care, won't report the crime, and the cops won't arrest you and the judge won't prosecute" that mayyyyybe that could be, oh I don't know, discouraging people to ever get into that kind of crowd???

This looks to me like a very good example of circular logic. This isn't hard. If people are committing crimes, it's literally scientifically supported, that they do so due to lack of resources/legitimate avenues to meet their needs. Take care of people's most basic needs and you'd see a huge reduction in crime, abuse victims could leave abusers safely, etc. etc. Just having the looming threat of prison hasn't solved crime in the several hundred years we've been doing it, what makes you think it'll magically work with a few extra billion dollars?

Given how many other necessary public services are gutted as cops get near-constant increases to their budget, it seems to me that we are not allocating the resources into preventing crime, so much as creating it via societal negligence and then throwing cops at the problem.

That has nothing to do with getting to the root of the problem of crime. You don't deal with a weed by chopping up the leaves, you deal with it by the root. Same thing with criminality. Cops get billions of dollars of taxpayer money every year, with the budget ballooning for them all the time, while other necessary services which would prevent crime entirely are severely underfunded, at best (bc as it turns out most people don't do crime for fun, but out of desperation).

It's a tragedy when people are killed, but adding more cops does not solve the underlying problems even a little and worthwhile to stop pretending otherwise.

Less that and "put the resources into solving crime at the root, as opposed to giving everything to cops and expecting things will be any different."