The Murder of George Floyd & Subsequent Protests/Riots

[ceecee]

This says nothing about what is done with the money taken away from the police department. If all a city does is reduce police funding, of course that won't help. My previous post already addressed the highlighted:


I posted a reference earlier somewhere. They are not hard to find.

There are several posts on this topic in this thread. If the people wondering actually gave a shit they would have read them to begin with.

 

[anticlimatic]

This says nothing about what is done with the money taken away from the police department.

Skyrocketing violet crime says plenty about what happens when you take money away from police departments- enough I wager to probably take it off the table as a long term source of funding for better first response units. My question is where the money is going to come from. Like I said your solution is great if the logistics can be worked out, but if they can't it's useless.

 

[Coriolis]

Skyrocketing violet crime says plenty about what happens when you take money away from police departments- enough I wager to probably take it off the table as a long term source of funding for better first response units. My question is where the money is going to come from. Like I said your solution is great if the logistics can be worked out, but if they can't it's useless.

Is violent crime skyrocketing? If it is, that suggests that current funding allocation is not appropriate to the need. "Defund the police" is a recent call, though, so any impact on crime won't be measurable until it is actually done and some time has passed. Like I said, it is not "my" solution, but has been employed in a number of places. If you are going to ignore those data, there isn't much more I can add.

 

[Maou]

Is violent crime skyrocketing? If it is, that suggests that current funding allocation is not appropriate to the need. "Defund the police" is a recent call, though, so any impact on crime won't be measurable until it is actually done and some time has passed. Like I said, it is not "my" solution, but has been employed in a number of places. If you are going to ignore those data, there isn't much more I can add.

I would assume most of the money given to police, pays the police officer's salary. As well as their education, equipment, pensions, and training. Officers also do their own paperwork too, iirc. Most of the things that work with police are on a seperate budget as well. Such as dispatching, that is probably funded independantly since they also work for the EMT and Fire department as well. So we have to really keep that intersectionality in mind when thinking of the budget. From what I can tell from google, is the police funding is directly related to corrections, and officers. Less money would mean less officers, less patrols, less equipment, less education etc. It is directly comparible to Teachers. Unions also play a huge role too. They will demand higher wages, which will also decrease officer counts to stay in budget.

So it is common sense to recognize less police means higher crime, because they just can't fire all the secretary to hire more police. Being an officer requires extensive training and a law degree in many places. It would also increase response time, and result in less incentive to become an officer.

 

[Jaguar]

Is violent crime skyrocketing?

Yes, from general stupidity:

• A Slatington, Pennsylvania man had a shootout with seven police officers after refusing to wear a mask in a cigar store.
• A fight over a mask at an Albuquerque auto shop resulted in one fatality.
• In mid-July, an unmasked customer pulled a gun on a mask-wearing shopper in a Royal Palm Beach, Florida Walmart—there were no injuries.

Violent crime is up simply because assholes don't want to wear a mask - shooting, stabbing, and punching people is apparently the solution.

 

[anticlimatic]

Yes, from general stupidity:

• A Slatington, Pennsylvania man had a shootout with seven police officers after refusing to wear a mask in a cigar store.
• A fight over a mask at an Albuquerque auto shop resulted in one fatality.
• In mid-July, an unmasked customer pulled a gun on a mask-wearing shopper in a Royal Palm Beach, Florida Walmart—there were no injuries.

Violent crime is up simply because assholes don't want to wear a mask - shooting, stabbing, and punching people is apparently the solution.

Jaguar- warrior for truth- not in any way interpreting events based on personal feelings about mask wearing.

 

[Jaguar]

Jaguar- warrior for truth- not in any way interpreting events based on personal feelings about mask wearing.

Do you have a problem with facts? Yes.

There's an uptick in MDS: Mask Derangement Syndrome. When asked to wear a mask, some people are becoming deranged.

 

[anticlimatic]

Is violent crime skyrocketing? If it is, that suggests that current funding allocation is not appropriate to the need. "Defund the police" is a recent call, though, so any impact on crime won't be measurable until it is actually done and some time has passed. Like I said, it is not "my" solution, but has been employed in a number of places. If you are going to ignore those data, there isn't much more I can add.

Homicide Spike Hits Most Large U.S. Cities - WSJ

The problem always with long term utopic visions are the pesky tactical necessities in actually building them. Folks like me can help bridge that gap, but folks like you need to understand that some gaps just can't be bridged on a budget. And there's always a budget.
Appropriating successful policies from other nations and areas that have had success can be a good tool for problem solvers, but taking spare parts from one machine will only work with a sufficiently comparable machine, and if the two law enforcement agencies do not have sufficiently similar areas in which they operate, the data that evidences success in the suggested policy may not apply when transferred. This fact is often overlooked due to its tedium, but that doesn't alter the reality of it.
Add to that the proverbial Sim City earthquake/tornado/Godzilla combo event we currently have going on with riots, a pandemic, and a recession- and those pesky tactical obstacles are piling up like Mount Everest. The higher that pile gets, the harder it's going to be for any utopic visions of 'woke law enforcement' to actually be a thing.

 

[Coriolis]

Homicide Spike Hits Most Large U.S. Cities - WSJ

The problem always with long term utopic visions are the pesky tactical necessities in actually building them. Folks like me can help bridge that gap, but folks like you need to understand that some gaps just can't be bridged on a budget. And there's always a budget.
Appropriating successful policies from other nations and areas that have had success can be a good tool for problem solvers, but taking spare parts from one machine will only work with a sufficiently comparable machine, and if the two law enforcement agencies do not have sufficiently similar areas in which they operate, the data that evidences success in the suggested policy may not apply when transferred. This fact is often overlooked due to its tedium, but that doesn't alter the reality of it.
Add to that the proverbial Sim City earthquake/tornado/Godzilla combo event we currently have going on with riots, a pandemic, and a recession- and those pesky tactical obstacles are piling up like Mount Everest. The higher that pile gets, the harder it's going to be for any utopic visions of 'woke law enforcement' to actually be a thing.

Your link is behind a paywall, so alas, I cannot read the whole thing. What I can see, however, already tells a different story. It seems while homicide is up, other forms of violent crime are down. To quote what I can see:

A sharp rise in homicides this year is hitting large U.S. cities across the country, signaling a new public-safety risk unleashed during the coronavirus pandemic, and amid recession and a national backlash against police tactics.

The murder rate is still low compared with previous decades, and other types of serious crime have dropped in the past few months. But researchers, police and some residents fear the homicide spike, if not tamed, could threaten an urban renaissance spurred in part by more than two decades of declining...

Looks like this homicide spike is an outlier after two decades of decline, with other violent crlme falling even in recent months. It even suggests that police tactics may compound the issue, as in, pose a challenge as communities attempt to address the homicide spike. Unless you can link this spike to the shift of a portion of police funds to medical/counseling responders, it says nothing about my suggestion. Depending on the circumstances in which those homicides occur (e.g. domestic violence fueled by COVID/unemployment stress), non-police response might do better at addressing the issue before it comes to murder.

 

[anticlimatic]

Your link is behind a paywall, so alas, I cannot read the whole thing. What I can see, however, already tells a different story. It seems while homicide is up, other forms of violent crime are down. To quote what I can see:

Looks like this homicide spike is an outlier after two decades of decline, with other violent crlme falling even in recent months. It even suggests that police tactics may compound the issue, as in, pose a challenge as communities attempt to address the homicide spike. Unless you can link this spike to the shift of a portion of police funds to medical/counseling responders, it says nothing about my suggestion.

Sorry about that, I read the article but it now does seem to be behind a paywall for me as well. Pity. I'll summarize from memory.

It mentions a decline in robberies and burglaries, and (speculatively) attributes them and the murder spike to the triple threat of recession (greater poverty, especially among communities of color), lockdown induced insanity (mental illness exacerbated by being forced to shelter in place), tensions with police (relative to the riots and the blow to the reputation of law enforcement in general), and youth violence brought on by closing schools prematurely and taking most structural public institutions away from them, leaving them vulnerable to getting drawn into gang culture. The drop in robberies and burglaries is attributed to people being in their houses most of the time and not walking down proverbial dark alleys (cutting off the supply of available places to burgle, and people to rob).


My point with the article was to point out that there is now a gigantic mess to deal with beyond the restructuring of police departments in the context of the pre-COVID era- a mess that is directly in the way of your medical/counseling first responders suggestion by virtue of scant resource priority. But that won't stop elected officials, who seem to have the combined intelligence of a stack of pancakes, from doing any insane shit they think will help them get reelected someday. When you see data like this, is "we should defund the police" seriously the first thing that pops into your head?

 

[Coriolis]

My point with the article was to point out that there is now a gigantic mess to deal with beyond the restructuring of police departments in the context of the pre-COVID era- a mess that is directly in the way of your medical/counseling first responders suggestion by virtue of scant resource priority. But that won't stop elected officials, who seem to have the combined intelligence of a stack of pancakes, from doing any insane shit they think will help them get reelected someday. When you see data like this, is "we should defund the police" seriously the first thing that pops into your head?

First, you can stop calling it "my" medical/counseling responders suggestion. I didn't make this up. I am aware of it from reading about what some communities do, with greater effectiveness than our current standard approach. You can read about it, too. Second, to call these approaches "defunding the police" misses the point. I don't know even if all of them are funded using money taken from police budgets. I do know that the communities who do this find it works better, and don't report financial shortfalls as a result.

The first thing that comes into my head when I see a rise in a particular kind of crime as your plot shows, is to look for the likely causes, and address it using the right tool for the job. The causes you mention - "greater poverty, (especially among communities of color), lockdown induced insanity (mental illness exacerbated by being forced to shelter in place), tensions with police (relative to the riots and the blow to the reputation of law enforcement in general), and youth violence" seem especially to lend themselves to approaches outside the traditional policing model. It is often a case of the stitch in time that saves nine.

 

[anticlimatic]

First, you can stop calling it "my" medical/counseling responders suggestion. I didn't make this up. I am aware of it from reading about what some communities do, with greater effectiveness than our current standard approach. You can read about it, too. Second, to call these approaches "defunding the police" misses the point. I don't know even if all of them are funded using money taken from police budgets. I do know that the communities who do this find it works better, and don't report financial shortfalls as a result. The first thing that comes into my head when I see a rise in a particular kind of crime as your plot shows, is to look for the likely causes, and address it using the right tool for the job. The causes you mention - "greater poverty, (especially among communities of color), lockdown induced insanity (mental illness exacerbated by being forced to shelter in place), tensions with police (relative to the riots and the blow to the reputation of law enforcement in general), and youth violence" seem especially to lend themselves to approaches outside the traditional policing model. It is often a case of the stitch in time that saves nine.

I don't think I've seen anyone use so many words to say absolutely nothing.

You seem more interested in distancing yourself from your suggested policy (that someone else came up with and trademarked) than talking about it; more interested in citing that we should figure out what's causing these problems than discussing what's causing these problems.

Which is fine I guess.

 

[Coriolis]

I don't think I've seen anyone use so many words to say absolutely nothing.

You seem more interested in distancing yourself from your suggested policy (that someone else came up with and trademarked) than talking about it; more interested in citing that we should figure out what's causing these problems than discussing what's causing these problems.

Which is fine I guess.

Unfortunately you are not the only person I have seen so completely miss the points I am making and misrepresent what I have written to the point that it seems deliberate. Fortunately even when I reply to someone specific (like you), I am posting for all readers. Those willing to consider the data and focus on actual solutions will take my meaning.

 

[anticlimatic]

Unfortunately you are not the only person I have seen so completely miss the points I am making and misrepresent what I have written to the point that it seems deliberate. Fortunately even when I reply to someone specific (like you), I am posting for all readers. Those willing to consider the data and focus on actual solutions will take my meaning.

This is at least the third time you have copy pasted this disengaging response (verbatim) to one of my efforts at engaging in conversation. Far be it for me to attempt to force someone into an exchange they are not interested in, but I just wanted to point out that I am consistently the only one even trying to communicate across ideological divides. While you're substantially more polite than most of your ilk, you still seem just as interested in only ever feeding your own echo chambers and contributing nothing- not even dialogue- to the greater non partisan good.

 

[Coriolis]

This is at least the third time you have copy pasted this disengaging response (verbatim) to one of my efforts at engaging in conversation. Far be it for me to attempt to force someone into an exchange they are not interested in, but I just wanted to point out that I am consistently the only one even trying to communicate across ideological divides. While you're substantially more polite than most of your ilk, you still seem just as interested in only ever feeding your own echo chambers and contributing nothing- not even dialogue- to the greater non partisan good.

As long as you keep telling yourself this, you will have a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I were disengaging, I would not even be replying to you. You on the other hand have consistently failed to reply directly to the points I have made, and have employed unproductive spin in your comments to me, then bristled when I called it out for what it is.

A good example of the first is failing to acknowledge that the article you posted to support your assertion that violent crime is up, stated exactly the opposite, with murder the exception. Yes, murder is significant, but it is a small subset of the violence that police have been responding to in recent months. A good example of the second, from your previous post, is "You seem more interested in distancing yourself from your suggested policy (that someone else came up with and trademarked) than talking about it". You seem more interested in ascribing false and irrelevant motivations to me, than addressing the merits of this approach. I am sure you can see how it is possible to support something while also giving credt where credit is due; and how there is difference between something I alone theorize might be a good idea, and something implemented to good effect in many places.

We shall see if any reply you make to this post contains actual discussion of the issues (merits of including medical/psychiatric first responders, nature of violence requiring police/community response, effects of COVID, etc.), or simply more attempts to dismiss myself and my comments without actual support in a way that borders on misrepresentation if not outright ad hominem.

 

[ceecee]

"your ilk". And this is a person that demands civility from everyone else.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

As long as you keep telling yourself this, you will have a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I were disengaging, I would not even be replying to you. You on the other hand have consistently failed to reply directly to the points I have made, and have employed unproductive spin in your comments to me, then bristled when I called it out for what it is.

A good example of the first is failing to acknowledge that the article you posted to support your assertion that violent crime is up, stated exactly the opposite, with murder the exception. Yes, murder is significant, but it is a small subset of the violence that police have been responding to in recent months. A good example of the second, from your previous post, is "You seem more interested in distancing yourself from your suggested policy (that someone else came up with and trademarked) than talking about it". You seem more interested in ascribing false and irrelevant motivations to me, than addressing the merits of this approach. I am sure you can see how it is possible to support something while also giving credt where credit is due; and how there is difference between something I alone theorize might be a good idea, and something implemented to good effect in many places.

We shall see if any reply you make to this post contains actual discussion of the issues (merits of including medical/psychiatric first responders, nature of violence requiring police/community response, effects of COVID, etc.), or simply more attempts to dismiss myself and my comments without actual support in a way that borders on misrepresentation if not outright ad hominem.

I don't think he's consciously duplicitous, but the way a lack of self--awareness can make a person cocksure they are earnestly attempting dialogue across ideological divides when it could hardly be further from the truth is simultaneously fascinating and completely banal. At any rate, the bolded is spot on.

 

[The Cat]

"your ilk". And this is a person that demands civility from everyone else.

🦊

 

[FemMecha]

It's all a game. It's always a game.

 

[anticlimatic]

We shall see if any reply you make to this post contains actual discussion of the issues (merits of including medical/psychiatric first responders, nature of violence requiring police/community response, effects of COVID, etc.), or simply more attempts to dismiss myself and my comments without actual support in a way that borders on misrepresentation if not outright ad hominem.

There are a bevy of "issues" in regards to the subject of this thread, well beyond the ones listed here. Are they the only ones you are interested in discussing? I am interested in additional issues, and interested in persuading you to be interested in them as well. Pivoting to something else isn't "spin" (which claims one thing is really a different thing), it's just the natural progression of discourse. If I'm unintentionally getting ahead of ourselves, I can back up. In this case, I'll start with these per your request.

merits of including medical/psychiatric first responders

Initially I addressed this here:

Excellent idea in theory

Like I said your (transcribed) solution (that someone else came up with and trademarked) is great

But to further expound, I think that if money were no issue and we could pair first response teams with someone psychiatric/medically trained (like a counselor and a dedicated EMT) then George Floyd's death probably wouldn't have happened. It could potentially solve a lot of the problems that the George Floyd Protesters are identifying. Training existing officers to be partial counslers/EMTs wouldn't go amiss either.

nature of violence requiring police/community response

I'm not sure exactly how you mean this, so you will have to elaborate. If I were taking a stab, I'd guess it was partially in reference to this:

A good example of the first is failing to acknowledge that the article you posted to support your assertion that violent crime is up, stated exactly the opposite, with murder the exception.

Which contrary to this, I did acknowledge here:

The drop in robberies and burglaries is attributed to people being in their houses most of the time and not walking down proverbial dark alleys (cutting off the supply of available places to burgle, and people to rob).

and (speculatively) attributes the murder spike to greater poverty, mental illness exacerbated by being forced to shelter in place, tensions with police, and youth violence brought on by closing schools prematurely and taking most structural public institutions away from them, leaving them vulnerable to getting drawn into gang culture.

These are all things police have to bear the brunt of in response. "Tensions with police" is just that- a two way hostile 'air' that provides the emotional fuel for outbursts in either direction, which creates a net positive of violence. How do we eliminate that tension? How do we ensure that unarmed first response units are kept as safe as they are expected to keep suspects?

effects of COVID

I mean it seems pretty obvious to me that locking people inside their homes, preventing many of them from working, and cutting many of them off from social support groups is going to have a mental health toll that is bound to push people over an edge they were already standing on anyhow. I don't think I need to dig up sources on this one, though I'm sure I could. How this can translate into anger and violent crime should also be self evident. However, the data is a lagging indicator, and most of this mess is currently in the "being sorted out" phase, so we are pioneers of speculation for the moment.

Does this sufficiently address the aspects of this situation that you want to address? Might I raise one of my own? Incidentally, it's the same point that I began this entire discussion on:

I don't see where else they can get the money to make it work.

to which you responded:

I didn't specify a way to implement this. If I were to do so, it would involve substitution, not augmentation.

In other words, defund the police- substitute that funding with medics/counselors. To which I responded:

Skyrocketing violet crime says plenty about what happens when you take money away from police departments- enough I wager to probably take it off the table as a long term source of funding for better first response units. My question is where the money is going to come from. Like I said your solution is great if the logistics can be worked out, but if they can't it's useless.

I can back up the assertion that a greater police presence drives down violent crime per data acquired via the old terror alert system- which discovered that during high alert moments, when officers were dispatched across cities, violent crime dropped off significantly. Your response:

Is violent crime skyrocketing? If it is, that suggests that current funding allocation is not appropriate to the need.

Seems to indicate, per the data that I just mentioned, that the need is currently a greater police presence in these areas of spiking violent crime. I thought this to be common sense, but maybe I was wrong. Do you have some other data on how to curb murder rates in american cities that I'm unaware?

4 Theories About Why Homicides Are Spiking in U.S. Cities | Cities | US News

Theory No. 1: Changes in police activity

The increase in violent crime could be linked to how the pandemic has impacted policing, Rosenfeld says. He notes that some of the main functions that police officers perform when out on patrol include monitoring buildings, checking vehicles and conducting interviews with people on the street or with business owners.

"Those activities are sharply curtailed when officers are wearing masks, stay in their vehicles and try to maintain social distance," Rosenfeld says. "And those are the kinds of so-called proactive activities that research has shown can reduce crime."

Reestablishing trust with Police could also help:

Theory No. 2: Communities are pulling back from the police

It's also possible that the spike in violent crime could be attributed to communities, especially disadvantaged communities of color, pulling themselves back from the police "due to breached trust and lost confidence," he says. Rosenfeld notes the similarities he's seen in his analysis between the recent spike in homicides and the increase found in 2015 and 2016 in the aftermath of protests associated with police brutality in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore.

"When people are alienated from the police – in my business, we call this when the police are experiencing diminished legitimacy," he says, "then people are less willing to call the police when they know of a crime, less willing to cooperate with the police or when they're asked to cooperate in an investigation, and more likely, then, to take matters into their own hands when disputes arise."

Which brings me back to the money, and our core argument of augmentation vs substitution.
Why would you want to substitute police officers, rather than augment them, when the data indicates that the opposite is called for?

How does one reconcile the demands of the protesters to substitute the police, as a means to boost police trust and bring down crime, with evidence and current reality on the ground, that the opposite of that is also what helps to bring down crime?

On this point- my point- you've offered nothing except Coriolitudes.