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im convinced the central argument for defund being "more money for social services" is the result of the left internalizing constant cries of "how we gonna pay for it??" https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1272683849865138176
found this in my drafts, decided it should see the light of day.
this piece outlines my views well. https://newrepublic.com/article/158210/abolish-police-departments
this piece outlines my views well. https://newrepublic.com/article/158210/abolish-police-departments
the conflating of 1: the need to make police officers less deadly, 2: the need to spend more on social services as a means of countering systemic injustice, and 3: the desire to stick it to cops under the umbrella of "defunding the police" strikes me as willful incompetence
they're separate issues. as #1 relates to defunding: I see no reason to believe that whatever it takes to reinstate the social contract between failed urban pds and their constituency will be inherently cheaper. and if it isn't, I tend to be bullish on government spending anyhow.
when you have members of Minneapolis City Council admitting the MPD functions as a protection racket, and the LAPD union pointedly reminding Garcetti that they are tasked with "protecting" him 24/7, it's apparent that cop cooperation will be both integral to reform and expensive
as an institution, police are evidently corrupt. therefore, some individual cops must also be corrupt. we know in theory that higher salaries can root out corruption (one reason why state legislators should be appropriately compensated and MoCs should actually be paid more).
although I tend to believe that cops are already paid handsomely (likely b/c of the above logic), and that their corruption is motivated by attitudes rather than compensation, I can't rule it out. it's another reason that ppl who see defunding as more radical than reform irk me.
in reality, the former could actually directly impede our ability to do the latter. that generally precludes something from being more radical than something else (e.g. whereas 'public option' is nested within 'single-payer,' 'defunding' and 'reform' might not be able to coexist)
propositions 2 and 3 are the two main planks of defunder thought imo, and represent different strands of it. as for #2, this is where we see the internalized paygo syndrome. cities spending generously on cops and not on many other public services is basically a non-sequitir.
*however,* the state of policing and the systemic racism that is in perpetuated by inadequate funding of vital services are v. closely linked. fixing the former could def. help us w/ the latter, but insisting on revenue-neutral local budgets would do the exact opposite.
this is what genuinely pisses me off the most b/c the logic behind it (so far as I can tell) is that you can only spend money on good things by cutting budgets for bad things. no, you can also raise taxes.
indeed, sales tax increases are a possible (albeit regressive) option that would keep us from being hamstrung in creating a new public safety force.
ok, number 3. this is the sticking point for ppl who want to induce radical change by cutting funds so low that not only do we (rightly) get rid of military equipment and general chaff, we basically cripple the whole thing. ppl here probably also say "abolish" i totally empathize
the issue with 3 as I see it relates to number 1 (this is all under the Pareene piece's stipulations, so idc about typical counterarguments like "who will I call" etc). I'm more concerned about what bad cops would do out of uniform, more precisely in a *different* uniform, than
I am about those same cops in uniform if we could be just a bit stricter regarding how we prosecute them (in addition to countless other reforms which sum to a new kind of policing, ofc.) so again, defunding could be in conflict with what needs to change w/ policing as I see it.
this dovetails with how if we supposed one could truly abolish the police, effective immediately, we think they would see the fired cops return immediately as private security forces. if we wish to defund to turn the screws on police - which could indeed help us target ...
problem cops if used in conjunction with prosecution reforms/ending qualified immunity - we risk a cop exodus similar to that under total abolishment, but targeted at the cops with the worst policing rap sheets. its the worst of both worlds, as they would feed right into the
private security apparatus as it already exists. I'd prefer them to go literally anywhere else, preferably somewhere that keeps them away from lethal weapons. if needed, balooning police budgets to give permanent severance *specifically for* problem cops is worth considering.
i think this is the worst counter against the need to roll up all left-of-center opposition to police brutality under "defunding police," as it's somewhat nebulous: we could likely legislate around it by requiring dismissed officers to avoid security jobs, for example.
I most prefer my counter to number two as it concisely expresses the psy-opness I feel regarding "defund" becoming the shorthand regarding various reforms, as "defund" actually encompasses like 10% of the things 90% of ppl want.
either way, thats the thread.
just to close, a reminder that I began this thread by sharing an article that states, in no uncertain terms: "Minneapolis’s police force has forfeited its right to exist. So have other cities." That's precisely what I believe-- defunding is not how we get there.
