Update: AOC wants to defund the police. She may be a lefty loony but she wields power and influence. You can't say anymore that defunding the police is not part of the protesters' platform.

Posted by Guitarguy567 on 6/6/2020 1:07:00 PM (view original):
Update: AOC wants to defund the police. She may be a lefty loony but she wields power and influence. You can't say anymore that defunding the police is not part of the protesters' platform.

AOC wields no influence in the real world. On Twitter, sure. But Twitter ain’t the real world.

By defund the police, do you mean reduce the budget (not a radical idea, what AOC actually supported) or completely defund the police?

I just checked her Twitter; I don't see a call to stop spending money on the police. If that's what she actually means, I'll completely oppose it.

Posted by Guitarguy567 on 6/6/2020 1:07:00 PM (view original):
Update: AOC wants to defund the police. She may be a lefty loony but she wields power and influence. You can't say anymore that defunding the police is not part of the protesters' platform.

No she doesn't.

She has exactly 0 power. The people who actually have power (political or economic) could shut her down tomorrow if they so choose. Influence? I guess...about as much as Oprah had when her TV show was topping the ratings. But then again, that influence was/is completely at the mercy of those who wield the power.

At any time, AOC could be discredited and lose whatever you/she thinks she has. She is a talking puppet for somebody(s) much higher up the food chain.

I have seen many people call for defunding the police force. The Minneapolis mayor mentioned the idea. It’s political pandering and is a terrible plan. Even reducing the budget makes no sense. Those guys already work in a very dangerous field for about $50k/year and despite the current battle cries are not racist or bad people.

Posted by Uofa2 on 6/6/2020 1:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Guitarguy567 on 6/6/2020 1:07:00 PM (view original):
Update: AOC wants to defund the police. She may be a lefty loony but she wields power and influence. You can't say anymore that defunding the police is not part of the protesters' platform.

AOC wields no influence in the real world. On Twitter, sure. But Twitter ain’t the real world.

Dammit, you type faster than me.

Posted by strikeout26 on 6/6/2020 1:35:00 PM (view original):
I have seen many people call for defunding the police force. The Minneapolis mayor mentioned the idea. It’s political pandering and is a terrible plan. Even reducing the budget makes no sense. Those guys already work in a very dangerous field for about $50k/year and despite the current battle cries are not racist or bad people.

They need to do a better job of weeding out the bad cops. This “protect all cops” mantra of theirs hurts the good ones. “It’s only a few bad apples,” yeah, and that ruins the batch guys. Get rid of the bad apples.

Posted by usf_bulls on 6/6/2020 1:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Uofa2 on 6/6/2020 1:28:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Guitarguy567 on 6/6/2020 1:07:00 PM (view original):
Update: AOC wants to defund the police. She may be a lefty loony but she wields power and influence. You can't say anymore that defunding the police is not part of the protesters' platform.

AOC wields no influence in the real world. On Twitter, sure. But Twitter ain’t the real world.

Dammit, you type faster than me.

Haha I dunno about faster, just shorter ;)

AOC!

DRINK!

BENGHAZI!

DRINK!

HILLARY E-MAILS!

DRINK!

Posted by Uofa2 on 6/6/2020 1:41:00 PM (view original):

Posted by strikeout26 on 6/6/2020 1:35:00 PM (view original):
I have seen many people call for defunding the police force. The Minneapolis mayor mentioned the idea. It’s political pandering and is a terrible plan. Even reducing the budget makes no sense. Those guys already work in a very dangerous field for about $50k/year and despite the current battle cries are not racist or bad people.

They need to do a better job of weeding out the bad cops. This “protect all cops” mantra of theirs hurts the good ones. “It’s only a few bad apples,” yeah, and that ruins the batch guys. Get rid of the bad apples.

I agree. Three things would improve this. I almost typed “fix this”, but no policy will truly get rid of all bad cops.

1. Do away with qualified immunity
2. Remove barriers imposed by police unions.
3. Better recruitment practices. I know this is vague, but I’m not sure that I’ve formulated a solution that solves this. I don’t know enough about the inner workings of the law enforcement hiring process.

Posted by strikeout26 on 6/6/2020 2:02:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Uofa2 on 6/6/2020 1:41:00 PM (view original):

Posted by strikeout26 on 6/6/2020 1:35:00 PM (view original):
I have seen many people call for defunding the police force. The Minneapolis mayor mentioned the idea. It’s political pandering and is a terrible plan. Even reducing the budget makes no sense. Those guys already work in a very dangerous field for about $50k/year and despite the current battle cries are not racist or bad people.

They need to do a better job of weeding out the bad cops. This “protect all cops” mantra of theirs hurts the good ones. “It’s only a few bad apples,” yeah, and that ruins the batch guys. Get rid of the bad apples.

I agree. Three things would improve this. I almost typed “fix this”, but no policy will truly get rid of all bad cops.

1. Do away with qualified immunity
2. Remove barriers imposed by police unions.
3. Better recruitment practices. I know this is vague, but I’m not sure that I’ve formulated a solution that solves this. I don’t know enough about the inner workings of the law enforcement hiring process.

It’s a hell of a lot better than whatever they’re doing now.

While things could certainly improve and we should strive always strive for better, I’m not sure there’s evidence that the current system is “broken.”

In 2019, 9 unarmed blacks were shot by police and 19 unarmed whites were. Police have 375M interactions with civilians/year. While we obviously want that to be zero, 28 out of 300,000,000 does not sound “broken” to me.

Also, the data axiomatically proves that systemic racism does not exist within the police force.

Posted by strikeout26 on 6/6/2020 2:20:00 PM (view original):
In 2019, 9 unarmed blacks were shot by police and 19 unarmed whites were. Police have 375M interactions with civilians/year. While we obviously want that to be zero, 28 out of 300,000,000 does not sound “broken” to me.

Also, the data axiomatically proves that systemic racism does not exist within the police force.

If these stats are correct, it just goes to show the power of the media and the power of narrative.