Police presents at upcoming D2 Football Games?

[NWHoops]

Problem is that many city counsels are making defund decisions without asking the WHOLE community they have been elected to represent if they REALLY want to defund the police. They are being held hostage by a small but VERY vocal group of people that threatens to burn down communities if the city counsels don't defund the police IMMEDIATELY! And whenever a group of citizens stands up for the police, they are attacked.

There are 13+ cities were the city counsels have defunded their police. They include:

Austin - 1/3 of the police departments budget has been cut.
Seattle - $3.5M immediate cut.
New York City - $1B cut.
Los Angeles - $150M
San Francisco - $120M
Oakland - $14.6M
Washington DC - $15M
Baltimore - $22M
Philadelphia - $33M

When asked if maybe "Defund the Police" actually meant something else like the reallocate of $'s to social programs, one of the originators of the "Defund Movement" said in no uncertain terms - NO, Defund the Police means EXACTLY what it says...DEFUND THE POLICE. Full stop.

Sending a Social Worker out to deescalate certain situations is a great idea...in a classroom. When you overlay reality, it looks a lot less viable for any number of reasons. Couple of instant questions:

1. Is there going to be a standing group of social workers that are available each and every shift, 24/7 365?
2. Who is going to triage the call for service to determine if a police officer will be deployed or a social worker? Calls to 911 are notoriously inacurate and devoid of any specific information.
3. Who will protect the Social Worker while they are trying to deescalate a person? If it is a police officer, you haven't really reduced the work load of the police officer.
4. What do you do about the underlying criminal activity (ex. a mentally ill person broke into a house)?
5. If an officer rolls up on a person with clear mental issues who is violent, what is the officer supposed to do while they are waiting for a social worker to arrive? What if that person attacks the officer (this actually happens quite often)?
6. The majority of police involved shootings occur when the officers have developed PC that a person has committed a crime and needs to go to jail for it and then goes "hands on" to effect the arrest. Does a social worker need to be present at all arrests?
7. And the big question, what is the officer supposed to do when they call for a Social Worker and none are available?

Don't expect you to answer any of those questions. Just pointing out that seemingly simple decisions that might make some degree of sense when discussed among rational people in the clear light of day become a lot less clear when reality rears its ugly head.

I try to get my information from a wide variety of sources. Unfortuanatly, the ability to get truly unbiased reporting is almost impossible. I do a good degree of research on line from what seem to be reputable sources. For example, I researched the DOJ for the number of unarmed African Americans killed by police officers to determine if this was a large number or if it was a relatively small one. In my simple mind, a large number or an increasing number might indicate "systemic racism" in police departments.

With those questions, you're still looking at the symptoms. When there is crime involved there will be need for police. What if there was less crime involving those dealing with mental health concerns because they had access to appropriate mental health care and medication? That will only be possible with more funding to support those initiatives. It would also help if we looked at healthcare as a public good rather than private business in this country like virtually all other developed countries have managed to do.

What if doctors only treated you for your symptoms but didn't try to find the underlying cause to eliminate the symptoms from ever happening? You would need to see the doctor over and over because the symptoms kept coming back. You would still need doctors because you are going to get sick but ideally you would treat the underlying issues, which eliminates symptoms from those issues, which leads to less visits to the doctor.

[boatcapt]

"Defund the police" is an absolutely terrible slogan. The original idea was to allocate those funds around to other agencies with the goal of accomplishing two things:

1) Allow agencies better equipped to handle certain situations the jurisdiction and financial backing to do so, i.e. mental health situations.
2) Allow certain agencies more money to work on the factors that cause the crime to begin with, with the ultimate goal of reducing the crime rate, i.e. homelessness.

If successful - both of these would effectively reduce the workload for the average officer, allowing them to function more where their skills are most useful. I'm not certain, but I think the idea is that things would level out financially. Less money coming in, but also less money going out. Would it work that way? Probably not.

Is the plan perfect? Absolutely not. What happens when a seemingly calm individual turns violent on a mental health worker, and they have no way to protect themselves? No plan is 100% perfect, but something has to change. Nobody in their right mind wants money taken away from the police for the sake of it, and nobody in their right mind wants to abolish the police entirely. Minneapolis has ~400,000 people proper. Even if 20,000 of those people were radicals that wanted to abolish the police, that leaves 380,000 that don't.

One question I am genuinely curious about - you have this idea that liberals en masse have this "narrative" of severely crippling police forces or outright abolishing them. Where are you getting this idea? National cable news, social/alternative media, conversations with liberals on the street? I often hear how conservatives have some sort of racist agenda of keeping things the way they are - but I rarely hear that narrative from the conservatives in my daily life. It's usually just the media trying to spoon feed me garbage so I get angry and watch.

Problem is that many city counsels are making defund decisions without asking the WHOLE community they have been elected to represent if they REALLY want to defund the police. They are being held hostage by a small but VERY vocal group of people that threatens to burn down communities if the city counsels don't defund the police IMMEDIATELY! And whenever a group of citizens stands up for the police, they are attacked.

There are 13+ cities were the city counsels have defunded their police. They include:

Austin - 1/3 of the police departments budget has been cut.
Seattle - $3.5M immediate cut.
New York City - $1B cut.
Los Angeles - $150M
San Francisco - $120M
Oakland - $14.6M
Washington DC - $15M
Baltimore - $22M
Philadelphia - $33M

When asked if maybe "Defund the Police" actually meant something else like the reallocate of $'s to social programs, one of the originators of the "Defund Movement" said in no uncertain terms - NO, Defund the Police means EXACTLY what it says...DEFUND THE POLICE. Full stop.

Sending a Social Worker out to deescalate certain situations is a great idea...in a classroom. When you overlay reality, it looks a lot less viable for any number of reasons. Couple of instant questions:

1. Is there going to be a standing group of social workers that are available each and every shift, 24/7 365?
2. Who is going to triage the call for service to determine if a police officer will be deployed or a social worker? Calls to 911 are notoriously inacurate and devoid of any specific information.
3. Who will protect the Social Worker while they are trying to deescalate a person? If it is a police officer, you haven't really reduced the work load of the police officer.
4. What do you do about the underlying criminal activity (ex. a mentally ill person broke into a house)?
5. If an officer rolls up on a person with clear mental issues who is violent, what is the officer supposed to do while they are waiting for a social worker to arrive? What if that person attacks the officer (this actually happens quite often)?
6. The majority of police involved shootings occur when the officers have developed PC that a person has committed a crime and needs to go to jail for it and then goes "hands on" to effect the arrest. Does a social worker need to be present at all arrests?
7. And the big question, what is the officer supposed to do when they call for a Social Worker and none are available?

Don't expect you to answer any of those questions. Just pointing out that seemingly simple decisions that might make some degree of sense when discussed among rational people in the clear light of day become a lot less clear when reality rears its ugly head.

I try to get my information from a wide variety of sources. Unfortuanatly, the ability to get truly unbiased reporting is almost impossible. I do a good degree of research on line from what seem to be reputable sources. For example, I researched the DOJ for the number of unarmed African Americans killed by police officers to determine if this was a large number or if it was a relatively small one. In my simple mind, a large number or an increasing number might indicate "systemic racism" in police departments.

[Wildcat Khan]

Yes, a dismantling of the system as we know it. The system was created to allow this, if it wasn't then we would see a massive backlash from officers each time there was an incident like we have seen too often. The current policing system as we've known it for centuries should be dismantled, it is not protecting or serving the population.

I'm not sure you saw this, but a police officer in Vegas was shot in the head back in June. They fortunately caught the guy, but what would your proposed new system do for violence in that case?

There was also this: https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/...LC7DOSOMJ6PGM/ which hit the news here. I really want to know what you propose for situations like these, especially as a person riding a scooter was injured also by the person that killed the officer in Bothel and injured another.

I'm all for getting rid of the corruption and racism, but I don't want to do so at the loss of safety if a crazy, drunk, or violent criminal is near me. BTW, I also had the police keep me out of my house for 2+ hours last week due to a natural gas leak in the area when they closed all the roads into it. I hope you would consider that protecting and serving me in keeping me safe from natural gas.

[SW_Mustang]

No, you are not un-American for wanting cops to be better. But that doesn't seem to be the narrative that is being pushed by many. Decreasing funding by 1/3+ will not make the police better. If anything it will make things worse by increasing the stress and danger for the remaining officers. Overworked, over stressed officers with no back-up increases the chances they will make mistakes.

"Defund the police" is an absolutely terrible slogan. The original idea was to allocate those funds around to other agencies with the goal of accomplishing two things:

1) Allow agencies better equipped to handle certain situations the jurisdiction and financial backing to do so, i.e. mental health situations.
2) Allow certain agencies more money to work on the factors that cause the crime to begin with, with the ultimate goal of reducing the crime rate, i.e. homelessness.

If successful - both of these would effectively reduce the workload for the average officer, allowing them to function more where their skills are most useful. I'm not certain, but I think the idea is that things would level out financially. Less money coming in, but also less money going out. Would it work that way? Probably not.

Is the plan perfect? Absolutely not. What happens when a seemingly calm individual turns violent on a mental health worker, and they have no way to protect themselves? No plan is 100% perfect, but something has to change. Nobody in their right mind wants money taken away from the police for the sake of it, and nobody in their right mind wants to abolish the police entirely. Minneapolis has ~400,000 people proper. Even if 20,000 of those people were radicals that wanted to abolish the police, that leaves 380,000 that don't.

One question I am genuinely curious about - you have this idea that liberals en masse have this "narrative" of severely crippling police forces or outright abolishing them. Where are you getting this idea? National cable news, social/alternative media, conversations with liberals on the street? I often hear how conservatives have some sort of racist agenda of keeping things the way they are - but I rarely hear that narrative from the conservatives in my daily life. It's usually just the media trying to spoon feed me garbage so I get angry and watch.

[Turbonium]

https://twitter.com/shaunking/status...358714886?s=20

Yes, a dismantling of the system as we know it. The system was created to allow this, if it wasn't then we would see a massive backlash from officers each time there was an incident like we have seen too often. The current policing system as we've known it for centuries should be dismantled, it is not protecting or serving the population.

[Turbonium]

No, you are not un-American for wanting cops to be better. But that doesn't seem to be the narrative that is being pushed by many. Decreasing funding by 1/3+ will not make the police better. If anything it will make things worse by increasing the stress and danger for the remaining officers. Overworked, over stressed officers with no back-up increases the chances they will make mistakes.

What if the money is used to actually help those who are in need of it which can greatly reduce the need for police to respond to all sorts of calls? Our mental health care in this country, for instance, is a complete joke. The homeless problem is going to continue to rise until liveable wages are offered, crime or at least the hours the police spend on dealing with the homeless is exponential. I realize the job is tough, but there are ways to make it easier. Those ways might involve using some funding to actually GASP help our citizens though. I don't understand how the party which constantly pulls the God card (referring to the Christian god) does the opposite of what their supposed religious text teaches. We aren't Somalia, we are supposedly the greatest country in history, surely we can drastically improve the quality of life for those who reside here. Police and civilians alike.

Do you remember the Toronto van attacker? He was an incel and mad at the world, rented a van, ran over a bunch of people. A lone cop pulls up once he has parked the van and has a weapon drawn, the guy reaches in his pocket and pulls his hand out quickly and "aims" it at the officer, the cop doesn't fire as he doesn't see a weapon. How many rounds would that guy have had in him in the US? My guess would be the number that the service weapon held. Should we not strive to have our police be that well trained and calm in what would be one of the most stressful situations of one's life? Instead we watch the news as an unarmed individual gets shot in the back 7 times in broad daylight, with children in the car mind you. This wasn't a mistake, it was attempted murder. Something needs to change, what that something is I'm not sure anyone 100% knows, but to allow the status quo to continue is asinine and dangerous.

[NWHoops]

No, you are not un-American for wanting cops to be better. But that doesn't seem to be the narrative that is being pushed by many. Decreasing funding by 1/3+ will not make the police better. If anything it will make things worse by increasing the stress and danger for the remaining officers. Overworked, over stressed officers with no back-up increases the chances they will make mistakes.

Yet, oddly enough many think the solution to America's educational problems is to defund underperforming schools, including DeVos who wants to be able to divert public money to private schools. I look at it as if you divert some funds from police to education, mental health, food banks, etc. then there is less need for police, especially in certain situations where they are called and they are not the best to handle the situation. That's not their fault. But if we can address the underlying issues rather than the symptoms themselves then there may be need for less police presence in the future. However, there will always be a need for police in some manner.

[boatcapt]

Recent history show examples in countries where their police force were either defunded, scaled back enforcement, or both. These decisions were made in Somolia and Zimbabwe. Both are now in ruins with a horrible quality of life with rampant violent crime, as compared to what they were prior. Even with a few changes that may be needed to be made, I wonder what percentage of Americans really want to live with the hell those people now have to deal with 24 hours a day?

I would venture to guess that the percentage of Americans that truley want to defund the police is pretty small BUUUUTTTT the percentage that want police to do a better job is high. Unfortuanatly, the ones that want to defund have bigger mouths, more twitter followers and bigger podcast audiences so they control the narrative. As the mayor of Portland learned, giving an angry mob the freedom to protest and burn is all well and good...until they show up outside YOUR door!!!

[boatcapt]

It really was incredible the Rodney King incident was captured on video, IMO. There was very little surveillance back in those days. Someone with a camera happened to be in the right place at the right time, otherwise I can guarantee we never would have heard of the incident.

Not only that, but the fact it was circulated before social media too.

I'm a fan of the police, but somehow I'm un-American because I want them to be better at what my tax dollars pay them to do. Odd.

No, you are not un-American for wanting cops to be better. But that doesn't seem to be the narrative that is being pushed by many. Decreasing funding by 1/3+ will not make the police better. If anything it will make things worse by increasing the stress and danger for the remaining officers. Overworked, over stressed officers with no back-up increases the chances they will make mistakes.

[SW_Mustang]

I have no problem with increasing their pay as long as we also increase their accountability (and training). Anyone else in a position of power is held to a higher standard, our troops in warzones have stricter ROE, cops here get away with murder and are called heroes. Imagine what they got away with prior to body cams and civilians with cell phone cameras, yikes.

It really was incredible the Rodney King incident was captured on video, IMO. There was very little surveillance back in those days. Someone with a camera happened to be in the right place at the right time, otherwise I can guarantee we never would have heard of the incident.

Not only that, but the fact it was circulated before social media too.

I'm a fan of the police, but somehow I'm un-American because I want them to be better at what my tax dollars pay them to do. Odd.

[Turbonium]

I'm in favor of increasing police officer's pay (those without any history of controversial confrontations) to at least 25% higher than the average of local teachers, especially those at under performing schools.

I have no problem with increasing their pay as long as we also increase their accountability (and training). Anyone else in a position of power is held to a higher standard, our troops in warzones have stricter ROE, cops here get away with murder and are called heroes. Imagine what they got away with prior to body cams and civilians with cell phone cameras, yikes.

[SW_Mustang]

https://twitter.com/shaunking/status...358714886?s=20

This is a better example. While Shaun King is nuts, he does have a very solid social media following.

He still doesn't control policy decisions and his influence is largely tied to Twitter - so there's not a whole lot to worry about here.

[SW_Mustang]

How would a college degree weed out "unscrupulous individuals??"

But according to the Police Foundation 56% of police officers in the US have college degrees.

Average starting salary for a police officer is $31,000...That's $14.90/hr. For comparison, a first year lawyer in a firm averages $135,000.

Why is having cops with more education a bad thing, first of all?

To answer your question, I knew a handful of kids that I wouldn't trust to watch my goldfish let alone my life and safety who became a cop simply because they didn't have to go to college. There are plenty of well-paying jobs that don't require a college degree or carrying a lethal weapon - but they chose the one that involves carrying a lethal weapon.

Also, is that 56% a Bachelor's Degree minimum or an Associate's Degree minimum? 56% is barely a majority, so there's a lot of room for improvement. Those two things are not the same. It would also be a good way to provide things like mental health training.

[Horror Child]

https://twitter.com/shaunking/status...358714886?s=20

We are calling for a complete dismantling of American policing.

[boatcapt]

I'm in favor of increasing police officer's pay (those without any history of controversial confrontations) to at least 25% higher than the average of local teachers, especially those at under performing schools.

Average first year school teacher salary, according to the NEA is $39K.