Steve Kelley for June 07, 2020

Haven’t many police departments been practicing civil forfeiture for decades?

The calls by a few ( and happily magnified by the conservative media ) to defund the police are borne out of frustration at the failure of authorities to deal with police excesses and racism. No society can survive without a robust police force.

What is needed is an impartial and independent authority to oversee police action. It shouldn’t take mass protests for even an inquiry to start when a police officer kills an unarmed person of color. The day we’re able to expect justice without taking to the streets is the day to look forward to, for all of us.

How about we defund the GOP, who gave us this police state because they knew in advance that one day they would have limited support as the numbers of low info old white folks dwindled to be replaced by a multi-racial woke populous who won’t vote for the party of hate, fear and more for the rich.

I noticed for years that all robbers and criminals portrayed on tv are white now

Re~fund education.

When Trump has another campaign fund raiser and nobody is willing to host it. Things are changing.

Skelley: check your statistics for when police departments, for whatever political/economic reason, pull back from the streets. Doesn’t seem to have worked like your simplistic cartoon.

I find it interesting that those on the right refuse to see things the same way with the IRS. The IRS has had its budget cut for years (in other words defunded) which allows the wealthy to cheat on their taxes. The wealthy then defund the American government and necessary government programs.

Come on Kelley. At least be FAIR in your misrepresentation.

State and local police receive all kinds of funds from the Fed. Funds which must be spent in certain ways. They give us money, but tell us how it must be spent.

Do we get to spend it on community outreach programs? No.

Instead the money is mandated to be spent on riot gear, crowd control and even military grade assault weapons.

This is what folks are asking to defund.

In the real world — outside of the “Republican” bubble — the long term crime rates have been falling. The oversize military has given materials to the oversize police who, to justify their existence have made excessive arrests of blacks and minorities using excessive force. That is what this protest is all about.

https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/FT_19.10.14_CrimeTrends_1.png

" Using the FBI numbers, the violent crime rate fell 51% between 1993 and 2018. Using the BJS data, the rate fell 71% during that span. The long-term decline in violent crime hasn’t been uninterrupted, though. The FBI, for instance, reported increases in the violent crime rate between 2004 and 2006 and again between 2014 and 2016. Violent crime includes offenses such as rape, robbery and assault."

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/17/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/

“Lawmakers Begin Bipartisan Push to Cut Off Police Access to Military-Style GearThe effort to end a program transferring surplus military equipment from the Pentagon to the police reflects a revived bipartisan concern about excessive use of force by law enforcement.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/us/politics/police-military-gear.html

Funding the police is socialism.

A few days ago during a pre-curfew demonstration, one of my students was walking backwards, hands in the air when she was shoved to the ground by a NYC “peace” officer. He then beat her with his baton and kicked her and beat her companion who tried to shield her. They tried, unsuccessfully, to steal her megaphone. This is on video.

If you go to https://www.capstat.nyc/lawsuits/ you can find 80 PAGES of successful lawsuits against NYC police excesses in only 10 years. Having recently served 30 days on an NYC Grand Jury, I can tell you that 90+% of the cases brought by police and prosecutors are found to be acceptable to proceed to trial, so the preponderance of sentiment is that the vast majority of the police do their jobs well.

In order to get a judgment against the police department, the behavior and violation has to be so egregious that it can survive the predisposition on the judicial side of the equation to side with the police.

Now think about the 80 pages of successful suits (noting that for every successful suit there are likely many worthy, but ultimately unsuccessful suits due to the judicial predisposition I mentioned above, and a police practice that is so prevalent that it has its own word: “testilying”) and tens of millions of dollars in judgments and tell me that reform is not needed.

My own proposal is that for every dollar of judgement against bad policing, two dollars gets cut from the budget. The officer and their immediate command chain should terminated with prejudice. If judgements go down, then the difference from the previous year is restored to the budget and the funds go to community policing and training.

What a stupid idea!

The children think it’s a choice between no police and a police state. The adults understand what is needed is for all police to remember their function in society is to serve & protect

And.. blackmail/extortion used to be illegal.. Enjoy the trump era

When you have 100 heavily armed cops wading into even 1000 protesters armed with face-masks and signs… you have calls to defund the police.

I’m on the left, but I speak only for myself. I’ve been arrested in demonstrations three times, and roughed up by the police in the station. I’ve been in many non-violent demonstrations where the police were quite aggressive; I’ve seen people beside and near me hit hard by billy clubs. (I was famous briefly for what came to be called the Lonecat Sidestep, so I was never hit myself.) I do not believe in defunding the police. We need police. We need police reform. The police should be well paid, well trained, and held accountable. And we should not expect the police to solve every problem. We need funding for community development and community services.

Remember when the NYPD went on strike and the crime rate dropped? I do.

While I find the yelling back and forth, and Kelly’s mischaracterization of what is proposed to be typical of him, the fact is, the police are in need of drastic reform, or even more to the point, re-envisioning. They do not need to be, nor should they be policing themselves. They do not need to be, nor should they be making all the traffic stops they do, especially targeting people of color. They do not need to be, nor should they be so instantaneously aggressive with their interactions with average citizens. As one commenter said, things aren’t getting worse, just uncovered. This is a systemic problem, much like racism or politics themselves. They need a total overhaul. Do communities need cops? Sure. But cops can not be the enforcers of The Hunger Games or some 80s dystopian movie. The discussion of HOW that might be achieved will take a long time. But I assure you, when they spend more time and resources on their increasingly battle-ready training (I mean seriously, tanks? — or tank-like armored vehicles for the sticklers), there is a systemic problem. Individual cops are good for the most part, but the system in which they work has been corrupted. It is a “We protect our own,” system that must change. And if it doesn’t, there’s a good chance the voters of the country will demand it be scrapped. Look for the middle ground — anything else will be disastrous.

So. There’s an organization in your town that… does good works from time to time, handles a lot of day to day minor conflicts in the various parts of town, charges a pretty large “protection tax”, requires its members to be brave in the face of danger, follow orders without fail, protect each other with their lives. By the way, it also commits a good many criminal acts against those who are not members. It’s called “The Mafia”. Should the Mafia be defunded?

Or to put it more directly: When you have bad cops who are aided and abetted by other cops, whose management not just allows but encourages bad behavior… how do you change the cop-culture? Defunding is certainly not realistic, but I’d be very inclined to let the top 25 managers go and replace them with new, young, idealistic managers… many of whom have never been cops. And I’d be very inclined to have an elected board of directors constituted so that actual cops constitute no more then 20% of the membership (and no less than 10%) whose task is to oversee the actions of the managers (NOT the cops on the street). There also needs to be a way for bad cops to be recognized and removed from on-the-street service designed to protect both whistle blowers and cops who are doing a good job but have gotten enemies.

It ain’t an easy thing to do.

Demilitarize.

How often to the police stop a crime in progress? Extremely rare….

There are cases of places defunding and in fact closing down their police departments (as so corrupt there was no way to allow them to continue…) The Result: NEW systems devised which work far better and a drop in crime! Take that, Steve Kelley! https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/how-defunding-the-police-department-worked-for-one-new-jersey-city/2452746/

Kelley is just so… Sigh. Wrong…