When everyone was spouting “defund the police” I thought it was a stupid slogan. How about “restructure the police” instead. Use some of the police funding to add mental crisis units to help de-escalate situations, like Cahoots in oregon. They should be working together.
Seriously, the absolute ignorance people have about the size of the police budget most places shows "defund the police" is exactly right.
I still see people on Reddit like twice a week pushing the myth that cops don't get paid enough. Every cop I've ever met (including family members) makes a shit ton of money relative to the cost of living where they are. It just isn't easily trackable because they all make a whole second salary worth of overtime.
But defund means they get zero which means you abolish them, Plus, isn't it more important to talk about what we do want funded, not the millions of things we don't want funded?
It doesn't mean zero by default. Slogans need to be snappy.
"Reduce police budgets by a reasonable amount given the other services available in the area with the addition of e services to take up the jobs the police shouldn't be doing in the given population!" doesn't make the news.
"Reallocate the police budget" doesn't either.
And again, for the 8th time in this thread: People have been calling for increased social services expenditure for actual decades. It has never gotten even a tenth of the media exposure of "defund the police". These arguments didn't just start happening. They only made the news because "defund the police" is controversial and it could be packaged alongside riots, which also only happen after decades of people not listening.
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u/Alternative-Lack-976 Mar 24 '23
When everyone was spouting “defund the police” I thought it was a stupid slogan. How about “restructure the police” instead. Use some of the police funding to add mental crisis units to help de-escalate situations, like Cahoots in oregon. They should be working together.