Defund the police is a great idea - to help Trump

Politics & Elections
81

Police unions protect good cops too.

You clearly have no idea of what “qualified immunity” is. Without it, any good, hard working cop would be sued every single day by crooks and people with nothing better to do. It would be impossible to be a police officer, we’d have to pay them like $10000 a day to handle legal costs.

Every civil servant, elected official and etc has qualified immunity. The Dog catcher, the sanitation worked, the meter maid, the clerk-typist- all of them. You are trying to suggest that a Sewer worker can have it, but not a Police officer.

82

Not really. They just did 'contract busting" and rehired everyone, and there is still a police union. Crime went down as they used the extra $ to hire 200 more officers.

83

can you cite where you got that info?

From what I see, far less than half the officers were rehired, actually closer to a quarter, and the numbers of police only went up by about 30, from 370 to 400, eventually, over a period of 7 years.

Be very interested to find out where you drew your information from.

84

https://whyy.org/articles/camden-residents-city-not-a-model-for-defunding-police/#:~:text=The%20Camden%2C%20We%20Choose%20Coalition,its%20police%20force%20in%202011.
Not so fast, say some residents.

The Camden, We Choose Coalition held a press conference downtown Monday to explain that the police department was not dismantled according to community needs, but rather forcibly taken over by the state of New Jersey, [following deep budget cuts] in which the city laid off nearly half of its police force in 2011.

The city police force was replaced by a county-operated department in 2013. Longtime city activists say the result was an increased police presence by majority white officers in a city that is more than 90% Black and Latino. The county does not require its metro police officers to reside within Camden city limits.

Activists petitioned and sued Camden City Council over the county takeover of the police, to which the Council counter-sued. Later the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the activists, but by then the county police force was already in place.

https://whyy.org/episodes/camden-p-d-s-transformation-its-complicated/

On what led Camden to dissolve its police department in 2013

*The simple answer is that it was a budget crunch. Camden had a severe budget deficit and was not getting the state aid that it thought it was going to get. And in 2011, they were forced to lay off hundreds of city employees. In 2011, they laid off 163 police officers, which was almost half of the police force. *

The following year, that led to a spike in homicides. The city had an all-time record of 67 homicides, which was just a horrific year. And in 2013, they formed a Camden County Police Department, which was county-run, rather than something that was based in the city. And they were able to get rid of a lot of officers and then rehire what they thought was the best of the best. The ones that they wanted to retain and also recruit from a much wider pool of applicants to get the police department back up to its former staffing level. But that took a lot of time.

Now i want to clarify something I posted, which will give the wrong impression- I said “rehired everyone”- they did not hire all the same officers- just more officers. Some officers were not rehired. But not due to corruption, due to budget woes.

85

In reality, Camden’s police restructuring was deeply undemocratic and involved a doubling-down on “broken windows” policing strategies that increased excessive-force complaints. It was only tireless efforts from local activists and watchdogs that eventually pressured the new police force to adopt a new force policy requiring officers to avoid escalation, training them to do so and requiring them to intercede if another officer was incorrectly using force. It is this local activism — not disbanding the police force — that is the key to understanding the gains made in Camden… With the city under duress, over the objection of Camden community members, local officials partnered with Christie to enact a plan to disband the city’s police force and replace it with a regional county force. The goal was to dissolve the local police union, which would allow for a cheaper force that would enable more policing, not less.

The immediate results of the new force were negative. The new Metro Police (no other police forces in the county chose to join the “county” force) hired more police (from 268 in 2012 to 418 in 2013) and became dramatically whiter. he new force embraced broken windows policing. In the first year of the new force, summonses for disorderly conduct shot up 43 percent. Summonses for not maintaining lights or reflectors on vehicles spiked 421 percent. Summonses for tinted car windows similarly increased 381 percent. And farcically, summonses for riding a bicycle without a bell or a light rose from three to 339. It was straight out of the Giuliani handbook.

Unsurprisingly, these moves provoked tensions between the community and the police producing a parallel rise in excessive-force complaints .(…

One resident described the time period by saying, “with the new police force, we all became suspects.” Rann Miller, a Camden-born education activist, said recently that it was [the “same team with new jerseys.”…Yes, Camden experienced a 23 percent drop in violent crime and a 48 percent drop in nonviolent crime from 2012 to 2018. But crediting the crime reduction to the new police force is highly questionable.

And so I was wrong but we both were. The PD went from 268 to 413, a increase of 145 officers, not 200 like I said or 30 as you claimed.

86

I did get that impression, as I really didn’t see any other way to read it. “Rehire everyone” to me, sounds like you rehired everyone that you fired. Since have cleared up that when you are saying “Rehire everyone”, you mean to hire people other than whom you fired, I can agree. You do see how your wording was more than just a bit misleading there, though, don’t you?

87

And there is also the fact that they completely changed their approach to the community and policing, and that is a very important part of what we are calling for. No more busting heads and taking names, but more, welcoming the neighbors and having BBQ’s with them.

88

Odd that, hard to get good numbers. I went off the Wikipedia page, which says they started with 370 in 2011 before the layoffs. It then later says that they were at 401 June 2013.

So, yeah, they dipped down to 268 in 2012, but that’s not where they started at.

89

The Camden model is mostly the opposite of left-wing dogma. While there was an effort to adopt community policing and work better with the locals they also increased the number of cops. The cops were more active with “broken windows” policing. They increased the use of technology for surveillance. And the proportion of minority cops actually decreased compared to before.

It is ironic that the BLM crowd has been invoking Camden as a model. It suggests a lack of intellectual seriousness and an unwillingness to do even basic research like say using Google for 20 minutes. It also suggests a lack of actual real-world models for “defund the police”.

90

Well, there’s your problem right there. There is no left-wing dogma.

It does invoke Camden as an example, not a model, of a police force that can be completely restructured from the ground up. It also serves as an example of some of the early pitfalls to avoid.

The efforts of local activists are certainly crucial to creating a police force that serves the community rather than oppresses and terrorizes it, but that’s always the case, and there are in fact local activists that are very interested in the problem.

Anyone who claims that the BLM crowd is invoking Camden as a model to follow, rather than simply an example that such a thing is possible, is extremely ignorant about what is actually being talked about and is unwilling to engage on what is actually being debated.

91

It seems to me that people invoking Camden are cherrypicking one or two things that they like and ignoring four or five other things that they don’t like. However there is no reason to believe that the restructuring would have worked without all those other elements like increasing the number of cops and using technology more aggressively.

92

Right, exactly. That’s why it is an example. There are some things that they like about the Camden situation, and those are things that they would like to emulate.

They don’t ignore the things that they don’t like, they avoid them.

As I pointed out to DrDeth, the number of cops didn’t actually increase by very much from 2011 to now, it is only if you look at the minimum number of cops they had during their budget crisis that you see such an increase.

And there is nothing wrong with using technology.

Do you not agree that the cops have a much better relationship with their community than before? Is there nothing that can be learned from that?

93

Obviously it’s better for cops to have a good relationship with the community. It’s also better to increase the number of cops in high crime places and there is a large amount of evidence which shows that this cuts crime as it did in Camden.

94

Since the Dem convention will be online no need to worry about riots or trouble .

95

I don’t know that a less than 10% increase in the police force does as much as changing the way the police force operates.

Also, how do you define a high crime area? Do you define it as a place where there are many calls to the police, or do you define it as a place where the police arrest a bunch of people? Those two are not always the same.

96

NO! Just the opposite!

The immediate results of the new force were negative. The new Metro Police (no other police forces in the county chose to join the “county” force) hired more police (from 268 in 2012 to 418 in 2013) and became dramatically whiter. he new force embraced broken windows policing. In the first year of the new force, summonses for disorderly conduct shot up 43 percent. Summonses for not maintaining lights or reflectors on vehicles spiked 421 percent. Summonses for tinted car windows similarly increased 381 percent. And farcically, summonses for riding a bicycle without a bell or a light rose from three to 339. It was straight out of the Giuliani handbook.

97

Before the change: 268 to

After the change: 413, = a increase of 145 officers,

You cant go back deep into the past- they increased the police by like 50%.

And by no means do they have a "much better relationship with their community than before"- as pointed out in my cites they have a MUCH WORSE relationship.

98

50% increase. Not 10%.

99

You are talking about the immediate results, which you are correct, was a problem. But they have gotten better since then, due to community activists.

100

It’s not deep into the past, it’s like 6 months prior.

And as pointed out by your cites, the had a much worse relationship, but it has gotten much better.