what improvements made by defunding the police

Oh For fuck's sake. Seriously??? The problem is current, it is NOW. I mean damn it, Reagan, you didn't have research going for coronavirus, so since you didn't why are we asking the current president to do it?

And FWIW, Obama put into signed decrees that made some police departments implement mandated reforms and encouraged others to do the same. He was trying to help the system get better

Guess what jackass ended those and tried to roll everything back?

I agree with iamkristinl16 that a huge hurdle is public access to guns. Situations which absolutely should not require an armed police response do because of the possibility/likelihood of the individual having guns. I think there needs to be more connection between the communities and the officers. I'd like to see how many live in the same communities they work in and the impact of police brutality.

I watch Live PD. I’ll admit it. The majority of stops these cops make—I would say 75% (at least on this show) are drug related. Of those, I’d say at least half of those are for pot. (Mind you, these are my purely UNscientific stats). Here’s how it generally goes:

1. Cop finds a reason to pull suspicious car over. In most cases, it really seems like the cops are suspicious and LOOK for a reason to stop people, like they are in an area “known for drugs.” Usually a license plate light is out, or they didn’t use their signal.

2. At this point, the cop almost always calls for back up.

3. They pull everyone out of the car. At this point, there are often AT LEAST 2 cops there, sometimes 3 or 4. The people being pulled over are usually mouthy and indignant (sometimes because they’re guilty, sometimes because they’re tired of getting harassed ). They pat everyone down and cuff them (they’re just detained—not arrested).

4. The cops ask if there’s anything in the car. They usually ask to search. Sometimes suspects say yes. Sometimes, they don’t. In that case, the K-9 unit is called in to sniff the car.

5. The K9s almost ALWAYS indicate for drugs. So now, the search begins. Usually 2 cops start searching every nook and cranny of the car. Sometimes, they only find a little “loose shake” or powder. Sometimes they find paraphernalia with residue. Sometimes they find a baggie or two for personal use. Every once in a while (but absolutely not the majority of the time) they find distribution amounts. They usually test the substances using a test kit (which are NOTORIOUSLY unreliable).

6. At this point, anywhere from 2-4 cops have been on this stop for 20-30 minutes.

7. People are usually arrested, Cars are towed. A lot of times, people are arrested for unrelated things—like outstanding warrants—usually for similar drug charges.

8. So in the end, multiple officers, K9s, resources, and lots of time are used to make minor drug arrests. The suspects will get hauled off to jail, go to court, get released, never pay their fines or make subsequent court appearances (because they’re ADDICTS) and this will all happen again soon.

So—how about we stop arresting people for personal use drugs? How about we legalize marijuana—which is no more dangerous than alcohol. And how about instead of throwing addicts in jail, or slapping them with fines they’ll never be able to pay, we actually get them TREATMENT. Think about how much money that ONE stop cost and if it was redirected into treatment instead.

I like a lot of these cops. But they spend WAY too much time on minor offenses (drugs or otherwise) and, quite frankly, way too much time harassing addicts and young, black kids.

Don’t believe me? Watch yourself. Live PD is on A&E tonight. You’ll see.

I absolutely agree with a lot of this and there's no question the "war on drugs" has negatively affected whole communities and exacerbated the conflict between POC and law enforcement. 

I honestly think we need a lot more "community resource officers" - trained professionals who can deal with the issues that people call police for that aren’t apprehending criminals and crimes being committed. Those types of officers could handle things like evacuations, as referenced by others, along with their other duties. 

I haven't read the rest of the thread so maybe someone already said this... But, you say the "schools are terrible". I'm assuming you mean that the kids test below grade level, and test lower than the state and/or national average...? That's usually what people mean when they say the schools are bad.

The teachers can be very highly trained but they are not magicians. If children are performing below grade level despite well-trained teachers then the reasons are elsewhere. Some children may come to school hungry. It's hard to keep attention on something like addition and subtraction when you're hungry. The family may not have enough food because they don't have much money. Also they may live in a "food desert" (like large areas of DC) where there aren't any decent grocery stores. If there were more ordinary grocery stores (vs. the convenience stores that sell mostly over-priced junk) the parents might be able to buy more nutritious food and take advantage of sales.

Or, the child may be tired because they live in an apartment with parents and several siblings and two cousins and an aunt and uncle, and their bed is the couch but people are always up watching TV until late (true story of several kids at the school where I sub.) If more affordable housing was available they wouldn't have to live this way in order to afford something. And of course this same child has nowhere quiet to do homework.

Or the child comes from a home with parents who are not well-educated or who do not speak English, or maybe both. (some immigrants are very highly-educated, of course, but usually not the ones from Central America who we see at my school.) These adults may have no idea *how* to help their child with school work. They may never have read a book to their kids before the child started school. 

Or, the child might be living with Mom in a local shelter (we have two within the boundaries of my elementary school) and is too emotionally traumatized to pay attention to that highly-trained teacher. 

Or the child may have some bad teeth which hurt because dentists are too expensive. Or they may need glasses but no one knows it until the teacher discovers it one day. 

Bring on the best-trained teachers in the country and they can't do anything about those problems, because that's not what their training was about. All they can do is work with the counselors to try to help the child in any way they can. More funding to programs who try to address all of those problems would be great, and it has nothing to do with the money the school gets per student.

 Even better would be funding for programs that are trying to *change* all of those issues. Yes, we give food to kids at school, and we send food home for the weekend with the very food-insecure kids. This is good as a stopgap. But even better would be to work with the city and large grocery store chains to get a store in that kid's neighborhood. 

Affordable housing is another huge issue where I live, which is why we see kids who live  with so many people in a small apartment. A few years ago my church sold its land to a local affordable housing developer. They knocked down the church and built a large apartment building that is solely for affordable units (there's a formula for figuring out what "affordable" is, which is of course different in different areas). The day after they started taking applications for apartments they had enough people on the list to fill three buildings. 

Anyway.... just a few thoughts.

You speak about things from such a limited perspective. It’s like you want people to think you are well versed but the words that you type betray you every time.

Perhaps a lot of that money could come from repealing the gigantic tax cut that was just passed so the handful of wealthy in this country could add to their coffers.

Amen. 

I think a lot of what Olan posted in the business insider article makes sense. I did take issue with the comment in the newsweek article

I grew up in a city that is primarily Hispanic and African American - less than 20% white. There were large sections the police did not enter. I saw no evidence of any system of dealing with conflict that relied on mutual need. I saw extreme violence - I think at one point when I was in high school we were the top 10 murder capital of the US. The neighboring high school made national news when a girl was gang raped at a dance. My parents still live there and I understand that things have improved. But they improved when there was a more community based emphasis on law enforcement and programs to reach high risk individuals. I absolutely believe there needs to be more emphasis on addressing the underlying poverty and societal problems, but I've lived in those neighborhoods and absolutely saw the difference between police presence and none - and none was no way to live.

People always like to trot out the spending/pupil and compare it to other countries and show that we're in-line w/other countries' spending for education (more or less).

But other countries have other HUGE safety nets for parents, for staying at home after a child comes into a family for MONTHS of PAID leave, for quality childcare for young children, for a host of other health-related services.

But they trot out the $12-15k/pupil and only compare THAT ONE NUMBER to other countries and say "See, we are fine."

OMG. It's not about sending social workers into DANGEROUS SITUATIONS.

It's about SPENDING THE MONEY ON SOCIAL WORKERS INSTEAD OF MILITARIZED COPS so we have less DANGEROUS SITUATIONS in the first place.  It's about fixing the problem AT THE SOURCE not at the END POINT.

Agreed. For "in the meantime" we follow the many well-thought out suggestions made by dozens of organizations w/expertise in what needs to change NOW.  They have been all over these threads.

And we start spending more on social workers, counselors, nurses, teachers NOW and less on militarizing LEOs. So we can stop the broken system NOW.