Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

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_subgenius
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _subgenius »

So, in the context of this thread, help me unpack the statistic for how the rate of death by police among African Americans has remained unchanged for the past 5 years. Yes, you are more likely to be killed by police if black, and most likely if a black woman. But the rate of that likelihood from Obama forward is basically stagnant. And this during 4 years of what was (in spite of Trump passing a primary BLM want with criminal justice reform) supposed to a racist policy administration. How was Trump unable to increase violence against minorities?
Also, please unpack all this againt the reality that regardless of color or sex, 90%-95% of civilians shot by police (yes, i know this is not the only cause of deaths) were attacking the officer(s) when shot..
_Icarus
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _Icarus »

subgenius wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 5:40 pm
So, in the context of this thread, help me unpack the statistic for how the rate of death by police among African Americans has remained unchanged for the past 5 years. Yes, you are more likely to be killed by police if black, and most likely if a black woman. But the rate of that likelihood from Obama forward is basically stagnant. And this during 4 years of what was (in spite of Trump passing a primary BLM want with criminal justice reform) supposed to a racist policy administration. How was Trump unable to increase violence against minorities?
Also, please unpack all this againt the reality that regardless of color or sex, 90%-95% of civilians shot by police (yes, i know this is not the only cause of deaths) were attacking the officer(s) when shot..
Why no sourcing on your stats? Afraid to post a Brietbart link?

I'm sure you're alluding to those 100% trustworthy police reports which never falsely claim they were resisting arrest.
_Icarus
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _Icarus »

A Facebook friend posted this, I think its relevant:

I feel as if I've been talking about this for nearly 20 years. I'm confused by the sudden increase in interest, but I'm very happy that it's happening.
I believe that the increased awareness of terrorism and asymmetrical warfare has increased the perceived need for greater capabilities of police forces. This is augmented by the increased awareness of how well armed 'bad guys' are of the normal, everyday variety, as well.

The thing is that this is partly the fault of increasing the armament of police forces. The police have created an 'arms race' with dissidents and run-of-the-mill criminals. A side effect is that they've created one with regular citizens, as well. The increased (and frankly abusive, unconstitutional) use of no-knock warrants and civil forfeiture has exacerbated these problems tremendously.

Over the last 40 years, police spending has increased more than double after adjusting for inflation. That's still at 4% of overall spending, as state and local revenues have increased - however, crime has decreased precipitously over that time period. While I wouldn't lower spending until the crime rate went back up to 70's levels, it does suggest that spending is too high.

Over the last 40 years spending on corrections has increased 4.5 times. That's doubling the percentage of spending. This despite crime dropping precipitously. I suggest there are 3 things happening there.

1. Yes, more people in jail will lead to less crime, but certainly this is not commensurate with the rate of incarceration.

2. Prisons have become revolving doors for several reasons, not least of which was the California-instigated "3 strikes" rules that destroyed so many lives and families. There's also been a long history of very poorly structured contracts with private prisons. Some of that has changed, so that reducing recidivism is being used more and more as the profit incentive, but that needs to be rolled out far faster and far more widely. The so-called 'war on drugs' needs to be cut off at the knees, too.

3. When you have an increasing police budget with reduced crime, but police are not generally being used as community improvement officers, but as law enforcement officers, they're going to find ways to justify their existence.

With these things in mind, we turn to surplus military equipment handed down to police forces. This hits all of these incentives and in no positive ways. You know have military equipment that needs to be maintained, so you can't very well decrease budgets. Budgets need to be augmented to pay for this increase in materiel, hence the spike in civil forfeiture we've seen the last 20 years. Police departments being to rely on these hand-me-downs and so they must begin to justify needing them. This means they must use them. There's no way to justify paying for an armored personnel carrier if it's simply rusting on a back lot behind an old bus, and you certainly won't get a new one that way.

But then you have the knock-on effect of police being trained with this equipment and thus relying on it. That reliance, that expectation, means they will continue to seek it out. It will continue to be used, which increases the reliance and expectation ... and round and round we go.
And this despite, again, the undeniable fact that crime of all sorts (excepting cyber crime, hah!) is way down in the past 40 years.

And the militarizing of the police means that citizens who have grown up in a country that prizes rugged individualism and guarantees the right to own serious weaponry (and, perhaps, demands it) must 'up their game' in order to actually be able to do that which is expected of them. If the police all have AR-15s and bullet proof vests and APCs, well, the people need them too for the 2nd Amendment to have any impact. (I actually disagree with this, but you can understand the thinking.)

This in turn encourages citizens, who are armed to the teeth, to self-police. Some call it vigilantism, but I think that's unnecessarily painting people with a brush that they aren't seeking. The training of police is clearly woefully inadequate for the innumerable jobs they are expected to do, and there is this false impression that crime is run amok, so people take it upon themselves to do the policing. As poorly trained as police are (compared to the demands put on them, that is), they are very much better trained than most citizens. Mr Aubrey's murder comes to mind. The only police-trained individual involved stayed in the back of the pickup and didn't fire until things went to Hell. His son, untrained fool that he is, gets within arm's reach of Mr Aubrey with his shotgun and the rest is history, very horrific history. The number of things that were done poorly here, even if Mr Aubrey had been a burglar, are just astronomical. This is why trained police are superior to self-policing. And I know this seems off the ranch from the topic at hand, but I believe it's all one problem. The arms race between police and normal citizens, as well as actual bad guys, is creating an environment that is completely untenable.

In the past 40 years the US population has increased !! 50% !!. Total number of "serious" crimes have decreased by !! 20% !!. Violent crime has decreased by !! 20% !!. The crime rate has absolutely plummeted, and yet police budgets have increased? Incarceration has ballooned? And we're continually militarizing the police?

And the perception that African-Americans are somehow out of control criminals is also not only not true, but not supported by the evidence. Yes, their crime rate is higher, no doubt. But ...

Since 1995, drug crimes by black juveniles has dropped in half. HALF. It only diverged from the white juvenile rate with the beginning of the War on Drugs - 1980. In fact, the War on Drugs correlated with a drop in white juvenile drug crime. I don't believe you'll find that white juveniles suddenly stopped doing drugs. The big divergence is down to how less expensive (and admittedly at times more dangerous) drugs were treated by law enforcement and legislatures compared to 'higher quality', more expensive drugs. That is to say, crack was seen as a scourge on the country while cocaine, in far wider use, was seen rather differently. Consequently, their users and dealers were seen rather differently.

This disparate treatment lead to the arms race before 'terrorism' was ever used as an excuse. 5 years, out in 2 is a lot different from 20 years, out in 15. Transporting 'shrooms and weed might get a first offender a local jail sentence. Transporting crack is definitely getting you sent to prison. Longer time, harder time, more violent environments ... people come out much different, and the incentive to fight off the cops and kill snitches, etc, is entirely different.

I must stop because I'm "trying to be brief".
_Chap
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _Chap »

Chap wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 3:47 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 9:06 pm
Perhaps patrolling social workers could do a better job and getting guns and drugs off the streets without getting people shot.
'Patrolling social workers' as a direct substitute for police? Gimme a break. Who on earth is suggesting such a stupid idea?
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 5:16 pm

It's being floated by various leftist organizations as a change to the current policing system.
Hmm. Those good old 'various leftist organisations', eh? I remember the 'certain circles' we used to hear about from the old Soviet propaganda machine. No names, no pack-drill, as they say ... anyway, it's certainly a crazy idea, and is by no means what the great majority of proponents of diverting a proportion of current police expenditure elsewhere are suggesting. So maybe we can talk about the serious stuff?

How about, for instance:
Chap wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 3:47 pm
thinking about whether, for instance, a million dollars more spent on raising the standards of public education in a poor area might or might not do more to reduce crime levels long-term than a million dollars more spent on more paramilitary equipment for police.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Speaking of vagaries. How, exactly, will your “million” dollars raise the standards of public education in a poor area?

- Doc
_ajax18
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _ajax18 »

Also, please unpack all this againt the reality that regardless of color or sex, 90%-95% of civilians shot by police (yes, i know this is not the only cause of deaths) were attacking the officer(s) when shot..
Because what they really want is the police to let them get away with whatever they're doing. In the meantime, cowardly officers like Scott Peterson infamous for the Parkland highschool Florida shooting, are living a sweet life of a $150k/yr pension after retiring in his early 50s. I hate to say it but more money to the police isn't going to solve this either.
_Chap
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _Chap »

Chap wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 9:06 pm
So maybe we can talk about the serious stuff?

How about, for instance:
Chap wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 9:06 pm
thinking about whether, for instance, a million dollars more spent on raising the standards of public education in a poor area might or might not do more to reduce crime levels long-term than a million dollars more spent on more paramilitary equipment for police.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 9:29 pm
Speaking of vagaries. How, exactly, will your “million” dollars raise the standards of public education in a poor area?

- Doc
The figure mentioned was, as you well know, merely intended as an informal message-board style way of saying, 'a significant sum'. Do you just want to play games on this issue, or are you suggesting that expenditure on improving the standards of public education in poor areas would inevitably be wasted in comparison with buying more tear gas and rubber bullets for the police? I mean, we know that works ...
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Cool cool. You da man.
_EAllusion
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _EAllusion »

On a more realistic note, community mental health is drastically underfunded, which places a greater burden on dealing with the social consequences on police and jail systems that are both more expensive and handle the problem much worse than if mental health systems are available. You could, in fact, cut police departments of some of their force, replace them with street social workers, and have a result that is much cheaper and leads to better outcomes. It's an American social problem, a consequence of its carceral culture, that this isn't happening already.
_Chap
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Re: Police violence, rising crime: a modest proposal ...

Post by _Chap »

EAllusion wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 12:49 pm
On a more realistic note, community mental health is drastically underfunded, which places a greater burden on dealing with the social consequences on police and jail systems that are both more expensive and handle the problem much worse than if mental health systems are available.
Yup. Having the police (followed by a for-profit prison system) deal with the consequences of untreated mentally ill people on the streets is a lot more expensive that it would have been to get those people treated and supported at a stage of their illness when it might have been possible for them to keep a job, a marriage, and a home.

Perhaps the necessary shift of expenditure would be more acceptable politically if a provision was introduced that all persons active in community mental health care work should carry pistols and pepper guns? I mean, to make them seem less 'left-wing'?
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