[ExI] that's why

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:16 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> Has anyone run the statistics to see just how widespread police brutality is?  Just guessing:  probably way less than 1% in police-public interactions.
> 
> Defunding police:  exactly the wrong thing to do.  I don't know what their thinking is on this, but we need more, not less:  1 - better pay equals better people applying for jobs, 2 - they need to hire or somehow fund the mental health workers I mentioned in my previous email  3 - they need more time for training 4 - they need to hire consultants to restructure police departments and training.  Probably more good reasons.  Defunding could lower cop pay.  It punishes the 99% plus majority of cops who are never brutal.  (again, I do not know the statistics)

It's hard to track brutality because much of this stuff is quashed at the local level. I mean the stories and reports are quashed at that level. And until recently, there weren't the kinds of databases one comes to expect from other government operations.

I can't imagine why anyone would think there's a need for more police. Overall, violent and property crime has declined since the early 1990s. So, if the argument is there's ever more need for policing (to combat crimes of violence and property), this flies in the face of the crime data. (And this trend is both national and global. Yes, there are exceptions, but the US and the West are not exceptional with this trend.)

As for how to penalize police misconduct, the problem goes further than, say, a bad apple in the bunch. The recent George Floyd case illustrates the typical police brutality narrative: one cop does wrong and the other cops on the scene do nothing to prevent or stop the wrong. They simply allow it to play out. In this case, yes, the other cops were charged, but that's what's atypical about the case. The usual case seems to be: one or more cops brutalize someone, the others look on, and they all face no penalties for misconduct.

Training and such also has little value if the incentives for misconduct remain in place. And all this depends on buy-in from the police, their unions, pro-cop groups, and pro-cop politicians. My guess is most of these reforms will be minuscule and more along the lines of making the protests die down before things return to business as usual. This is why abolition is the best approach: excise the problem rather than try to manage it.

Regards,

Dan
   Sample my Kindle books at:
http://author.to/DanUst
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