[ExI] that's why

[William Flynn Wallace]

As usual, Dan, you offer to get rid of something but do not supply anything
to replace it to deal with crime.

Spike, I think, pointed out that the cops who were with the accused one
were trainees - a reasonable, though not valid, reason why they didn't try
to stop it, remark on it, or anything.

bill w

On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 2:45 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> 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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