[ExI] Clearly communicating the concept behind "defund the police"

SR Ballard sen.otaku at gmail.com
Wed Jun 10 15:01:17 UTC 2020


The “koban” community policing style in Japan is very good. Police are a normal and respected part of people’s day. They help you find your lost phone or wallet, they give you directions (like a gas station would here in the states). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kōban

We could also do the “311 transition” like NYC did, where non-emergency “police” calls, for things like homeless people loitering, parking violations, etc are done through 311 and have a different tone to interactions. 

https://www.ny.gov/agencies/nyc-311

https://www.nyhabitat.com/blog/2019/04/01/nyc-311-tenants-guide/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.govtech.com/public-safety/New-York-Launches-311-Citizen-Service.html%3fAMP

It might also be a good time to look at the Peelian Principles of Policing. Notably:

(1) To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to [...] severity of legal punishment.

(2) To recognise always that the power of the police [...] is dependent on public approval [...] and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

(4) To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

(5) To seek and preserve public favour [...] by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law [... and] by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

(6) To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

(7) To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public 

(8) To refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles


> On Jun 10, 2020, at 8:45 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> The Camden police replacement story is excellent, even if missing a lot of details.  How did they know who to rehire?  I really like the part about the cops going up to houses and apartments, knocking on the door and getting to know the residents.  Sounds like a good thing for every police department.   Hard to argue with the results.   bill w
> 
>> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 9:58 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 11:15, Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>> Thinking about the nomenclature problem with "defund the police"...
>>> 
>>> (Politics being politics, there is potential to diverge into a number of related threads. I am explicitly declaring that I am thinking just of this subset of the problem, so as to carve off a problem small enough to be solvable in one step. All related problems are acknowledged and can be solved separately.)
>>> 
>>> The issue is that people stop listening after hearing those three words. "Defund the police and then spend the money on...", people stop listening before "and then", and insert their own wild takes.
>>> 
>>> So instead, how about, "relieve the police"? That doesn't seem as prone to such wild takes - meaning the usual reaction will be to ask, "relieve them of what"?
>>> 
>>> That then gives an opening to explain: "relieve the police of non-police duties, by shifting funding: instead of paying the police for mental health duties, pay mental health experts, so the police can concentrate on police duties". This also allows changes beyond just funding shifts to remove non-police duties from the police - for example, changing laws and regulations so that 911 calls in response to someone defecating on the street would be routed to social services, rather than sending a cop as the first response.
>>> 
>>> Exactly what "police duties" are can be debated, but there's a wide range of stuff that even the cops say they shouldn't be doing. Implicit in this is that, with less funding, there'll be less cops; even the unions and review boards won't be able to keep everyone on, leaving room to start actually removing the worst performers (starting with those who actively and routinely threaten human lives without legal cause; I'd say "moral cause", but too often they claim "because he was black" as sufficient moral cause to kill or injure someone).
>>> 
>>> In the worst cases where an entire department needs to be cleaned out and restarted, that is "relieving" them in a more thorough sense, for those cases which engage in too many non-police duties. (Oppression of minorities being "not a valid police duty" in this context.) But this is not every case, unlike what "defund the police" implies.
>>> 
>>> Does "relieve the police" seem a more useful (and ultimately at least as accurate) term as "defund the police"?
>>> 
>>> (This won't replace "defund the police". People who are super-angry will keep chanting that. "Relieve the police" is suggested for those who wish to focus on convincing those currently opposed to police reform.)
>> 
>> They did "defund the police" in Camden, New Jersey, in 2012 and it apparently turned out OK:
>> 
>> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Stathis Papaioannou
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