[ExI] communism/authoritarianism

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 12:23 PM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 19, 2020 at 3:00 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>> There are a few cities that have 'defunded' their police. Camden, NJ did, though that was years ago.
>
> That was in 2012. The Camden police were notoriously corrupt and the
> city council got fed up, so they fired most of the officers and reduced
> the police budget by tens of millions of dollars and put the money saved
> into affordable housing, addiction treatment, and mental health services.
> Since 2012 violent crime in Camden has been reduced by 42% and the
> number of official complaints about police using excessive force have
> fallen from 64 to 3.

I'm not sure why you brought that up and then left out the rest of my
paragraph, which was:

'But there's been a lot of effective pushback by police unions and
lobbyists that pretty much stopped in getting rid of qualified
immunity in places like Virginia. See:

https://reason.com/2020/09/16/virginia-democrats-declined-to-end-qualified-immunity-police-unions-are-alive-and-well/
'

Let me emphasize here: yes, some places have 'defunded' their police
-- and with good reason and good results -- but the major takeaway
here at this point is this is rare and police unions and police
lobbyists have managed to pushback and overall reforms. Yes, they've
lost in a few places like Cambden, but when reforms were tried at the
state and federal level, so far, the police unions have won the day.

My fear is what happened with the antiwar movement will happen with
the police reform movement: it will be co-opted and almost nothing
will change. And that's why the protests continue. I think many people
understand that.

Regards,

Dan
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