| sundin13 said: Thats generally not what defunding the police is about. Basically the idea is that police budgets are absurd. Here is an image out of Denver that I think illustrates this point: We know that there are a lot of risk factors which lead to crime. If we shift the budgets to other priorities such as education and housing, you can tackle crime issues in a way which actually benefits the community. While we shouldn't abolish the police, we do have to understand that our current justice system increases recidivism. That means if you are arrested, you are more likely to commit additional crimes. This is obviously not beneficial for the very bottom line of preventative policing. The justice system is failing in many ways. Now, how do we "defund" the police in beneficial ways? Well, there are a few solid ideas that I've seen thrown around. One is changing what we are asking police to do. Many of the things that police get sent out for don't really need an armed response. One example is rape cases. The vast majority of the time, when victims contact police, they are not in any current pressing danger, so sending someone who fulfills more of a social worker/mental health expert role could make reporting easier for the victims while alleviating some of the pressure on our policing system. Overall, we need to ask as a society "how often do we really need an armed response?" Doing so can allow us to downsize police departments while improving interactions with victims. This obviously extends far beyond this one example, but this comment isn't meant to be comprehensive. |
I can probably provide a little insight on the budgeting side of the equation. Well. For Australia at-least.
The police tend to run some very expensive highly specialized equipment like personal thermal imaging cameras to find missing persons and items, speed cameras, breath/drug testing equipment... And after something like a Road Crash Rescue we will have the Road Crash Police team fly in and set up special devices that record with lasers the gradient of the road, trajectory of the vehicles, record placement of debri, road composition and more.
Sometimes police helicopters get used in a search which comes with an accompanying budgetary cost even when not being used... And we also have Police Water Ops which assists us with marine rescues and body retrievals/hand overs. - These all cost, because 1,000 liters of fuel can get expensive, maintenance costs are on-going costs.
And there is a significant overlay with wages, insurance and training, police need to do skills maintenance like us firefighters and marine rescuers and there is ongoing running costs with all of that as well.
Not sure on the vehicles they use in the USA, but here they take commodity consumer vehicles and "enhance" them for police use, which means a new chip to increase power, reworked steering, breaking and so forth, but every few years they cycle the vehicles through and buy new ones to take advantage of more modern vehicle features and technology... Some of that cost gets recouped when they sell the old vehicles thankfully.
Could things be better? Yeah. It's a Government agency and government agencies due to admin and bureaucracy tend to be inefficient.
My advice to the people of the United States is... Be careful how you defund the police, because that will impact other rescue agencies as well and our ability to respond...
Last night for example I worked on a structure fire, Police was busy keeping the public out of our way and put in road blocks while we went in the building. - They were bringing us water, they were helping us strip off and decontaminate our PBI Golds (Asbestos home) and they had officers evacuating neighbors to keep them safe... And they were investigating, they were gathering information and providing that to us as well.
Police do more than just pull you over and fine you for excessive alcohol or drug consumption, that's the grunt work that is generally exposed to the public, there is a ton that goes on behind the scenes that us (Or myself even!) even know about.
I personally believe the USA needs to do multiple independent inquiries into the Police system in the USA all specialized in specific areas, I.E. One on abuse, the other on monetary... And then politicians need to enact policy to support those inquiries and enact some systemic changes... Because clearly there are issues.
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