The US Politics |OT|

[sundin13]

KLXVER said:

sundin13 said:

"When a white man kills a person of color, its national news and is discussed and analyzed to death. When a person of color kills a white man, it might get a mention on page 7 of your local newspaper. Its ridiculous. No wonder some people think the US is a racist hellhole."

Are you talking solely about police shootings here? Because you make no indication that you are. If so, I would agree that police shootings of black men get more coverage, however the race of the shooter typically plays less of a factor. That said, is that a bad thing? You said that you didn't want to get into the racial issues in the policing system, but we can get into that if you want. There is a myriad of data showing that the criminal justice system has huge systemic issues with race.

That said, do you have any comment in regards to the other things that I said in that post? I'd like to resolve that discussion regarding defunding and reforming the police before we move on.

I do not think defunding the police is a good idea. It gives them less options and less resources for fighting crime. I thought that was pretty obvious. They cut the NYPD budget by 1 billion dollars and crimes have skyrocketed. Other cities seem to have become worse as well. 

A reform within the police could be good. They should always be conscious of what they can do in order to better themselves. However I dont agree with giving the police less options and more rules when it comes to answering a call. The rules are very clear. Its just easy for some of those rules to fade when you are fighting for your life. 

I was not only talking about police shootings btw. Should have made that more clear.

Defunding the police is a means of increasing the resources that goes to funding crime by way of restructuring. I felt I had already made this clear, but I will go over it again. Probably the primary goal of the "defund" movement, is changing the type of thing that police respond to. Officers may be asked to respond to everything from drug addiction to barking dogs to mental health issues to cats stuck in trees. None of this really provides benefits when it comes to reducing crime and much of it could be handled better by a separate, non-police group who is trained in handling issues such as mental health, homelessness and addiction. 

It is a commonly stated problem among police that we are asking police to do too much. They largely agree that it doesn't make sense to send them out for a lot of these calls. We shouldn't be sending an armed force to every problem under the sun. As such, the "defund" movement seeks to shrink the responsibilities of the police in order to allow them to focus their efforts on the areas which they could benefit (and shrink their funding in kind), while redirecting some of that funding, and adding additional funding to other means of reducing crime and providing the services that the police used to provide.

As for your assertion that "they cut the NYPD budget by 1 billion dollars and crimes have skyrocketed", this is bullshit. Like, come on dude. This cut has not been enacted yet, and as such, we have yet to see any consequences of this change. The crime spike that we are seeing across the country is considered to largely be the result of the coronavirus, not budget cuts that haven't even went into place yet. 

And if you were not only talking about police shootings, then my initial assessment was correct. You are 100% wrong when it comes to your assertion that the media overrepresents white on black crime while ignoring black on white crime. 

The fact that you believe this stuff absolutely baffles me, when it is the polar opposite of reality.