Good job, Austin!

[Dionysus]

Pardon my cluelessness as I haven’t followed this closely but “defund” meaning what exactly — shut down the entire PD, or specific budget items?

I understand reform/improvements in certain areas but is anyone seriously thinking a city’s police force should just go away?

 

[bystander]

They just did.

Enjoy your feces and trash. I’m sure it makes you feel at home.

All that matters is the make-believe world of Liberalism. The reality is only uttered by racists and Nazi's.

 

[Monahorns]

Need to do that with public schools now. Then the Austin City government.

I'm joking. Half joking.

There needs to be a public security. Police departments can be that. They don't have to be that though.

 

[Horn6721]

Mona
you agree there needs to be authorized people able to respond to lawless situations from drunks driving to looters in a store to murders etc?

 

[Vol Horn 4 Life]

Need to do that with public schools now.

We could eliminate 75% of school "administration", give a 50% pay increase to teachers and still significantly reduce funding to schools. School districts are bloated with useless payroll at the top. When my daughters 4A school has FOUR principals you know something is wrong. Just too much wasted money.

Then, yes....defund the Austin City Council. They are a waste of fresh air.

 

[Run Pincher]

Don't matter, Mayor & Clowncilmembers are much smarter than the voters of Austin so they know what's best for all the people in the city.

 

[Mr. Deez]

Pardon my cluelessness as I haven’t followed this closely but “defund” meaning what exactly — shut down the entire PD, or specific budget items?

It depends on who's talking. When the activists say "defund the police," they literally mean getting rid of the police department. Politicians are echoing this verbiage, but they largely are BSing. The politicians are usually talking about banning certain practices like chokeholds or making deadly force more restrictive and cutting police budgets (though usually not wildly) while signalling to the crackpot activists (by adopting their slogan) that they're going along with their nutty agenda when they actually aren't.

 

[Mr. Deez]

Don't matter, Mayor & Clowncilmembers are much smarter than the voters of Austin so they know what's best for all the people in the city.

None of it matters unless they're willing to vote this crackpots out.

 

[Monahorns]

Mona
you agree there needs to be authorized people able to respond to lawless situations from drunks driving to looters in a store to murders etc?

I personally would rather see existing police departments reformed. I don't say that because BLM or Antifa or George Floyd. I have thought that for at least 5 years.

But authorization can come from different areas. It doesn't have to be a government employee. It could be a volunteer organization. It could be a private security organization.

 

[Mr. Deez]

So I check my notifications this morning, and I got a like ("agree") from @Hollandtx on a post from 11 months ago. How cool is that?

And I need to acknowledge her greatness. Some acknowledge their white privilege. I acknowledge Hollandtx's greatness and (unlike the idiot white privilege people) actually have evidence to support my acknowledgement. She rarely speaks here, but she's always on the mark when she does. Is she awesome or what?? Yes she is!

 

[Garmel]

It's funny how these people who believe in white privilege talk down to you if you don't buy into their nonsense like i was talked down to earlier. These are the same people who think Trump is Hitler and support Black Lives Matter no matter how many buildings they burn down. We truly live in stupid times.

 

[mchammer]

It's funny how these people who believe in white privilege talk down to you if you don't buy into their nonsense like i was talked down to earlier. These are the same people who think Trump is Hitler and support Black Lives Matter no matter how many buildings they burn down. We truly live in stupid times.

Ask next time if there is asian privilege because they make more income than whites.

 

[NJlonghorn]

Pardon my cluelessness as I haven’t followed this closely but “defund” meaning what exactly — shut down the entire PD, or specific budget items?

I understand reform/improvements in certain areas but is anyone seriously thinking a city’s police force should just go away?

It depends on who's talking. When the activists say "defund the police," they literally mean getting rid of the police department. Politicians are echoing this verbiage, but they largely are BSing. The politicians are usually talking about banning certain practices like chokeholds or making deadly force more restrictive and cutting police budgets (though usually not wildly) while signalling to the crackpot activists (by adopting their slogan) that they're going along with their nutty agenda when they actually aren't.

I think @Mr. Deez's answer is fairly accurate, but of course I'd shade it differently.

Yes, the most radical activists call for disbanding the police altogether. They are all over the map in terms of what (if anything) they'd replace the police with, but the uniting thread is an unwillingness to reform from within because they feel the entire system is irredeemably corrupted.

For a much larger number of people, defunding is focused on certain aspects of policing. In addition to the things Deez points to, a key focus is ending the practice of having police handle situations involving drugs, domestic violence, and mental-health issues. Police officers are not properly trained or equipped to handle those situations, so all too often they make things worse. The goal is to transfer both funding and responsibility from the police department to social-service agencies.

The reformers ignore or downplay the fact that many of these situations are dangerous. Thus, the gold standard would be to send both a social worker and a police officer. But that would be expensive, so ultimately this is a question of resource allocation.

My view is that the "defund" movement doesn't have all of the right answers, but they deserve credit for finally bringing these long-neglected problems to the forefront.

 

[Mr. Deez]

My view is that the "defund" movement doesn't have all of the right answers, but they deserve credit for finally bringing these long-neglected problems to the forefront.

Not all the proposed reforms are bad. I can at least consider some of them. However, why are we attaching the label "defund the police" to them? I get suspicious when politicians use deceptive verbiage to describe their policy agenda. Why not call it "police reform" or something that fair-minded people can take seriously?

 

[Monahorns]

Or you could organize parallels providers of the services via non-state means. It's what humans did for thousands of years before the modern state even existed.

 

[Austin_Bill]

You know what is worse than Austin, Minneapolis, Seattle and even San Francisco.

New Braunfels, don't move to New Braunfels, it's the worst place on the planet. Poop everywhere, toxic waste, Nazis everywhere. Stay out of New Braunfels. If you live in New Braunfels and are liberal you probably are looking to leave because it is so bad here. Same with Seguin, both places are the worst.

 

[Sangre Naranjada]

You know what is worse than Austin, Minneapolis, Seattle and even San Francisco.

New Braunfels, don't move to New Braunfels, it's the worst place on the planet. Poop everywhere, toxic waste, Nazis everywhere. Stay out of New Braunfels. If you live in New Braunfels and are liberal you probably are looking to leave because it is so bad here. Same with Seguin, both places are the worst.

I see what you're attempting there.

 

[Mr. Deez]

Colorado passes a police reform bill. None of this sounds bad to me. Link.

 

[nashhorn]

Sounds reasonable. I will say Nashville passed a “must have body cams” rule/law and then did not allocate the funds so in essence it meant nothing. Just an aside.

 

[theiioftx]

Apparently Cooper and council will use federal Covid money for body cams. I think like 24 million. The police department is already lacking hundreds of officers and, I am guessing, that shortage will grow with the lack of support from council and the mayor. Cooper is a hypocrite of the largest order. One weekend, inviting thousands to protest (who eventually damaged millions) in direct violation of his stay at home orders, then fining businesses the next weekend for being open and busy.

 

[nashhorn]

Wow, amazing how they find the money somewhere. Don’t know anyone in Nashville that likes Cooper. Don’t live there full time so not that ‘informed’ but according to my family members he’s a genuine p****. Daughter and her family are actively looking to get out of Davidson Co.

 

[Statalyzer]

The police department is already lacking hundreds of officers

Has there ever been a PD that claimed otherwise? They don't have any useless speed traps and such they can pull people off of?

 

[Joe Fan]

 

[Austin_Bill]

I hate people.

 

[Joe Fan]

Austin is lost

 

[OUBubba]

I think @Mr. Deez's answer is fairly accurate, but of course I'd shade it differently.

Yes, the most radical activists call for disbanding the police altogether. They are all over the map in terms of what (if anything) they'd replace the police with, but the uniting thread is an unwillingness to reform from within because they feel the entire system is irredeemably corrupted.

For a much larger number of people, defunding is focused on certain aspects of policing. In addition to the things Deez points to, a key focus is ending the practice of having police handle situations involving drugs, domestic violence, and mental-health issues. Police officers are not properly trained or equipped to handle those situations, so all too often they make things worse. The goal is to transfer both funding and responsibility from the police department to social-service agencies.

The reformers ignore or downplay the fact that many of these situations are dangerous. Thus, the gold standard would be to send both a social worker and a police officer. But that would be expensive, so ultimately this is a question of resource allocation.

My view is that the "defund" movement doesn't have all of the right answers, but they deserve credit for finally bringing these long-neglected problems to the forefront.

I agree with this. We hear police for the last 20 years talk about how they are left to do everything. We defund behavioral health and they have to deal with it. That's happened in OK. Homelessness has grown.

Defund to me means properly fund the social/behavioral side of the house. Do that well and you may not need as many police. It's a decade long migration of funding to me. More like a "creeping".

The challenge with things as they are now is that we train police to be a hammer. Hammer's hit nails. They're usually good at it. When we ask them to be a sawsall, mitre saw, screwdriver, etc. they're still a hammer hitting at nails. We need to better arm our tool chest.

 

[Sangre Naranjada]

I agree with this. We hear police for the last 20 years talk about how they are left to do everything. We defund behavioral health and they have to deal with it. That's happened in OK. Homelessness has grown.

Defund to me means properly fund the social/behavioral side of the house. Do that well and you may not need as many police. It's a decade long migration of funding to me. More like a "creeping".

The challenge with things as they are now is that we train police to be a hammer. Hammer's hit nails. They're usually good at it. When we ask them to be a sawsall, mitre saw, screwdriver, etc. they're still a hammer hitting at nails. We need to better arm our tool chest.

Can't find a lot wrong with that, Bubba - except that somebody has to be a first responder, the ones who step into highly chaotic and sometimes violent situations, and the social service types don't have the training (and most likely not the ability) to do that. There is no perfect solution, but getting rid of first responders is about the worst solution imaginable.

 

[4th_floor]

..............Defund to me means properly fund the social/behavioral side of the house. Do that well and you may not need as many police. It's a decade long migration of funding to me. More like a "creeping".....................

Defund means reduce or eliminate funding. It does not mean reform. Already there are initiatives to reduce the police in Minneapolis, Chicago, NYC and Austin before any reductions in demand for police functions are realized. Plus the major argument for defunding the police is that the police are racist killers. Being a racist killer is not changed by reducing the social/behavioral side of the job. Racist killers gonna hate and kill. Right?

 

[2003TexasGrad]

I agree with this. We hear police for the last 20 years talk about how they are left to do everything. We defund behavioral health and they have to deal with it. That's happened in OK. Homelessness has grown.

Defund to me means properly fund the social/behavioral side of the house. Do that well and you may not need as many police. It's a decade long migration of funding to me. More like a "creeping".

The challenge with things as they are now is that we train police to be a hammer. Hammer's hit nails. They're usually good at it. When we ask them to be a sawsall, mitre saw, screwdriver, etc. they're still a hammer hitting at nails. We need to better arm our tool chest.

What you do is increase funding for these other programs while still funding the police. If these programs actually work and you see results then maybe you can pull back on police funding in some areas, but only after you see results from the increase in other programs.

They are doing this all backwards....

 

[Mr. Deez]

I agree with this. We hear police for the last 20 years talk about how they are left to do everything. We defund behavioral health and they have to deal with it. That's happened in OK. Homelessness has grown.

Defund to me means properly fund the social/behavioral side of the house. Do that well and you may not need as many police. It's a decade long migration of funding to me. More like a "creeping".

The challenge with things as they are now is that we train police to be a hammer. Hammer's hit nails. They're usually good at it. When we ask them to be a sawsall, mitre saw, screwdriver, etc. they're still a hammer hitting at nails. We need to better arm our tool chest.

"Defund the Police" is a fraudulent proposal driven by a fraudulent narrative. The proposal is fraudulent, because in most of these situations, nobody is truly defunding anything. The narrative is fraudulent, because it assumes without evidence that police are murdering black people in large numbers and that George Floyd's killer is common and typical. All of that is not only false but wildly so.

If we want to boost social services in some areas, I'm open to that. However, far too many on the Left and guys like you think that social spending can substitute for personal character and responsibility. You're pitching Great Society/Kerner Commission rhetoric. It was wrong then, and it's wrong now. Furthermore, it's deadly. The last time we tried this "hug a thug" approach, we saw a massive spike in violent crime that took decades to get under control, and it got under control the way crime has always been brought under control - with a bigger and stronger police force.

Like idiots, we're repeating history, and the violent crime spike is starting again, and far more black people are being killed now. You all don't give a crap about them because their deaths don't present a virtue signaling opportunity for you, but the people are just as dead.