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addctd2badideas t1_j9tzdm2 wrote

I'm not interested in defunding the police, but rather reforming them to where they're virtually unrecognizable from who they are now. Even if you're ideologically lazy with all the "ACAB" nonsense, we still need the police. Even if you have fully funded social programs to address generational poverty and violence, you still need to stabilize public safety so folks have a chance to heal and improve their community. Not to mention the right of citizens to be able to walk out of their houses without encountering open-air opioid markets and dodging crossfire.

Now, the optimal thing would be that we have enough police to actually do the job. It'd also be nice if the current ones would do their job at all (and do so while not violating the most basic of civil rights). I lost the point where this all had to be ideological. The police, particularly the union, are such a bunch of snowflakes, making out their job to be part of their political identity.

If Wes Moore can somehow thread the needle that reassures the police, giving them a proverbial pat on the head with a "good job" while addressing inequality, civil rights and public safety at the same time, I would be ecstatic.

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todareistobmore t1_j9uwf39 wrote

> but rather reforming them to where they're virtually unrecognizable from who they are now. Even if you're ideologically lazy with all the "ACAB" nonsense,

It would be far less work just to internally read ACAB as 'all cops are badly in need of reform' than to try to parse a meaningful ideological difference between your stated position and the one you're trying to dunk on.

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Inevitable_Sherbet42 t1_j9v89ge wrote

OR, the people who actually want police reform can just call themselves police reformers instead of ACAB.

Because ACAB has the pretty strong connotation that policing = Cops bad.

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addctd2badideas t1_j9uz2ah wrote

If people actually mean they'd prefer police reform when they say "defund" or "ACAB," then they can say that. Christ, that is such a cop-out (excuse the pun).

Because if I read between the lines, I personally look at the meaning behind them as, at best, wholly impractical, and at worst, an ideological purity test. This is why so little movement has been had in police reform... most people take this idea at face value. We don't need extremes to solve this problem. What's more is that these supposed slogans aren't really addressed to the people who need convincing. Just like conservatives, liberals and progressives do a whole shit-ton of ideological pandering.

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todareistobmore t1_j9vjwdu wrote

> We don't need extremes to solve this problem.

What you called for is "reforming them to where they're virtually unrecognizable from who they are now." Who's the loudest 'reform' voice that you think embraces anything resembling this view?

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Syphon6645 OP t1_j9u3ohr wrote

Enough police will be hard to manage. Who wants that job? Low pay. People hate you and are not respected. Oh by the way, get shot at from time to time.

There are so many things wrapped up in this. It's hard to unwrap.

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addctd2badideas t1_j9u4lu4 wrote

>There are so many things wrapped up in this. It's hard to unwrap.

That's an understatement. It's made more challenging by the fact that the upper command is full of people who are either flat-out lying about their purview and abilities or are just dumb.

I had an exchange with a former district commander that's now a major at headquarters and when she explained how her officers operate according to the consent decree, it was like she had read an entirely different document.

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SeaworthinessFit2151 t1_j9up6xg wrote

Not low pay. Three times what a city social worker gets after 10 years of schooling and clinical. I consider $125k a pretty Penny.

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Syphon6645 OP t1_j9vldou wrote

That's not a teacher's salary at all. I see an Assistant Principal that makes that much. I'm seeing on average $54k to $77k

Social workers are another that is way underpaid and overworked. For what they do and the education they must get to be that is crazy. The ROI to become that doesn't make any sense.

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Willothwisp2303 t1_j9uq8xi wrote

They have an uphill battle with the police. They have the manpower to pull me over for a taillight out, but tell me they aren't going to do shit about someone stealing my identity and trying to open a bank account down the street from a police station with a bank fully willing to cooperate with them? Fuck these dicks.

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addctd2badideas t1_j9ut7m4 wrote

Not that I disagree with your sentiment but local police don't deal with identity theft. If your identity is stolen, contact the Federal Trade Commission.

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jashxn t1_j9ut8w2 wrote

Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!

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Inevitable_Sherbet42 t1_j9v816a wrote

I get the feeling identity theft is the purview of states and the feds, and not munciple police.

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BKNORTH t1_j9w1bb7 wrote

Saying we need reform is great, but that’s a vague and meaningless statement unless you can come up with specific changes that are actually going to improve public safety in practice. The reforms that went into place after Freddie Gray sounded good in theory, but have been a complete and total failure, and pushing for more reforms in the same direction is not going to improve peoples lives. Just look at the murder rate in the city before and after the reforms, it’s fucking absurd that people just ignore this.

2008- 234 murders 2009 - 240 murders 2010- 224 murders 2011 - 197 murders 2012 - 217 murders 2013 - 235 murders 2014 - 211 murders

2015, the year the Freddie Gray reforms were impromented - 342 murders

2016 - 318 murders 2017 - 342 murders 2018 - 309 murders 2019 - 348 murders 2020 - 335 murders 2021 - 338 murders 2022 - 335 murders

Obviously the real challenge is to address the factors that lead to people wanting to murder each other at such an absurd rate in the first place, but that is almost definitely something that is goin to take generations of work to accomplish if it is possible at all, and in the mean time whatever we’ve been trying to accomplish with the police reforms we have passed have backfired enormously.

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cologne_peddler t1_j9vjy9m wrote

This line of thinking is actually pretty lazy. It's straight out of the 90s. We've been "reforming" since Rodney King got the shit beat out of him on TV.

We don't have anything resembling the sort of constabulary we need. We have impulsive children running around with broad authority and no oversight, slaughtering and brutalizing people in the streets (and with dubious impact on public safety at that). That's urgent. That's grounds for pulling the plug. If a broken pipe is flooding your basement, you don't give the waters the "proverbial pat on the head." You don't go "well I need water, I can't just turn it off!" You stop the fucking flooding, and then you figure out how you're going to take a shower.

"Let's tweak this shit for another century until we get it right" is just lazy as hell. It really diminishes the severity of what we're facing: the state is routinely killing, brutalizing and violating citizens' rights. That's fucked.

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