this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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Maybe we should defund the police.
Stop that, please.
That entire "defund the police" is the dumbest idea out there. You NEED police, any society needs police. Either that, or next time your being assaulted or robbed, well, sucks to be you.
What the US needs is a completely restructured police system, from the ground up. It needs officers that received training, not the 3-6 months dicking around with idiots that teach them "anyways, then I started blasting". It needs restructuring of yhe laws so that they can be held accountable when they abusre their powers. They need to learn how to de-escalate situations instead of throwing oil on fires. Racism needs to be squeezed out.
This is how police works in other countries, this is why in other countries we actually like and respect police .
This also requires other changes in the US. This justice system based on revenge has to go. Focus on rehabilitation instead. You gotta limit your guns. I know that people start screeching at the idea, bit if by now it's still not clear that US citizens are NOT able to responsibly use their guns, then you have issues. You yourself might be super responsible but the next ten people are not. Take the guns away. Best would be all of it.
Those are things that will make your country nicer, and your police actually respectable.
All of that is true, but our police also need to be defunded. Police spending makes up a huge percentage of most municipal budgets, and diverts money from other necessary and helpful things, like social workers, emergency responders, programs for the unhoused, education, etc.
Yeah but you still need police. You need well trained police who know how to de-escalate situations. It also requires a change in how usi citizens look at crime. Prison sentences in Europe are always een as too lenient and lax but that is because in the US they are to punish, to enact revenge for the victims. In Europe prison sentences are also meant to reeducate, to prepare the person to come back to society. If o get arrested in Europe, it sucks. If I get arrested in the US, my life is mostly over. Once you've been a prisoner in the US, and you come back into society, you're fucked. Good luck getting a normal job. It makes it that crimjnals are mucbore aggressive in the US, so police needs to be more aggressive too. You need to change how you handle crime, you need to rework your entire justice system.
Keyword: meant, but i get what you... meant.
No shit. That starts with reducing how much money they're allocated. That's what defunding the police means. It doesn't mean get rid of the police as your implying, it means give them less money, so we have more to spend on social programs, rehabilitation, and other things that actually reduce crime.
...'cos they blow it all on military-grade equipment, among other stuff.