I would strongly recomend listening to 99% invisible Freedom House episode. This has happened before. In the past we didnt have ambulances services and cops would often throw a dying person in a paddy wagon and then take them to the hospital…hopefully i don’t have to explain why this is bad. When the first ambulance service was being organized the cops through a fucking fit about their “jobs being stolen”. There have been a number of programs trying to take off like the Denver Star program that do similar things. They take on wellfare cases. There have also been things proposed for other types of issues that cops do. A exercise is to start thinking of cops as “murder squad”. Do you need the murder squad to take care of X? Do you need them for tickets? Hell sometimes if the answer may seem yes, but the way they do things as reckless and bloody as possible has shown that it is often not effective. High speed chases down packed streets? Shoot outs they start in heavily crowded areas? A kid who shoplifted candy and surrendered and got murdered anyway? (Know one of those). We have got to deprogram ourselves in thinking we know what police do, because what we were sold is no where centered in reality.
That’s what defund the police is all about, it’s not to take money away to punish the police, that would be stupid, it’s to move that money to other departments that would be better trained to handle mental health or domestic issues
I would strongly recomend listening to 99% invisible Freedom House episode. This has happened before. In the past we didnt have ambulances services and cops would often throw a dying person in a paddy wagon and then take them to the hospital…hopefully i don’t have to explain why this is bad. When the first ambulance service was being organized the cops through a fucking fit about their “jobs being stolen”. There have been a number of programs trying to take off like the Denver Star program that do similar things. They take on wellfare cases. There have also been things proposed for other types of issues that cops do. A exercise is to start thinking of cops as “murder squad”. Do you need the murder squad to take care of X? Do you need them for tickets? Hell sometimes if the answer may seem yes, but the way they do things as reckless and bloody as possible has shown that it is often not effective. High speed chases down packed streets? Shoot outs they start in heavily crowded areas? A kid who shoplifted candy and surrendered and got murdered anyway? (Know one of those). We have got to deprogram ourselves in thinking we know what police do, because what we were sold is no where centered in reality.
So what you’re suggesting is a reevaluation of police duties, not their total dissolution. I would vote for that. Food for thought.
That’s what defund the police is all about, it’s not to take money away to punish the police, that would be stupid, it’s to move that money to other departments that would be better trained to handle mental health or domestic issues