Alright, Enough Already!

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The Guardian

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Activists have long advocated taking money from police and reinvesting it in services. The idea is now seeing a wave of support

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theguardian.com

What does 'defund the police' mean? The rallying cry sweeping the US – explained

Activists have long advocated taking money from police and reinvesting it in services. The idea is now seeing a wave of support

Activists have long advocated taking money from police and reinvesting it in services. The idea is now seeing a wave of support

Comments

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  Buddy Black
• Alright, enough already! This demonizing of law Enforcement, and our Military is simply getting out of the range of common sense.
• While it's obvious that with-in the LE profession, as with-in any 'profession' including medical where more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer and not a single street demonstration , 36,000 Americans, both Black and White Americans, are killed by guns each year—an average of 100 per day, and no protestors, there are some bad apples that are making the LE profession as a whole look bad as well. But the majority of LE should not be demonized because of the terrible deeds of the few who should never have been allowed in the ranks of LE in the first place.
• "Defunding" and "dissolving" LE agencies is like killing the 'patient' to repair a broken leg. The States, Cities, and Towns that host LE agencies must be held to a higher standard to ensure that the potential candidates for LE are the best, and highest standard that can be found for that agency. Not just 'good enough', but the very 'best'. Weed out the bad apples before they make the whole agency look rotten!
•  One of the biggest stumbling blocks that prevent proper punishment or firing of bad apples, is the quite often, corrupt Police Unions that protect its members no matter what. Many a bad cop is allowed to stay on the job when they should have been prosecuted and fired due to misconduct. The LE agency itself must be held to a higher standard! By "defunding" an agency, the salaries, training, and equipment for their officers will be cut back and lowered such that the difficulty will be finding anyone who is willing or even qualified, to work for low wages. The result would most likely be the hiring of less qualified candidates and then even more potential problems for the agency and the citizens they serve.
• "Defunding" and "dissolving" could be that preverbal 'boomerang' that comes back and hits from behind. Instead of this "defunding" and "dissolving" LE agencies, as this politically 'correct' fervor is calling for, find the actual 'problems' that's causing an agency to 'have' these bad cops in the first place, and fix that problem. Police Use Of Force Policies currently lack basic protections against police violence
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  These policies often fail to include common-sense limits on police use of force, including: 
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   1. Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force
  2. Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians
  3. Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor
  4. Failing to restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles, which is regarded as a particularly dangerous and ineffective tactic
  5. Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance
  6. Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force
  7. Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian
  8. Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians (This from the 'Police Use Of Force Project')
•  In short, fix the 'problems' that are 'causing' the problems! Better training, better policies, better leadership, better candidates, better follow-ups, better intervention and punishment of the offenders.
  
  . If you get rid of LE, or lower the standards due to "defunding", who are you going to call when you have a 911 situation and there's no one left to respond?
•  Like it or not, we need LE because society cannot 'police' itself, and as such, we need LE that is better hired, better trained, better supervised, and LE that's held to a much higher standard, and accountable for their any egregious actions against those they should instead, 'Protect and Serve'. ;)