250 Microsoft Employees Call on CEO To Cancel Police Contracts and Support Defunding Seattle PD (medium.com) 483
Hundreds of Microsoft employees have signed a letter to the company's top executives asking for Microsoft to take action in the wake of national protests. From a report: The letter, which was obtained by OneZero, requests that Microsoft cancel contracts with the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and other law enforcement agencies, asks the company to formally support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and calls for the resignation of the Seattle mayor. The email, which eventually included more than 250 employees CC'd in solidarity, was sent in the early hours of Monday, June 8, and was addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and executive vice president Kurt DelBene with the subject line, "Our neighborhood has been turned into a warzone." Much of the email focused on the protests and police response in Seattle. "Every one of us in the CC line are either first-hand witnesses or direct victims to the inhumane responses of SPD to peaceful protesting," the letter said, according to the copy obtained by OneZero.
Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting rid of bad cops and the systems that protect them is a better, more realistic solution.
Re:Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:5, Insightful)
When law enforcement vanishes, all manner of violence breaks out: looting, settling old scores, ethnic cleansing, and petty warfare among gangs, warlords and mafias. This was obvious in the remnants of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and parts of Africa in the 1990s, but can also happen in countries with a long tradition of civility. As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike.
By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that had competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist).
The CBC has a recording of the news broadcast [www.cbc.ca] that was released at the time as well as some other information about events at the time.
I suspect that they're only in favor of this because none of looting or violence has spread to their part of town. People seem to have a sudden change or heart about things when the danger is a little bit closer. There was one pretty humorous example of a sports writer [sportingnews.com] who was tweeting all many of incendiary things in support of the riots who seemingly wanted no part of it when it came close to his neighborhood. Gun sales have already been increasing [apnews.com] as a result of fears surrounding the pandemic, but I have a feeling that the nationwide riots are going to result in another increase.
Re:Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, given some recent incidents, they might arrive at the wrong house, not announce that they are police as they break down the door, and then gun down the homeowner when he or she has a gun to defend themselves from what they assume is a criminal.
Re:Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:5, Funny)
Private security firm.
If you are going to be a Capitalist, you don't want your life and property in the hands of some government officials. What are you some sort of communist or something?
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That's what defunding is.
In 2014 the New York PD did a "slowdown" in protest of the mayor. They expected crime to rise as they backed off from their "broken window" policy (cracking down on low level crime, theory being it leads to bigger crimes) but in actual fact crime fell.
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Basically heavy policing causes social problems that lead to more crime.
So take away their military equipment, the armoured vehicles and weaponry. Have fewer of them, and divert that money to social pro
Re: Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you getting home invaded at 2am? What social issue is pushing them to do that?
There is a fantasy world where we can divert funding and solve all social issues. In that fantasy, once all social issues are solved there will be no crime. Unfortunately that isn't how the real world works. We cannot solve all social issues, and even if we did, all crime would not vanish. Ask a woman who has been raped if she thinks that her rapist just needed a better social safety net.
Re: Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:4, Insightful)
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In my case, which happened long ago, it was apparently beer money based on where they tried to pass the bad check- a bar about 15 blocks from my house (it was an old checkbook to a closed account that was stolen).
empathy is the key (Score:3)
Plus nobody's ever prematurely ended their life with a frying pan while on a bender after their wife just left them.
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Unless you believe every property crime is committed by someone exhibiting anti-social pathology, you have to admit that maybe doing something about raising populations in poor socio-economic conditions is probably a more effective than either shooting everyone or hiring cops who do it for you. Expensive and sometimes violent police officers are a symptom of a disease, not the cure.
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You think it's a *solvable* issue?
I think there's a spectrum for sure, and we've left mental health high and dry, as well as general social services for a lot of displaced people.
But even with *all* of our monies, we won't *solve* anything. We might reduce occurence X by 50,80,99% - but someone will *still* get "home invaded" at 2 am.
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I do believe it's a preventable issue, and even if there's one instance of 2am home invasion that isn't resolved by eliminating poverty and instituting proper mental health coverage (and I'm sure plenty of other things that could be suggested using the millions you'd save), I struggle to think that this would be resolved by sending what we currently call a police officer.
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Sending the police officer removes the offender from society to get the help the offender needs, while returning other property that was stolen.
Not sending the police officer means the offender gets only what he steals, which may not even be what he really needs, and the homeowner either buys a gun or does what I did- set booby traps to prevent the invasion from happening again.
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Well a lot of thefts are for drug money so if cheap heroin was easily available, a whole bunch of crime would go away. The war on drugs has been a dismal failure and is one thing that could be defunded and reduce crime.
They've been experimenting with free heroin here and listening to the interviews with the junkies on the program, it seems to be more successful then imprisonment. Instead of spending all their time trying to fund their next fix, they stop at the clinic on the way to work and on the way home.
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Re: Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:4, Insightful)
The massive increase in law enforcement budgets, militarization of police forces, the blue wall, all of these things are the definition of insanity; in that they haven't solved the problems of inequity and mental illness, and yet we just keep throwing more money at law enforcement, imagining if we had even more cops the problems would disappear. The problem with hiring even more police officers is that you end up with forces who have some significant fraction of their own ranks made up of the same kinds of people that bust into your house at 2am, except at least the burglar has to ply his trade in secret, whereas a cop has a badge that in most cases allows him to behave with impunity, and out in the open.
When a cop leans on a guy's neck for nine minutes, and the guy's only alleged crime was paying for something with a phony $20 bill, then something very bad has happened, and law enforcement has become the very problem it claims to be able to solve.
Now I'm not trying to impugn every policy officer. I'm sure the vast majority are pretty decent fellows, but the fact is that even the best of them live in a world of "us vs them", where the citizen is always the "them", and some groups are more "them" than others. Some of it is inevitable in any organization that has a quasi-military structure of ranks. The esprit de corps required to take a bunch of people of varying personality types and backgrounds and weld them together into a unified organization of any kind creates a certain kind of tribalism. But modern policing has in many cases bought into that completely, and serves no ends but its own. Whether there are good cops or not is almost irrelevant. The organization itself has its own personality and its own motives.
Defunding as some would imagine it is ludicrous. There are always going to be a need for some sort of police force. When the first modern professional police forces were created in Britain in the early 19th century, they had a pretty limited mandate. In the English-speaking world, at least, there was a significant fear of have any kind of soldiery wandering the streets imposing law and order (though the Brits had little problem having Red Coats imposing law and order in Scotland and Ireland). The Metropolitan Police were an example of balancing the need for organized law enforcement and not permitting it to be overtly militaristic. In Britain, to some extent, that is still maintained; the idea of arming all police officers is still somewhat of an anathema in Britain. But in North America, it would be pretty hard to distinguish the police from soldiers. Essentially we have a bunch of armies running around major North American cities, with all the social ills that come along with having a bunch of soldiers.
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Prevention is important and there is a lot that can be done.
But don't for once think that there isn't such a thing as bad people. Some assholes will become criminals just because. There is no solving that through social programs. Jeffrey Dahmer didn't eat people because he was oppressed or poor. He did it because he was fucking evil.
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I'm saying if you solve the issue that would push somebody to do that, nobody will invade you at 2am and you won't have to have a gun, and more people will be alive at the end of a given day.
Have you never read a history book? A large chunk of the code of Hammurabi deals with criminal justice. What insight do you have to preventing crime that hasn't been tried in the past 5000 years of recorded history?
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"People 5,000 years ago had primitive notions of criminal justice and nobody has come up with anything better so let's stop trying"
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Ok, this is the "pie in the sky" attitude we need to get ride of.
Not everyone is good. Do you think you can fix everyone? They are not broken, there is just bad people out there. Evil in some cases.
The person braking into your house at 2 in the morning, might want your stuff, so they steal it. They want sex, so they rape. And yes maybe they like to hurt people. And you know what, they might like who they are, or maybe they think they're right in doing it, etc. Who knows.
You can help some people preve
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What makes you think it is possible to prevent addiction-driven crime if you take away all the laws that resolve addiction?
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Addiction isn't resolved by making drug-taking illegal, otherwise the War on Drugs would have been won already.
Re: Who do you call at 2am when home invaded? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you can't answer any of those questions, your snark is cute but irrelevant. Come back when you know what you're talking
Proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proof (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:3)
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There are elected officials, however these are often talking heads. As we elect people based on how much we like them, vs what they will actually do.
These are often for positions where we need a public face to a problem.
But not all public servants should be elected. Because their job isn't so much dictated by the political parties or public opinion. You can have a Republican IT Administrator running the system for a Democratic majority district. The use of Cloud vs. Your own servers. or Virtualization
Defunding the police (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Defunding the police (Score:3, Informative)
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I'm not sure why you think "reduce the police force" would be done by just cutting all departments. Obviously, we wouldn't be cutting home invasion units. We'd be cutting having armed police who deal with selling loose cigarettes and things like that. Places that reduced the police force saw no increase in violent crimes, or even really non-victimless crimes.
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Actually it's quite successful https://www.npr.org/sections/l... [npr.org]
In these troubled times (Score:2)
A reminder can't hurt that a little bit of love goes a long, long way. [youtube.com]
And no, not like a homind.
Activist Employees Never Learn (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else notice (Score:2)
Anyone else the sheer number of high UID comments on any political topic on slashdot? Look like russian trollfarm is out in full force and we have just normalized it.
---
Oops forgot to post anonymously.
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You think Russia bothers with this site that gets 0.000006% of the traffic of places like reddit? Could just be all the old timers moved on. My account is over two decades old now.
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Is my 6 digit one better, or my 4 significant digits one?
Co-incidence (not "coincidence") suggests I go with this one.
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After a while you realize that you probably have better things to do than argue with random people on the Internet. Don't worry, you'll probably get there eventually.
It's still fun to read the comments though.
Why should hire up cares? (Score:2)
What some dumb flunky thinks.
Those people can get up and go and find other jobs in the high unemployment market.
Just now a company declared [yahoo.com] that it is moving out of Minneapolis because the city didn't protect thier plant. 50 jobs and a lot of tax revenue gone. A lot isn't covered by insurance because of civil disturbance clauses.. To get those clauses removed is going to take a lot. Who is going to relocate to pay more insurance.
If these people get what they want, then Microsoft will have to pay more
Defund or Demilitarize? (Score:2)
Last Saturday in Chicago: 18 Murders in 24 Hours (Score:5, Informative)
https://chicago.suntimes.com/c... [suntimes.com]
"On Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, 'Hey, there's no police anywhere, police ain't doing nothing,'" Pfleger said.
Most homicide victims in Chicago are young, black men, and the suspects are, too. But murders have fallen significantly in recent years, along with police-involved shootings. There were 764 murders and 12 fatal police-involved shootings in 2016, compared with 492 murders and three fatal police-involved shootings last year.
Re:Last Saturday in Chicago: 18 Murders in 24 Hour (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Last Saturday in Chicago: 18 Murders in 24 Hour (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's all take a quick look at http://heyjackass.com/ [heyjackass.com] which is a dashboard that documents Chicago violence, but can stand-in for any big city in America. Look up and down that page - look at the American carnage on display. Look at the victims, and look at the perpetrators. Apparently none of their lives matter.
Then, look at the only number in single digits: police-involved shootings. This is what they identify as the problem?!
I know it's schadenfreude (Score:2)
...but I literally hope every one of them has a home break in. Or maybe a mugging, but I genuinely don't want anyone to get hurt.
Just maybe wake up a little.
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I don't know why you think that would change anything. I'm not aware of the police doing anything for anyone I know who got mugged or had a home break in.
250 fewer people to protect (Score:2)
With less funding, the police will be able to do less. The first cuts should obviously be to limit protection to those who did not call for their defunding.
And the names should be published, so thieves will know exactly who to target.
If you don't like the police... (Score:3, Insightful)
Trump couldn't buy a better campaign ad (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like these people never learn. The republican ad campaigns are practically writing themselves right now.
Ambiguous phrase. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people (and the news in particular) would stop using the phrase "defund the police". It is ambiguous enough to be completely misleading.
Some people use it to mean completely disbanding police departments. But more often, it means reducing police funding in order to redirect funding to other activities that reduce crime, in the belief that "policemen should not be used as mental-health workers". And in some cases, it even is used to mean "cut the planned increase in police budget."
When people use the phrase without clarifying what they mean, I have no idea what they mean.
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you type "defund the police" in to Google it first suggests "defund the police meaning", but if you ignore that you get a list of articles explaining exactly what it means.
In the interviews I have seen on TV protesters seem happy to explain it and seem to have a good grasp of what it means.
The only people trying to confuse things are the ones who oppose it.
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guarantee given the sheer volume of protesters that there is no way they all have identical nuanced strategies behind them chanting 'defund the police'. No group of people as numerous as the protesters will ever have specific identical views.
In a protest they settle on chant-friendly phrases that so long as each participant can interpret the phrase to mean what they mean.
Unfortunately humans are inclined to jump to total adversarial relationships when faced with a situation that would call for a nuanced solution. Protestors just say 'never call cops', 'fuck the police', etc and police has a tendency to be pissed at the seeming total lack of regard for the good things the police do and at some level are itching for an excuse to break out the riot control in the heat of the moment.
And then when we have some time to breath and collect our thoughts and speaking only for our personal perspective, we develop and convey a more nuanced set of thoughts, but we rarely manage to view the other side as having the same sort of nuance.
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Insightful)
at some level are itching for an excuse to break out the riot control in the heat of the moment.
If not for things like that, the people wouldn't be protesting in the first place. The murder that started all of this was due to a cop who wanted to ignore professional standards and break out some riot control.
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Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why police need to check each other. I even saw a good example of that on the news. Arresting officer had a protester down with his knee on his neck (yes, exactly like in the incident that started the whole thing). Another cop yelled "get your knee off his neck". He had to yell it twice, but the arresting officer did move his knee. The officer that did the yelling saved both of them, the arrestee, and the city from a world of hurt. If one of the 3 bystanding cops in Minneapolis had done that, we wouldn't have world wide protests now.
If enough officers check and get checked often enough, professional standards can prevail and there will be no need for the protests.
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:5, Informative)
There have been two autopsies, one by the county, one commissioned by the family. BOTH ruled Floyd's death a HOMICIDE. If you want to tell yourself pretty little lies, go ahead, but kindly don't tell them to me.
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Actually, autopsies always include the manner of death when it can be determined. If it cannot be determined, they explicitly say it is undetermined. He didn't just happen to die at that moment, he died BECAUSE of the actions of another. It wasn't an accident. He didn't kill himself. He had medical issues, but they didn't kill him. Occam suggests it was the guy with a knee on his neck, not a passer-by thinking bad thoughts.
You're the one who suggested the autopsy was authoritative, then when you find out I
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The official autopsy found George Floyd had drugs in his system and underlying health issues. However, it also found Chauvin's actions to be contributory to his death. In plain language, Floyd died due to physical stress, exacerbated by his health issues/drug use.
If you perform an action -- for example, felony assault, which is what Chauvin was doing to Floyd by using excessive force during the arrest -- and that action leads to the unintentional death of someone, you can be charged with 3rd degree murder
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Even if his charges include 2nd degree murder, the jury has the option to convict on a lesser charge instead. It's not all or nothing.
The fact that Floyd repeatedly indicated his inability to breath and the fact that the officer kept his knee on Floyd's neck long after he lost consciousness is where the intent to murder comes in.
If you do something that can kill someone, see that they are moving in the direction of death and continue doing that thing anyway, we can rightly include that death was your intent
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if his charges include 2nd degree murder, the jury has the option to convict on a lesser charge instead. It's not all or nothing.
Correct, and interestingly this is exactly what happened in the case of Mohammed Noor’s shooting of Justine Damond.
Initially charged with 3rd degree murder (and 2nd degree manslaughter), the murder charge was upgraded to 2nd degree.
He was then convicted of 3rd degree murder.
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Insightful)
Given a Minneapolis councilwoman (read: elected politician with a strong voice behind this movement) has said that she can see a police free future, in her own words, what are we supposed to think "defund the police" means?
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:5, Insightful)
When I read the points in the articles, they make sense. For example, about that fact that many tasks have been put on the plate of the police men+women over time that are probably better handled by people trained in those areas (e.g. mental health), and that we should shift those funds and duties over to different groups for those non-crime type items.
And then I get done with an intelligent well thought out article and I scratch my head at why they chose to confuse people with a phrase "defund police" that does not mean what the article just laid out.
It's illogical and does not help communication.
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Say what you want about Trump, but regardless of anything else and how he got where he is today, he was worth billions of dollars before becoming President. If you think he wanted to be elected President for the purposes of increasing his wealth, you're delusional.
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Say what you want about Trump, but regardless of anything else and how he got where he is today, he was worth billions of dollars before becoming President. If you think he wanted to be elected President for the purposes of increasing his wealth, you're delusional.
Nah. He ran for president to increase his wealth (and stroke his ego), but he never intended to win. His goal was to build a new conservative media empire and the presidential bid was just for publicity, and because he immediately discovered he really likes doing rallies. When he accidentally won he wasn't really sure what to do with it. Still isn't. If you pay attention it's pretty clear that he's still treating the whole thing like a reality TV show. The occasional allusions to ratings aren't just his Al
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Informative)
Defund isn't ambiguous. Here's the dictionary definition with a relevant example:
transitive verb
: to withdraw funding from
Example:
Higher education has been defunded by state to the point where not having courses flat leaves them out of business.
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
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The point is the phrase 'defund the police' *suggests* withdrawing *all* funding from. In natural speaking, we tend to say 'reduce funding' to mean less money, but some money, and 'defund' to mean 'we totally give up spending on this'.
Protests like 'defund the police' because it has the ring of a *dramatic* call to action, the initial impression is 'get rid of them totally' and resonates with their feelings at the moment, they might think it serves as an anchor point for negotiating a more realistic course
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Interesting)
Defund isn't ambiguous. Here's the dictionary definition with a relevant example:
transitive verb : to withdraw funding from
Example: Higher education has been defunded by state to the point where not having courses flat leaves them out of business.
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
And to you, "withdraw funding" means "reduce funding"?
Here's the thing, your ideological side relies on ambiguity, because then the argument that you are making can't be logically examined. It's why you prefer an ambiguous code of conduct to unambiguous rules: anyone claiming that the code of conduct is unfair will have nothing concrete to point to as examples of unfairness, but anyone using the code of conduct in politically motivated attacks "interprets" some clause the way they want to.
Ambiguity, lack of science, lack of evidence ... these are all things that you can use in your arguments, because when you get called on it you can simply claim that the caller is simply misinterpreting it, but when you want to enforce your rules, then you can interpret it in the way that is most beneficial to you.
Lets cut out the ambiguity, shall we? Try to weasel your way out of this one: Have you burned down your own house yet in support of the "protesters" burning down innocent peoples' houses? How about another question - do you call the police when someone commits violent crime against you (like, say, attempting to burn down your house with you in it)?
No ambiguity, no misinterpretation possible. Just answer; although a lot of the readers on this site will probably enjoy seeing you squirm more than seeing you caught in your own hypocrisy.
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry if you attention span is too short to think beyond the slogan.
It's not short, I'm just not letting you dodge the issue: you are supporting people who are burning other, innocent people's stuff, so why aren't you burning your own property down?
I've explained it, you clearly don't want to actually discuss it.
This is the evasion I was talking about in previous post: rather than stick on topic, you want to inundate anyone calling you out with so much material that there's no time for discussion. Let's stay on topic - you are supporting the people who are burning down stuff, why won't you burn your own stuff down?
This lady explains why people are burning down stuff better than I can. You say it's their neighbourhoods, but it's not.
I didn't say it was their neighbourhoods, I said they are burning down other people's property, innocent people. So why aren't you burning down your own property?
They built it but they don't own any of it.
https://youtu.be/sb9_qGOa9Go [youtu.be]
That video is irrelevant to the questions posed to you. Stop evading, I've removed the ambiguity. There's nowhere for you to hide, no deluge of irrelevant citations to keep me busy, because this is a personal question to you and what other people think the rioters want is irrelevant. Why are you supporting the burning down of other peoples property but not your own?
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That is still someone else's property! There are still dozens of households who depend on that property, there are people who will suffer hardship because of the burning down of that property. Not to mention, all the murders of innocent bystanders.
Yeah, sucks when criminals use it as an excuse. Like how it sucks when the police become criminals and murder people. I guess the whole police thing is illegitimate now.
Isn't that what they're claiming with "police-free future"? A few hundreds of police deaths out of 800 million encounters, and suddenly the rest of those 800 million encounters need to be defunded?
Look, if you shit on people and murder them for long enough your fucking electronics retailer is going to get burned down.
So, the solution to a 5-time black convict getting murdered while arrested is to .... kill more black people?
Maybe next time try being part of the solution while you fill out that insurance claim form.
It's not the people who have insurance that will suffer - it's the people who depend on that business. You think it's a coincidence that the Mayor of Chicago is begging the retailers to rebuild?
And from
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Because they're walking at a protest, not giving a 3 hour dissertation in a lecture hall.
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Then why not use less ambiguous terminology then?
Why bother? It's not like a sizable portion doesn't willfully distort the message even when the message is clear. "All Lives Matter" being a noteworthy example.
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...As for the second issue, Africans and Hispanics tend to respond aggressively toward the police.
Nope, NOT AT ALL CLEAR. You are confusing your own prejudice with data.
For a long time, the police used to say, after they killed unarmed civilians, "They were being agressive!". But with so many people having video cameras and documenting what actually happened, we are now seeing that in a lot of those cases the actual video record shows otherwise.
So, naturally, the police will act aggressively toward Africans and Hispanics.
It may be "natural" for a policeman who has had a bad experience with ONE African American to behave agressively toward other African Americans. This tendency
Re: Ambiguous phrase. (Score:3)
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Re:Ambiguous phrase. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to be glib, but it means exactly what it says: defund the police. Take away their money, reduce their budget, cancel budget increases, make sure there's less money for the police to spend.
It is sometimes linked to abolition movements, but usually those people are just calling for the police to be disbanded outright.
But really, there's no ambiguity: police take up too much of our budgets—very often the number one line item in a large city's budget—and that needs to end. Montreal, for instance, spends $660 million on the police, but infrastructure is only a fraction of that despite chunks of bridges literally falling down onto roads, and the most egregious pothole problem I've seen in North America. I think Toronto spends $1 Billion on policing. Neither city spends much on social housing, health care, or any of the huge numbers of things that would reduce crime.
More example of how it's an ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to be glib, but it means exactly what it says: defund the police. Take away their money, reduce their budget, cancel budget increases, make sure there's less money for the police to spend.
Exactly. You just listed three different things that "defund" might mean: take away their budget entirely, or, don't take it entirely away but reduce it, or, cancel planned budget increases.
There is a difference between "you should go on a diet" and "you should starve to death."
It is sometimes linked to abolition movements, but usually those people are just calling for the police to be disbanded outright.
Exactly. Other people are using the term "defund" to mean "remove all of the funding," which is essentially meaning "disband the police."
But really, there's no ambiguity:
You just finished giving me a clear examples showing that there is an ambiguity, with some people use it to mean "reduce the planned budget increases," other people use it to mean "reduce the budget" and yet others meaning "disband the police outright." You are apparently agreeing with my statement that the phrase is ambiguous and gave examples of the ambiguity.
police take up too much of our budgets—very often the number one line item in a large city's budget—and that needs to end. Montreal, for instance, spends $660 million on the police, but infrastructure is only a fraction of that despite chunks of bridges literally falling down onto roads, and the most egregious pothole problem I've seen in North America. I think Toronto spends $1 Billion on policing. Neither city spends much on social housing, health care, or any of the huge numbers of things that would reduce crime.
This may be true... but it is irrelevant to the discussion of the ambiguity of the phrase.
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Mental health is probably what they're talking about. Currently the police seem to be the main response to mental health issues. Wellness checks for example where an armed cop shows up to check on the mental health of someone. Just had a case where the cop ended up shooting the young woman he was checking up on. Perhaps having a trained person doing the wellness check would have had a better outcome. Likewise with the nutcases on the street where the cops are the first line of dealing with them.
Then there's
Those black lives matter too (Score:3)
There's a list of the victims here [thepostemail.com]. Here's the sister of Italia Marie Kelly [twitter.com] with a message for you asking why her sister's life doesn't matter.
Why don't you look her in the eye and tell her why your peaceful riots matter more than her sister?
Democrats run every level of government in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed. Was burning down the police station the "only way" to change things? This isn't about change. You freaked out over some actually peaceful protests where the protesters didn't play games
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It can work if a particular police department is horrendously corrupt. A loophole to get around union contracts governing employment and firing requirements.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ambiguous phrase. (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing ambiguous coming out of MN, The Minneapolis City Council is on record of completely shutting down the MPD.
"This council is going to dismantle this police department," Ellison said.
"Weâ(TM)ll be taking intermediate steps towards ending the MPD through the budget process and other policy and budget decisions over the coming weeks and months."
"We recognize that we donâ(TM)t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does"
Insanity
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If I was more evil, I'd want her address.
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What is interesting is that police salaries may contribute to the problem.
Given the conditions and risks, it's a totally crappy job to take for the money offred. Which means that they are going to attract assholes who want the power to exert over others more than they want a profitable career. It means that the candidate pool is small so that they can't be too selective and they will be more reluctant to sideline officers for lack of coverage.
So when they see sociopaths in uniform, they want to punish the s
Re:250 morons call for increased crime (Score:5, Funny)
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Another lady whose address I'd like if I gave in to my evil side.
What defunding actually means (Score:5, Informative)
Here is what defunding actually means and how it improved Camden NJ https://www.npr.org/sections/l... [npr.org]
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> Here is what defunding actually means
That's your personal interpretation (because it had a good outcome, why is this not the spearhead of the movement?). Depending on the region and individual, "defunding the police" means something different. Without a formal proposal it's a dogwhistle for "police reform" which can mean anything.
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So basically, they just let the county sheriff's department handle everything- including rehiring the majority of the cops who lost their jobs.
I could really get behind that. I may have started out as a marxist, but I've drifted more towards distributism as time goes on- and a removal of city government in favor of elected county government fits that.
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At least 5 slashdotters fall for false dichotomy (Score:2)
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Now hold up- this is an opportunity for industrial espionage raids. Microsoft's competitors could easily get the keys to the kingdom, since these 250 people will not be calling 911.
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I dunno, based on the videos of protests, cops seem to be the CAUSE of most crime right now. Seattle's mayor banned tear gas, but the chief REALLY WANTED to use it, so they used so much it started getting into buildings and affecting the breathing of people INSIDE.
A police force that's so abjectly unaccountable for its actions is not anything that anyone should want, left or right, progressive, conservative or moderate. We have a police force that is subject to virtually no checks or balances, and it's beca
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No, this is defending vs disbanding.
I would also support this for most emergency workers, and the Military too.
Because their funding from the public is often from a threat. We save lives, so we need this money to save more lives. Even if it is for a pinball system in the Rec-room. We are spending a lot of money as tax payers to things, that will offer marginal benefits.
As the GOP likes to defund many of the Liberal services, like education and social security. It does make sure these institutions are b
Re:250 morons call for increased crime (Score:4, Insightful)
We need to stop the water(crime) at it's source, the lack of education, opportunities, and poverty. Then we can pump out all of the water (lock up the criminals), and have a dry basement.
Re:250 smart people call for reduced crime (Score:3)
I see you weren't listening when they explained what defunding means.
It doesn't mean no cops. It means diverting some of the police budget to other things that prevent crime happening in the first place, while also making thing better for everyone.
You can live in a police state and get near zero crime, or you can address the causes of crime for the same outcome but keeping your freedom too.
Re:Lets see what we can personally gain from BLM (Score:4, Informative)
- Support Black Lives Matter Seattle’s List of Demands -- We don't know what they are, but just do whatever they say.
About twenty seconds of Google tells you what the demands [blacklivesseattle.org] are:
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/black-lives-matter-seattle-king-county-calls-statewide-general-strike-march-next-week/SLLBUBFTYZB5JPXTTR3QNY43O4/
http://blacklivesseattle.org/blm06032020statement/
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/03/43830893/local-black-lives-matter-chapter-issues-demands-for-seattle-say-theyve-had-no-role-in-recent-protests
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Geoffrey, you seem like a logical person. I hope you understand your role in this coup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
When the left is done with you, you will be expunged. They absolutely abhor you, but they tolerate you as long as you support their agenda.
Please read up on Yuri Bezmenov. I'll save you "twenty seconds" this time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]