Police Reform

[RedDenver]

1 minute ago, teachercd said:

I have no clue who she is but I do know that trying to make a word mean something it doesn't is not a good idea.  They f#&%ed up when they started using the word "defund" and instead of just changing the word choice they have tried changing the meaning.  Just own up that you the word you picked was wrong...morons.

Except look at how much more discussion there has been since the word "defund" has been used. I'm open to another word that means "reduce the funding of" but "defund" is the closest I've seen. "reduce the funding of the police" just doesn't have the same impact as a shorter slogan like "defund the police".

[teachercd]

1 minute ago, RedDenver said:

Except look at how much more discussion there has been since the word "defund" has been used. I'm open to another word that means "reduce the funding of" but "defund" is the closest I've seen. "reduce the funding of the police" just doesn't have the same impact as a shorter slogan like "defund the police".

Sure...but most of the discussion is about how stupid it is because of the word.  

 

I am going to try it this school year...I am going to give kids that earned an :"A" in class an "F" and just say that the "F" really means "A" now...that will get some good discussion going...between their parents and my boss hahaha

[DevoHusker]

3 hours ago, RedDenver said:

Now do violent criminal offenses...

[Waldo]

1 hour ago, Enhance said:

I 100% believe that police training and standards for entry should be heavily evaluated and, in many cases, reformed.

 

But, I think this graphic is a tad lazy. Its sole point is to suggest that more police training = less fatalities, with some indirect insinuations to George Floyd. I think that this is probably true in a general sense but not in the direct context this graphic is trying to suggest.

 

Of the more than 1,000 people killed by police in 2019, many of those were suicide by cops, shootouts with hardened criminals, etc. People unfairly brutalized, restrained and murdered in the way George Floyd was only make up one piece of the puzzle. So while I think it's important to address the problems within law enforcement that lead to the inexcusable deaths deaths, we can't ignore the fact that we have a lot of challenges in America that other countries simply don't have to deal with. I'm looking specifically at our gun laws, gun philosophies and mental health situation. Those, in my opinion, are just as serious of concerns as anything else.

 

 

I definitely think police need more training, especially while on the job, but I didn’t love the graphic. It’s hard to compare countries with 2% of the population as the US and have any correlation. While the policing needs a huge improvement, we need to get ourselves under control as well. 

[teachercd]

"Others" Ha

[Enhance]

1 hour ago, teachercd said:

And what do those countries have in common in terms of gun rights?  I have no idea if you can have guns in Finland or Norway...

At a cursory glance, it appears all three of those countries (to no surprise) have more strict gun control laws, particularly as it relates to the purchase and ownership of handguns or 'self defense' weapons. Weapons for the purpose of sporting/hunting are more easily obtained, but anything outside of that is heavily regulated.

 

And then @Waldo brings up a critical point, as well. Google says Norway and Finland have populations of approximately 5.5 million each. Germany is just above 80 million. The U.S. Population in 2019 was 328 million. Graphics like that do more to incite baseless, emotional responses than they do to contribute to any sort of meaningful dialogue and reform.

[Enhance]

1 hour ago, RedDenver said:

Except look at how much more discussion there has been since the word "defund" has been used. I'm open to another word that means "reduce the funding of" but "defund" is the closest I've seen. "reduce the funding of the police" just doesn't have the same impact as a shorter slogan like "defund the police".

 

1 hour ago, teachercd said:

Sure...but most of the discussion is about how stupid it is because of the word.  

Yeah it's tough. I was curious about the actual definition. Merriam lists it as 'to remove funding from' whereas the Google dictionary definition is to 'prevent from continuing to receive funds.' So, there's definitely some room for interpretation in there.

 

When I first started to hear the slogan, I assumed the intent was more to just lower funding and not completely remove funding. But, I've since realized that's not the intent of everyone saying it. Some people are saying it in order to suggest a complete defunding and abolishment of police forces. Others just think police are too well funded, but don't want police to be completely abolished. There's too much confusion.

[BIGREDIOWAN]

1 hour ago, RedDenver said:

I agree with your sentiment, but I think we've seen that it's more than just a few. I hope there's good cops out there doing what they can to help get this broken system fixed, but I think there needs to be a major overhaul of the system and it's going to need to mostly come from us citizens to push hard enough to get the wheels moving.

We're up to what?......500 videos that are being posted on cops doing bad things on that whole Twitter feed or whatever it is? I haven't watched all just a few here or there, but there's between 700,000 and 800,000 cops out there. So there's an awful lot of us not ending up on social media because of our actions.......That's all I'm getting at here. I'm still not happy with the amount of videos that are popping up on there either, but fatigue is setting in with some of these officers and they're doing stupid **** because of it. Not excusable, just saying it's becoming a problem. 

[knapplc]

35 minutes ago, Enhance said:

At a cursory glance, it appears all three of those countries (to no surprise) have more strict gun control laws, particularly as it relates to the purchase and ownership of handguns or 'self defense' weapons. Weapons for the purpose of sporting/hunting are more easily obtained, but anything outside of that is heavily regulated.

 

And then @Waldo brings up a critical point, as well. Google says Norway and Finland have populations of approximately 5.5 million each. Germany is just above 80 million. The U.S. Population in 2019 was 328 million. Graphics like that do more to incite baseless, emotional responses than they do to contribute to any sort of meaningful dialogue and reform.

 

Why does population size matter in a conversation about police training? If anything, a larger country should have greater resources (and we do) to provide even better and longer training.

 

What does population size matter in a conversation about education requirements for police? Because again, in a country with greater resources, we should be able to pick much better-educated people for police work than those with only a high school diploma.

 

 

[teachercd]

15 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

Why does population size matter in a conversation about police training? If anything, a larger country should have greater resources (and we do) to provide even better and longer training.

 

What does population size matter in a conversation about education requirements for police? Because again, in a country with greater resources, we should be able to pick much better-educated people for police work than those with only a high school diploma.

 

 

Ummmm...

 

That is like saying that the amount of crime in Nebraska vs the amount of crime in California has nothing to do with population.  I mean, California has more people and more resources...shouldn't they have less crime?

[BigRedBuster]

On 6/15/2020 at 3:54 PM, RedDenver said:

 

 

This is ridiculous.  All the police officer had to do is call his supervisor.  Simple as that.  I remember years ago I was in some type of self defense training for a job.  One thing that was discussed with the women is that if you are pulled over at night and alone, make sure you pull into a busy parking lot and then ask to have the police officer call his supervisor to confirm he is who he says he is.  This is because there had been men impersonating officers to assault women.

 

This officer a) refused to even say why he was being pulled over, and b) refused to simply perform a  simple request that could very well have resulted in the officer being allowed to check the guy's car like he wanted.  The guy was honest that he had a gun and had a license.  No friggen reason to pull a gun on the guy.

[Waldo]

23 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

Why does population size matter in a conversation about police training? If anything, a larger country should have greater resources (and we do) to provide even better and longer training.

 

What does population size matter in a conversation about education requirements for police? Because again, in a country with greater resources, we should be able to pick much better-educated people for police work than those with only a high school diploma.

 

 

The population doesn’t have that much meaning, but the United States has 7 times more people living in poverty than Finland/Norway do people. Combine that with an abundance of guns and poor policing, you will get higher police shooting rates (it shouldn’t be anywhere near as high as it is). I am also not a fan of ex-military becoming cops. 
We also lead the world in civilian mass shootings. We seem to have a mental health crisis as well. People are too willing to escalate situations with violence/emotions and we need to change that as a country, cops and civilians. 

[Enhance]

27 minutes ago, knapplc said:

Why does population size matter in a conversation about police training? If anything, a larger country should have greater resources (and we do) to provide even better and longer training.

 

What does population size matter in a conversation about education requirements for police? Because again, in a country with greater resources, we should be able to pick much better-educated people for police work than those with only a high school diploma.

It matters in these types of conversations when people are trying to make arguments and draw conclusions about police reform, particularly in relation to scope and scale. A geographically small European country is not necessarily equivalent to a geographically larger country with 60 times the population base.

 

Edit - 'Population' itself isn't necessary loaded with deep meaning, but population does tend to bring with it a more robust network of challenges and problems.

[BigRedBuster]

1 hour ago, Waldo said:

I definitely think police need more training, especially while on the job, but I didn’t love the graphic. It’s hard to compare countries with 2% of the population as the US and have any correlation. While the policing needs a huge improvement, we need to get ourselves under control as well. 

I fail to see what population levels have to do with this.

[teachercd]

4 minutes ago, Enhance said:

It matters in these types of conversations when people are trying to make arguments and draw conclusions about police reform, particularly in relation to scope and scale. A geographically small European country is not necessarily equivalent to a geographically larger country with 60 times the population base.

It matters, everyone knows it matters.  This is like saying "Geeze, my Class D school of 36 students in the entire school didn't have any problems at all but that school with 3,000 students AND a resource officer on site was always having problems...must be poor training"

 

I have coached teams that had 100 kids on our roster and I have coached teams with 20 kids on my roster.  Guess when there were more issues with jacking around???