The answer is not to give more money to police, who already take on average between 30-70% of the entire budget in their cities. The answer is to work towards abolishing the police. This is done a few ways, all simultaneously, and a good first step is things like Eugene Oregons CAHOOTS program or Denver’s STARS program.
Even if you believe in the myth that police are there to protect, 90% of the functions they currently serve have nothing to do with protection, but rather their primary purpose is to ensure compliance and subordination to the systems. Policing is inherently right wing work, and will forever attract primarily right wing individuals.
The vast majority of police functions could and are better served by civilians. So even in you believe that we need police, there’s evidence to show that we don’t need police performing nearly as many functions as they do now. If they are to remain, they should remain only as acute crisis response teams, on a primarily volunteer basis, much in the way the fire department works.
Even in instances where it is used for training, often the training itself is problematic.
See: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/daunte-wright-and-crisis-american-police-training/618649/
The answer is not to give more money to police, who already take on average between 30-70% of the entire budget in their cities. The answer is to work towards abolishing the police. This is done a few ways, all simultaneously, and a good first step is things like Eugene Oregons CAHOOTS program or Denver’s STARS program.
See: https://whitebirdclinic.org/what-is-cahoots/
And: https://www.denverpost.com/2022/02/20/denver-star-program-expansion/
Even if you believe in the myth that police are there to protect, 90% of the functions they currently serve have nothing to do with protection, but rather their primary purpose is to ensure compliance and subordination to the systems. Policing is inherently right wing work, and will forever attract primarily right wing individuals.
The vast majority of police functions could and are better served by civilians. So even in you believe that we need police, there’s evidence to show that we don’t need police performing nearly as many functions as they do now. If they are to remain, they should remain only as acute crisis response teams, on a primarily volunteer basis, much in the way the fire department works.
Oh, that all sounds great. I really was just curious about this specific case of using training money for buying tanks.