What defund actually means…
“Defund the Police” was some of the worst branding/slogan I’ve ever seen. Like, opponents would literally just say “Can you believe they want to defund the Police?”
The actual ideas of the movement, like the program in this article, are great. They’re popular, too. Demilitarizing the police has pretty widespread support.
But the first-glance impression of lawless anarchy that the “Defund” slogan brings up… You shouldn’t need to explain why your slogan doesn’t mean what it appears to mean.
That’s true, but I’m not sure any amount of clever messaging would matter to something like 75% of the US population when they want less accountible, more militarized police. It’s like the Kaepernick kneeling thing, no matter how respectful and polite you are, they don’t want what you want…
Right but why would you get in your own way considering it’s already an uphill climb?
That and “Black Lives Matter” were two incredibly poor branding choices at the same time. I couldn’t understand why they needed to shoot themselves in their feet.
It means a lot of things. A big chunk of the movement wants police abolition, too. It’s a radical movement, i don’t want to see the teeth taken out of it.
That’s true, I dont speak for anyone but myself. It’s hard enough to convince the unconvinced of bare accountability, let alone abolition!
It’s cool, I figured you weren’t trying to undermine anyone. I don’t think straight-up authoritarians can be convinced that cops should have anything but absolute power. Better to try to convince compassionate liberals that radical solutuons are worth a shot. The activists they lionize were a lot more radical than they think. Some spicy MLK quotes might work. Idk, BLM got me to start learning about history, and it radicalized me a lot.
I don’t think this is defunding. This is using resources better. Often times, there are mental health crisis that look like “police” issues. But they are actually just mental health problems.
Mental health is super heavily stigmatized across the world.
Part of “defund the police” includes “fund mental health services” using the money that used to pay for police and police accessories.
This has actually been in place for a while. It was super successful and is being expanded. Really hope its success is shared with other communities and they follow suit. It’s a fantastic idea.
https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/denvers-police-alternative-star-program-continues-expansion
I so agree! Not my original content, I wanted to share it so hopefully it can be talked about and spread.
Programs like these save lives! I have family that I am sure would not be here, had awarness not progressed where they were living, because of cops being called for mental health situations.
Hmmm it’s almost like sending fully armed and decked out gang members to respond to mental health crises would result in exacerbated circumstances??? Wild stuff.
/s
But for real I love this program and hope to see it spread throughout the country
Hell yeah, let’s go Colorado. Another one for the list: I moved to the mountains southwest of Denver and got symmetric gigabit internet thanks to the municipal broadband changes. The incumbents here charge at least $100/month for like 20mbps down (they don’t advertise up speed). Go fuck yourself HughesNet and co. (and Comcast of course)
@corytheboyd I don’t live in Colorado, but I also got HughesNet and while it started out ok, that was just to lure me in. By the end of it, I had to beg them every month to give me faster speeds because it would slow to a crawl. Never again am I getting satelite. I’ll only ever rent if I am able to have municipally owned gigabit ethernet that has little to no chance of being throttled. Anything slower and I can’t do my work.
Err… Did the USA not already have the option to send an ambulance full of paramedics to emergency calls? What do they do if someone calls and reports a heart attack, send round the rozzers to arrest their heart?
Yes, sending paramedics is normal. Including the mental health expert and not sending cops for certain calls is new.
In most of the US, if someone is having a mental health crisis where they may hurt themselves or others, the only option has been to call the emergency line and have cops sent. Cops don’t receive adequate training on how to deal with those situations and far too many have ended in the death of the person needing help
Fair enough, congrats on now doing the bare minimum required I guess!
They have a similar program in Manchester New Hampshire that has been very successful from what I’ve heard.
What? Only for some certain types of calls or all of them? Wouldnt make any sense to send a mental health expert for an armed robbery.
I’m guessing the lack of clarification is due to Twitter character count limits.
If only there was another way to share that information…
Now that I’ve been snarky, this is a great step in the right direction.
It would scare people less as well