Posted on 06/23/2020 12:59:57 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Twelve years ago, officials in Vallejo, Calif., reluctantly took a step that activists are now urging in cities across the country: They defunded their police department.
Unable to pay its bills after the 2008 financial crisis, Vallejo filed for bankruptcy and cut its police force nearly in half - to fewer than 80 officers, from a pre-recession high of more than 150. At the time, the working-class city of 122,000 north of San Francisco struggled with high rates of violent crime and simmering mistrust of its police department. It didn't seem like things could get much worse.
And then they did. Far from ushering in a new era of harmony between police and the people they are sworn to protect, the budget cuts worsened tensions between the department and the community and were followed by a dramatic surge in officers' use of deadly force. Since 2009 the police have killed 20 people, an extraordinarily high number for such a small city. In 2012 alone, officers fatally shot six suspects. Nearly a third of the city's homicides that year were committed by law enforcement.
Those who support such an approach say that the current model of policing is irrevocably broken and that millions or billions of dollars should be moved from police budgets to social services.
But in Vallejo, where residents and public officials have seen firsthand the reality of a decimated police department, the defund mantra is facing a skeptical audience. Beyond the obvious consequences of fewer officers - such as fewer responses to burglaries, car thefts and other lower-priority offenses - this city has learned the hard way that a smaller police force is not necessarily a less deadly one.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
All murders are homicides, but not all homicides are murder.
Homicide just means death at the hands of another. Self Defense is homicide, but not murder.
Right-so Social Workers need to STFU about policing
Absolutely. It’s certainly become clear to me after watching a lot of badge-cam videos that officers should be patrolling in buddy teams and we should almost never have officers attempting to arrest suspects alone.
A lone officer approaching even a lone unarmed suspect is just asking to end up in a wrestling match for his gun if the suspect is so inclined.
Good Lord. They’d better have had a police department full of Batmen for that money.
They’d better have had a police department full of Batmen for that money.
That was 10 years ago. Cops in CA make more that that now.
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