Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
Those are good long term goals, but the immediate effort is to assign the right resources to problems, rather than send armed and armored warriors, many of whom view the community as their enemy, into every situation.
It really shouldn't be controversial that we respond to traffic crashes with traffic enforcement (that doesn't need guns), overdoses with EMS and mental health crises with mental health professionals. The men with guns can be backup. You know, like most of the rest of the world.
Yeah, we don't have the staffing for all of that, in part because all the money goes to the police, but the system we have makes not sense and we need to change it.
But it's lots of fun having conversations with people who only heard "abolish the police" for the first time in the last week.
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I don't disagree. That's why I suggested the first step is demilitarizing the police.
It's nuts that these guys have battered ram trucks, armored vehicles, all kinds of lethal hand combat weapons, and assault rifles.
Most of the serious violent crime involving guns was related to drug dealing. Why was drug dealing attractive? Because of the War on Drugs that rewarded such dealing with a huge risk premium. Take away that risk premium and you take away a large portion of the market, and with it the guns which market participants previously used to compete with one another.
