>How you get any of those things by demonizing the police and making it a left-vs-right political issue is beyond me.

These aren't new issues, practically speaking every attempt at less radical solutions hasn't worked and there have been many. In the end, the solution will be filled with political compromise and the weaker your starting position the more compromise there will be.

Surely the amount of police violence is less today than say, the early 1900s, when outright lynching was practically sponsored by the police? You deny that there has been any progress?

Society as a whole has changed and I'd argue police have changed less than the rest of society. Given the videos from the last few days it's clear that the police see themselves as immune to consequences even in the age of social media, cell phone cameras and widespread public opposition.

Sure, I agree to that absolutely. But how you get from "the police needs radical reform" to "we don't need police, abolish them" is a mystery to me.

> "we don't need police, abolish them

I think it's important to not conflate this movement with the defund movement, which merely points at the for example 6 billion dollar NYPD budget and says "is this really necessary?"

Furthermore, the "abolish" movement comes with its own subtleties, that don't necessarily mean "all cops gone tomorrow." An easy exercise to illustrate this to yourself: you can imagine that an alt-right 2a gunsrights activist wearing milita patches, body armor, and holding a rifle, while chanting "abolish the police," has a very different idea in their head of what that means from a liberal social-democrat holding a "black lives matter" sign and chanting "abolish the police," can't you?

Here's a good article: https://bostonreview.net/law-justice/derecka-purnell-what-do...

If I want a $200k salary I don't start the negotiations at $200k, I start them at $250k knowing that I will be argued down. Likewise, the fear of a radical approach drives those in power to actually implement a productive moderate approach. If all you have is the moderate approach than those in power will implement nothing of substance.

> How you get any of those things by demonizing the police and making it a left-vs-right political issue is beyond me.

I get this vibe as well. I want to interpret this charitably, but this seems antithetical to good faith participation. It feels like these people don't actually care about police brutality--any arbitrary partisan issue would suffice. Of course, I'm sure I'm misreading the situation (even though social psychology's most replicable studies predict exactly this sort of hyper-partisanship).

To work towards a solution requires understanding the problem. Understanding problems on this scale is very hard and it's much easier to say empty phrases that please your base.

Wait what? All the things you mentioned are table stakes. Till we have those things, there's effectively no police department. We have a bunch of empowered thugs roaming around unencumbered. We absolutely have to demonize (rather bring out their true color) in order to have any reasonable possibility of change.

How can these continuous variables be table stakes? That doesn't make sense. Type error.

> How you get any of those things by demonizing the police and making it a left-vs-right political issue is beyond me.

If not this way the, how do you get it? It's been hundreds of years. The U.S. is not immune to revolutions and revolutions have changed corrupt states for a very long time.

Study other countries which have less police violence? Incorporate more community involvement? Etc.

The idea that society doesn't need some sort of police force is so hilariously naive, I am in disbelief that serious people are suggesting it. Clearly they are from an extremely privileged background and never had to deal with living in poor areas.

The police absolutely need reform, but to pretend that they're more of a threat than criminals is factually false.

I'm sure it seems very alarming that people are 'demonizing the police' if you're new to this issue -- in which case this week has woken you up to something that's been a problem for people for a very very long time. But it is not a new issue, and people's fear and pain at it is genuine.

To some segments of society (who are not criminals), the police absolutely are more of a threat than criminals. When there are people who are terrified of getting pulled over by a cop in traffic because they know it might end up with them shot, even though they are in every way a model citizen, there is a deep problem.

Also, police as we know them are only a couple hundred years old. No one is saying there doesn't need to be people who fill most of the roles police do in modern society, they are saying the structure the police embody is rotten and can be replaced with better things.

And in my experience, it's the least privileged who take the hardest line on police abolition. Most 'privileged' people have, like yours, a lukewarm "some reform would be good" perspective.

I'm not new to this issue and I haven't "been woken up". As I just said, I actually have experience living in a crime-ridden area. Of course the police are a problem but again, the facts simply don't line up to your statements. The police killed 1,098 people in 2019.

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org

Compare that to the overall murder rate (not including other crimes.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicid...

> To some segments of society (who are not criminals), the police absolutely are more of a threat than criminals.

So getting rid of the police will have no effect whatsoever on the amount of criminals or crime? It will simply remain the same? That, again, is extremely naive.

As usual, the predominant political news topic overrides all rational thought. One week, we have a mass shooting and call for more police and less guns. The next, the police unjustly kill someone and everyone wants to abolish them entirely.

I like how you just completely ignore the part about how no one is saying "abolish the police and replace them with absolutely nothing we love crime!" You also lump various different debates all into one and assume the people you disagree with are in alignment with each other on all of them.

But it's the other side that's had its "rational thought" overridden. These are not a good faith arguments.

I'm not really sure what you're arguing for. It seemed to be that "the police are more of a threat than criminals", which is factually untrue, even today, before any so-called abolition of the police (which is what people are calling for.)

Also, I am not "on a side" and my original comment was calling out this attempt to make it a black-and-white issue. There are more than two options.

That the police are more of a threat to criminals to specific subsets of the population is absolutely, unquestionably, factually true. There is more than enough personal attestation to the experiences of black and queer people (including those who otherwise have privilege in some ways) in the US with police to say this with confidence.

They aren't to you perhaps.

And again, when people call for abolition of the police they are not talking about leaving a complete vacuum of every function they serve in society. They are calling for dismantling police departments completely and replacing their functions in society with other, more directly capable, social systems. You may want to actually read some of what's been written on the topic instead of having a knee jerk reaction that assumes the worst.

Any statistic is true of a small subset of the population. To use your example of black people:

Killed in 2018: Black or African American 2,925

Police killed 1,098 people in 2019. (I can't find exact numbers by race)

Again, I'm not arguing that there isn't police bias against minorities, that they aren't disportionally affected, or anything like this. But the facts simply show that the police kill less people than other people do, so it seems like a stretch to say they're more of a threat.

In regards to the other point: that may be the case, but that isn't what "abolish" and "dismantle" mean. I still don't see how you avoid some amount of armed protective personnel (to deal with shootings or robberies) which are basically police.

> But the facts simply show that the police kill less people than other people do

The total number of police is a fraction of the population of the united states. Do you really not understand even the most basic math or is this argument in bad faith?

I am more afraid of a police department that has no legal accountability than I am of a criminal.

It's not a witch hunt if there's an actual problem.