Peter, you might want to check out a Libertarian party candidate by the name of Dr. Jo Johensen. Ending police brutality is at the top of her platform. I take that back. The Libertarian ideology is poison. “The freedom to trade and travel are fundamental to human liberty. As American citizens, we should be free to travel anywhere we choose, and to buy and sell anywhere in the world. As President, I will use my Constitutional authority to eliminate trade barriers & tariffs, and work to repeal arbitrary quotas on the number of people who can legally enter the United States to work, visit, or reside. “ We absolutely need tariffs to protect our industry. We absolutely need sharp limits to immigration for the same reason. So much for the Libertarian Party. .
Right off the top of your head Pete, who do you think already buys most of the equipment police officers have to use? Now, right off the top of your head Pete, how much does the average police officer make? How about social workers. How much does the average social worker make? Get my drift yet?
It's funny how the same people who want to defund the police also want to disarm everyone but themselves. Actually, the funny thing is that so many people who could only be hurt by a scenario in which the police are defunded, they are not allowed to defend themselves, and the people who are out to hurt them know that they will not be charged with a crime, will nevertheless think it's a good idea. Perhaps using the word "think" is giving them too much credit, though.
Can't tell you as there is no average. My nephew is a Captain in the NYS Troopers and he makes about 140,000. Out Sheriffs deputies start off in the low thirties I would guess. What is a social worker, Skills range from physical caretakers to Doctors, A low of minimum wage to the sky is the limit. I would guess that a certified counselor (bachelors degree) would be in the thirty to forty range Of course as with every thing else the compensation varies widely from state to state and locality to locality. Our Sheriff is always complaining that he runs a training school for Buffalo Rochester and Syracuse police departments. Guys get hired on get all the certifications and a couple years experience and abandon ship for the cities for sometime a close to fifty percent raise. Our tax dollars local state and federal purchase every bit of police officer equipment. What we have been doing for the last thirty forty or so years obviously has problems. Defunding is just a way to make people look at the status quo and maybe maybe tweak thins, try when appropriate to have a less aggressive less authoritarian approach to social problems.
I will call a family counselor because the perpetrators families will be needing grief counseling. Police response for me is 20 minutes in the best case unless a deputy is up at the Fast Trac getting a coffee. I will not be calling the police except to take picture and haul away the bodies. Nope the only defense my castle has is what I provide.
There is a national average if you really care to look it up. The average starting pay for a police officer versus a certified Social Worker is far less. It’s a given that officers can enter into many courses of accredited college study but in short, it ain’t free. Also, YOUR local tax dollars may pay for Your local policeman’s equipment but nationally, most officers purchase most of their own with the possible help of a very strict small stipend. All I am getting at is really simple. If, whoever “they” are backs up on the money that is needed to run a successful police force, it hampers their ability to be and do what we ask them to do. As it is, if you look at the stats, 1 cop for every 1000-5000 (or more) citizens is asking a bit much out of any department which I am very sure your nephew can elaborate on. Less money, less cops, less equipment and a lot more frustration from the citizenry and the police force. One other thing that really needs to be looked at is where does the money that is deferred from the police departments go? Infrastructure? Sanitation? Homeless initiatives? Food bank improvements? Prison system? the Public Library? Child development or the school system? Well, one city decided to give that money to.....(drum roll) Family Planning and more specifically, on abortions. What a way to run a city huh?
No money should still stay in Law Enforcement. It is just that Law enforcement can look quite different than it does now. We obviously are doing a lot of things wrong. But there is no reason for us to reinvent the wheel. We need to look off shore at other governments best practices and systems.Most other 1rst world nations get their law enforcement accomplished with much less violence and force. When funding promotions and salaries are propelled by a scoreboard of number of arrests,and convictions the amount and severity of arrests encounters and experiences will of course rise to meet the standard. When a Police Department and administrator salaries and budget is directly related to head count,(and this is in no way exclusive to law enforcement), it is only human nature to build an empire. Ton of things that can and should be done not a one of them extreme to improve things. It just takes someone to say<"Maybe there is a better way"
That's fine, until the "defund police" group makes confiscating guns their next agenda. Then you'd better dig a moat for that castle.
Seattle, who has been at the top place for wanting to defund its police force, has now decided that the best thing to do to stop the violence , is to hire a “street czar”, and the man that they have chosen for this job was a pimp who used underage children. I guess now he is an ex-pimp, because he has a different job and is making $150,000 a year to replace the defunded Seattle policy. Just when you think that things could not possible get any crazier...... then they do ! How can any city council even think that this makes any sense ? https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/seattle-hires-convicted-ex-pimp-as-street-czar-to-work-on-police-reform/
To piggy back that, I posted somewhere else an experience I had in Seattle when I worked at the rescue mission. I went outside for a break and observed two obviously underaged girls following a black guy, a known dealer, into a building across the street from the mission. It was a school day and the girls shouldn’t have even been out of school yet. Fortunately, or so I thought, a cop came around the corner and I stopped him and told him about what I saw. He told me that there was nothing he could do about it other than report the information because the way the laws were set up, even if he personally saw what happened, he couldn’t stop the girls and even talk to them if they were not openly breaking the law. The guy wasn’t forcing the girls into the building and so far as the law was concerned, they might have belonged there. I tried arguing the point by telling him who the dealer / pimp was and he said that he knew who I was talking about but if the girls went into the door on their own power then there was nothing he could do. For such a small downtown area compared to other large cities, on a per capita basis, I saw more open drug use and prostitution than in any other city I have ever lived in so it’s no wonder they picked a pimp for their city czar.