Originally Posted by JerryLBell (Post 1780041)

A lot of people (I was one of them) think that "defunding" police departments means getting rid of the police department. It doesn't. Over the years, the governments of most cities and states have dropped all kinds of programs and had the police departments step in and do the work. For example, mental health clinics have lost all kinds of funding and now police departments are forced to deal with mentally ill folks that once might have gone to the clinics. Similar with other things like drug counseling and even animal control in many areas. The police have had their budgets increased in part to offset the loss of these services from other departments. "Defunding" police departments means taking some of the money that would have gone to the police departments and giving it to other community support departments like mental health clinics, drug counseling clinics, etc. This should offset the work in those areas from our overworked police officers and have it done by professionals specializing in those areas. It does NOT mean eliminating entire police departments and embracing lawlessness. At first, I was against the idea of defunding police departments but I am seeing how that may actually be helpful.

Originally Posted by Stuart Zaikov (Post 1780158)

We shall see but from what I have been reading the citizens of Minneapolis are going to be in for a rude awakening down the road a bit.

Originally Posted by JerryLBell (Post 1780041)

A lot of people (I was one of them) think that "defunding" police departments means getting rid of the police department. It doesn't. Over the years, the governments of most cities and states have dropped all kinds of programs and had the police departments step in and do the work. For example, mental health clinics have lost all kinds of funding and now police departments are forced to deal with mentally ill folks that once might have gone to the clinics. Similar with other things like drug counseling and even animal control in many areas. The police have had their budgets increased in part to offset the loss of these services from other departments. "Defunding" police departments means taking some of the money that would have gone to the police departments and giving it to other community support departments like mental health clinics, drug counseling clinics, etc. This should offset the work in those areas from our overworked police officers and have it done by professionals specializing in those areas. It does NOT mean eliminating entire police departments and embracing lawlessness. At first, I was against the idea of defunding police departments but I am seeing how that may actually be helpful.

Originally Posted by JerryLBell (Post 1780041)

A lot of people (I was one of them) think that "defunding" police departments means getting rid of the police department. It doesn't. Over the years, the governments of most cities and states have dropped all kinds of programs and had the police departments step in and do the work. For example, mental health clinics have lost all kinds of funding and now police departments are forced to deal with mentally ill folks that once might have gone to the clinics. Similar with other things like drug counseling and even animal control in many areas. The police have had their budgets increased in part to offset the loss of these services from other departments. "Defunding" police departments means taking some of the money that would have gone to the police departments and giving it to other community support departments like mental health clinics, drug counseling clinics, etc. This should offset the work in those areas from our overworked police officers and have it done by professionals specializing in those areas. It does NOT mean eliminating entire police departments and embracing lawlessness. At first, I was against the idea of defunding police departments but I am seeing how that may actually be helpful.

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby (Post 1780191)

Thank you. I was going to post something about this but you beat me to it.

The Villages has an example of ONE way defunding can be used, though in the current situation in this country, it isn't what the other municipalities have in mind.

We have the Community Watch, right here in the Villages. They are -not- a Police Department, but they serve our community with certain services that the police usually serve large towns and spread-out cities. The Community Watch isn't a replacement for the Police. But they're also more "authorized" than a typical block or neighborhood watch. It's an adjunct to the Police services. We still rely on the county/city/town jails and city/county/town police for certain functions such as arrests and violent crime handling. But some of the burden is eased up on them, and put on the Community Watch.

Originally Posted by Bay Kid (Post 1780434)

If the cops have no radar then I can drive as fast as I want.

Originally Posted by Yung Dum (Post 1780234)

Defunding the police is nothing more than appeasing a certain group of miscreants. It's sole purpose is to temporarily quiet things down while nothing actually changes. Nobody in their right mind would really do such a thing. Of course, right mind does not apply to DiBlasio. Nevertheless, it won't happen. If it does, NYC will have the greatest mass exodus of law abiding citizens and businesses in history as gangs become the new police. How did this guy ever get elected in the first place?