See the note above about focusing on the substance of the issue and not the slogan. Please talk about the issues themselves. The reason we did not defund the police has nothing to do with "branding" or "finding a better slogan." If that were the case, Democrats would have in fact rolled out another slogan. They didn't because they did not want to do the policy. The question is why they did not want to do the policy. Please do all the musings about branding somewhere else. I have heard them for five years and they are not interesting. Thank you.
I love how you talk about focusing on the “substance of the issue” but fail to actually talk about any evidence related to policing and violent crime, or the polling data on police support even within communities unfairly targeted by aggressive policing (spoiler alert, it is high). Dealing with “substance” means dealing facts and data, thinking about real consequences, not ideological cosplay and jousting within your bubble to prove who is the most “revolutionary”.
Why don’t you ask how the communities you’re trying to sweep in and protect how they feel about defunding the police? Their complete rejection of it is not “the political establishment”.
As I write in the piece above, the long term consequence of decades of bipartisan consensus on the idea that increasing police and military funding is good is a sprawling network of armed men that are now under the control of very bad people, with little elected political opposition structure in place to even begin to build a movement to roll back the abuses we are witnessing. I believe this is bad. I'm a socialist, I believe lots of things that may not poll well. Matt Yglesias is the guy to read who says to do everything that polls well, check him out.
So why not distinguish between federal and local level policing? Bipartisan consensus is not what drives citizens to completely reject the idea of defunding their local police forces. It’s also a ridiculous position to claim that curbing abuses requires abolition. If my doctor tells me a medicine has side effects, my goal should be to mitigate the side effects and improve the medication, not reject treatment altogether so that my fringe bubble will praise me for my “bravery”.
It is not about believing what “polls well”. Polling is just evidence that local people reject your solution, which is not irrational when looking at the scientific evidence on policing showing that your solution would be disastrous for them.
So if your solution would be a disaster, and “the people” do not want it, then what reason could you possibly have for promoting it other than using clickbait nonsense to gobble up some subscribers from the far-left portion of Substack, who are just as disinterested with engaging in the “substance” of this issue as you are?
"Defund the police" doesn't mean defund them to zero. It means taking some of the budget from police and trying to actually tackle the underlying social problems that lead to crime. Hamilton says this in the very article you're commenting on
Defund the police means exactly what it means. It's simple, and easy to understand.
Ta-Nehisi Coates made this crystal clear during the BLM protests.
No police means no private property is possible as they are the brutal enforcers of it. The "underlying social problem" is the fact that private property exists in the first place. Abolish that and there is literally no such crime as "theft" any more.
“every dollar that you spend on armed men is one that is not going to mitigate the actual systemic issues that create the conditions that the armed men purportedly exist to fight”
“You can’t just say that you hope nobody will ever pick up one of the loaded guns you have laying around. You have to get rid of them.”
Forgive me if any of those quotes lead me to potentially straw man the author.
Even the less extreme position of “reallocating some of the funds” is just as baseless, given the clear evidence that reduced police presence increases criminal activity. Notice no one suggests funneling the budgets from leisurely public programs, like say, the arts, and divesting that in “exploring” alternative solutions to crime reduction, which of course, also conveniently lack hard evidence as well.
A rare instance when the motte is almost as weak as the bailey.
In Chicago, there are any number of social programs, particularly peer, designed to divert young men from gangs. They are successful, and supported, in the neighborhoods, when they are FUNDED. Which they often are not. BTW, the statistics seem to indicate such programs ARE working, as our violent crimes have steadily decreased. Still, decades of red-lining, lack of development, and all the numerous social ills are REAL. And police themselves don't wish to be mental health or social workers. My BIL was a cop in Liberty City, FL back in the day. They developed a multidisciplinary team, with programs for intervention in drug use, spousal and child abuse, and so forth. They worked. He was a proud, white, veteran, gentle giant from Mississippi. And he knew he didn't need weapons of war to fix what ailed that community.
TRUMP is the one who took the 80 side of every 80/20 issue in AmeriKKKan politics and just look where we are now! He's seized control of DOJ, Pentagon, State Department and will never leave office. Disbanded USAID, shut down NPR, PBS and the corporation for public broadcasting!
Just withdrew the US from a ton of very helpful UN orgs too.
Maybe taking the side of the most propagandized morons in the world who believe the world is 5,000 years old isn't he best idea, ya think?
Polling just measures how effective propaganda is. If marginalized communities are agreeing that leaving loaded guns lying around is good, that is evidence that apps like X need to be limited or banned to prevent real-world harm.
My much longer response is below and probably won't be seen, but I'll echo what others have said: You haven't presented any evidence to back up your arguments, several of which are pretty easily swatted down. This kind of rhetoric isn't helpful and is part of the reason Democrats lose despite having the numbers on their side. I hate ICE and Trump as much as anyone else, but you're not helping by making bad arguments.
The arguments in this very thread over what "defund" means point to you being clearly wrong here. There is a very real argument to reallocate funds from police forces buying damn tanks towards better social programs, but opponents can argue, and are arguing constantly, that that side is pro-complete abolition of law enforcement. Without an obvious place to point to prove that wrong and that's not what the majority of the movement is supporting, that side is failing if that propaganda is swaying people because they believe it. Clarity of message for something as nuanced as this is absolutely crucial, and saying the branding is "not interesting" is missing the point entirely. Increasing police funding is clearly not the answer, but many, many elections have shown that pointing to "Defund the police" as a pro-abolition, or near-abolition, movement that will make things less safe is not ineffective. Make the marketing more clear, because that's how you reach more people. Unless you're actually arguing for full abolition, in which case you're arguing for a completely lost cause.
"Defund the police" has always been too simplistic and overly broad to be effective. De-militarize would be a better angle.
We need educated, well-trained police. Police who can de-escalate a situation. Police who don't put themselves at unnecessary risk. Police who can recognize when a mental health advocate is needed — and can access one. And we need better communication between departments and agencies to avoid recycling bad apples. Those all take money.
We don't need fancier weapons, tanks in our streets, and our own citizens treated as The Enemy. The situation, as always, is more nuanced that black & white, us vs them.
The problem is this is directly at odds with "defund". Trading and education requires *more* funding and depolarization needs progressive minded people to *join* the police rather than stigmatize it and anyone who would sign up.
+1 for "demilitarize the police" as a better goal.
For an example of how things can be different, look at any number of police forces in northern Europe. They are educated professionals.
Police in the United States are generally underpaid, poorly trained and the work is dangerous. It is not surprising that it attracts thugs who like firearms.
Police in the US are not underpaid for the qualifications, particularly in large urban cities. That ICE agents killer probably makes over 100k a year without a university degree.
Police work is less dangerous then being a roofer and a whole host of other occupations.
Police work is actually tedious and boring, which is why the adrenaline junkies attracted to it by the mythology react like you saw in Minneapolis when given the opportunity to act out the mythology.
The incident was a high pressure tension filled atmosphere only because one group had guns and the expectation to use them and one group was entirely unarmed.
"State of the art" by whose definition? The trend in many (if not most) departments since the early 1990s has been military style, which is exactly what I'm NOT advocating.
Apart from being murder, it was some of the most unprofessional policing I've ever seen in my life. If that's the result of "state of the art" police training, something needs to be done about the state of the art.
"defund" is literally a budgetary request. there is no way to frame an issue in a more anodyne way than making it about a municipal budget. i feel insane
The job of police is to apprehend criminals, not to provide pallative emotional care and social services. Social order is far more important than transient uncomfortablness experienced by criminals.
No, the job of the police is to serve and protect the community. Sometimes that means apprehending a criminal, sometimes escorting a funeral procession, sometimes talking down a suicidal person, sometimes defusing a domestic dispute. Ask any officer, and you'll learn that the best way to get the family — and yourself — killed in a domestic dispute is to charge in with guns drawn.
I said they needed access to trained professionals, not that they needed psych degrees themselves. Societal order requires seeing everyone as human, not us vs them.
Be a royal pain in your Rep’s ass. They’ve gotten away with complicity in this bullshit simply for their own personal gain for far too long. Demand to know why they aren’t using the tools available to them rather than simply following Shrugmaster Hakeem and Limp Chuck down the drain.
I completely agree. Can you please address how this message was misinterpreted (intentionally, in many cases)? Republicans distorted "defund the police" to saying people asking for change wanted to shut down entire police departments and eliminate legit police functions. Corporate Dems and pundits who don't read anything more than op-ed bad-take headlines, ran away from the idea, while consultants scolded that the people asking for change were using "the wrong phrase." In other words, the shorthand slogan was too easily exaggerated and distorted.
First, it disguised political cowardice by allowing elected officials to willfully duck the issue over the slogan. Second, since perception is vital in reaching low-information voters (and chickenshit centrist, corporatist, Clinton-idiot Dems), what's a better way of selling the idea that some police money - and more new money - should go to more effective public safety purposes, de-escalation training and emphasis (as in Canada), better treatment of minority and poor communities? How can we name what we want (or, forgive me, "rebrand") in a way that resonates with the majority of voters, accurately represents the changes we want, and allows us to hold elected and public safety officials accountable for responding to those demands?
If voters in Mayberry have been petitioning for a stoplight near a school zone, and rebuffed because "it's too expensive," how do we make it easy for people to point out that the Mayberry police department just bought Barney Fife a $5 million IED-resistant Humvee he won't ever need or use, when that money could've paid for dozens of new, necessary stoplights?
With respect, the idea was good but the slogan was terrible—and that matters. It did a major disservice to the idea: more like, rebalance investment in a far wider view of public safety and who can best provide it. Every single non-MAGA normie I know thought it meant literally abolish the police. That killed it.
Very well said Mr. HN. I suggest everyone watch the video of the women shot in Minn. (There are several versions out there). Decide for yourself if what this women did in anyway deserved a death sentence. Take a minute to reflect if this happened in your neighborhood, a mother being shot in the face, is something we can simply ignore.
Oh my fucking gawd. I cannot believe how many people read this article, saw Hamilton's words about not bashing slogans and instead focusing on substance, and still ran their mouths. The internet is sprawling. There are millions of other places you can go & get your "the slogan was bad" take reinforced with some ego-stroking likes and "yesss, this!" agreement. You don't have to do it here. You "better branding" people are the reason we are drowning in hopped-up psychos with guns who believe they are doing God's will.
Also, for everyone here trying to walk a cute line... "Defund The Police" is a say-it-with-your-whole-chest slogan. We mean all of it.
I would say that I'm so exhausted, and I am, but it kind of pales in comparison with being dead, so I'll instead send condolences to Ms. Good's family and community
As with most policy issues, given the state of public opinion and misinformation in the US today, it's the packaging, not the policy itself, that wins or loses the battle for attention. The idea of cutting back on our overspending on police is an excellent one, but the label "defund the police" was easily distorted by Republican misinformation and Democratic cowardice to "abolish the police." I'm no wordsmith, but it shouldn't be hard to come up with a better one -- something along the lines of "slenderize police waste." The Democratic leadership's easy adoption of Republican mislabeling isn't the greatest of their sins, but it's still an important failing...
The core argument of this piece is "hiring more armed men does not, in fact, do anything to solve the underlying problems like poverty and inequality and oppression that produce “crime,” and therefore, with a fixed budget, every dollar that you spend on armed men is one that is not going to mitigate the actual systemic issues that create the conditions that the armed men purportedly exist to fight.”
It is based on an assumption that we *know* what causes crime and so can act to reduce it by addressing its fundamental causes. But in reality we do not know this. In work I've seen poverty does not seem to be a factor, while race does seem to have an effect, suggesting a cultural factor. But the conclusion is that after much study we *not* know the "underlying problems" that produce crime.
We do have some evidence on strategies that can reduce the incidence of crime. We have good evidence that increasing the *likelihood" of punishment for crime is effective while increasing severity of the punishment is not. Research on factors correlated with the steep decline in crime levels found several significant factors: declining levels of lead in the blood of Americans, increased numbers of police on the street, the rise in abortions after 1973, and increased numbers of incarcerated people, and perhaps one or two other things I do not recall right now.
Also, ICE agents are NOT police. The nominal role for police is to suppress crime and arrest criminals. ICE personal are political agents, more like National Guardsmen than municipal police.
Indeed. The author is making a claims about root causes of crime—poverty, inequality, oppression—which we’re supposed to take at face value.
This is doing some heavy lifting for his premise, and while surely part of the picture, i don’t think it’s as capable of bearing the load as he thinks.
While it would be nice if Nolan had included some more sources, the cost-effectiveness of social supports at reducing crime is quite well established and you can easily find resources on it. I'm out the door but here's one example. Also check out Vera Institute. "As a growing body of evidence illustrates, when implemented appropriately, these developmental prevention efforts not only effectively prevent crime but also are cost-effective solutions that save public resources (Crowley, Hill, Kuklinski, and Jones, 2013; Crowley, Jones, Greenberg, Feinberg, and Spoth, 2012; Heckman, Moon, Pinto, Savelyev, and Yavitz, 2010; Klietz, Borduin, and Schaeffer, 2010; Kuklinski, Briney, Hawkins, and Catalano, 2012; Reynolds et al., 2011)." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4137908/
You'll never find a monocausal evidence for what causes crime, and what brings it down, but there's overwhelming evidence for the idea that proactive policing -- when done intelligently, in response to community demands -- helps. (The lead hypothesis is discredited, and the theory about Roe is flimsy and misunderstood. Even the authors of that paper said that if they're right, it would account for only a tiny part of the crime drop.) Demographic factors matter, though. Across history, in every culture, violent and predatory crime is mostly committed by young men. Lots of studies also show that an increased police presence reduces crime. We should have more police, though it's an expensive remedy. Hamilton's essay is pitiful, full of effusions from someone who does not know what they are talking about.
You are right. The 2020 Democratic convention was sickening. Truly a disgusting display of cowardice. But. People did not understand the slogan. There was no positive alternative. Eg. Change Department of Police to Domestic Peace. No centralized national leadership. Very unsuccessful political ideology and organization on our side.
The next Dem who insists on having a "Sister Souljah" or "you people" moment needs to be tarred and feathered, and permanently run out of elected office on a rail.
I have a feeling they will be...Metaphorically (wink)...I get the feeling (and maybe its just me. But I hope not) that we on the left are fresh out of patience for spineless dem leadership. the cat is out of the bag now
Weird, because the first Dem who had a Sister Souljah moment pulled an upset win over an incumbent president after Republicans had controlled the White House for three straight elections.
I agree that the militarization of the police in the US has always been a bad idea that should be reversed, but there are several problems with your argument.
1. You haven't presented any data to back up your points. You're pointing to an incident where you claim that over-policing led to a tragedy,* but how many deaths happen due to under-policing? Do you have that data? Can you point to experiments where reduced policing led to better outcomes? Is there evidence in the other direction where reductions in policing led to more crime? As a San Francisco resident, my firsthand experience is that increased policing under the new mayor has led to a noticeable reduction in crime; with that said, I wouldn't do what you've done here and say this is hard proof that more policing is always good. Just because something sounds intuitively true or is borne out in a single instance doesn't make it fact.
* Even this is wrong because this is not a "policing" problem. See my next point.
2. ICE isn't the police. It's Trump's gestapo. They're recruiting the dregs of society with snuff films, giving them zero training, and encouraging them to treat American citizens like enemy combatants. Using the actions of these hateful morons to make a point about policing in general isn't fair, doesn't make sense, and undermines many of your points.
3. "Defund the police" is a vague and counterproductive slogan that's easy to twist into advocating anarchy. You'd want to abandon even if it didn't carry all the baggage it does—and it does carry that baggage. Something like "Reform the police" would be much better.
4. Democrats were right to abandon this slogan for the reason above. I want Democrats to win, and so I'd like to see them using more common sense and strategic thinking, not less.
5. Your guns in the house analogy is clever but easily falsifiable. Play your argument in reverse and you'll see why: The logical conclusion is that no guns in the house is safer (and indeed that is the case when we're talking about a person's house), so would zero police make us safer? No.
I actually do think over-policing happens, and that we'd do better to invest more in addressing underlying issues to prevent crime before it happens, as you suggest. However, I would disagree with most of this post for the reasons stated.
Excellent framing with the loaded guns metaphor. The core insight that resources poured into armed enforcement without corresponding civilian oversight creates a structural vulnerability is somthing we're seeing play out right now. I worked with a community org that tried negotiating with local PD on de-escalation training, and the barrier wasn't expertise or cost, it was cultural resistance to restraint. Without shifting the underlying logic that more firepower equals safety, we're just handing whoever's in power better tools.
I think it was Sherrilyn Ifill who said this yesterday, but: if you really think it was about the messaging, look what the Right did with the perfectly innocuous phrase "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion." A phrase market-tested to be as inoffensive as possible, and they made it a slur.
And I'll add, look at the reverse: the Right tried to sink the ACA and Obama both by calling it "Obamacare..." instead, it became his most popular policy. If there had been *any* political will or commitment to de-militarizing police forces, the Dems would have found a different phrase (as you point out) or, even more likely, the phrasing would have ceased to matter. Democrats abandoning BLM out of fear was a crime.
See the note above about focusing on the substance of the issue and not the slogan. Please talk about the issues themselves. The reason we did not defund the police has nothing to do with "branding" or "finding a better slogan." If that were the case, Democrats would have in fact rolled out another slogan. They didn't because they did not want to do the policy. The question is why they did not want to do the policy. Please do all the musings about branding somewhere else. I have heard them for five years and they are not interesting. Thank you.
I love how you talk about focusing on the “substance of the issue” but fail to actually talk about any evidence related to policing and violent crime, or the polling data on police support even within communities unfairly targeted by aggressive policing (spoiler alert, it is high). Dealing with “substance” means dealing facts and data, thinking about real consequences, not ideological cosplay and jousting within your bubble to prove who is the most “revolutionary”.
Why don’t you ask how the communities you’re trying to sweep in and protect how they feel about defunding the police? Their complete rejection of it is not “the political establishment”.
As I write in the piece above, the long term consequence of decades of bipartisan consensus on the idea that increasing police and military funding is good is a sprawling network of armed men that are now under the control of very bad people, with little elected political opposition structure in place to even begin to build a movement to roll back the abuses we are witnessing. I believe this is bad. I'm a socialist, I believe lots of things that may not poll well. Matt Yglesias is the guy to read who says to do everything that polls well, check him out.
So why not distinguish between federal and local level policing? Bipartisan consensus is not what drives citizens to completely reject the idea of defunding their local police forces. It’s also a ridiculous position to claim that curbing abuses requires abolition. If my doctor tells me a medicine has side effects, my goal should be to mitigate the side effects and improve the medication, not reject treatment altogether so that my fringe bubble will praise me for my “bravery”.
It is not about believing what “polls well”. Polling is just evidence that local people reject your solution, which is not irrational when looking at the scientific evidence on policing showing that your solution would be disastrous for them.
So if your solution would be a disaster, and “the people” do not want it, then what reason could you possibly have for promoting it other than using clickbait nonsense to gobble up some subscribers from the far-left portion of Substack, who are just as disinterested with engaging in the “substance” of this issue as you are?
"Defund the police" doesn't mean defund them to zero. It means taking some of the budget from police and trying to actually tackle the underlying social problems that lead to crime. Hamilton says this in the very article you're commenting on
Defund the police means exactly what it means. It's simple, and easy to understand.
Ta-Nehisi Coates made this crystal clear during the BLM protests.
No police means no private property is possible as they are the brutal enforcers of it. The "underlying social problem" is the fact that private property exists in the first place. Abolish that and there is literally no such crime as "theft" any more.
From the article.
“every dollar that you spend on armed men is one that is not going to mitigate the actual systemic issues that create the conditions that the armed men purportedly exist to fight”
“You can’t just say that you hope nobody will ever pick up one of the loaded guns you have laying around. You have to get rid of them.”
Forgive me if any of those quotes lead me to potentially straw man the author.
Even the less extreme position of “reallocating some of the funds” is just as baseless, given the clear evidence that reduced police presence increases criminal activity. Notice no one suggests funneling the budgets from leisurely public programs, like say, the arts, and divesting that in “exploring” alternative solutions to crime reduction, which of course, also conveniently lack hard evidence as well.
A rare instance when the motte is almost as weak as the bailey.
In Chicago, there are any number of social programs, particularly peer, designed to divert young men from gangs. They are successful, and supported, in the neighborhoods, when they are FUNDED. Which they often are not. BTW, the statistics seem to indicate such programs ARE working, as our violent crimes have steadily decreased. Still, decades of red-lining, lack of development, and all the numerous social ills are REAL. And police themselves don't wish to be mental health or social workers. My BIL was a cop in Liberty City, FL back in the day. They developed a multidisciplinary team, with programs for intervention in drug use, spousal and child abuse, and so forth. They worked. He was a proud, white, veteran, gentle giant from Mississippi. And he knew he didn't need weapons of war to fix what ailed that community.
Respectfully, you're a little bitch who has no idea what they're talking about.
This is the length of response appropriate to the absolute mush of words you are trying to pass off as a valid point.
In case anyone was wondering what refusing to engage with substance looks like.
TRUMP is the one who took the 80 side of every 80/20 issue in AmeriKKKan politics and just look where we are now! He's seized control of DOJ, Pentagon, State Department and will never leave office. Disbanded USAID, shut down NPR, PBS and the corporation for public broadcasting!
Just withdrew the US from a ton of very helpful UN orgs too.
Maybe taking the side of the most propagandized morons in the world who believe the world is 5,000 years old isn't he best idea, ya think?
Fixed your next to last sentence: "I'm an idealistic moron, I believe lots of things that may not poll well."
Polling just measures how effective propaganda is. If marginalized communities are agreeing that leaving loaded guns lying around is good, that is evidence that apps like X need to be limited or banned to prevent real-world harm.
So everyone else’s opinions are the result of online propaganda, but your opinions are the result of careful thinking. Sure.
Most people are not online. Their opinions on policing have been steady. If all you can do is blame X then you are not being serious.
My much longer response is below and probably won't be seen, but I'll echo what others have said: You haven't presented any evidence to back up your arguments, several of which are pretty easily swatted down. This kind of rhetoric isn't helpful and is part of the reason Democrats lose despite having the numbers on their side. I hate ICE and Trump as much as anyone else, but you're not helping by making bad arguments.
THIS^^^
The arguments in this very thread over what "defund" means point to you being clearly wrong here. There is a very real argument to reallocate funds from police forces buying damn tanks towards better social programs, but opponents can argue, and are arguing constantly, that that side is pro-complete abolition of law enforcement. Without an obvious place to point to prove that wrong and that's not what the majority of the movement is supporting, that side is failing if that propaganda is swaying people because they believe it. Clarity of message for something as nuanced as this is absolutely crucial, and saying the branding is "not interesting" is missing the point entirely. Increasing police funding is clearly not the answer, but many, many elections have shown that pointing to "Defund the police" as a pro-abolition, or near-abolition, movement that will make things less safe is not ineffective. Make the marketing more clear, because that's how you reach more people. Unless you're actually arguing for full abolition, in which case you're arguing for a completely lost cause.
It is odd to argue that clarity does not matter.
"Defund the police" has always been too simplistic and overly broad to be effective. De-militarize would be a better angle.
We need educated, well-trained police. Police who can de-escalate a situation. Police who don't put themselves at unnecessary risk. Police who can recognize when a mental health advocate is needed — and can access one. And we need better communication between departments and agencies to avoid recycling bad apples. Those all take money.
We don't need fancier weapons, tanks in our streets, and our own citizens treated as The Enemy. The situation, as always, is more nuanced that black & white, us vs them.
The problem is this is directly at odds with "defund". Trading and education requires *more* funding and depolarization needs progressive minded people to *join* the police rather than stigmatize it and anyone who would sign up.
It doesn't necessarily require more funding if there are less of them...
+1 for "demilitarize the police" as a better goal.
For an example of how things can be different, look at any number of police forces in northern Europe. They are educated professionals.
Police in the United States are generally underpaid, poorly trained and the work is dangerous. It is not surprising that it attracts thugs who like firearms.
Police in the US are not underpaid for the qualifications, particularly in large urban cities. That ICE agents killer probably makes over 100k a year without a university degree.
Police work is less dangerous then being a roofer and a whole host of other occupations.
Police work is actually tedious and boring, which is why the adrenaline junkies attracted to it by the mythology react like you saw in Minneapolis when given the opportunity to act out the mythology.
The incident was a high pressure tension filled atmosphere only because one group had guns and the expectation to use them and one group was entirely unarmed.
Derek Chauvin and the 7 or so other cops who watched him murder George Floyd all had state of the art training
"State of the art" by whose definition? The trend in many (if not most) departments since the early 1990s has been military style, which is exactly what I'm NOT advocating.
I mean "sensitivity training" training on dealing with folks with mental health issues, "de-escalation training", the works. You can't train this away
You can't be serious.
Apart from being murder, it was some of the most unprofessional policing I've ever seen in my life. If that's the result of "state of the art" police training, something needs to be done about the state of the art.
it was the result of "state of the art" police training
"defund" is literally a budgetary request. there is no way to frame an issue in a more anodyne way than making it about a municipal budget. i feel insane
The job of police is to apprehend criminals, not to provide pallative emotional care and social services. Social order is far more important than transient uncomfortablness experienced by criminals.
No, the job of the police is to serve and protect the community. Sometimes that means apprehending a criminal, sometimes escorting a funeral procession, sometimes talking down a suicidal person, sometimes defusing a domestic dispute. Ask any officer, and you'll learn that the best way to get the family — and yourself — killed in a domestic dispute is to charge in with guns drawn.
I said they needed access to trained professionals, not that they needed psych degrees themselves. Societal order requires seeing everyone as human, not us vs them.
This is not the moment of helplessness as portrayed the Democratic leadership, or frankly, ANY Democrat currently in Congress.
https://youtu.be/1PwmiG7ABl0?si=lAk-knA1DajEB2DU
Bring it all to a standstill until Noem resigns and is made available for prosecution by the States and ICE is defunded.
Anyone that claims none of that is possible doesn’t understand the levers of power still currently available to elected Democrats.
And, BTW…
https://prospect.org/2026/01/07/ice-agents-can-be-charged-with-murder/
Be a royal pain in your Rep’s ass. They’ve gotten away with complicity in this bullshit simply for their own personal gain for far too long. Demand to know why they aren’t using the tools available to them rather than simply following Shrugmaster Hakeem and Limp Chuck down the drain.
These are excellent source videos and excellent points. Thank you for posting both.
thank you...
I sure don't know if America is ready to meet this moment. But I'm glad we have voices like yours.
I completely agree. Can you please address how this message was misinterpreted (intentionally, in many cases)? Republicans distorted "defund the police" to saying people asking for change wanted to shut down entire police departments and eliminate legit police functions. Corporate Dems and pundits who don't read anything more than op-ed bad-take headlines, ran away from the idea, while consultants scolded that the people asking for change were using "the wrong phrase." In other words, the shorthand slogan was too easily exaggerated and distorted.
First, it disguised political cowardice by allowing elected officials to willfully duck the issue over the slogan. Second, since perception is vital in reaching low-information voters (and chickenshit centrist, corporatist, Clinton-idiot Dems), what's a better way of selling the idea that some police money - and more new money - should go to more effective public safety purposes, de-escalation training and emphasis (as in Canada), better treatment of minority and poor communities? How can we name what we want (or, forgive me, "rebrand") in a way that resonates with the majority of voters, accurately represents the changes we want, and allows us to hold elected and public safety officials accountable for responding to those demands?
If voters in Mayberry have been petitioning for a stoplight near a school zone, and rebuffed because "it's too expensive," how do we make it easy for people to point out that the Mayberry police department just bought Barney Fife a $5 million IED-resistant Humvee he won't ever need or use, when that money could've paid for dozens of new, necessary stoplights?
"Republicans distorted "defund the police"
Republicans would have distorted it no MATTER how we 'phrased' it. It's literally what they do. ALL the time EVERY time
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html
With respect, the idea was good but the slogan was terrible—and that matters. It did a major disservice to the idea: more like, rebalance investment in a far wider view of public safety and who can best provide it. Every single non-MAGA normie I know thought it meant literally abolish the police. That killed it.
Very well said Mr. HN. I suggest everyone watch the video of the women shot in Minn. (There are several versions out there). Decide for yourself if what this women did in anyway deserved a death sentence. Take a minute to reflect if this happened in your neighborhood, a mother being shot in the face, is something we can simply ignore.
Oh my fucking gawd. I cannot believe how many people read this article, saw Hamilton's words about not bashing slogans and instead focusing on substance, and still ran their mouths. The internet is sprawling. There are millions of other places you can go & get your "the slogan was bad" take reinforced with some ego-stroking likes and "yesss, this!" agreement. You don't have to do it here. You "better branding" people are the reason we are drowning in hopped-up psychos with guns who believe they are doing God's will.
Also, for everyone here trying to walk a cute line... "Defund The Police" is a say-it-with-your-whole-chest slogan. We mean all of it.
I would say that I'm so exhausted, and I am, but it kind of pales in comparison with being dead, so I'll instead send condolences to Ms. Good's family and community
As with most policy issues, given the state of public opinion and misinformation in the US today, it's the packaging, not the policy itself, that wins or loses the battle for attention. The idea of cutting back on our overspending on police is an excellent one, but the label "defund the police" was easily distorted by Republican misinformation and Democratic cowardice to "abolish the police." I'm no wordsmith, but it shouldn't be hard to come up with a better one -- something along the lines of "slenderize police waste." The Democratic leadership's easy adoption of Republican mislabeling isn't the greatest of their sins, but it's still an important failing...
"slenderize police waste" yeah really gets the blood pumpin!
The core argument of this piece is "hiring more armed men does not, in fact, do anything to solve the underlying problems like poverty and inequality and oppression that produce “crime,” and therefore, with a fixed budget, every dollar that you spend on armed men is one that is not going to mitigate the actual systemic issues that create the conditions that the armed men purportedly exist to fight.”
It is based on an assumption that we *know* what causes crime and so can act to reduce it by addressing its fundamental causes. But in reality we do not know this. In work I've seen poverty does not seem to be a factor, while race does seem to have an effect, suggesting a cultural factor. But the conclusion is that after much study we *not* know the "underlying problems" that produce crime.
We do have some evidence on strategies that can reduce the incidence of crime. We have good evidence that increasing the *likelihood" of punishment for crime is effective while increasing severity of the punishment is not. Research on factors correlated with the steep decline in crime levels found several significant factors: declining levels of lead in the blood of Americans, increased numbers of police on the street, the rise in abortions after 1973, and increased numbers of incarcerated people, and perhaps one or two other things I do not recall right now.
Also, ICE agents are NOT police. The nominal role for police is to suppress crime and arrest criminals. ICE personal are political agents, more like National Guardsmen than municipal police.
Indeed. The author is making a claims about root causes of crime—poverty, inequality, oppression—which we’re supposed to take at face value.
This is doing some heavy lifting for his premise, and while surely part of the picture, i don’t think it’s as capable of bearing the load as he thinks.
The piece suffers because of it
While it would be nice if Nolan had included some more sources, the cost-effectiveness of social supports at reducing crime is quite well established and you can easily find resources on it. I'm out the door but here's one example. Also check out Vera Institute. "As a growing body of evidence illustrates, when implemented appropriately, these developmental prevention efforts not only effectively prevent crime but also are cost-effective solutions that save public resources (Crowley, Hill, Kuklinski, and Jones, 2013; Crowley, Jones, Greenberg, Feinberg, and Spoth, 2012; Heckman, Moon, Pinto, Savelyev, and Yavitz, 2010; Klietz, Borduin, and Schaeffer, 2010; Kuklinski, Briney, Hawkins, and Catalano, 2012; Reynolds et al., 2011)." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4137908/
You'll never find a monocausal evidence for what causes crime, and what brings it down, but there's overwhelming evidence for the idea that proactive policing -- when done intelligently, in response to community demands -- helps. (The lead hypothesis is discredited, and the theory about Roe is flimsy and misunderstood. Even the authors of that paper said that if they're right, it would account for only a tiny part of the crime drop.) Demographic factors matter, though. Across history, in every culture, violent and predatory crime is mostly committed by young men. Lots of studies also show that an increased police presence reduces crime. We should have more police, though it's an expensive remedy. Hamilton's essay is pitiful, full of effusions from someone who does not know what they are talking about.
You are right. The 2020 Democratic convention was sickening. Truly a disgusting display of cowardice. But. People did not understand the slogan. There was no positive alternative. Eg. Change Department of Police to Domestic Peace. No centralized national leadership. Very unsuccessful political ideology and organization on our side.
The next Dem who insists on having a "Sister Souljah" or "you people" moment needs to be tarred and feathered, and permanently run out of elected office on a rail.
I have a feeling they will be...Metaphorically (wink)...I get the feeling (and maybe its just me. But I hope not) that we on the left are fresh out of patience for spineless dem leadership. the cat is out of the bag now
You know it's a problem when people see that "spineless Democrats" goes from being a cliche to the actual name of the party in all first references.
Weird, because the first Dem who had a Sister Souljah moment pulled an upset win over an incumbent president after Republicans had controlled the White House for three straight elections.
I agree that the militarization of the police in the US has always been a bad idea that should be reversed, but there are several problems with your argument.
1. You haven't presented any data to back up your points. You're pointing to an incident where you claim that over-policing led to a tragedy,* but how many deaths happen due to under-policing? Do you have that data? Can you point to experiments where reduced policing led to better outcomes? Is there evidence in the other direction where reductions in policing led to more crime? As a San Francisco resident, my firsthand experience is that increased policing under the new mayor has led to a noticeable reduction in crime; with that said, I wouldn't do what you've done here and say this is hard proof that more policing is always good. Just because something sounds intuitively true or is borne out in a single instance doesn't make it fact.
* Even this is wrong because this is not a "policing" problem. See my next point.
2. ICE isn't the police. It's Trump's gestapo. They're recruiting the dregs of society with snuff films, giving them zero training, and encouraging them to treat American citizens like enemy combatants. Using the actions of these hateful morons to make a point about policing in general isn't fair, doesn't make sense, and undermines many of your points.
3. "Defund the police" is a vague and counterproductive slogan that's easy to twist into advocating anarchy. You'd want to abandon even if it didn't carry all the baggage it does—and it does carry that baggage. Something like "Reform the police" would be much better.
4. Democrats were right to abandon this slogan for the reason above. I want Democrats to win, and so I'd like to see them using more common sense and strategic thinking, not less.
5. Your guns in the house analogy is clever but easily falsifiable. Play your argument in reverse and you'll see why: The logical conclusion is that no guns in the house is safer (and indeed that is the case when we're talking about a person's house), so would zero police make us safer? No.
I actually do think over-policing happens, and that we'd do better to invest more in addressing underlying issues to prevent crime before it happens, as you suggest. However, I would disagree with most of this post for the reasons stated.
Excellent framing with the loaded guns metaphor. The core insight that resources poured into armed enforcement without corresponding civilian oversight creates a structural vulnerability is somthing we're seeing play out right now. I worked with a community org that tried negotiating with local PD on de-escalation training, and the barrier wasn't expertise or cost, it was cultural resistance to restraint. Without shifting the underlying logic that more firepower equals safety, we're just handing whoever's in power better tools.
Can someone please send this to the entire Democratic party?
I think it was Sherrilyn Ifill who said this yesterday, but: if you really think it was about the messaging, look what the Right did with the perfectly innocuous phrase "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion." A phrase market-tested to be as inoffensive as possible, and they made it a slur.
And I'll add, look at the reverse: the Right tried to sink the ACA and Obama both by calling it "Obamacare..." instead, it became his most popular policy. If there had been *any* political will or commitment to de-militarizing police forces, the Dems would have found a different phrase (as you point out) or, even more likely, the phrasing would have ceased to matter. Democrats abandoning BLM out of fear was a crime.