We're commenting on an article about how the NYPD aren't accountable and aren't even following NYC laws. It is well-known that they don't follow the law in general.
There's very little power for the citizens to actually do anything. The NYPD holds tremendous political power, and wields it aggressively. They even _publicly threatened_ the children of the previous mayor.
This doesn't seem to support any allegation that the NYPD "publicly threatened" DeBlasio's "children". What did happen is that the NYPD Sergeants' union inappropriately tweeted details about her arrest, after she was arrested. That's one child, for those keeping score, not "children", and it's also not a "threat" of any identifiable kind. It is definitely inappropriate, though.
So it would appear that Business Insider's headline was sensationalist and not well supported.
> There's very little power for the citizens to actually do anything.
How much effort did you expend before declaring that change is futile? The NYPD has political power because they worked to establish relationships with politicians and spent money to hire lobbyists that keep these these politicians accountable to their interests. On the other hand, most people would have trouble to name a single city councilor.
Because the various police unions hold enormous power over city council, the DAs and the mayor.
There's nobody in the city that seems to dare hold them accountable, because past experience has thought them they will get completely owned by Pat Lynch.
Quite frankly we lost. We were beaten and tear gassed and arrested and called rioters & looters on the news. Public figures called for more violence against us in major mainstream liberal publications. Many of us are still in jail with six figure bails, some of us are facing terrorism charges.
The entire system came down hard on those protests, from nearly every angle. The democrats refused to endorse or support the goal, and the risks & costs of continuing or escalating were too high. So it stopped, failed.
What are you talking about? The media and Democrats were heavily in favor of the protesters to the extent of denying its part in enabling rioters and looters.
One of the greatest disservices in American education is how they teach about activism. The narrative goes that if you can get a million people to complain on the streets, this will magically drive political reform. What doesn't get talked about are the intense lobbying and legal challenges that actually kept the government accountable.
I would say it's equally hard to sympathize with the cops that pushed down an elderly man, then left him bleeding from the head on the street, marching over his unmoving body towards protestors, in broad daylight.
It's important to remember that it's the cops with the deadly weapons, its the cops with the chemical weapons, and its the cops depriving access to medicine when they hurt protestors.
I'm not claiming protests were or should be necessarily peaceful. Those protests started because of murder and disempowerment, and a context of decades of it.
Making it hard to sympathize with protestors is an important role of the news, and a significant part of why those protests failed.
I've seen astounding violence from police, before during and after those protests. Look at the thread we're in! Look at the one yesterday about them smuggling fentanyl! Look at the one from last week about the LA county sheriff gangs! Protesters don't carry a responsibility to uphold the law, they are a reaction to the police refusing to do so.
Floyd had traces of fentanyl and meth in his blood and had used them in the last several days. He did not have enough to be "on" them at the time of death.
The police aren't supposed to execute drug users either I don't think we have a different system for that. Or people with covid (??).
And it's actually ok to be upset by people being killed. Good even. If it doesn't bother you your soul is weak and cowardly, as much as you might try to frame it as some inevitable result of objective facts or whatever.
Most cities that started to follow through on either scrapping their police force or cutting their funding saw a massive spike in crime, and even those mayors and city councillors who were adamantly defund-the-police types are now begging for more money for the police and for police officers to come back out of retirement or from the other cities they moved to.
The public turned on the movement when the movement turned on the public. Minneapolis neighborhoods were faced with turning into food deserts after looting caused enough damage to force the grocery stores to close for nearly a year (smoke and water damage).
Some stores partner with non-governmental community peace organizations (i.e. civilized gangs) to reduce the need for police presence, and it is slowly working.
Others haven't been so lucky. A Walmart recent closed in a suburb because it needed to call police nearly 6,500 times over the course of 5 years. That was after other local retail outlets had also closed.
Social fabric in some areas is just fundamentally torn, and there's nobody with a good solution.
Which cities were those, that started to follow through on defunding?
Cities that increased funding are also experiencing the crime spike. It's a national phenomenon. Also one that apparently police can't prevent because, again, more police haven't prevented it.
> Over 20 major cities cut or moved funding in some way by 2021
That's a misleading way of talking about those numbers, and in fact the source linked within the article shows the exact opposite.
For example, it cites New York as an example of a city which "reduced" police funding. Except New York famously didn't - they simply moved SROs to the Department of Education instead. Total funding for police actually increased. It just was reported on a different line in the budget.
> Most cities that started to follow through on either scrapping their police force or cutting their funding saw a massive spike in crime
This is factually incorrect. Every major city in the country increased funding for police between 2019-2021. None defunded the police. Some made temporary adjustments in 2020 due to pandemic changes, but every single one was reversed by a subsequent increase over baseline levels for the 202-2021 or 2021-2022 cycle, depending on when the city's fiscal year falls.
Minneapolis is the only one which even voted to permanently defunded the police, but that was reversed before it went into effect.
New York, remember? The State that looks at the Second Amendment as an aspirational guideline. To be frank, I think the current problem may be a symptom of the other.
(Unarmed populace -> Corrupt cops)
Power dynamic changes a bit, taking one down a few pegs when everyone else in the room is packing iron without having to get a blessing from the Police.
Not even a bit. If the officer is never held accountable, they can threaten with their gun and the civilian who wants to pull theirs in response is just going to be legally shot by the threatening officer (and if not, found guilty of murder by a vengeful police department). This really is a problem of accountability, which guns don't bring except in a revolution.
because those large protests were mainly young people. Most New Yorkers, especially the middle-aged and older white liberals, are pro-cop. New York city, the supposed bastion of progressivity and human rights, has the most segregated school system of any big city in the nation. Walk around liberal brooklyn and look at the color of the people being served and those doing the service, and you will see a caste system no better than anywhere in the South.
