I am totally against defunding any of our security,
defence, or protection services be they police,
military, ambulance, fire-fighters, et al.

I have the highest respect for all of them and feel
that we would be in dire straits without them.

They deserve our full support and funding.

What a click bait article.

It claims: “The March 2021 piece was about Oakland in California, where local officials took the post-Floyd anger of 2020 to heart and made plans to cut police spending by a whopping 50 per cent – around $150 million a year. Then the killings started. And other forms of crime. In 2020 there were 107 murders in Oakland, compared with 75 in 2019.”

The thing is those cuts were never instituted, they wouldn’t have anyway in the time frame stated above, and the number of serving frontline officers remained the same.

So how on earth did this contribute to the rise in murders? Simple answer, it didn’t.

Leaving the beatup aside there is a pretty basic question, what is the balance between social spending and spending on law enforcement? It is certainly inarguable that social spending lowers crime just as it is that without police lawlessness of one stripe or another prevails. But to cut social spending in half to double law enforcement to deal with the result is backward. This is what had happened in some US cities.

This is in a sense what we are seeing in Victoria at the moment. It use to be that police numbers per 100,000 citizens pretty well matched that of NSW at around 278 officers in 2010.

Ten years later the NSW figures had fallen slightly to 263 officers per 100,000 while the Victorian figures had blown out to 327 and still by all accounts accelerating.

“Victoria Police now has 22,000 personnel and government funding worth $4 billion a year, surpassing that of NSW Police even though the northern state is three-times the geographical size with 1.4 million more people.”
The Age

All the result of political parties trying to outdo themselves on the law and order question.

During nearly the same period the percentage increase in spending on police doubled that of education and percentage increase in spending on the prison system trebled that figure.

Where does this all end and what is needed to turn it around?

black officers, whose lives apparently don't matter to the BLM as much those of black civilians.
ttbn,
For a start, it should be it ADLM (all decent lives matter) but what BLM has achieved is to put BCLM (black criminal lives matter) before anything.
Police are challenged way beyond what anyone should have to tolerate & to even just think about defunding their ability to counter the masses of criminal idiots out there is even more idiotic than those morons putting up statues to criminals who pushed Police too far for too long ! Just how much more patience & self control do people think Police should muster ?
Rather than defund Police it should be proposed to defund correctional facilities. A lot more money could be saved from doing away with gyms, recreational equipment, computers etc. in jails !

SteeleRedux

The US defunding police band wagon departed station madness in 2020. Trump was in power.

NY actually defunded their PD’s by $1b. Half from capital works and half from reduced budgets, to redistribute $500m to mostly youth services, directly and indirectly.
Nothing wrong with funding social services, but there is something disturbing about defunding your local Police to raise the funds in order to fund social services That’s madness.

The rioting youth who were happy to burn down police stations in Minneapolis and Seattle in 2020, were recipients of largesse from City officials which allowed them the ability to burn down and loot shops in down town areas unmolested by police interference from understaffed police stations.

As for Melbourne’s increased Police presence, that fact allowed them to control potential riotous crowds effectively without suffering the indignity of Police failure so obviously on display in mostly Democrat States of the US.

Dan

Dear diver dan,

NYC was forced to find over 10% savings in its budget overall. The police did have one sixth of their budget redirected to other departments but so was some of their workload.

The police were forced to institute a hiring freeze but so were most of the other departments.

But I am keen to know where your mark is? How many police per 100,000 do you think is justified? Should we be prepared to end up like the US with the highest percentage of its citizens behind bars? Where do you think the balance lies? Should we like them go without an expensive universal health system and put more policing resources into dealing with the inevitable wave of crime resulting from desperate people bankrupted by medical expenses?

What does your utopia look like?

SteeleRedux

Your painting a wall with striped paint again aren’t you!
There’s a miasmic unpleasantness to you at times SR.

I’m referring to the NYCM PD. 2020 budget. It was reduced by $1bn .
$500m from Capital expenditure such as new buildings refurbishments and maintenance. A further $500m from reduced funding. Percentage of that would be more than 6%, but I’m not interested in doing the math.
There was the addition of overtime and recruitment freezes.

Your other complaint was…ah yes my mark?
My mark with policing is maintains its independence out of the hands of politicians and the military.

We are extremely lucky in Australia on that score, give or take some failures eg political use of nsw special force by Balilro against friendly Jordies.
And the disturbing growing trend of intrusive policing by specialist terrorist forces.
That’s a big worry when it’s politicians with the say as to what is a specific terrorist group.

You’ve conflated two issues in your comment, policing and the judiciary. It’s not Police that jail criminals, it’s the courts.

Your stray issue of the quality of society. Policing is a necessary part of a stable society.
The police force numbers should be adequate to maintain their policing roll successfully.
That one is a political issue unfortunately.

Whats my view of utopia? Survival in adequate circumstances prior to inevitable death.

Dan.