Defund the police

The above is essentially a hashtag that's become very popular among certain groups of people.  It's awesome, because it can mean anything anyone wants at any time.  This post will be a  place to collect that various ways people interpret this statement and to examine the contradictions.

Not that it'll matter much, but I've been quite clear that we are at a point where significant, even radical, changes to how police operate are appropriate and that one significant step should be to decertify police unions.   I also believe that it's not enough to focus only on the police, but that any reform must put accountability and consequences on the politicians who have failed to halt police corruption for decades.  My problem isn't with the concept, but with the terminology and the scapegoating of the police.

(I've decided that for the purposes of any further discussion of this issue that I will use the term corruption as the primary term to describe police actions.)

The point has been made that police departments spend a disproportionate amount of time and effort ticketing people for traffic violations, I don't disagree with notion.  The question needs to be asked though, "Who is responsible for this focus?".  Is it the individual officers or the department leadership?

Isn't controlling things like speeding, drunk driving, and unsafe vehicles providing an important service to keep the community safe?

Enough editorial comment.  I'll continue to add things as appropriate and I'm sure we'll see additions in the comments.

"Nobody is going to defund the police," Clyburn, the House Majority Whip and one of the leading African American members of Congress, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of The Union." "We can restructure the police forces. Restructure, re-imagine policing. That is what we are going to do."

He continued, "The fact of the matter is that police have a role to play. What we've got to do is make sure that their role is one that meets the times, one that responds to these communities that they operate in."

Jim Clyburn

"We call for a national defunding of police. We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive, but thrive."

BLM

"What does an America with defunded police look like to you?" Ocasio-Cortez responded, "It looks like a suburb."

AOC 

(I hate to break it to AOC, but suburbs fund the police)

"Yes, we mean literally abolish the police."  Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century," Kaba began. "Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police."

Kaba claimed there was "not a single era" in American history when the police was not a "force of violence against black people" dating back to slavery.

"When you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America" from officers who believe it's "his job," Kaba wrote.

 Mariame Kaba