Should Police Departments Be Given More Money?

[swansont]

3 hours ago, drumbo said:

I've seen you claim something I said was not true at least twice now on these forums, without giving any further explanation. How is that constructive? If you aren't able to explain yourself then your input is almost useless. Justify your beliefs.

Police don’t run prisons, and these are separate institutions, so how is this not a false dichotomy?

[MigL]

It might seem to go against common sense, but more police could actually lower tensions in a community.
When there were enough cops to 'walk the beat', they actually got to know people in their neighborhoods ( no, I'm not old enough to remember that ).
Knowing a person, and their circumstances, gives police the 'human touch', leeway in how they address a situation, and can have a more personal conversation/de-escalation in mental health, suicide, and domestic disturbance cases.

They don't simply show up in several squad cars with their guns drawn, and then all hell breaks loose.
( is that enough clarification, Drumbo ? )

[CharonY]

36 minutes ago, MigL said:

When there were enough cops to 'walk the beat', they actually got to know people in their neighborhoods ( no, I'm not old enough to remember that ).

This is not exclusively matter of number of police, but type of policing. What you describe is typically known community policing. Unfortunately especially large police forces tend to forego it in favour of hard responses (certain narcotics and anti-gang groups are notorious for that). 

That being said, it is true that effective community policing often requires more manpower. But again, the important bit is to change the approach. In fact, studies have shown that increase in police force has to be balanced with policies. In areas where e.g. things like stop and frisk events increased due to increased police presence, there was no benefit in terms of crime reduction, but there was an increase in complaints and violent incidents. So having more force on the beat and building community connections is indeed a good way to reduce crime as well as complaints, but it has to be part of a larger package. In other words, it would make sense to defund the areas dedicated to the most aggressive measures (say, military equipment, heavily armed plainsclothes units and so on) in favour of hiring folks that get to know the folks that they are policing.

 

[iNow]

17 minutes ago, CharonY said:

In other words, it would make sense to defund the areas dedicated to the most aggressive measures (say, military equipment, heavily armed plainsclothes units and so on) in favour of hiring folks that get to know the folks that they are policing.

Or hire more social workers and substance abuse & related counselors (or all of the above) 

[drumbo]

2 hours ago, iNow said:

More police bring more people into the system. Rehabilitation begins after the system has been entered. This isn’t exactly rocket science. 

Also, property can be protected in other ways. More police is not the only option. 

You aren't listening. More policing results in more confrontations between police and citizens, resulting in more deaths and injuries for them before they can be booked into any system. Read, this just happened:

https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gone-rogue/watch-phoenix-cops-kill-man-after-responding-to-noise-complaint-over-video-game-AsvFt-AHpkeQlcgNj5qiTA

Quote

Ryan Whitaker was sitting at home with his girlfriend playing video games when he was killed by police.

A noise complaint from an annoyed neighbor resulted in cops shooting and killing a man within five seconds of him opening his front door.

Ryan Whitaker opened the door holding a gun in his right hand which is legal in Arizona but it made the cops fear for their lives.

However, the cops never gave him a chance to put the gun down which he appeared to be trying to do when one cop shot him in the back three times.

It is astounding to me that you cannot grasp this, perhaps this is rocket science for you. Your claim "Also, property can be protected in other ways. More police is not the only option.", is moot since you made no effort no show that it doesn't concede the point that maximizing the protection of property in an absolute sense likely involves a well funded police force.

There, you see what a proper elucidation of a viewpoint looks like? Now you do that.

[iNow]

11 minutes ago, drumbo said:

More policing results in more confrontations between police and citizens, resulting in more deaths and injuries for them before they can be booked into any system.

Those outcomes are not a function of how many police there are or how many interactions with police there are. Those outcomes are a function of how the interaction goes and what steps the officers take to de-escalate. 

I’m hearing / reading you just fine, but merely repeating inaccurate points and incorrect assertions doesn’t magically render them valid. 

14 minutes ago, drumbo said:

maximizing the protection of property in an absolute sense likely involves a well funded police force.

Perhaps, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with rehabilitation or the original point you were trying (and failing) to make. Stop trying to move the goal posts. 

[drumbo]

45 minutes ago, iNow said:

Those outcomes are not a function of how many police there are or how many interactions with police there are. Those outcomes are a function of how the interaction goes and what steps the officers take to de-escalate. 

I’m hearing / reading you just fine, but merely repeating inaccurate points and incorrect assertions doesn’t magically render them valid. 

Perhaps, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with rehabilitation or the original point you were trying (and failing) to make. Stop trying to move the goal posts. 

You are plainly wrong, they are a function of both the number of interactions and how the interactions tend to go. Given what we read in the news and what we know about American cops the interactions can go catastrophically poorly, and those unfortunate cases increase as the number of interactions increase. I don't know where you are planning on getting these angelic cops who never pull the trigger when a seemingly belligerent person answers the door with a gun, but in the real world many of those cops are going to shoot the man no matter how well you train them to use de-escalation techniques. The outcomes are a function of how many interactions there are, the trivial proof being that if there were zero interactions then nobody would ever be shot by a police officer.

Maximizing the protection of property versus maximizing the potential to rehabilitate criminals is exactly the point that I made originally, and is completely consistent with everything I said thereafter. I added the detail about absolute maximization versus constrained maximization because you seemed to be unable to grasp the difference, forgive me for assuming that those concepts were intuitively understood by most people.

Edited August 8, 2020 by drumbo

[iNow]

More interactions with police increase the odds of a poor interaction occurring. That does not, however, mean additional interactions lead to negative outcomes. It’s not a function in the way approach, technique, and style of police engagement are.

Hundreds of thousands of cops manage to have positive outcomes every day and often across their entire careers, so now you’ve added the hasty generalization error and confirmation bias to your use of fallacies. Just because you hear more about negative interactions on the news does not mean they’re occurring everywhere all of the time, yet that’s the core of your current position. While I acknowledge it’s more common in some communities than in others, violence with the police is the exception yet you keep asserting it’s the rule. 

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. 

Edited August 8, 2020 by iNow

[drumbo]

23 minutes ago, iNow said:

That does not, however, mean additional interactions lead to negative outcomes.

Are you seriously claiming that additional interactions between suspects/criminals and police does not lead to a greater amount of negative outcomes for the suspects/criminals? That's like claiming that additional interactions between wolves and deer does not lead to a greater amount of negative outcomes for the deer. It's just immediately wrong. The police are there to enforce the law. They aren't there to be the suspect's best buddy therapist and help them get their life back on track. That's what social workers do, but social workers won't protect your property.

The entire premise of the "defund the police" movement is that in some cases social workers should be sent to a situation rather than police officers, precisely because it is anticipated that sending officers increases the likelihood of a negative outcome. I am not saying that I agree with the movement, since I value the protection of property, but it is the fundamental premise of the entire debate that the country is having right now. Your refusal to acknowledge that premise puts you at odds with most of the political left in the US at the moment, and you don't seem to care much about protecting property either which puts you at odds with the political right. So you just have a completely odd position which makes little sense.

[iNow]

31 minutes ago, drumbo said:

Are you seriously claiming that additional interactions between suspects/criminals and police does not lead to a greater amount of negative outcomes for the suspects/criminals?

No

32 minutes ago, drumbo said:

Your refusal to acknowledge that premise puts you at odds with most of the political left in the US at the moment,

I’m really not bothered by being at odds with just about anyone, especially not with the political classes.

I also am not refusing to acknowledge anything. I’m simply poking at obvious holes in your rather remedial and illogical arguments. 

35 minutes ago, drumbo said:

you just have a completely odd position which makes little sense.

As I said. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. Would it perhaps be easier for you if I used fat crayons and construction paper instead? 

[drumbo]

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

No

If you are making the more general claim that additional interactions between the police and the general public does not lead to a greater amount of negative outcomes, then that already concedes that there would be additional interactions between suspects/criminals (who are a part of the general public) and therefore a greater amount of negative outcomes.

If you are instead using the word outcomes in a holistic sense then you are avoiding my point entirely, since the potential for an individual suspect to be rehabilitated decreases when they are subject to a risky encounter with law enforcement rather than a low risk encounter with a social worker.

minutes ago, iNow said:

I also am not refusing to acknowledge anything. I’m simply poking at obvious holes in your rather remedial and illogical arguments. 

You haven't poked a hole in anything, you just keep making claims without any follow up or justification.

minutes ago, iNow said:

I can explain it to you

You are welcome to start trying. Please bring out the fat crayons, my inferior brain needs all of the help it can get to read your mind because you're too lazy to explain yourself properly.

Edited August 8, 2020 by drumbo

[iNow]

28 minutes ago, drumbo said:

the potential for an individual suspect to be rehabilitated decreases when they are subject to a risky encounter with law enforcement

No, it doesn’t. 

29 minutes ago, drumbo said:

my inferior brain needs all of the help it can get

At least here we can finally agree 

[drumbo]

11 hours ago, iNow said:

No, it doesn’t. 

At least here we can finally agree 

I see you're back to your "nuh uh!" style of argumentation. When an individual such as Ryan Whitaker https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gone-rogue/watch-phoenix-cops-kill-man-after-responding-to-noise-complaint-over-video-game-AsvFt-AHpkeQlcgNj5qiTA interacts with law enforcement the probability of a poor outcome increases and if there is a poor outcome the  potential to rehabilitate him decreases drastically. If a social worker was sent instead of the cops then Ryan Whitaker would still be alive, and if he needed rehabilitation there would still be the potential for that. You have to think about how these cases play out on an individual level and the worst case scenario, not holistically and assuming nothing goes wrong. Please explain why you think otherwise, I can't read your mind. If you aren't able to explain yourself because your opinion is based on a feeling rather than careful analysis then you are likely to be wrong.

I think your problem is that you are unable to see the difference between a local change (local as in within a constrained set of possibilities) in someone's potential to be rehabilitated versus a global change (global as in within the full set of possibilities). When the cops interact with a suspect there is the possibility where they do not kill him or injure him greatly, and instead book him into the system and perhaps once he is in the system he would be exposed to resources which could rehabilitate him. Therefore since the interaction between the police and the suspect increases the likelihood that the suspect gets exposed to rehabilitation there is a local increase in the suspect's potential to be rehabilitated. I use the word local, because we are talking about a local region of possibilities where the suspect has already interacted with the police and rolled the dice on getting killed or injured which totally eliminate the potential for rehabilitation. On the other hand, if the suspect interacts with a social worker the probability that the suspect is killed or injured is greatly diminished, and the suspect can be exposed to resources for rehabilitation just as they were before. Now with the social worker we have attained a higher potential for rehabilitation than we did in the case where we sent the cops, because we maximized the potential within a global set of possibilities rather than a constrained set where we always send the cops. This is why I asked you if you understand the concept of optimization, you don't seem to. That is why I claim that the potential for an individual suspect to be rehabilitated decreases when they are subject to a risky encounter with law enforcement, since their global potential to be rehabilitated decreases even if it locally increases within the constrained possibilities of the events where an interaction with the police occur.

Edited August 8, 2020 by drumbo

[dimreepr]

30 minutes ago, drumbo said:

I see you're back to your "nuh uh!" style of argumentation. When an individual such as Ryan Whitaker https://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-gone-rogue/watch-phoenix-cops-kill-man-after-responding-to-noise-complaint-over-video-game-AsvFt-AHpkeQlcgNj5qiTA interacts with law enforcement the probability of a poor outcome increases and if there is a poor outcome the  potential to rehabilitate him decreases drastically.

Are you sure you know what you're arguing about?

33 minutes ago, drumbo said:

If a social worker was sent instead of the cops then Ryan Whitaker would still be alive

You seem to agree on this...

35 minutes ago, drumbo said:

I think your problem is that you are unable to see the difference between a local change (local as in within a constrained set of possibilities) in someone's potential to be rehabilitated versus a global change (global as in within the full set of possibilities).

But you don't seem to know what rehabilitation is, nor the role of the police in its execution, i.e. none...

43 minutes ago, drumbo said:

When the cops interact with a suspect there is the possibility where they do not kill him or injure him greatly, and instead book him into the system and perhaps once he is in the system he would be exposed to resources which could rehabilitate him. Therefore since the interaction between the police and the suspect increases the likelihood that the suspect gets exposed to rehabilitation there is a local increase in the suspect's potential to be rehabilitated. I use the word local, because we are talking about a local region of possibilities where the suspect has already interacted with the police and rolled the dice on getting killed or injured which totally eliminate the potential for rehabilitation. On the other hand, if the suspect interacts with a social worker the probability that the suspect is killed or injured is greatly diminished, and the suspect can be exposed to resources for rehabilitation just as they were before. Now with the social worker we have attained a higher potential for rehabilitation than we did in the case where we sent the cops, because we maximized the potential within a global set of possibilities rather than a constrained set where we always send the cops. This is why I asked you if you understand the concept of optimization, you don't seem to. That is why I claim that the potential for an individual suspect to be rehabilitated decreases when they are subject to a risky encounter with law enforcement, since their global potential to be rehabilitated decreases even if it locally increases within the constrained possibilities of the events where an interaction with the police occur.

Now you're just talking bollox...

Look, a cops interactions with a civilian has to start with respect (just like any other civil interaction); being a cop is not a get out of jail free card, this isn't monopoly...

[drumbo]

24 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

But you don't seem to know what rehabilitation is, nor the role of the police in its execution, i.e. none...

The police do not perform rehabilitation, but if their interaction with the suspect occurs prior to the suspect receiving said rehabilitation then receiving that rehabilitation is conditional upon a risky encounter with the police! That is why Americans are talking about sending social workers rather than police to certain domestic calls. I feel like I'm interacting with people who have zero sense of logical deduction here, it's so frustrating.

26 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Now you're just talking bollox

Just because you cannot understand it does not mean it's "bollox". Here, let me bring out the big crayons and construction paper, as iNow likes to say. Let's say you can either spin a dreidel with 4 sides numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, or you can roll a 6-sided die instead numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. The number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Mmmm yummy marshmallows! Now I tell you if you wait one hour, you can instead roll the six-sided die or an eight-sided die numbered 1-8. Again, the number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Now if you decide to eat your marshmallows immediately, you can maximize your potential locally by choosing to roll the die rather than spin the dreidel. However, you have made a choice that decreased your global potential to each as many marshmallows as possible, since if you had waited one hour you could have rolled the eight-sided die instead.

[dimreepr]

18 minutes ago, drumbo said:

The police do not perform rehabilitation, but if their interaction with the suspect occurs prior to the suspect receiving said rehabilitation then receiving that rehabilitation is conditional upon a risky encounter with the police! That is why Americans are talking about sending social workers rather than police to certain domestic calls. I feel like I'm interacting with people who have zero sense of logical deduction here, it's so frustrating.

Just because you cannot understand it does not mean it's "bollox". Here, let me bring out the big crayons and construction paper, as iNow likes to say. Let's say you can either spin a dreidel with 4 sides numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, or you can roll a 6-sided die instead numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. The number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Mmmm yummy marshmallows! Now I tell you if you wait one hour, you can instead roll the six-sided die or an eight-sided die numbered 1-8. Again, the number it lands on determines the number of marshmallows you can eat. Now if you decide to eat your marshmallows immediately, you can maximize your potential locally by choosing to roll the die rather than spin the dreidel. However, you have made a choice that decreased your global potential to each as many marshmallows as possible, since if you had waited one hour you could have rolled the eight-sided die instead.

What goalposts are you aiming at?

[drumbo]

5 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What goalposts are you aiming at?

Lol muh GoAlPoStS

I originally claimed that it was not possible to maximize both the protection of property and the potential to rehabilitate criminals, and that we needed to decide what should be prioritized in order make a logical and coherent policy. We can only maximize one or the other within a constraint where we do not allow the potential to rehabilitate criminals to fall below a certain level, or where we do not allow the protection of property to fall below a certain level. We need to choose where our priorities lie. It is not a fAlSe DiChOtOmY if you have an ounce of deductive reasoning and the aptitude to follow the arguments I gave.

[iNow]

1 hour ago, drumbo said:

I originally claimed that it was not possible to maximize both the protection of property and the potential to rehabilitate criminals, and that we needed to decide what should be prioritized in order make a logical and coherent policy. We can only maximize one or the other within a constraint where we do not allow the potential to rehabilitate criminals to fall below a certain level, or where we do not allow the protection of property to fall below a certain level.

But this is untrue and remains a false dichotomy regardless of how frequently you reintroduce it

[drumbo]

29 minutes ago, iNow said:

But this is untrue and remains a false dichotomy regardless of how frequently you reintroduce it

Do you care to point out where my analysis is incorrect? If you are unable to understand the analysis then it does not mean it is incorrect, it only implies that you lack the aptitude to understand it.

[Strange]

The Terrible Sea Lion: http://wondermark.com/1k62/

[drumbo]

11 minutes ago, Strange said:

The Terrible Sea Lion: http://wondermark.com/1k62/

Poor analogy, I am not figuratively following anyone into their house. This is a space to debate, and if you cannot do that properly then you are free to leave and I will not "follow you".

[iNow]

Wow. 10 neg reps all at once, exactly when drumbo then replied. Must have hit a nerve 

Edited August 8, 2020 by iNow

[Area54]

5 hours ago, drumbo said:

I originally claimed that it was not possible to maximize both the protection of property and the potential to rehabilitate criminals,

Could you review the justification for this claim please. It appears valid if, and only if, one has a closed system with two goals, yet that is not a sound model of the real world. Your argument then becomes analgous with the Creationists who assert evolution is prevented by the second law of thermodynamics. Perhaps I am missing something and you can point me to it.

[drumbo]

7 minutes ago, Area54 said:

It appears valid if, and only if, one has a closed system with two goals, yet that is not a sound model of the real world.

Completely nonsensical. There is no model here, just an abject truth that maximizing the protection of property almost certainly requires the deployment of more police officers than we would like if we wanted to minimize harmful interactions with suspects.

52 minutes ago, iNow said:

Wow. 10 neg reps all at once, exactly when drumbo then replied. Must have hit a nerve 

I was extremely patient with you, giving you apparently at least 10 replies to explain your position. You have failed to do so, and I made my judgement.

Edited August 8, 2020 by drumbo

[Area54]

2 minutes ago, drumbo said:

There is no model here, just an abject truth that maximizing the protection of property almost certainly requires the deployment of more police officers than we would like if we wanted to minimize harmful interactions with suspects.

If you genuinely have no model then you are just farting into the wind and your comments may be disregarded. However, i think you do have a model, it is just over-simplified. I suggest you reflect on the meaning of the word 'model' in a scientific context. You should then, readily, recognise that you do have a model.

I say your model is over-simplified since you fail to consider, for example, having police deployed with 'social workers', or psychologists. Or having improved physical safeguards for the protection of property. Or adjusting the training of officers to reduce or eliminate harmful interactions. And those are just some of the options that are ignored in your simple model, or, as you call it, your "abject truth".

So, I should like to understand on what basis you reject these (and similar) examples. Unless you are able to do so your argument is refuted.