Yahoo News’ Mike Bebernes is asking the question, and, while he gives some interesting reasons why there has been little reform, he misses the biggest one
Has the opportunity for police reform already closed?
The police killing of George Floyd in late May ignited a nationwide protest movement that saw thousands fill the streets in cities across the country. The goals of the Black Lives Matter movement cover many areas of American society, but the most immediate demand is reforming the role of police in communities.
Floyd’s death, along with the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, helped draw public attention to reform measures that activists have been promoting for years. At the height of the protests, it appeared that lawmakers in many places were ready to make substantial changes. New York City and Los Angeles announced they would reduce police budgets. The use of police chokeholds was banned in several states. The House of Representatives passed a sweeping police reform bill. The most substantial move was taken in Minneapolis, where the City Council voted to disband the police entirely.
As time has passed, though, the momentum for reform appears to have waned, and many of those planned changes have stalled. New York lawmakers have been accused of using “funny mathâ€Â to hide the fact that police funding wasn’t really being cut. The House bill died in the Republican-led Senate. Minneapolis’s plan to dismantle its police force has gotten bogged down in bureaucratic red tape.
The shooting of Jacob Blake on Aug. 23 offered, for many, a stark reminder of how little has changed about policing in the U.S., despite the massive social movement that was ignited just a few months earlier.
All the various hurdles and delays that have impeded police reform efforts in recent months may mean the country has missed its chance to truly reimagine the role of police in society. After spiking in June, support for Black Lives Matter has gradually trended downward and public opinion of the police has improved, polls show. The issue has also become increasingly politicized, with Republicans holding up reform bills at the national and local levels.
Damned hurdles and delays! How dare people discuss this stuff! Just Make It Happen! Anyhow, Bebernes offers what the pessimist and optimist views of this are, rather than really delving into why, things like
- Pessimism: the police unions (suddenly, liberals hate unions) standing in the way (they really aren’t, as long as reforms do not endanger police officers, but, darned sure when it comes to defunding them)
- Optimism: Democrats disagree on specifics but share a common belief that change is needed (well, yeah, they want to defund the police, except in their own neighborhoods)
Also optimism
“This will be a fight waged at the local level — a war fought in city council chambers, budget offices, and other modest rooms, led by city officials who feel emboldened by the emergence of the largest protest movement in American history. Those fights rarely make national headlines, but their effects can be more important than the bigger ones.†— Andrew J. Hawkins, Verge
Reforms should occur at the local, county, and state level, not the federal, but, regardless of all Beberness and others he quotes write, the main reason there has been little done, and a lot of backtracking in places like Minneapolis, is because of the riots and threats that started almost immediately. And once you started seeing this violence by BLM/Antifa/leftist white entitled college kids spread around the nation, people tuned out. Does anyone think 100+ nights of violence in Portland helps the call to defund the police, much less basic reforms?
Most people agreed there needed to be some reforms, though they might not agree on the reforms. Now? No one is talking about it except the hardcores, and no one listens to them, not when they are a reason that more police are needed. Not when they’re a reason that federal, county, and state law enforcement has to be brought in to places like Portland, and even the National Guard, because of lots of lawlessness and violence.
Do you think the average U.S. wants the police defunded? Nope. They lost their chance for reform with their Crazy.
It is going to be hard to reform the police when their entire job consists of dealing with trouble makers, drug addicts, domestically violent people, armed thugs, knife wielding morons and the like.
In short even in traffic stops with the day of the internet telling people they don’t have to cooperate with the police and question why they are being pulled over in highly aggressive terms almost every encounter by police these days is a contention FU to the cops by whites, blacks, hispanics, asians and all religions.
I see it on YouTube all the time people filming a police officer trying to give someone a speeding ticket or a running a red light ticket and they are just begging the police to pull them out of the car and beat the snot out of them.
I watched a video last night of a huge black woman cold cock a police officer with a closed fist. Not once, but Twice. She was black. Guess what the office that cold cocked her was a black police officer. I mean he laid this woman out after she nearly laid out a cop that was 6 foot and 200 lbs.
Its on film. Guess what the officer who hit her is on suspension and the man that was cold cocked for literally standing their talking to her is on suspension, while the woman is now suing the city for being knocked out by a police officer.
Sensitivity training? That is too funny. IF any commie actually wants sensitivity training I suggest they go live in Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, China and film their police in action. You know the same ones that lock you in your building and weld the doors shut until you DIE.
This is what our communist brainwashed kids want in America. They have been led to believe that Communism is good. It is not. In China there are 100’s of billionaires, 1000’s of millionaires all living the good life and the rest of the country is in poverty and debt and there every action is monitored and their very thoughts controlled or they simply disappear.
The left wants kumbyeahhh. Instead they will get the real version of Communism. Elwood will live in his estate, the rest of us in high rises standing in line for toilet paper.
Elwood will eat and have a good life. The rest of us not so much. The internet will be frozen. Our phones monitored, our rights abolished.
This is Joe Biden’s America.
I prefer Trumps America where at least you can riot and not be mass murdered, followed home and welded in your home without food and water until you die.
A vote for BIDEN is a vote for COMMUNISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Members of Joe Biden’s staff donated money for the BAIL OF RIOTERS so they could be on the streets the next day contiuing to burn down your city.
Kamala Harris Tweeted for the Rioters to Continue. YOUR VICE PRESIDENT TO BE WANTS TO BURN DOWN AMERICA.
Michele Obama gave a speech with veiled suggestions of encouraging violence.
TWO years ago you voted in a bunch of QUOTE””””””””””M O D E R A T E”””””””””” democrat candidates who then went on to bow to Nancy Pelosi and the far left and do whatever they were told.
JOE BIDEN IS NOT MODERATE he will DO WHAT HE IS TOLD. JOE BIDEN will turn this country communist because that is what democrats want.
Don’t vote for a single democrat this election. You are insane if you do. They will simply do what BLM, Antifa and Cancel tell them to do. You see it in the mayor of portland and Seattle and Chicago. Let your city burn while they defend their own homes and family with YOUR TAX DOLLARS and your police you want to defund.
Who you gonna call when the LEFT and JOE BIDEN defunds the police.
IGNORE WHAT BIDEN SAYS….he will say anything to get elected. Once elected he will become FIDEL CASTRO and tell you Come on Man!!!!!!!! Get with the party. We are suspending the constitution and your right to free speech and fair elections and as AOC wants in her green new deal.
REEDUCATION OF ALL PEOPLE….Seriously its right there in the Green new deal. Communist BRAINWASHING. Thats what the Democrats offer you in 2020.
The city of Philadelphia has been ‘reforming’ the police ever since the elections of Mayor Jim Kenney in 2015 and District Attorney Larry Krasner in 2017. Under Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, total homicides in the City of Brotherly Love was reduced from 331 to 280, and their last year, 2015, saw an unfortunate uptick from the 248 the previous year.
Since these cockamamie reformers have come into office — Mr Krasner and his office are not prosecuting the ‘minor’ offenses — the murder rate has soared to 315, then 353, then 356 last year. This year, 307 people have already been murdered, and at the current pace Philly is looking at 455 people killed.
Of course, Black Lives Don’t Matter in Philly, since the vast majority of both the victims and their killers are black.
Where’s Frank Rizzo when we need him?
Frank Rizzo wasn’t exactly great.
The real model is Rudy Giuliani and Bernard Kerik. They cleaned up New York City by focusing on ‘broken windows’ policing, going after the petty crimes and targeting the apprentice thugs before they became fully fledged criminals. Larry Krasner’s campaign promises, and his action as District Attorney, has been the exact opposite, ignoring the little stuff, and the results of that are written in blood on the streets.
Those that need to be reformed are the black neighborhoods where treating the police like dirt is idolized.