Thanos Thanos:
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
Thanos Thanos:
This is where the concept of scaling back police duties is going overboard. DUI is a dangerous crime that kills people. It's not like taking the cops off of jaywalking busts.
Pulling the DUI over, yes it's dangerous and should be done by a cop.
But a guy parked in a lot who looks drunk? No. You could just have a bylaw guy and a tow truck. Administer the breath test, and call a cop to arrest him if it's warranted. But two cars, with guns and tasers? Overreaction.
Read the essay Boots posted. That ex-bastard makes it pretty clear that what he did day to day did not require an armed officer to respond.
I did. I wasn't surprised. I just don't see that rushing willy-nilly into a mass "decriminalization" of certain activities is that much of a solution.
No one is calling for that. Laws won't change, only who responds to 911 calls.
For Example:
The Canadian Police Performance Metrics Framework: Standardized indicators for police services in CanadaIf Police in Saskatchewan are being called out for non-criminal vehicle traffic (first indicator) why are we wasting their time? Can that be handled by another department? What about "Other matters"? Can a police liaison officer not be better?
If statistics show that police are attending X% of mental health calls (for which they are not trained) and Y% of domestic disputes (for which they are not trained); . . .then those percentages of funding should be moved away from the police to actual people trained in those fields, and they should be dispatched instead of police. You know, the things like mental health and homelessness that we've been defunding in the name of austerity for decades.
That's all 'defunding' means.
Thanos Thanos:
Take traffic law enforcement as one of them. What happens if you remove the cops from the roads? Libertarians and anarchists alike believe that freedom, lovely freedom! spontaneously erupts and everyone is happy. The problem with both libertarians and anarchists is their deluded view that there are only good people in the world, and there is not a negative to be spotted from eliminating the state from certain fields and sectors. They are, of course, completely wrong because in that 100% of humanity who are given unchecked freedom there's at least 30% of the mob who are selfish bastards or outright sociopaths who are going to take that freedom and use it to cause utter mayhem and get other people hurt and killed.
...
We already have allowed Sheriffs in Alberta to move away from only being part of the court system, and transitioned them to handle non-criminal activities like traffic and highway patrol. Have the roads erupted in anarchy like you predict?
Will there be chaos if a bylaw officer attends the scene of a traffic accident to take people's names and birth dates and a couple pictures instead of a city cop?
Let's use resources properly, and at the same time turn the police back into protectors of society, not a military force to act against it.
Thanos Thanos:
Reform the police. Demilitarize them as well, both in terms of some of the equipment they have and their "everyone not in blue is our enemy" attitude. Hire legions of social workers and negotiators to show up with the cops at tense situations. Decriminalize ALL drugs so that unless they've committed a robbery or violence the drug user never gets sent to prison. And a bunch of other things too just to ratchet down the tension by a few dozen degrees. But take the police out of the field altogether? Never. It would be chaos and anyone who knows their history absolutely knows that from chaos only the worst things happen and only the very worst people emerge triumphant.
Again, no one is saying take the police out of the picture. Just take the job they do, and divide it among the properly trained professionals. Ones who can de-escalate a wellness check so that the person in mental distress doesn't get 8 rounds to the chest, or jump off a balcony.
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