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It's disappointing to see so many of my fellow libertarians deriding and blithely dismissing calls to defund or abolish a government entity (an inherently coercive one with a well-documented history of abuse) because the very idea is crazy, or extremist, or unrealistic.
I mean, if any group should be able to understand the value of pushing an extreme position, even if you suspect it's never going to happen, in order to move the Overton window and make room for other ideas, it should be us.

(To be clear, I'm not suggesting that activists ...
... calling for abolition or defunding are disingenuous. Only that libertarians who mock those demands for being out of touch or nuts or unfeasible might reflect on how our own ideas have been characterized over the years -- including many that are now mainstream.)
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Radley Balko
@radleybalko
While we're talking statues, let's talk about Edward Carmack, the Nashville statue torn down by protesters.

Weirdly, Carmack's statute is one of the most prominently placed at the Tennessee capitol. It's weird because he only served a single term in the state legislature.
He also served 4 years in the U.S. House of Reps., and one term in the U.S. Senate. Not exactly a lifelong public servant.

For most of the rest of his adult life he was a newspaper editor, where he pushed alcohol prohibition, published defamatory articles about his rivals ...
... and -- oh yeah -- defended lynching.

In 1892, a white grocer in Memphis convinced some cops to arrest the black owners of a competing grocery on trumped-up charges. Black people in the area came to defend the grocery. A riot ensued. A white mob then drug the three ...
Read 13 tweets
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Radley Balko
@radleybalko
Just finished updating the ongoing list of studies, surveys, and reports of racial bias in the criminal justice system. Added 27 new studies. 24 found some sort of racial bias, 2 did not, and 1, oddly, could go in either category.

washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/…
One of the more compelling/horrifying additions was a meta-analysis of other studies which found that in nearly all aspects of the system, not only are blacks treated worse than whites, but the darker a black person’s skin color, the worse they’re treated, almost on a continuum.
Another takeaway: Study after study after study finds that cops are much more likely to search black people than white people, even though the same studies find that searches of white people are more likely to turn up contraband.
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Radley Balko
@radleybalko
Re: “defund”

Seeing a lot of mockery and ridicule of this from people who until now have said next to nothing about police abuse. We’ve had decades of George Floyds and Breonna Taylors, and little has changed. The police aren’t going to be abolished. So maybe, just maybe, . . .
... the slogan that activists have adopted to demonstrate urgency isn’t the most important thing to be focusing on right now.

Try to look past it to the actual policies they’re proposing: Stop relying on police for mental health crises. Demilitarize. Recruit better people.

...
End qualified immunity. Spend more on intervention and mental health treatment, less on surveillance and war gear. Spend more on oversight and accountability. Pay brutality settlements from police pension finds instead of public money. Stop kowtowing to cop unions.

...
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