Yglesias takes on what comes next in the "defund" debate that is largely over. One of his most salient points is a larger point about "Black Lives Matter" that is largely ignored by those who focus on the very real issue of police brutality: the absence of prosecution when it comes to crimes against Black people.
It's too early to tell if the current reversal of violent crime numbers is a glitch or a trend, but it's not too early to think about how to craft better police policy that would address either option. One of the most underrated causes of the conservative resurgence from 1970-1990 were public perceptions about crime.
Here's where the Left - especially the Far Left - loses the thread. If you're a self-styled revolutionary who wants to abolish capitalism, you're blind to the fact that most people work hard to provide as comfortable a life for themselves and their family as they can. They want all of that protected. Any perception that crime is spiking will increase their support for people like Trump who blather on about American Carnage.
Defund the Police was always a terrible slogan, because it did not say what it seemed to say, which is police abolition - though there were absolutely those who believed in police abolition. All of that got wrapped up in the idea of getting rid of the police, which I believe led to some of Trump's surprise strong showing among Black and Latino men.
America needs to rethink how we do policing. And we absolutely need a counterweight to police authority. We need an independent panel in the DOJ who can investigate police brutality. District Attorneys are not the right people to do that.
We also need to create the various entities that reform activists wanted: crisis social workers, community based policing, more body cameras.
And we will need to pay police more so that we get better police. I'm not sure why that's complicated, but it is.
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