One of the more subtle ways policing is broken in the US

[lady_*nix]

I had the info available to figure this out, but never made the connections:

https://twitter.com/ava/status/1282066862977646592

TL;DR the cops who police poor Black neighborhoods usually live in richer white suburbs. Their salaries get spent and taxed in those suburbs, but the money comes from poor Black people. Even if every single cop were a "good apple", an expensive police budget would still be siphoning money out of places that need it and into places that don't. Even when it's not directly violent, it's indirectly violent by increasing the wealth and power disparity.

[SciFiFisher]

I didn't really consider that factor. It is also a fact that many cash strapped local governments are using law enforcement as a way to generate operating revenue through fines, tickets, and other enforcement actions that result in the police being a de facto tax collector. This typically impacts low income communities the hardest. One of my favorite examples is a very small town in Oregon who decided to expand the town limits to include a stretch of the interstate highway that ran past them. They hocked the town for a shiny new police interceptor and within 2 years they could afford a second interceptor and the town was no longer bankrupt. And that was splitting the speeding ticket revenue with the state. That was a "feel good" story and no one thought too badly about it because most of the victims were passing by and only got "taxed" once.

I can imagine how I would feel though if I lived in a town where the police were essentially looking for reasons to "tax" me by writing me a ticket for every little infraction.

[SciFiFisher]

I had the info available to figure this out, but never made the connections:

https://twitter.com/ava/status/1282066862977646592

TL;DR the cops who police poor Black neighborhoods usually live in richer white suburbs. Their salaries get spent and taxed in those suburbs, but the money comes from poor Black people. Even if every single cop were a "good apple", an expensive police budget would still be siphoning money out of places that need it and into places that don't. Even when it's not directly violent, it's indirectly violent by increasing the wealth and power disparity.

I know at one time a lot of communities tried to make it mandatory that public service employees such as law enforcement, fire, and etc had to live in the community they served. It was taken to court and the courts said they couldn't do that.

The obvious answer would be to fund police from a national or statewide funding source. And to recruit heavily from the population of the community they serve. Even if it means creating a special recruiting, training, and retention program to create qualifed personnel.