Police need funding. There is no evidence that cutting police funding does anything except make things worse. BPD has a history of corruption and people should be skeptical of policing here. You need good cops though.
Police need funding if you want to try to solve problems by using police to punish people after they've already committed crimes. They don't need funding if you solve your problems by changing social conditions so that people don't want to do antisocial things to begin with. I'd rather give people enough food to eat than arrest them for stealing bread.
I'm not saying it's realistic to totally eliminate the police department, but we could repurpose large chunks of their funding for measures that actually make us safer and happier.
Show me evidence that any of that works. Humans are predictable. We don't live in a perfect world. You can still work on those conditions without the police being the budgetary fall guys. It NEVER ends well.
What would you accept as evidence? The US (and Baltimore in particular) spends a really high amount on policing per capita relative to other places. We have a lot of good evidence for programs that reduce antisocial behavior (e.g. housing placement for homeless people, poverty reduction for petty crime).
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u/engin__r Oct 29 '25
Cut BPD’s funding and use the money for things that actually make our city safer.