[scarmig]

It seems likely that police have divested from minority communities, which I agree is a genuinely racist outcome.

There are complications, though. In the 90s, leadership figures in minority communities rightly called out under policing as a serious issue that hurt their communities and needed addressing. Nowadays enforcement actions, although increasing overall quality of life and decreasing violence and premature death, are highly politically sensitive, and police in those communities can expect lots of push back and legal actions without the support of political leadership.

It's simple enough to say "well police officers should enforce perfectly," and that would of course be ideal. But in a world where perfect solutions are the enemy of the good, what's the best course of action? There are always tradeoffs, and activists need to recognize them.

[KennyBlanken]

There's a difference between not providing enough patrol coverage and poor response time to calls, not taking reports, not devoting sufficient investigatory resources to reported crimes...

...and stopping people for random pat-downs, pulling people over for the slightest traffic infraction or "smell of pot" and then emptying everyone out of the car because someone acted "suspiciously" and searching the car.

That's what activists and leaders in minority communities are referring to when they talk about under and over policing. You can have a community that is both under and over policed.

The typical pattern is: little focus on enforcement around crimes that affect people's lives, and lots of enforcement on "harming society / law and order" type crimes.

Another example of over-policing: SWAT teams showing up with door-busters and sub machine guns and stun grenades to serve no-knock warrants on suspects with no history of violence, over non-violent drug crimes.

[standardUser]

When so many common, consensual and mostly-harmless activities are criminalized, especially in communities with less resources to keep things in private homes, "perfect enforcement" becomes impossible by design. Instead, law enforcement have a vast catalog of infractions and suspicions they can use to target people at their discretion. Before we can ever hope to have equitable law enforcement, we need to reform this culture of criminalization. And vastly increasing privacy rights, the same ones being gutted by the current Supreme Court, wouldn't hurt either.

[scarmig]

What does enforcement of law look like to you? As in, how do we concretely deploy police resources and use them to improve public welfare?

Is the answer basically "officers only use force against individuals who are actively committing violence against them at that same very moment and otherwise just exist and don't engage with any particular person more or less than any other"?

[samhyde69]

divest is synonymous with defund, no?

[scarmig]

Divest I see as broader than defund, particularly in that it can involve an organization removing non-financial backing (i.e. officers) from some project. But, sure, close enough.