[mrguyorama]

American police are funded locally, often with large budgets, and would happily turn away that extra federal funding and associated accountability. Even more, lots and lots of conservative politicians and talking heads would make a point about how they fought off "big government" and "democrat" control of their local police departments, and you'd be hard pressed to convince people not already pissed at their local PD that such a situation is a bad one.

[jrochkind1]

If they had to turn away things like surplus military gear and federal dollars for training in military tactics because they weren't willing to take the accountability measures -- that'd be progress.

[YeBanKo]

Police really rarely needs military surplus gear anyway. Neither do they need training in the military tactics, unless they want to treat policing streets as a battlefield, which is very concerning if they do.

[jrochkind1]

Oh, they do, pretty widely, and it is concerning.

https://theintercept.com/2014/08/14/militarization-u-s-polic...

[tcmart14]

To add on. Even outside the scope of funding. There is an interesting trend in local politicians elected to city council, mayor, etc and having backing of the police union. Any serious action that would cause a culture change that is unwanted by the police could result in loosing the backing of the police union, hence, a good chance of loosing an election. So change on the local level is unlikely to happen.

[lotsofpulp]

It is not a recent trend, it is simply a consequence of sufficient voters not able or willing to do sufficient due diligence and voting in the election.

100% of the cops and their family and friends will be voting for the politician that favors them. Will sufficient local voters not associated with cops also vote? Probably not.

Few people want to go to work their jobs, raise their kid, and then also dig into the city budget to find out which politician is proposing increasing retirement benefits for cops that will cause massive increases in spending 30 years down the road.

In many ways, our “democracy” relies on a certain amount of people doing the “right thing”, even though they could get away with worse. Too many people try to get away with stuff, and it will start to unravel.

[mistrial9]

but, since covid times, many small towns are legitimately in financial distress.. especially around pension commitments.. its a slow-moving train wreck