[satellites]

“A survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police.”

“By far” means “10% more” in the actual graph the author cites, which comes from an online poll that had 1500 respondents. I’m no statistician but that seems like a small difference and small sample size to be the key piece of “data” here.

This article follows most tropes of behavioral science blog articles: broad moral statements taking a vaguely contrarian stance, analogies comparing humans to random animals (gazelles?), and “gotcha” survey data with questionable sample sizes. I find it difficult to take it seriously.

[jihadjihad]

It's a pretty typical result from social science. 1500 respondents is a fairly large sample size--I've seen papers where you're talking closer to ~50.

Going from 22% to 32% is a 10 percentage point difference, but a 46% increase. I agree that the conclusion at the end is flimsy, and there are undoubtedly confounding factors--but the statistics are pretty well in line with what you'd expect in social sciences.

[mistercow]

Yeah, but think about the error bars there. You’re looking at an MoE of around 3% for the entire sample, and more for these subgroups. The real difference could be just a couple percentage points and still be within the confidence interval.

[jihadjihad]

I completely agree--many times, papers from the social sciences appear as exercises in "wringing signal from a sea of noise." They're not always successful or convincing! But often there is wide latitude because of the inherent noise...don't ask me why! I got out of economics for a reason!

[esrauch]

Also notably the rural/urban divide is even wider, so even taking the data at face value it appears that it also be justified that high earners are more likely to be in urban areas, and that high-earner rural residents are more likely to spend time in urban areas, and that people more exposed to multiculturalism are more likely to espouse concern with policing.

[mc32]

If they they have a good confidence, there error could be around 3% up or down. So that's not bad.

And, yes, I think Defund the Police was primarily espoused and driven by people who would be little affected by the outcome of such performative stances.

The people who live in the places where the police got defunded suffer greater crime rates and disorder --which is why we see people at the grass roots asking for more police.

It's known that lawless places will suffer from lawlessness and then engender vigilantism --this is evident is most war-torn places where 'warlords'/gansters control neighborhoods.

[michaelmrose]

Few cities reduced police budgets at all certainly nobody in any meaningful way defunded the police and even cities short of officers have funding for additional officers they lack people far more than money.

Also in case you didn't notice police don't do much to protect normal folks from crime. They'll be there 15 minutes after whatever happened happened to file a report if they aren't too busy screwing with law abiding citizens.

Personally Ive seen little help when needed and plenty of harassment.

[mc32]

The movement not only affected budgets but also affected morale. DAs would not press charges, so they didn’t bother with lesser crimes.

Yes, the police harass, sometimes I get harassed but that presence is what puts a lid on crime.

I’ll put up with some harassment in exchange for fewer criminals running free.

We can seek redress from the police, we cannot seek redress from criminals.

The reason we need police is the same reason we can’t have nice things: people can’t self govern in a harmonious way.

[less_less]

> Yes, the police harass, sometimes I get harassed but that presence is what puts a lid on crime.

> I’ll put up with some harassment in exchange for fewer criminals running free.

Maybe you have a specific harassment:imprisonment ratio in mind, but to me this just says "bring on the police state".

> We can seek redress from the police, we cannot seek redress from criminals.

You can seek it, unless of course they kill you. But will you actually find it? Police departments are famous for investigating themselves and finding that they did nothing wrong.

[mc32]

Compared to the alternative? I'll take the lesser of the two evils.

[michaelmrose]

I was harassed repeatedly made to stand with my hands on a patrol car for 15 minutes in case I had developed a record since last week when I was just walking home from my job at night. I was ultimately falsely arrested for using bad language whilst walking away, prepared a reasonable defense then a excellent appeal both of which were ignored. They showed it as dropped then re-raised it when I had left town.

If I was willing to spend 30 days in jail lose thousands of dollars income and spend thousands more I might be able to win it when appeals took it out of that fucked up state.

Realistically I can't do anything about it.

On the other hand they didnt really investigate the 2 attempts to burn down my apartment building attempted homicide x 50 x 2 nor arrest the ex co-worker who tried to murder one of his fellows in a walmart parking lot.

I was left to organize a neighborhood patrol of the premises in the one case and get a psycho to chase me to get him off a guy who can only run by pressing x.

We live in the worst of all possible worlds where police are available to shoot teens but aren't available to do their jobs. If you wonder why you can't hire enough cops wonder no more. It's not liberals pissing in their cornflakes a lot of good folks don't choose to be a part of an obvious shit show.

In closing it's been said those who would give up essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither but more importantly they get neither. A police state isn't a particularly safe place.

[hooverd]

What are you going to do about a police work stoppage, call the police?

[_cenw]

Also, it's not quite clear how much of a material difference exists between the middle answer and the defund the police answer. The slogan has some optics issues, but diverting funds from overfunded surplus military gear filled police departments to social support networks is not likely to be controversial with the middle group either.

[lscdlscd]

Exactly. Mostly nonsense, and anything true in it was already obvious.