Well, because the below is an incendiary and mostly false statement. Additionally, just because the police in your community are perfect doesn't mean real problems don't exist elsewhere.
"when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police"
Seattle council member on looting of stores: "Colleagues, I hope we’re all saying we understand why that destruction happened and we understand why people are upset", and "I don't want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told looting doesn't solve anything."
And didn't Don Lemon, the warrior of our justice warriors publicly called democrats to stop rioting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp7oPgIwpZ8? To be fair, being silent does not mean supporting rioting. I guess that the Portland government letting "protesters" destruct federal court building for 5 months is not condoning either. But hey, it is the righteous people who told us "silence is violence, not me.
> because the police in your community are perfect doesn't mean real problems don't exist elsewhere.
Of course not. But following the same logic, we should "abolish" or "dismantle" police for a few bad apples?
I appreciate this discussion and your viewpoint, but I frankly fail to see your point.
What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.
On that, as an aside... I will say that as black-belt in Aikido, I remain flabbergasted that police officers are not taught simple techniques to subdue or disable people/threats without resorting to deadly force.
To your original post I will also say that owning a gun does not make you and your family impervious to crime! You cannot protect your family with a gun, it doesn't give your family a bullet proof shield. On the contrary you will likely escalate a situation.
> What is being said is that the police shouldn't be the instance to handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling, or social working. We're talking about shifting funds to those and let police do what they have been trained for.
I wish that's the discussion, but I failed to see that's what actually happened. I'm aware that many people argue that "defund police" means allocating fund for better use, but it sounds revisionism. The word "defund" means stop funding, simple and clear. BLM/ANTIFA's demand is clear too: abolish police. The word "abolish" does not mean restructuring, nor does it mean improving. The Minneapolis council woman was specifically asked for her view about "dismantling police", and I don't see how the word "dismantling" can be interpreted as routing fund to a better org.
So, no, the left populists did ask for reallocating funds to "handle incidents where what is really needed is counseling". They were asking for dismantling police. People may take "defund" as "reallocate fund", but that's interpretation that is not supported by facts.
What side? I was simply stating the demand by the BLM protesters in Washington DC and in NYC, as well as the demand by the leadership of BLM movement. There are multiple videos, pictures, and NYT/WaPo OpEd that showed such demand.
You know that the aphorism is "a few bad apples spoils the bunch", right? The underlying metaphor is that you have to get rid of the entire group because the infection has spread to all of them even if it's not immediately visible from the outside.
"when politicians condoned publicly looting and robbery and violence and abolishing police"