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Looks like you have a city manager form of gov't in Charlotte with a weak mayor. All properly progressive! But makes it hard to hold the departments to account. Maybe an angry crowd at the next city council meeting?

Same as it ever was

bsky.app/profile/kend...

They will - if there's an effective Democratic tea party movement next year. The Dems have been more resilient against that than the GOP, but nothing lasts forever.

it's part of the reason that the 'brunchlord' insult has such staying power, directed towards dem-adjacent voters who immediately tune out as long as 'their side' is in power and just assume that therefore everything is working out just fine

It’s the opposite that happens. Local politicians are terrified of police. Police unions are very political and their members vote. Most local politician are terrified to be on the wrong side of that. It’s very hard, or impossible, to overcome in so many local elections.

Even in blue strongholds the median voter is inclined to reward cops failing at their jobs by throwing more money at them and remove anyone who wants to reign them in from office.

Thinking back to how the CBC supported the infamous crime bill of the '90s

Yeah fully agree this is as much a crisis of voters as representatives.

If police dont get to police the way they want, they don't police at all, so Democratic Mayors have to negotiate

It goes beyond Bass, but elected officials absolutely have the ability to dictate rules of engagement for the police forces they oversee yes.

Every time we go after cops for terrible behavior, it seems to blow back against us. Even (or especially) when mayors try to rein them in

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely". Lord Acton and others before him expressed this interesting human trait.

Folks worry about the liberal monolith in academia like it’s existential threat. But there are other monoliths and they’re armed.

The military has a true ethos of service. Cops hate the communities they serve and are taught to use violence to control them. Mayors in big cities cannot control or change their police. I do not think the professional military is going to be with Trump. The fascist boys in blue are 💯 on board.

A lot of the answer is cop “unions” which are really just well-funded cop PACs. Back in 2000 I heard directly from a city council candidate (not LA) that they were limiting what they said about police because we’d all seen the cop machine destroy another candidate two years prior (we had)

This seems to be the point where defunding is necessary. If they answer to nobody then they shouldn't exist.

It would be great to see high level attention to this. The biggest problems are the labor supply monopoly on the policing service, and negative polarization on recruitment. Police unions are a severe problem, and stigma of cops as thugs makes recruiting non thugs a problem.

Yep, and then they went after the person in oversight as well Look at the lengths they went to after Christopher Dorner. They literally shot up a bunch of random civilians. LAPD needs to be started over and LASD disbanded.

Yes indeed - mayor bass, the city council, and the supervisors should answer for this (dependable) debacle

The mayor usually plays more of a civilian oversight than a commander in chief role

Hedging

Police is most major cities have been on strike since 2020. They don’t work but still demand more money. If people don’t like to say defund, maybe we ask what we’re paying these bozos for.

Exactly

Yes, last night it was the county police initiating most of the violence in LA

maybe governors should try "testing the limits of their power" the way the admin is doing constantly. just spitballing here.

Local police are the biggest organized crime gang in America. they don't answer to Mayors (and they have all the weapons)

End police unions

Institutional culture is very real just the same as institutional knowledge. Librarians are hard-core 1A screw the government everywhere. Police, on the whole, beat the shit out of minorities. Unix admins have beards. Some cultures are worse than others.