A long read but some clear insights into how policing came to be what it is today. “Johnson’s Great Society essentially ended when he asked Congress to pass the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which had the effect of diverting money from social programs to policing. This magazine called it “a piece of demagoguery devised out of malevolence and enacted in hysteria.” So “defund the police” is call to return to the day when America was great – when it valued social programs over punishment and control.
