User talk:Bearslovefriends

Note on social services
I think your contributions on the 'defund the police' movement provide important information about its potential effects on social structures and institutions. When reading about Wilt's article, I was particularly interested in the call for a shift of funds from the police to social services. Another author that expands on the necessity for such a shift, from a different perspective, is Ian Cummins who in his article "‘Defunding the police’: A consideration of the implications for the police role in mental health work", discusses not only the need for more resources in mental health work but also the challenges that arise when police act as mental health workers, placing vulnerable individuals in a precarious situation by not receiving the adequate help they need. Marislatw (talk) 16:36, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

'Police abolition movement': in Canada
Thank you so much for your much-needed contributions on 'abolish and defund the police' in Canada! The statistics and numbers we see are often from the US and its refreshing for a contributor to point out that there is also a similar problem of police brutality, over-militarization and over-funding. I would suggest to perhaps add the new numbers of the SPVM budget for the city of Tiohtiake-Mooniyang/Montréal for 2023 - just to illustrate the disparity between the public's desire to defund the police versus the government's ironclad policies in continuously upping their budget to the detriment of other essential services.

Indeed, the SPVM's budget for 2023 is 787 million dollars, which is an increase of 8.7% or 63 million from 2022. [Timothy Sargeant, "Montreal police department's 2023 budget is excessive, critics say" (November 30, 2022), online: Global News .]

Furthermore, I was thinking that it could potentially be pertinent to highlight that the arrival of the new SPVM chief Fady Dagher, who is famous for his 'community policing' initiatives, has been widely criticized by abolitionists as a smokescreen for concealing the fact that more funds are channeled to the police. Ted Rutland, in particular, has asserted that these initiatives are likely to further marginalize vulnerable members of the public through increased interactions with armed officers who - as Marislatw has so eloquently put - are not equipped to respond to their needs. His scholarship contends that ultimately, these policies that are being praised as progressive and innovative have the potential to hinder community organizing and resistance through the logic of 'counter-insurgency', which includes compromising and collaborating with the very oppressive institution that marginalized communities seek to dismantle. [Ted Rutland, "From promise to counter-insurgency: Variations in the racial politics of community policing in Montreal" (January 202), 118 Geoforum 180, online: .]

Overall, thank you again for your invaluable contributions to this topic! Daisiesandroses (talk) 03:35, 24 March 2023 (UTC)