Two questions:

1. Can you point me to where NPR said “snitches get stitches”

2. Which police departments precisely were defunded?

I watched this narrative unfold in the wake of George Floyd in my beloved Minneapolis. While I can't answer the question directly, I can relay the message that some law enforcement relatives told me:

While defunding never materialized, mass quitting and a huge change in enforcement away from areas that, well, might result in another George Floyd incident have produced effectively the same thing as a big old defund. There is less presence and less inclination to pursue calls in areas of trouble.

My opinion is this is kind of a temper tantrum on the part of some of these folks I spoke to, but the reality is that many of them fear getting caught up in sweeping reforms and made an example of.

Make no mistake those reforms are probably coming, esp after the federal report on the Minneapolis policing, but I don't think it will involve less money.

Makes sense. The thing to remember about members of law enforcement is that they never lie about things to improve their public standing, so it's logical to take that message from these relatives you mention at face value.

I don’t believe there’s any proof of any police departments in the US being defunded.

It’s likely that one or two had their budgets drop by a marginal percent for a single year only and then got a substantial increase in budget the next year.

The murder clearance rate has been in the toilet for decades, maybe forever, everywhere in the US.

It’s also likely that you knew this already!

> As discussed throughout, the above results provide no evidence that greater police budgets lead to increases in homicide clearance rates (or equivalently, lower police budgets decrease homicide clearance rates).

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jels.12325

Let's set it to zero then, save billions.

Do you operate using anything besides fallacies?

> no evidence that greater police budgets lead to increases in homicide clearance rates (or equivalently, lower police budgets decrease homicide clearance rates).

No evidence. The experts are clear, police funding doesn't have anything to do with murder clearance rates. I mean that's super counter intuitive, I'd think the more interviews you do, the more forensics you have done, the more likely you are to solve the case but apparently not. I guess all that stuff was just a waste of time, or the experts are wrong once again.

Yeah, if we defund the police and I get burgled who am I supposed to call when I want someone to show up eight hours later, shoot my dog, and tell me there’s nothing they can do to help?

(Apologies for not just linking to the evergreen tweet, couldn’t find it)

Let me guess, they live in a major city led mostly by people who love NPR?

I'd love to see you try and use valid rhetoric to make a point.

I'll let one of you go first.

You have used logical fallacies such as an 'all or nothing' (if adding more money doesn't make it better, then removing all the money can't make it worse -- as if there is there is nothing in the middle) which sound persuasive but crumble when pointed out.

What you used just previous to my above post, about cities with people run by people who like NPR, is "cum hoc ergo propter hoc" which basically means 'because something exists with something else they must cause each other'. In other words 'because a city is run by a political party, that is the reason that cities have the problem X'. There may be a causation, but you haven't produced any persuasive elements to have anyone make that conclusion. Insinuation is not an argument.

When using fallacies as your rhetorical devices people will call you on it, and the response is not 'no you first', because you are being tasked with actually making the point you were trying to make but without using invalid strategies.

Unless of course you are not able to, in which case 'no you first' is simply a concession.

Can you actually make an argument? Being dismissive and insinuating things might be substantive to you, but I prefer if you actually say what you mean and back it with evidence.

The answer, clearly, is because of NPR.