DEFUND THE POLICE?

It is hard for me to believe that our country has devolved to a point where anyone within it, much less the large groups who are calling for this measure, would even speak such a thought out loud. I guess I’m the fool.

I have read articles giving a variety of views of what defunding the police would actually mean. Early on reporters were saying that the cry to defund the police was a call to add more social workers and less police officers. (Maybe they were as blindsided by this movement as I was?) I think that would be restructuring rather than defunding. On the other end of that spectrum the purported head of Black Lives Matter in Philadelphia (YahN’e Ndgo) can be seen in a video demanding a “complete abolition” of police within five years and calling for the scrapping of military bases abroad as well.

Wikipedia has a long definition of “Defunding The Police” which includes diverting money allocated to police to social services and, in the same definition, it acknowledges factions of the movement are demanding the police be abolished.

I have read that the Minneapolis City Council members have vowed to “dismantle” the police department. Many articles have covered the fact that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to cut money from the NYPD budget and redistribute it to Youth Services and Social Services. Demonstrations across the country are calling to defund the police and, it seems to me, many politicians are listening.

Somebody pinch me! This nightmare has gone on too long!

A point seldom mentioned in the coverage, we wouldn’t want to offend after all, is that the police in the United States have over 7.5 million contacts annually with five or ten questionable incidents. If doctors had numbers this good we’d be talking about the population explosion again! 

I feel that the large number of people calling for actions against the police can be traced back to Joseph Goebbels’ (Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda) saying, “If you repeat a lie enough it becomes the truth.” The lie, in this case, is that the police are systemically racist and target Blacks.

I believe, and have seen, that many people are violent, it is just a nature of the beast. In school there are bullies. On the streets there are muggers. In business there are cheaters, scam artists and armed robbers. As a police officer I have stopped cars going over 60 mph in 30 mph zones. I have taken guns and knives off of people intent on using them to kill or seriously injure others. I have found lost children. I have stopped suicidal people from completing that deed. I have broken up fights. I have caught residential burglars. I have made arrests. I have given warnings. For about 20 years I did these things in the hours when most of my city was sleeping. With police defunded, who will get those calls for help, and will they answer?

Even if the police are not “defunded” there will be less people willing to take a job that requires you to run towards the gunfire, when you will be scrutinized by the national media and possibly charged criminally if deadly force is required. Unless, of course, you (the police officer) are the one to die. Then chances are good the media will ignore the story. How many of the 55 officers who died in the line of duty (29 died feloniously, 26 died in other ways) in 2020 can you name? Don’t feel bad, how could you know? It doesn’t get covered.