Defund the police
Shutterstock

 

The country experienced a record homicide spike in 2020, with cities like New York and Los Angeles reporting historic year-over-year surges — still well below the record murder rates of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but enough to stoke fears nationwide. Political support for defunding law enforcement has withered in many places, the gains earned during the summer 2020 protests flagging as people worry cities cannot fight surging crime without police.

New York City voters picked Eric Adams, a former police officer and defund critic, in the Democratic mayoral primary in June, while the new president of the Los Angeles civilian oversight panel is an outspoken critic of the defund movement. Supporters in both cities are frustrated by the lack of sustained political support from government institutions, as across the country, defunders are still voicing their demands through demonstrations. 

In Baltimore, defund proponents are embracing a longer play. Over a decade of activism focused on the city’s notorious police force, they’ve learned that effecting lasting change isn’t as simple as a single summer of outrage. Instead, they are pushing for gradual movement on the city budget and the slow toil of working through bureaucracy. These advocates hope to convince both their neighbors and their political representatives that the bold choice is the one that will keep them all safer.

But with the death toll of the city’s gun violence rising, residents in neighborhoods on the front lines of violence are caught between a police department with a record of abuse and the fear that even a marginal cut to funding will lead to chaos and even more violence. Defund leaves people with so many unknowns, making it a tough sell. That’s why [Ray] Kelly, the local face of police reform activism, fussed with those speakers, trying to put people at ease with music before broaching the fraught subject.

— J. Brian Charles in Baltimore Still Thinks It Can Defund the Police

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

49 COMMENTS

    • Indeed. If a jurisdiction is gutting their PD, they had best make sure that their citizens have the ability to take care of business themselves.

      • Lol you should already be prepared. The Governement and or law enforcement have no duty to protect you. You are and always have been on your own.

  2. Let’s be honest with ourselves, are police in fact actually necessary anymore? I’m asking this as a serious question. We have collectively hundreds of millions of firearms in the case of a threat. The same cop/political candidate wailing about a spike in murders would gleefully and with great zeal inhibit a fellow law abiding citizen from obtaining a carry permit and arming themselves in the event of a violent act. The same cops would gleefully pull anyone over on the side of the road and go on a fishing expedition looking for cash or whatever they can grab. The same cops who would with 5 other cops wrestle someone to the ground breaking arms and legs for not wearing a mask and saying that broken limbs are for your own good. I still can’t erase the picture from my mind of the cop in Australia who is choking out a woman for not wearing a mask saying comply, comply, comply. Maybe traditional law enforcement is something that needs a serious look at. Why is that so hard to understand? Where are the good cops? Crickets…. Youtube is filled to the brim with video after video of bad actors who after being caught hide behind their ‘muh qualified immunity’ shtick. I rarely ever agree with the political left on anything, in fact almost never, but on this case, I agree that maybe the days of cops are numbered.

    • Society needs those folks willing to police society. Is our current method of policing the best? But without them you wind up with Seattle.

      Every house I know of has water hoses. We don’t talk about doing away with fire men.

      • “But without them you wind up with Seattle.”

        And look what happened there – What was it, 2 or 3 murders? All while ‘self-policing’…

    • MyPrettyAR15,

      We need a MUCH BETTER and probably smaller police force for the following reasons:

      – We need detectives to investigate and build cases to arrest/prosecute crimes the likes of theft, burglary, embezzlement, fraud, and successful aggravated assaults, rapes, and murders.

      – We need police to to investigate and build cases to arrest/prosecute “powerful entities” such as criminal gangs, wealthy individuals, and large businesses/corporations which can easily overwhelm/overpower a single armed-person or small business.

      – We need police to respond to emergency events in the community–events which one or two armed people cannot handle.

      – We need police to serve arrest warrants.

      Having said all that, we need a serious RE-CALIBERATION of policing mindset to eliminate the many abuses that we often see/hear. And we need police to abandon their entrenched practice of enforcing rules/policies/laws when there are no victims or when those laws violate fundamental, inalienable rights.

      • ‘And we need police to abandon their entrenched practice of enforcing rules/policies/laws when there are no victims or when those laws violate fundamental, inalienable rights.’

        No, we need to eliminate laws when the ‘crimes’ have no victims or that violate fundamental, inalienable rights.

        • there it is. Our overlords have gotten all manner of stupid victimlsss “crimes” on the book,s then ORDERED their BOyzinblue to “enforce” them, with lethal force if necessary.

          SO many non-croms are listed as felonies. I don’t use marijuana but I hve no issue with anyone else using it. Let parents make that choice for their kids. And grown adults for themselves. Just like the insane mandates to get a needle poked into my arm so I can “be safe”. Got news for ya, chumps.. I AM safe, Probalby safer than most who have “taken the poke”.

          Besides ending victimless “crimes” end qualified immunity for cops, and end “asset forfeiture” altogehter, until AFTER the asset has been proven in court to have been either a material art of an illegal operation, or proven to be the fruit of illegal activity. which must no long include dealing in any substances now called “controlled”. That would include things like hydrochloroquin,e ivermectin,

        • Never gonna happen Republicans are just as bad as Democrats with laws in regards to victimless crimes if not worse.

    • The question isn’t ‘Do we still need police?’. The answer to that is absolutely YES.

      These are LEO. They are ‘Law Enforcement Officers’. It would be more effective for EVERYONE to stop looking at the police and start looking at law makers. It is not reasonable to hold those that just enforce the law accountable without ever considering those that MAKE the law to be enforced. Where as we DO have people in all kinds of places in our nations law enforcement that seriously need to be removed, it MUST be recognized that the bigger problem is with the law makers that are voted in and in some cases appointed. Law enforcement DOES have people to answer to but when city, county, state, and federal leadership and prosecutors are corrupt then we get what we have.

      • Nope.
        “Well I’m really not that bad of a guy. I’m just doing my job, it’s the pricks I work for and the laws they pass .”

    • Lets be actually honest based upon reality instead of this made up emotional angst stuff.

      We all know there are good and bad in every group of people with a purpose to serve society at large. Police are no different.

      This thing that police should be held to a higher standard is true, but then when one or some of them act bad there is this tendency to want to crucify the whole lot of them.

      In our society, the same people who question if police are necessary and want to de-fund police claiming to do it in the name of serving society at large are rife with people who are bad people that do bad things and the only thing holding them back, among others, is the law & order represented by the police willing to be the ones who deal with it on the front lines.

      Based upon arrests made in the BLM riots/protests so far, 32% of the “protestors/rioters” arrested were violent felons with outstanding arrest warrants for violent crimes and were fugitives from justice, having skipped bail and escaped prosecution due to very relaxed bail standards as a result of liberal democrat actions. It just so happens the de-fund police movement is infested with liberal democrats basically running the whole movement, so yeah they want lowered bail standards and lighter punishments and want to blame the BLM woes and angst on other things like bad police or guns. That’s the thing about liberal democrats you can always count on, its always someone else that’s the cause of their angst and woes and in today’s today its the police and legal gun owners. So granted there are bad police, and heck even sometimes a bad gun owner, so lets get rid of them – but guess what, the BLM angst and woes and the angst and woes of liberal democrats overall is mostly a result of the extremely bad people in their own ranks who do bad things that provoke responses.

      Police “de-funding” is not a new idea like some people think and its been around for a long time in different forms like, for example, budget cuts and hiring freezes and lowered budget allocations. To date, in every case of police “de-funding in any form, even today’s direct de-funding actions, general crime rates have risen in the areas affected.

      The point is this; There are bad police officers, so lets get rid of them. But remember, if you don’t take out the trash and deal with it then it begins to stink more and attract even more vermin. So trying to eliminate what are essentially the only people, the police, willing to take out and deal the trash we call criminals is a really bad idea.

      • think “officer” giones of Houston, who has terrorised the marginals in that town for a couple decades now. He finally got caught when he took a round from a fellow officer in a raid staged and enabled by HIS outright lies. Been doing it for a long time, thousands of cases are now being reviewed, and his tain has let many go free, I’d guess based on his last “actioin” they are a small farction of those fraudulanetly incarcerated by this one man’s lies.
        Abuseve coppers are far too often protected by their fellows, as NONE of them can easily be held accountable under present laws. END IMMUNITY from prosecution and/or civil action when cops get out of hand. THey KNOW the line.. and CHOOSE to walk on the other side of it. EVERY ONE of the other cops in the raid that neded GOines’carrer HAD to be aware of the obvious fct he was dirty as the manure pit at a dairy farm. Most had worked together as a team” for quite a while. Yet NOT ONE of them blew the whsitle on Goines.

        Thenwe have a decent hed cop like SHeriff Joe in Arizona. His poicies had the crime rates in his county down to record lows for some years. His ideas WORKED. Jail was NOT fun, nor was it a quick turnaround time for the inmates, used to serving a week or two in cushy facilities wathing the TeeVee set and feating on gourmet food… released on bail, plea down at trial, out free on time served. Not so with Joe. His recivisim rate was so far below averages they skewed the numbers. Yet HE has been “cancelled” c=since.. the libruls want to coddle and enable the rats, and Joe stood in the way. So “no mo’ Joe”.

        • Sheriff Joe was hated by the Libertarians Liberals and the Left. They are incapable of supporting the police. You don’t have to believe everything they do and say. But the three L’s can’t bring themselves to support the idea of a governemnt police force.

          Using overwhelming force to stop criminals is not pretty. It never is. But sometimes it is necessary.

  3. I think police are still necessary since not every situation calls for “a pretty AR15”. The police show up as the independent arbiter of a domestic dispute, a house party that went on too long or too loud. Think about all the times that some law enforcement agency does what no one else is willing to do whether it is crime related or some family or traffic issue. Sure there are corrupt LEOs and I have met some, but the vast overwhelming majority are our friends and family members. they just want to get home in one piece at the end of their tour of duty. Punish the bad ones but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

  4. Meh…I’m in the middle of this. My local 5-O is fairly worthless but we need cops to collect $ via speeding tickets. My Meh-he-can neighbors were quite loud over the weekend playing their “music”. Complaints to the po-leece get a 3rd degree response. “Name,address, where do you live,why are you bothering us?” As a result of that attitude & cowardice during BlackLootersMurder rioting I will never call ’em. Anyone have a backhoe?!?

    • Somebody’s got to put the ticket under the wiper blade of my neighbor’s pick up when he fails to move it to the other side of the street at 9:00am Sunday morning. That kind of criminal behavior just cannot be tolerated.

  5. Have we forgotten Joe Biden and Bill Clinton’s “Get tough on crime” and Joe Biden’s ultimate predators comments? 100,000 more cops on the streets, for the express purpose of chasing down black men for serious crimes like firing up a joint.

    Yeah, we could do with downsizing all police departments.

    At the same time, I want to see an end to police departments getting surplus military gear, and high tech crap like facial recognition. Reduce personnel by 5%, cut out all that extraneous expenditures nonsense, give the cops that remain a 5% raise – and get on with business. Hopefully, the 5% of the cops you got rid of were the worst of the racist arseholes who think it’s necessary to chase some black kid down for lighting up.

    • Oooops, I forgot. When you lay off 5% of the police force, you can get rid of 20% of the police cruiser fleet. Put those lardass cops out to walking a beat. Hey, we are giving them a 5% raise, make them earn it!

    • Interesting that you use something that ‘leadership’ said to justify issues with police.

      It isn’t the police….It’s leadership
      You just said so yourself.

      Or are you thinking that Biden was once a police officer?

      We all know that the cops are going to do as they are told by THEIR superiors. They are just like everyone else and do not wish to lose their jobs and be unemployed. The issue isn’t the cops. It’s with people like O’Rourke that want positions of power to be able to tell the cops what to do.

      We see the same thing within the ATF and the FBI.

      • Cops are going to do as they are told because they like what their doing.
        How long would you work at the testicle smashing factory before you guit?

      • This comment is so ignorant I almost had the same stroke that led you to the reduced mental capacity that caused you to think this comment was good.

  6. Most of the real fix needs to happen at the federal level. Civil asset forfeiture needs to go and all federal LEO management hired since day one of Obama needs to be fired, since that is the only way to get rid of the swamp.

  7. Anyone who wants better cops and more responsive police forces knows that defunding is the exact opposite of what should be done. Better cops means better recruiting and better training, both of which costs more money, not less.

    Well, except, of course, in Loony Lefty Land, where spending $3.5 trillion doesn’t actually cost anything because — magic!

    • Yeah…you wanna talk about the money spent in Iraq, started by/under Bush (he’s a Republican in case you didn’t get the two brain cells you have to rub together for this comment)?

  8. Defunding the police may happen due to out-of-control spending and breakdown in society due to a financial collapse. It may happen whether we want it to or not. Prepare accordingly.

  9. I love how everyone instantly becomes a drooling idiot any time this sort of topic comes up.
    It shouldn’t be a question of “Fund the police, yes or no?”
    It should be a question of where that funding is going. Stop buying them tanks and full auto rifles. Stop paying for their court battles (take that our of their pensions) and start paying them to take training courses.

    My local department has a 2 hour course for de-escalation training. If you get a job as a security guard, there’s an 8 hour course.

    • That kinda stuff is exactly why it is so important to focus on leadership. Liberal mayors like Sylvester Turner enabling Chiefs like Art Acevedo are the problem. With conservative leadership in place, he could have been fired in Houston and Florida would never have had to suffer him.

      It’s all in how you vote.

  10. Defunding police has to start with stopping the sharing of the proceeds of crime of the people they arrest. Whole departments focus on going after likely drug dealers(and those they can claim could be drug dealers) for the sole purpose of taking cars, boats, cash, many times without a conviction. The arrestees are supposed to know better than ask for their money back. This was one of the reasons a group of immigrants fought a war to get rid of their overseers back before 1800.
    Giving ANY government agency that much power leads to abuse.

  13. Just let law abiding civilians shoot criminals dead on sight. Leave the dead bodies out for three days for the news cameras to take pictures. And crime will then go away. And there will be no need for this country to have a large prision system.

  14. Defunding the police saves the city money, now if they could just get the peaceful rioters to quit destroying city property.

    • Yeah! And stop all those inbred morons that tried to literally overthrow our government!

      Wait, you didn’t think your comment through, did you?

  15. I’m very comfortable when other cities defunding their police departments. It’s a great country when people have the freedom to do so. Freedom is very messy. Now they can live with the results.

    • No, just disarm the police. Then send in the social workers. There is no reason for the police to have guns. The English did very well when the entire police force never carried guns.

  19. Why are my comments not posted even after hours and hours? There was nothing in them to cause them not to be.

  21. LMAO, I’m sorry, guess I got lost – I thought this was TTAG, where we constantly preach ‘when seconds count, the police are minutes away,’ and ‘I don’t need police to defend myself and my property.’

    Holy shit, the cognitive dissonance you FOWG’s live with must be dizzying.

Comments are closed.