Written By: Anton Sawyer
Nothing irritates me more than when a topic requires nuance but is met with nothing but a knee-jerk reaction. When it comes to the Democratic National Committee and their “defund the police” regime, that is exactly what has happened.
The entire topic of police brutality, whether it’s defunding or “re-funding” of the police, has caused two distinct camps that have further split the already divided nation. What everyone seems to forget is that each slice of the police accountability pie are touchy subjects that need examining from a plethora of different perspectives. The perspective today is how ham-fisted some of the liberal legislation is in various states across America when it comes to their local law enforcement, and how when the going gets tough, the Dems cower and get going in their pants.
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I have covered police brutality and the different responses brought about from a number of different perspectives previously. I’ve looked at how the police officer’s rights need to either be abolished or heavily modified because it places law enforcement above the law. I’ve also looked at how the LGBTQ community has taken on some of the injustices perpetrated by the boys in blue over decades. There are others, and what they all have in common is this: law enforcement in America is not held anywhere near the same level of accountability as those whose lives they’ve sworn to “protect.”
In every article, I illustrate that though law enforcement does have a tougher job when it comes to life and death responsibilities, they always go too far. These police are enabled by loopholes, the use of which has become so proliferate that you can be a cop and literally shoot a man in the neck while he’s handcuffed and detained by two other officers in your PD’s holding department and not get in any trouble. But as any good cop knows, everything falls apart for the enemy once the enemy starts backing down.
Enter the DNC.
I’m one of those people who looks at reality and knows that law enforcement is necessary to any civilized society. I don’t get the concept of anarchy AT ALL. Literally, in every historical event where there was a vacuum brought about by a lack of government or the police, it ends up with the most extreme taking over the role. The most recent examples I could use would be ISIS in the 2010s, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, 2021. To those who support a complete defunding of the police without an incredible backup plan, please learn 21st-century American-Middle Eastern history. In an attempt to show their “moral superiority” when it comes to civil rights, the DNC jumped on the defund the police bandwagon and started putting the pieces into place across America to either remove or massively harm, every police department in the country within realistic capabilities. With certain crime statistics showing an increase in crime across the nation—along with tensions raising over COVID and inflation—a public relations campaign led by the GOP started a backlash to defunding the police ideology. So far, a combination of that PR and the DNC not doing themselves any favors has allowed the conservative talking points to be incredibly effective.
A 2021 ballot proposal in Minnesota to remove the police department and replace it with some ambiguous new agency has been met with both republican and judicial ire, and for good reason. Because of how vaguely the proposal was written, it ended up being stricken down in a court of law ... a mere five hours before it was scheduled to be sent to the presses. “The court finds that the current ballot language is vague, ambiguous and incapable of implementation, and is insufficient to identify the amendment clearly,” Hennepin County District Judge Jamie Anderson wrote. “It is unreasonable and misleading,” she continued. The race was on. The City Council approved the new language 12-1 a few hours later. The rejected language for the proposed amendment to the city charter, approved by the City Council last month, would have asked voters whether to replace the police force with a new but mostly undefined Department of Public Safety that “could include” police officers. It would have removed a mandate that the city have a police department and provide at least minimum staffing levels based on population. The council instead of the mayor would control the new entity. The new language, presented by City Attorney Jim Rowader, asks voters whether to remove the police department requirement from the charter and replace it with a Department of Public Safety, whose specific functions would be determined by the mayor and City Council by ordinance. It includes an explanatory note that would appear on the ballot to provide voters with more information on how the change would be implemented, saying the new department would be led by a commissioner nominated by the mayor and appointed by the council, and that the current minimum funding requirement would be eliminated. The problem lies in the fact that even Rowader isn't sure the revisions would pass muster in a court of law. “We certainly think that we’ve done our absolute best to satisfy all of the concerns she has stated,” Rowader said. He did make it known that there are no assurances. As bad as this rush to the voters with bad legislation in Minnesota is, it pales in comparison to the cowering by the DNC that’s happening in Atlanta, 2021
In 2020, when the protests over the murder of George Floyd were reaching a national peak, a black man named Rayshard Brooks was shot and killed in an Atlanta, Georgia parking lot. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms found herself thrust into the national spotlight, telling the Today show in June 2020 that Brooks “could have been any one of us.” The Democratic establishment in the mostly black city commenced efforts to change the game. That July, the City Council went so far as to debate moving $70 million from its police budget and holding onto it to be used for policies intended to help “reimagine policing.” The ordinance failed. Let’s fast-forward a year to 2021. City officials—who recently increased Atlanta’s police budget by 7%—are inching toward greenlighting what critics describe as a sort of new high temple to cops: an 85-acre public safety training center for police. The facility, expected to cost $90 million and include state-of-the-art explosive testing areas, firing ranges, and a mock city, has powerful backers. Chief among them: The Atlanta Police Foundation, an advocacy group with funding from local businesses and loads of political sway that has suggested the city’s “violent crime surge” underscores the “urgency” of the investment in the training center. In a June overview of the proposed project, the Police Foundation also suggested the center would increase morale and “halt the exodus of officers.”
That last statement is key in every way. One of the greatest myths perpetuated by the Republicans is this idea of a mass exodus of police because of this defunding war cry. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, those worries are unfounded. In 2020, as the overall U.S. economy shed 6% of workers, local police departments lost just under 1% of employees after a decade of steady expansion. That’s about 4,000 people out of nearly half a million employees in municipal police departments and sheriff’s offices nationwide. State and federal law enforcement departments actually saw a slight increase in the number of employees as well.
This debate over the future of law enforcement is going to rage on for the foreseeable future. As long as someone, somewhere can benefit politically from focusing the narrative on absolutes and that only one side can win, it seems that the American people will ultimately end up losing somehow.
Before I end, let’s consider one thing. Though it would be impossible to determine the exact number of crimes the average American unknowingly commits in a day, there was a great book written by Harvard University professor Harvey Silvergate in 2009 called “Three Felonies A Day.” His research showed that America is so over-criminalized that the average citizen commits three felonies a day. This doesn’t even account for all the little crimes that everyone commits on a daily basis; things like not coming to a complete stop at a traffic sign, jaywalking, etc. As much as we could look at the lack of law enforcement accountability when police do commit crimes, it’s also imperative that we look at legislation that is unjust and do what can be done to get them off the books. It’s like a computer operating system: garbage in, garbage out.
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