The “defund the police” slogan gained much recognition in the year 2020, due to the chorus of voices calling for US cities to ‘defund’ or ‘abolish’ the police.
Important reforms have followed George Floyd’s killing in May 2020. Many new laws in states like Texas, include criminal penalties for officers that use forms of neck restraint or chokeholds leading to death or injury unless they can proven necessary.
Within a month of Floyd’s death, Colorado lawmakers approved a ban on chokeholds as part of broader policy reform legislation, Utah lawmakers voted to ban knee-to-neck chokeholds, In Vermont, officers can face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000, the New York legislature passed a bill to effectively ban police use of chokeholds, making it a felony.
Many activists have used Floyd George’s death to pursue the radical agenda of ‘defunding the police’.
It is an extreme idea, with even the majority of democrats decrying its use.
D.J. Jordan and Scott Martin (public officials in Virginia) put it this way during an op-ed for Potomac Local News: ‘Police brutality usually occurs when overly aggressive policing tactics are implemented in dramatic fashion, or with evil intent.’
The current police abuse of power is rare overall if any.
If funding were to be cut, not only would police brutality increase but, homicide rates would go way up.
Police brutality numbers would skyrocket as a result of the lower quality of training provided to cops in training who would eventually as police officers be more likely to rely on their instincts instead of on best practices developed over decades of experience by teachers and trainers.
Statistics show that with an increase in the police budget per capita, the rate of homicides has gone way down.
We need greater and more effective policing, defunding the police will divert us from this essential goal of our society.
Cori Bush, a Democratic congresswoman from Missouri, who began her political career as an anti-police activist in Ferguson has over the years been very vocal about her radical ideas of defunding the police.
However, when it comes to her own safety we can quite clearly see her being somewhat hypocritical.
On a CBSN interview (August 2021), she was questioned regarding her paying over $70,000 for her private security team while continuing to push for reforms to cut funding for police departments.
Here’s a brief summary of the question and her response:
Vladimir Duthiers (anchor): Campaign records show that you spent roughly $70,000 on private security and some critics say that move is hypocritical. What's your response to those critics?
Bush: They would rather I die? You would rather me die? Is that what you want to see?
You want to see me die? I have private security because they, the white supremacist racist narrative that they drive into this country.
So suck it up and defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets because we're trying to save lives.
Throughout the interview, she basically argues that she pays for security to protect her life with the money of American taxpayers because she has ‘work’ to do, and that she needs them in order to continue working toward achieving her radical goal of defunding the police.
Where her argument starts to make break down and make less sense is her consideration that she is one of the few that truly require security to protect their lives and that the rest of the country, majority of which can’t afford to pay $70,000 for a security team, should not even have the police to rely on for safety and order.
The congresswoman might be blind to the idea that not everyone can spend taxpayer dollar on a security team. She also seems to believe that the average person, has no risk to their lives whatsoever. It sure seems like the congresswoman has forgotten what crimes like manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, gang violence, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson are.
The same communities, Cori Bush swears to protect are put in jeopardy by her extreme ideas with increasing homicides and violence in states with lowered police funding.
“A lot of people saying, ‘defund, defund,’ aren’t acknowledging the real threat of the streets,” says Antoine Towers, a physically imposing but exceedingly friendly 42-year-old. (via Common Sense with Bari Weiss - Leighton Woodhouse)
Out of the total 37% of total deaths from firearms in 2019, a mere 0.2% of total firearm deaths were unintentional, undetermined, from legal intervention .
Law enforcement and violence prevention are two sides of the same card.
You may ask what happens if the police disappear?
In Montreal (1969), a police strike resulted in 16 hours of total chaos in which bank robberies, arson, looting and violence were so savage the army and Mounties had to be called in.
In 2017, a police strike in the Brazilian city of Vitoria resulted in such brutal chaos that 1,200 soldiers were sent in to restore order.
Abolishing the police or even defunding them for that matter would lead to nothing but chaos and anarchy.
A very important question that doesn’t get asked enough during interviews is, If the police were to be abolished or defunded, who gets to set the new limits on the power of communities to determine their own public safety priorities?
The police and order, in general, exists for the greater good. The state, as suggested by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, should have an absolute right to enforce what’s best for everyone, rather than one’s particular interest. So to avoid general anarchy, we cede our personal desires.
Any form of social order necessitates a degree of repression.
The slogan “Defunding the police” is nonsensical in every way of its being.
APOLOGIES,
I’ve been gone a while.
Yet again,
I’ve come up short on my promise to deliver this newsletter every week. Just like last time, I apologise for the sudden hiatus and promise to try and be more professional in the future. ( P.S- I plan on writing a newsletter on why I’ve not been sending these emails over the past few weeks)
I hope to see you soon! :)
As always,
Take care
See you next week!
with love,
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facts and figures: UC DAVIS HEALTH
image source + interview etc: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/cori-bush-defund-the-police-biden-b1897709.html
After quite a long time....