The left in America have a love-hate relationship with the police. They hate cops for enforcing laws. At the same time, they know they will need someone to confiscate all those guns from freedom-loving Americans some day.
At least for now, in the wake of nationwide rioting over the George Floyd killing, it looks like the ‘hate the police’ contingent has the upper hand. According to the mainstream media, more and more cities are looking to defund their local police departments.
Less funding means fewer cops on the street. And we all know what that means. For those slow on the uptake, it means more crime and more reasons to strap on one’s Roscoe religiously each and every day.
The UK’s hard-left Guardian reports on the “unprecedented” support for defunding law enforcement.
Movement to defund police gains ‘unprecedented’ support across US
Activists say the way to stop police brutality and killings is to cut law enforcement budgets and reinvest in services. Some lawmakers now agree.
The movement to defund the police is gaining significant support across America, including from elected leaders, as protests over the killing of George Floyd sweep the nation.
For years, activists have pushed US cities and states to cut law enforcement budgets amid a dramatic rise in spending on police and prisons while funding for vital social services has shrunk or disappeared altogether.
“Shrunk or disappeared” social services is a fake news fantasy. Local, state and federal welfare spending — aka “vital social services” — approached $1.1 trillion (that’s with a ‘t’) in the US in fiscal year 2019.
Government officials have long dismissed the idea as a leftist fantasy, but the recent unrest and massive budget shortfalls from the Covid-19 crisis appear to have inspired more mainstream recognition of the central arguments behind defunding.
“To see legislators who aren’t even necessarily on the left supporting at least a significant decrease in New York police department [NYPD] funding is really very encouraging,” Julia Salazar, a New York state senator and Democratic socialist, told the Guardian on Tuesday. “It feels a little bit surreal.”
Floyd’s death on camera in Minneapolis, advocates say, was a powerful demonstration that police reform efforts of the last half-decade have failed to stop racist policing and killings. Meanwhile, the striking visuals of enormous, militarized and at times violent police forces responding to peaceful protests have led some politicians to question whether police really need this much money and firepower.
Over on the left coast, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to slash LA’s police budget by $100 to $150 million and spend that money to end racism.
As he began to speak about reforming the LAPD during his Wednesday evening press conference, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti called this an “urgent moment” for the city, “an inflection point.”
He said he is “committed to making this moment not just a moment.”
Garcetti said he would be making commitments to creating racial equality. “It is time to move our rhetoric towards action to end racism in our city.”
He said the city must move beyond police reforms of the past. “Prejudice can never be part of police work…It takes bravery to save lives, too.”
“We will not be increasing [our] police budget,” said the mayor. That allocation is pegged at $1.8 billion in the mayor’s previously proposed budget.
Garcetti spoke of “reinvesting in black communities and communities of color.”
The mayor proceeded to announce $250 million in cuts to the proposed budget and to reallocate those dollars to communities of color, “so we can invest in jobs, in education and healing.” L.A. Police Commission President Eileen Decker then announced that $100 million-$150 million of those cuts would come from the police department budget.
So the same people who’ve been running things for decades and who want gun bans and gun confiscations believe they can dramatically slash police funding and still accomplish their goals? It’s the same sort of logic that says that if we just ban all the guns, criminals won’t have them any longer.
Meanwhile, protesters in Phoenix marched to demand cuts in that city’s police budget. However the city council didn’t pay much attention to the crackpots who wanted to slash police spending by a quarter and spend all that cash on “community programs.”
From AZCentral:
In Phoenix, activists specifically requested a 25% reduction in the police department’s budget. The proposed budget includes about $745 million for the department — more than half of the $1.3 billion general fund budget.
The Phoenix City Council spent nearly four hours listening to people comment on the budget during a meeting Wednesday.
The council wouldn’t entertain the 25% decrease in police spending, but did go back and forth over how much money to spend on its new Office of Accountability and Transparency, which will provide civilian oversight of the police department.
After three failed attempts to pass a budget, the council scheduled a special meeting to reconsider the budget on Monday and adjourned for the night.
These same folks want to end cooperation between local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and give millions to local illegal aliens, too.
And then there are the attention-whoring celebrities wishing to burnish their social justice credentials. “Slash police spending!” they demand.
Celebrities including Lizzo, John Legend, and Jane Fonda have signed an open letter pushing for a decrease in police budgets and reallocation of government funding to community programs.
The Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of black-rights groups, released the petition as part of their “week of action” from June 1 to 7 to combat racism and police brutality in the US.
No doubt they would still want cordons of armed police to protect them at their virtue signaling festivals awards shows and plenty of staffing for the neighborhoods where they live. Because…they’re important and irreplaceable.
Two things will likely happen in any jurisdictions that go ahead slash spending on law enforcement. Those who can afford to leave will vote with their feet. And those who can’t will invest in some cold steel to defend themselves when police response times increase exponentially.
At the same time, maybe someday these same people will quit voting for woolly-headed, low-information political candidates who foist their fanciful utopian social schemes on real-world people.
But don’t look for police to totally disappear, even in social services utopias like Los Angeles. If they get rid of the cops, who’s going carry out red flag orders and confiscate all the “assault weapons” when Gun Control Czar Beto O’Rourke is finally appointed?