Why ‘defunding’ the police is insane
Jonah Goldberg (Jae Hodge)
A popular solution proposed by liberals, in response to the policing issue in America, is to “defund” the police. Defunding the police means to reduce the funding of police departments in order to reallocate the funds to other agencies. To take away funding and ,in turn, large amounts of responsibility from the police, in a varying scale, would be effectively the same as abolishing the current police departments. Hence why the terms tend to be used interchangeably, because although the definitions/ ideas are different the results would be very similar if not the same.
In this case of defunding the police departments, who will respond to shootings, what about robberies– social workers? The function of the police is to maintain public order and safety, enforce the law, and prevent, detect, and investigate criminal activities. Hence, the police are essential to a civilized society and serve a purpose that can sometimes only be served by trained government agents that are able to use force.
However defenders argue against this essential function and propose the use of community patrols in replacement. This sounds a bit like local militias to me, but regardless of the name you give them , how would the execution of these patrollers avoid the creation of more issues? Does having untrained individuals confronting ‘suspicious’ characters in a neighborhood sound sensible ? In fact, the use of cop-wannabes has incited unwarranted violence in the past , look at the Zimmerman and Trevyvon Martin case. These patrols have the potential to really exacerbate hate crimes and are a true disaster waiting to happen.
Notwithstanding, some Democratic Politicians recognize that defunding the police departments is political suicide and therefore push for “defund” to really mean “reinvent” .
To reinvent the police is a far more sensible solution. The newly elected Minority Whip, Senator Sasse (Joshua Hernandez) confirmed to be in the early stages of his Crime Bill. This bill will include: increasing the amount of police officers on the street and reforming the current training process for police personnel. These reform measures are being introduced as a tool to reduce violent policing misconduct and rebuild a system that is more effective in both protecting the American people and handling crime.
Further, Senator Sasse says that he is “very open to working with democrats on that (some intricacies of the Crime Bill)”. Taking this into account, I urge the democratic party to work with Senator Sasse on the development of this bill, so that we may prioritize the safety of our American people.
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