The term “Defund the Police” has become a rallying cry of extremes on both the right and the left in this difficult political season. Some on the far left believe in anarchy and cry out that there should be no police. Anarchists have been around for centuries and will never gain any meaningful support. The far right immediately asserts that any one that questions police behavior is an anarchist that seek to remove all police force so that crime will quickly run rampant especially in cities with Democrat governance The reality, however, is that no will ever choose to eliminate all police service. No community could exist without reasonable policing. There has been no occasion where a police force has been disbanded and a community left without any form of policing.
The loud cries that
communities will be left to the mercy of murders, looters, and thieves is
simply a red herring attempt to distract from legitimate political debate over
the much more complex and difficult issues relating to police practices in our
communities. We can and we must discuss tough questions such as:
- Are police
asked too often to act as social workers?
- Are
officers adequately trained to deal with mental problems of citizens they must
confront?
- Do
police unions have too much power?
- Should
blanket immunity apply to virtually all police actions?
- Does the
duty of loyalty to fellow officers too often cause silence from the vast
majority of wonderful police that in the absence of silence would likely result
in the removal or reduction of bad conduct by questionable officers?
- Why
has there been historically disparate treatment of Blacks and Hispanic?
- Why do
incidents like the deaths of George Floyd or Breanna Taylor keep occurring?
Police are part of the
critical team of first responders that protect all of us. We cannot simply remove that protection. We cannot however, be forced to have only the
choice of silence in the wake of questionable police action or be considered
adverse to police action. A third way and better way is to accept that police officers
are not perfect, to accept that an officer should not be sanctioned on making a
split second decision that might be questioned in an after the fact review but to
also not accept that nothing more can be done. We can provide better police training.
We can develop better methods of hiring.
We can enhance diversity. We can
remove the unwritten rule of unequivocal silence among officers. We can do better in addressing the above
questions without political litmus tests. We are a great nation but we can be
better. We cannot be distracted by red
herring political pablum.
