Bloated Police Budgets Increases In Murders And Shootings…

As the world enters the age of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, bet­ter known as AI, one of the risks being dis­cussed is what hap­pens when the com­put­er decides to go rogue. So too, they cre­at­ed the mon­ster called polic­ing, and it has got­ten so big and pow­er­ful that they are afraid to even talk about down­siz­ing it. It rears its ugly head to any talk of defund­ing or down­siz­ing it. Amazingly, instead of down­siz­ing by defund­ing, they fight to find ways to fun­nel tax­pay­er mon­ey into more polic­ing, more of the same>
Police can­not stop mur­ders, so the idea of more police to stop mur­ders is beyond stu­pid. Hiring more police sends our tax­es through the roof but does pre­cious lit­tle to stem vio­lent crimes over the long run.
It is the equiv­a­lent of let­ting the Genie out of the bot­tle or squeez­ing the tooth­paste out of the tube; you don’t get to put it back.
And so it is with Tuesday’s Mayoral elec­tions in the windy city of Chicago as Democrat Lori Lightfoot, the incum­bent, faces eight (8) oppo­nents to lead the nation’s third-largest city. If no can­di­date wins more than 50 per­cent of bal­lots cast Tuesday, the top two advance to a runoff elec­tion on April 4.
Despite sup­port­ing mea­sures to defund the police, a pro­posed $80 mil­lion cut to her city’s police bud­get, Lori Lightfoot is now accus­ing Brandon Johnson, a Cook County com­mis­sion­er who’s gain­ing momen­tum, assail­ing him as a “rad­i­cal” who’d “wreck our city with dan­ger­ous defund­ing of police.”

What’s remark­able about Lightfoot’s attack on Johnson is that she ran as a per­son who saw the need to defund the bloat­ed police bud­get, but once she got into office, she drank the biased pro-police cool-aid.
The call to defund police is legit­i­mate, and it remains so. The prob­lem for peo­ple liv­ing in large urban areas is the pow­er­ful police unions. Their prox­ies have tremen­dous clout that dri­ves the fear of the dev­il into Democrats who know cut­ting those bloat­ed bud­gets is the right thing to do but are too piss-scared to do it.
Defunding the police has been ren­dered so radioac­tive Democrats are afraid even to debate it on its merits.
The polit­i­cal right which espous­es a police state that pro­tects white suprema­cy is extreme­ly com­fort­able throw­ing out­ra­geous sums of mon­ey at police, pro­vid­ing them with arma­ments and over­time pay, con­fi­dent in the knowl­edge that cops will not come to their com­mu­ni­ties to mur­der their sons and daugh­ters. Many large city police depart­ments are larg­er and bet­ter armed than some nations’ mil­i­taries; Chicago is one such city. New York City’s police depart­ment boasts a 36,000-strong army.
On the oth­er hand, black peo­ple know the more their tax dol­lars go to fund the police, the less safe they and their chil­dren become.

Overall, more police offi­cers may pre­vent some street-lev­el crimes, but they do noth­ing to cur­tail the scourge of mur­ders and oth­er seri­ous crimes. If more police equaled less crime in large cities with their huge police armies and bloat­ed police bud­gets, cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago would be vir­tu­al­ly crime free.
Many of the calls police 911 switch­boards receive do not require police to show up armed with guns to deal with per­sons hav­ing men­tal issues, or oth­er med­ical emer­gen­cies. Minor traf­fic acci­dents, and a host of oth­er issues can be tack­led with­out armed police with god com­plex to sort through.
Experts in social work and oth­er fields have long argued that a more humane way is need­ed to deal with peo­ple going through emo­tion­al dis­tress out­side of armed police yelling dif­fer­ent and con­fus­ing orders at them lead­ing to police killing them.
How is that even an accept­able solu­tion? Minor traf­fic offens­es do not war­rant hyped-up mil­i­ta­rized police itch­ing to shoot some­one. The streets can­not be a bat­tle­field with over­hyped mil­i­ta­rized police look­ing to kill mem­bers of the pub­lic they deem to be the enemy.

Listen to the aver­age cop on the street talk­ing to a per­son who tells them they are a vet­er­an and the first thing you hear is that the cop is also a vet­er­an as well. Imagine the dan­ger inher­ent in hav­ing for­mer sol­diers who were on the bat­tle­field killing peo­ple now police offi­cers, replete with all of the issues sol­diers return­ing from wars have.
No, not all police offi­cers are bad but the idea of polic­ing as it is present­ly con­fig­ured is dan­ger­ous and should not be supported.
Making the point about a cop who is a good friend who is a sol­id guy miss­es the point. It is not about whether ornot there are good police offi­cers. The rea;it is that the entire con­cept of what con­sti­tutes polic­ing in the United States is beyond repair and should be dis­card­ed. You do not extract a clean buck­et of water from a tox­ic dirty pool.
No one should be afraid to say defund the police. Every tax­pay­er has the absolute right to demand that their tax dol­lars are spent in ways that are ben­e­fi­cial to them.
Only Racists Fascists and fool are unable to see that defund­ing the police is exact­ly he right thing to do.
Lets hope that vot­ers in the Windy City shows Lori Lightfoot the door and elect a Mayor who is tru­ly reform mind­ed, some­one unbe­hold­en to police unions and their cor­rupt and cor­ro­sive influence.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.