Why Defunding The Police Should Not Be Sidetracked…

Amidst the conversation of defunding the police in the United States is the idea that what people actually want is better policing; they don’t want to abolish the police.”
However, police unions and certain segments of the population have convinced the rest of the country that there is a movement afoot to get rid of the police. And for that segment of the population, God forbid that the institution that has been the single most dangerous to Black people be reformed or dismantled.
Unfortunately, black activists and other conscientious objectors to the rampant police violence have been inarticulate with their messaging and that has given an opening to the pro-police violence crowd to distort their message.
For the most part, many of the defunding that has been proposed hasn’t even taken place, haven’t even gotten off the ground.
In Minneapolis, where the idea of defunding the police was birthed after Derek Chauvin lynched George Floyd, voters resoundingly rejected a proposal to dismantle the city’s police force.
Emboldened, the same police department went into a home and murdered Amir Locke the same way they murdered George Floyd and countless others.
The people who support the lawlessness of wanton police violence and extrajudicial killings do not care about social justice; what they crave is social order. No amount of dead black bodies will change their hearts-dead black bodies is the point.

Criminals have cho­sen to take advan­tage of the uncer­tain­ty by engag­ing in more shoot­ing inci­dents and oth­er crimes. What has elud­ed every­one in this dis­cus­sion is that it has been the police who caused the out­cry for defund­ing in the first place.
Police have no way of stop­ping peo­ple from shoot­ing each oth­er; they have no way of stop­ping mur­ders if peo­ple are intent on mur­der­ing each oth­er. If the police could stop any of the fore­gone, the New York City Police Department, with its 36,000 uni­formed cops and 19,000 civil­ian employ­ees, would have ensured that no mur­der or shoot­ing occurred in their city year after year.
The sad real­i­ty is that the NYPD, with its army of cops, sup­port infra­struc­ture, and mam­moth bud­getary allo­ca­tion in 2020 of $10.2 bil­lion and $9.9 bil­lion in the fis­cal year 2021, would have ensured a safe and mur­der-free New York City.
The minus­cule amount of mon­ey removed from the police bud­get in New York in the fis­cal year 2021 was shaved from over­time and oth­er parts of the depart­ment that had noth­ing to do with oper­a­tional readiness.
For exam­ple, a class that was sup­posed to begin train­ing at the acad­e­my was canceled.
In New York City, two things of note happened,(1) the mam­moth out-of-con­trol police depart­ment was told that cops were no longer allowed to stop and frisk peo­ple mere­ly on a cop’s whim.
Police and their unions took umbrage at this direc­tive, and in many cas­es, they con­tin­ued doing it to poor Black men anyway.
(2) After Minneapolis cops mur­dered George Floyd, the cry around the coun­try has been to defund the police.
The idea behind the defund move­ment was to appro­pri­ate a part of the police bud­getary allo­ca­tion and divert those funds to youth pro­grams, drug treat­ment pro­grams, men­tal health pro­grams, and oth­er pro­grams that remove the prospect of armed cops show­ing up after every 911 call ready to shoot the peo­ple they are sup­posed to be helping.

The push­back against this sound pol­i­cy came from Republicans and Democrats, who believed that the answer to every prob­lem was to send armed police offi­cers with bat­ter­ing rams and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehi­cles (MRAPs).
Others in the cor­po­rate media, Brian Williams of MSNBC, Michael Smerconish on CNN, and oth­ers also joined in the push­back, claim­ing that the democ­rats lost seats in the US house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives because of the calls to defund the police.
This writer has seen no data that sup­ports that the­o­ry. They failed to explain that Joe Biden won the pop­u­lar vote and the pres­i­den­cy with the largest num­ber of votes cast for a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the his­to­ry of the country.
Democrats’ loss of seats may have been that can­di­dates rest­ed on their lau­rels, believ­ing that anti-Trump sen­ti­ments were enough to get them elected.
It was not. None of the loss the feck­less Democrats suf­fered may be attrib­uted to calls to ‘defund the police.‘The mad­den­ing­ly stu­pid nar­ra­tive that defund­ing police is respon­si­ble for increased crime came from police unions and cops who take home hefty salaries through over­time pay for doing noth­ing, some as much as $200,000 annually.

There is no cor­re­la­tion between defund­ing the police and the rise in crime, but police and their unions want you to believe there is a cor­re­la­tion. Police depart­ments across the United States, all 18,000 plus of them, have the tools and the sup­port to fight crime; in many cas­es, they have what they do not need.
For example…

Rehoboth, Mass. (pop­u­la­tion 10,200), show­ing not only the town police department’s MRAP but also three Humvees, also obtained from the mil­i­tary. Orrville, Ohio (pop­u­la­tion 8,400), where the local police depart­ment also doesn’t have an MRAP, acquired a 1980s-era M‑113 armored fight­ing vehicle.
And then there’s Reeds Spring, Mo., which also has some oth­er sort of armored vehi­cle, as evi­denced by the pho­to the town’s police chief post­ed on the police department’s Facebook page. Reeds Spring’s pop­u­la­tion: 903.

Deming, N.M. (pop­u­la­tion: 14,800), got an MRAP in March 2013. You may remem­ber Deming as the site of a hor­rif­ic sto­ry last year in which a traf­fic stop for rolling through a stop sign esca­lat­ed into police sub­ject­ing a man to mul­ti­ple forced anal probes, X‑rays, and a colonoscopy because they sus­pect­ed him of hid­ing drugs in his rec­tum. There were no drugs.
Sweetwater, Fla. (pop­u­la­tion 13,500), elect­ed offi­cials approved the police chief’s request for an MRAP. The scan­dal-plagued police depart­ment also has a SWAT team (see a video of the SWAT team in action here) and at least one OH6 heli­copter, appar­ent­ly obtained from the Pentagon. Sweetwater has seen all of two mur­ders in 13 years.

Franklin Indiana MRAP — a bul­let­proof, 55,000-pound, six-wheeled behe­moth with heavy armor, a gun­ner’s tur­ret, and the word “SHERIFF” embla­zoned on its flank — a vehi­cle whose acronym stands for “mine-resis­tant ambush-protected.”
On and on, it goes all across the coun­try, police depart­ments gear­ing up for war. Who is the enemy?
You be the judge!!!

.

.

.

.

.

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