‘Abolish The Police’ Is A Slogan For The Destruction Of America

[mystery-ak]

    Outrage

‘Abolish The Police’ Is A Slogan For The Destruction Of America
Calls to defund or abolish the police are not about restoring an open and liberal society, they are about tearing it down and seizing power.

By John Daniel Davidson
June 5, 2020

If you thought “abolish the police”—or it’s more moderate iteration, “defund the police”—was just some asinine slogan blue-check journalists, woke academics, and pandering public officials post on Twitter to show they support the Black Lives Matter movement, then you’re not keeping up with the revolution.

This week Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, announced the city would be slashing the police department’s budget by $100 to $150 million and instead “reinvesting in black communities and communities of color.” The cuts to the LA police will make up the bulk of $250 million in funds to be reallocation to “end racism in our city,” Garcetti said. How exactly those millions will be spent remains unclear, but the mayor has in mind investments “in jobs, in education, and healing.”

It’s unclear how cutting funds for the police will bring about healing in a city wracked by widespread looting and riots that forced Garcetti to request assistance from the National Guard to restore order last weekend. But it does demonstrate the extent to which BLM has been able to turn what should’ve just been an idiotic Twitter hashtag into actual policy.

In Minneapolis, where George Floyd died in police custody on May 25, kicking off nationwide protests and riots, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board terminated its contract with the city’s police department on Thursday following a similar move by the city’s school district. The University of Minnesota, museums and other venues have likewise severed ties partially or completely with the city police.

That means the parks will no longer use the city’s police to staff park events and park police will no longer respond to request for assistance from city police. It means no more school resource officers in public schools. It means, in general, fewer cops doing police work throughout the city.

more
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/05/abolish-the-police-is-a-slogan-for-the-destruction-of-america/

[EasyAce]

Abolish the police? No.

Hold them accountable for misconduct or abuse of authority? Damn right.

But . . . I could alsoget on board with this . . .

It's Time To Bust Police Unions: Over and over again, unions have defended bad policing and bad police. It’s time for them to go.

. . . and I say it with more than a twinge of regret: When my father fought lung cancer in 1965-66, a time when little enough treatment was available beyond oxygen and sulfa drugs, my paternal grandfather---a retired New York cop but a life member of New York's Patrolmen's Benevolent Association---picked up the phone and called the PBA asking if they could help somehow. They swung into immediate action and arranged round-the-clock oxygen and an oxygen tent for my father in the last four months of his life. (He died in June 1966.)

That was then.

This, unfortunately, is now.

I've never held with police abusing their authority. (Neither, I should say candidly, did Grandpa Walter, whether it was the Harry Gross scandal of the 1950s or the corruption scandals of the early 1970s still ongoing when he died in 1972. And Grandpa would fume today at both such abusive police officers as caused George Floyd's and others' deaths and those taking advantage of legitimate protests against such abuse by, shall we say, breaking entire neighbourhoods that had nothing to do with such police abuses.) And the author of the piece to which I linked is right:

Police are public servants granted enormous power over the citizenry. They are tasked with protecting the public and serving their interests. Police unions, in contrast, are tasked with protecting police and serving their interests—even in direct contravention of serving the public. That distinction makes them a barrier to reforms aimed at improving public safety and increasing oversight of how law enforcement behaves. If union-busting is what it takes to reduce the pernicious influence of today's police unions on policing, then it's time to bust some police unions.