Defunding the Police – USA Gov Policy

The conclusion of Judge John Wilson’s (ret.) analysis of the bizarre concept of ending police protection of the American people.

Views on what defunding the police actually means range across the spectrum. According to CNN, “some supporters of divestment want to reallocate some, but not all, funds away from police departments to social services. Some want to strip all police funding and dissolve departments.” One of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, said that defunding the police “means that we are reducing the ability for law enforcement to have resources that harm our communities…It’s about reinvesting those dollars into black communities, communities that have been deeply divested from.”

There is no basis in reality for the claim that black communities have been “deeply divested from.” In fact, a review of the 2019 Minneapolis City budget reveals that of the $349.9 million in taxes collected in 2019, $20 million was budgeted for the “Minneapolis Homes program which provides affordable financial assistance to create homeownership opportunities; and a new Healthy Homes, Healthy Schools program which aims to provide housing stability for City of Minneapolis families with students enrolled in Minneapolis public schools”; provides for “major investments in Community Police Relations across multiple departments”; and includes this statement – “As we continue a near decade-long economic expansion, we know that the effects of the expansion are not being felt equally amongst all communities within our city. This budget invests in continuing to grow our economy through inclusion – rather than accepting disparate outcomes as given.”

Other cities have joined the “Defund the Police” bandwagon. In New York, Mayor Bill DeBlasio has vowed to cut the budget of the NYPD, and give the money to “Youth and Social Services,” while Los Angeles Mayor Gil Garcetti wants to cut up to $150 million from his budget as part of a broader effort to reinvest more dollars into the black community.

Meanwhile, on the federal level, “House and Senate Democrats…are expected to unveil the new ‘Justice in Policing Act of 2020,’ which includes major overhauls for how police officers around the country will do their jobs. (The bill) includes prohibiting the use of chokeholds, lowering legal standards to pursue criminal and civil penalties for police misconduct, and banning certain no-knock warrants.”

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All this talk of “reinvesting in black communities,” and “rebuilding a new model of public safety” begs several crucial questions. While funding is diverted to Youth and Social programs, who will address reports of burglaries, robberies, rapes and murders? Who will place suspects of violent crimes under arrest, and who will investigate these crimes? Who will Jeremiah Ellison and Patrisse Cullors call if their wallet is stolen, or their car broken into?

For a glimpse of what supporters of defunding the police have in mind, we can turn to the Occupy Wall Street protest of 2011. When women reported rape or sexual molestation, “Brendan Burke, 41, who help(ed) run the security team in Zuccotti Park…admitted there have been times when members of the community have taken it upon themselves to chase off men who exposed themselves in the park. “If there is a consensus that someone is bothering another person, the community will take care of it,” he said.”

How will the community take care of this issue? In 2011 the protest organizers released this statement; “As individuals and as a community, we have the responsibility and the opportunity to create an alternative to this culture of violence…We are working for…a world in which survivors are respected and supported unconditionally… We are redoubling our efforts to raise awareness about sexual violence. This includes taking preventative measures such as encouraging healthy relationship dynamics and consent practices that can help to limit harm.”

It remains to be seen how “encouraging healthy relationship dynamics” will lead to the arrest, prosecution and incarceration of a sex offender, or how additional funding for Youth and Social Programs will lead to the arrest of the man who pushes your Grandmother to the ground, breaking her hip, and stealing her purse.

Illustration: Pixabay

This article was contributed by the distinguished jurist, Judge John Wilson (ret.)

For a brief moment, the country stood united. No one of good will watched the video of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd and believed that the officer’s actions were appropriate. No one has seriously argued that Officer Chauvin should not be charged with one degree or another of murder. No one can seriously argue that the authorities in Minneapolis did not handle this matter quickly and effectively.

And yet, despite this unity, there are those who found their opportunity to divide us once again, and put forth the most ludicrous and unreasonable methods of dealing with the alleged epidemic of police brutality.

In fact, there is no increase in police violence. According to John Hirschauer in National Review, “last year, according to the Washington Post’s database of police-involved shootings, nine unarmed black people were shot and killed by the police, compared to 19 unarmed white people. Assuming that the use of lethal force was unjustified in each of those nine cases — not always a safe assumption — the resulting deaths are no less tragic for being so statistically improbable.”

This is not to say that those who believe there is a disparity between the treatment of whites and blacks by police officers are utterly wrong. According to the National Violent Death Reporting System, “victims were majority white (52%) but disproportionately black (32%) with a fatality rate 2.8 times higher among blacks than whites. Most victims were reported to be armed (83%); however, black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims.”

On this statistical basis alone, people who wish to highlight this difference between the treatment of blacks and whites by law enforcement and seek redress are not unreasonable. However, reasonable discourse and practical solutions regarding this issue have been hijacked by extremism and its enablers among legislators.

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In response to the death of George Floyd, 9 of the 13 members of the Minneapolis City Council have decided to “defund” their police force. “‘We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,’ Council President Lisa Bender told CNN.” One of the leaders of the “defund the police” movement in the Minneapolis City Council is Jeremiah Ellison – the son of Minneapolis Attorney General Keith Ellison, who happens to be prosecuting Officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.

Both father and son have expressed extreme radical views in the past. Keith Ellison was associated with the Nation of Islam in his youth, and was a strong defender of its leader, Louis Farrakhan. According to CNN, “in one scathing column from 1990 unearthed by CNN’s KFile, Ellison accused the president (of the University of Minnesota) of chilling the free expression of black students by openly criticizing a controversial speaker invited to speak on campus by the Africana Student Cultural Center. That speaker, Kwame Ture (also known as Stokely Carmichael), had publicly claimed that Zionists had collaborated with the Nazis in World War II and has been quoted as saying ‘Zionism must be destroyed.'”

His son Jeremiah, has publicly expressed his support for ANTIFA, stating “Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THE ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!” His father, while deputy chief of the DNC, also expressed his own support for ANTIFA by endorsing a handbook for the group.

The Report concludes tomorrow

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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