Defund the police. Abolish the police. You have heard these terms recently. I would imagine some of you are skeptical about them. Hell, you may even be scared of those ideas. There are differences in the two terms and I think both have merits. However, this post is not about which idea is better or even what this all means. If you are confused, I highly suggest you read Critical Resistance’s page. And if the abolish crowd is not your speed, then check out Campaign Zero. Once you are up to speed, then we can debate the merits of either approach.
No, that is not what this post is about. This is about the weird things people say when they do not understand the idea. First, allow me to quickly summarize defund the police. Basically, police budgets are huge. They tend to take up a very large percentage of a city, town, borough, municipalities overall budget. The police have been tasked over the years with handling things that are outside of their training. Whenever a program is cut, the solution is to hand it off to the police. If you remember, a few years ago the Dallas police chief, David Brown, said this:
Not enough mental health funding, let the cop handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding, let’s give it to the cops. Here in Dallas we have a loose dog problem. Let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, give it to the cops. 70 percent of the African-American community is being raised by single women, let’s give it to the cops to solve as well. That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems. I just ask other parts of our democracy along with the free press to help us.
The idea then is to spend less on police and instead have more of that money going back to (or creating) agencies/departments/whatever to handle different tasks. For example, should cops really be responding to a mental health issue? Are they trained enough to handle a schizophrenic or would someone else be better in that situation?
Before my friends chime in with how I am oversimplifying things, allow me to respond with “well duh.” This is an incredibly complex issue and there are tons of things being left out. I am aware. No need to remind me.
Anyways, back to the point of this post. My favorite response to defund the police is the classic: “well good luck calling a community wellness representative when some psychopath with a machete is breaking into your house in order to rape you.”
I seriously think at least three of my friends have posted something similar to that exact scenario. Does that happen often? How many cops have responded to a call like that? I wonder if those people have ever called the police for an emergency. I once called the police because a drunk guy was beating on my door asking me for a ride to the VFW. I told him no and said to leave my porch. He walked away and kept yelling and being weird. It took the Ebensburg police twelve minutes to get to my place (and the cop called me and asked for directions). Fortunately it was just a drunk idiot, but what if it was something serious. Twelve minutes is a long time.
The other argument I keep seeing came after a news story about a bear roaming the streets of Pittsburgh. People would say something like “haha, I want to see a social worker deal with this!” What an odd thing to say. Police are typically not trained to deal with bears. You know who is? Animal control. The PA Game Commission. I do not think sending in the SWAT team is the best use of police resources.
I am not asking for people to jump on board the defund/abolish the police train. Instead, I just want some of you to read up on it. Try to understand it before you say dumb shit like “well if there are no cops, I guess crime is just legal now.” No. That is not at all what that means. Knock it off.
