Defunding the police didn't really work out, did it? 

Two years ago, we heard the chattering liberal hoards clamoring to abolish or defund the police and pledging their fealty to Black Lives Matter. Since then, the leaders of BLM have been preoccupied with trying to explain where all those donations went and in justifying their acquisitions of pricey real estate. The same liberals are now saying they never really supported "defunding" and are offering lame and unconvincing explanations for what they "really meant"—sort of like how someone caught making a racial slur will explain that they were "just kidding."

Following the murder of George Floyd, liberal politicians were eager to harness the outrage of the activists and quickly jumped on the bandwagon. In June of 2020, the Minneapolis City Council pledged to defund and dismantle their police department, the Portland City Council cut $27 million from the budget of its police department, and other jurisdictions joined in.

A beatific vision was presented of replacing all those awful cops with crack teams of achingly sensitive social workers, who would deftly de-escalate armed and violent individuals and offer a plethora of pricey programs. Some jurisdictions announced an intention to stop enforcing certain laws or to use civilian workers to enforce things like traffic laws.

How'd all that work out?

Not surprisingly, it hasn't worked out so well. In Minneapolis, 2021 saw the highest number of murders in 20 years, double the number reported in 2019. Portland is headed for its highest murder rate in 25 years and continues to be wracked by occasional Antifa violence. Perennial champion Chicago continues to dazzle with 797 murders in 2021, beating its 2020 total of 775, and far eclipsing its 2019 total of 519. Philadelphia is impressive with 562 murders for 2021, up from 228 in 2020, and a miserly 180 in 2019.

Other violent crimes have also risen, and some cities no longer even bother to respond to things like auto burglaries and assaults. Citizens are frightened as they realize what a society without police would be like, and gun sales have skyrocketed as people realize that they may be forced to defend themselves. Most "defund" or "abolish" cities have now reversed themselves.

Still, crime is likely to get worse.

Many city police departments are already understaffed, and are hemorrhaging police officers to early retirement or to more supportive cities. Most departments are finding it impossible to find enough qualified applicants to replace them. Who would want to work in a job where your boss will be quick to scapegoat you and throw you to the leftist mob? A relentless media depiction of cops as murderous racists, who are presumed to be in the wrong in any incident, has made the typical response of anyone asked if they would consider being a cop, to be, "Are you out of your freakin' mind?"

As the cop in the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson discovered, even being absolved of blame by the Obama Justice Department is not enough to convince those who condemn you as a murderer.

The skills to be a cop are already daunting, requiring not only the physicality to subdue criminals, but the temperament to work in a potentially deadly environment and to routinely endure verbal abuse. It requires the intelligence to learn a rapidly growing set of laws and procedures, which are conceived in the orderly environment of the committee room, but must be applied in the chaos of the street. Only a small segment of society has these abilities. As qualified applicants are scared off by the political climate, the only applicants remaining will be those who enjoy violence and dominating people, hardly the sort of cops we want. But, since we will always need cops, who else can we use?

With the outcome of this anti-cop tantrum being so predictable, we really have to wonder about the judgment and character of those politicians who thought that "defund" was a good idea. If a politician easily gets swept up in whatever brainfart momentarily catches the media's attention and instinctively panders to it, can they be trusted when the next brainfart comes along? Revising or qualifying one's position after the disaster, and after the voters have expressed their disapproval, is hardly the responsible leadership we need.

We need thoughtful, pragmatic leaders, not opportunistic political "weather vanes," nor the emotionally incontinent. When you vote, consider the candidate's history and whether they have supported dumb, predictably disastrous fads like "defund." If they are elected, you will be stuck with the results. Δ

John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach who can say "I told you so." Respond with a commentary or letter to the editor by emailing it to [email protected].