What the Hell Does ‘Defund the Police' Even Mean?

Actions taken in moments of anguish and frustration may feel

good and even work to deflate the anger on both sides of a sensitive issue, but

they don’t often end up on the right side of history.

Consider a racist

and militarized civilian police.

It’s not hard to consider, we’ve

seen it in all its vicious majesty in every decade of our nation’s history. We

are, in the most honest and sensitive definition of the word, a racist nation.

Sit back, adjust the twist in your knickers and recognize

the social, economic and spiritual distance between who we are and who

we think we are. That’s never been shown more visually and accurately

than in the recent days of national anguish over George Floyd’s death at the hands

of Minneapolis police.

There are always camel’s backs in

the history of man and straws that break camel’s backs. That great mass of

Americans, known as the silent majority, are truly and finally fed up with the sometimes

daily and surely weekly murder of unarmed black men by police.

It must and will stop, but the

answer is not in defunding. If we’ve learned a single thing in crises of any

nature, it’s that austerity never works. Defunding is austerity on steroids.

I asked you, a few paragraphs back, to consider our racist

and militarized civilian police. Now, I ask you to consider another possibility…

…consider awakening tomorrow

morning—or next week, or next month—to no police at all. Or, in a far more

realistic scenario, a reduced rank of men and women embittered, shamed, hated

and ostracized by the public they are expected to protect.

Defunding is an idiotic proposal,

meant for a feel-good moment and a bumper-sticker solution to a 244 year old

lie about all men being created equal. Only a fool storms a powder-tower with

torches.

And the most powerful and elegant nation in the world is

a powder-tower of lies.

We were founded on the lie

of equality. Slavery fed that lie and we fought the bloodiest war in American

history  to right that wrong, carrying it

forward over the decades since by the ‘other means’ of segregation,

lynching, education and all the favors that make a life worthwhile if you

happen to be born white.

Somehow we never defunded racism,

because that might have meant a change of heart. The American heart is at the

moment of change but, oh my, that’s a tender and open-minded undertaking.

We need to approach it with money and care and a sense of

shared trust, rather than a bumper-sticker and chaos in the streets of our

cities. Defunding sinks all boats and our lovely country is so close to anarchy

at the moment that it only makes sense to add up the forces aligned against  us.

Agreed, the police are largely out

of control nationwide. My home area is Chicago and it’s a poster boy for every

grievance on the books. Why do you suppose that is the case?

1.  White

money built Chicago and the power structure behind white money always likes

things to be predictable, profitable and comfortable.

2.  The

police are and always have been very good at that, as long as no

one looks too closely at the process. It’s a bit like making sausage. It’s best

not to know exactly what’s in it.

3.  The

history of money in the United States is and always has been (think

back to Washington and Jefferson here) closely tied to the sort of privilege

that leaves certain classes lying wounded or dead in the streets. That’s not a

comfortable thought and so the wealthy don’t think it.

The less fortunate have

known it for 400 years.

The moment is right. Unfortunately, the circumstances are

wrong, with a pandemic of unknown proportions among us, 40 million Americans

out of work, many businesses and entire industries likely not to survive and an

almost disappeared middle class.

But we’re going to do it anyway. Good on us.

Trust me, it’s not going to be easy.

This is where Martin Luther King, Jr’s train ultimately came off the tracks. He

awoke the spirit of mutual love and care among the races, but the mechanics

of racism survived unchanged and, in many ways, grew much stronger.

But spirit is a different

animal. Spirit survives once it is awakened. The protesters in our

streets are of all races and whites are among them, under police batons,

across the media and in conversations across dinner-tables and curb-sides.

An interesting thing occurs when Wall Street goes bust, as

it does every decade or so. Government, particularly among those snarly old

deficit-hawk Republicans, finds money by the shovelful to keep the rich afloat,

which the wealthy write off and the less well off are obliged to pay back.

Socialism of course, but the comforting, snuggle-your-head-in-your-pillow

type of socialism that’s so special to the great and wonderful leaders

of industry.

So, the money’s there. We just saw

$3 trillion disbursed in the past few months. For god sake, stop ranting about defunding

the police and look elsewhere for social equity.

Yes, for the homeless, yes

for housing equity, yes for healthcare, yes for education and yes

for mental health, but don’t take it from police budgets.

We need more, not less to reframe the very

nature of policing.

The police unions should be the

first to go and that probably means bankrupting departments as the only way to

start fresh. The demise of union employment since Reagan is the foremost driver

of a once-great and now-lost middle class. I’m a fan of unions, but UBTC’s

(Unions Before the Change) are rife with agreements that unfairly protect officers

from civilian oversight.

The ‘new’ police must be

de-militarized, pulled out of patrol cars and put on neighborhood beats, where

they can interact with the public. That costs money. Pay rates need to go up as

well and that costs more money.

Police recruiting from the military

is a non-starter, unless a federal six-month training course is instituted that

brings all 50 states into compliance. Yet another money issue, but I was in the

military. They teach (and very well, I might add) that everyone is the

enemy and to shoot-to-kill. Swat Teams and ‘no-knock’ drug raids must be

gone. Policing is a bargain with those policed and must always respect

that obligation.

Most cities are set up in

precincts, or other similar areas and the police in those sectors must live

in the area they patrol. No more living in the suburbs and policing a city.

As an officer, you have to know your locals and they have to know you. Call

them Police Boards (or whatever you choose), but local citizens and local

officers must meet to discuss tactics and strategy at least twice a

week.

C’mon, people, this is a community

effort. Body and patrol car cams are required at all times and non-compliance

is cause for firing. The firing of any weapon, under any

conditions, is cause for a full public inquiry.

This is, obviously, simply a bare-bones first look at

reconfiguring our police departments. And I favor a sit-down with all members

of individual forces, from chief to patrolman, to be given the chance to wholeheartedly

get on board with the new terms, including the replacement of the current

union.

But defunding will bring on chaos

and disaster.

America is an armed nation, perhaps

too well-armed, but the wholesale demise of police departments puts ordinary

citizens at far too much risk.