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Minneapolis Lunacy: A Recipe for Disaster
This morning my blood ran cold when I heard the latest recommendation from the Minneapolis City Council: disband the police department. Sundance at the Conservative Tree House explains the background for this action:
The term ‘community policing’ has been used for several years by groups advocating for radical changes to law enforcement; however, behind the innocuous phrase is really a much more serious agenda.
If each community can determine the enforcement of law, then essentially all communities can eliminate the underlying law itself. Remove local enforcement of law and the local community can independently assemble a social structure separate from all other binding contracts that frame a larger societal compact.
This is not the community-oriented policing that Rudy Giuliani instituted in New York. These actions, instead, would be the perfect recipe for lawlessness and chaos.
Spearheading this action is Jeremiah Ellison, the son of Minnesota Attorney Keith Ellison, a Muslim activist and far Left advocate:
Jeremiah Ellison, the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and a representative of the city’s Ward 5, explicitly led calls to ‘dramatically rethink’ how the city keeps its people safe.
‘We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,’ he tweeted. “And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together. We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response. It’s really past due.’
Lisa Bender, president of the city council, sent out this warning:
On Wednesday she posted a thread about how a ‘white person’ should think about dismantling the police.
‘If you are a comfortable white person asking to dismantle the police I invite you to reflect: are you willing to stick with it? Will you be calling in three months to ask about garage break-ins? Are you willing to dismantle white supremacy in all systems, including a new system?’ she said. ‘I mean this quite sincerely & seriously: just look at recent conversations about City-funded neighborhood organizations to understand how explicitly we would have to work to establish alternative systems that do not replicate the same problems. White ppl need to show up for this.’
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Ms. Bender is telling the white people in Minneapolis that if the deprived black people attack the homes of the white community or commit any other offenses, get over it. Pay back is tough.
The city council is due to vote on this issue today.
Published in Policing
See: Chernobyl.
There is a portion of the far left, Antifa loving, Jeremiah’s message that I agree with. Dismantling the current structure of the police department and rebuilding it should begin with the banning of the Police Union. The current union structure protects the worst actors, the most corrupt; the bad cops. It becomes near impossible to discipline bad cops, and harder to get rid of them, because of union protections. It seems to me there should be some common ground in all of our desires to improve the system. The rest of Jeremiah’s proposal is radical garbage, but we should be looking into improving the system. For the record, this is my opinion regarding virtually all modern unions. They all promote mediocrity, and protect the worst, rather than promoting the best. Alternately, Trade Guilds, seem to do just the opposite.
I personally think this is a great idea. I think conservatives should embrace dismantling any coercive government monopoly.
Having a competitive market for police services would be a great improvement.
Anyway, the “larger societal compact” is a phony construct.
In Venezuela, local law enforcement is partly delegated to neighborhood committees under control of the regime. There’s a term for these local organizations.. what are the called by the citizens?… oh yeah, thugs. That’s it.
If only.
Back to your original point, if you are a police officer in Minneapolis, how confident at this point are you in your employer honoring their commitment to you pension?
This.
That’s a good question: But perhaps more important is a persons relative priorities. It determines what a person will do for money.
I’m with you, @nohaaj. But I’ll bet that Jeremiah has no intention of modifying the unions. He wouldn’t be a Lefty if he did. No question that the system needs work!
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, or over applying your comment – but seems to me folks will not learn from any failure. They will just say, well they didn’t do it right: But I know how to do it right! So I would see here just another opportunity to apply the aphorism “you can’t fix stupid”.
Oh, man, I think you’re right! They use that rationale all the time with Communism: we’d do it right!
Also, I bolded the word “now” with the intent of stressing how important that is. There will (and should) be consequences for even engaging in this crazy talk.
Does this mean policed by homeowners associations?
If there is no one to call about people who break into garages, will there be anyone to call about people who shoot people who break into garages?
Mexico has experimented with this model with large sections of or entire towns given over to community activist groups/cartels instead with no cops. That is perhaps why five Mexican cities now hold 1 through 5 in world rankings for per capita murder rates. It would be the top six but Caracas edged out Acapulco for #6.
We tried variants of this approach in Baltimore after the Freddy Gray and Ferguson
riotsprotests.There will be no black-on-Black crime in Minneapolis once the police provocation is eliminated. And it is well-known that the white population there is very woke so they have nothing to fear.
I just hope they do it right away and get the endorsement of all Democrats so we can see the outcome before the elections.
Which really means I’d do it right.
Today, David Marcus at the Federalist had a preview of what this will look like:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/05/im-the-rapid-response-social-worker-who-replaced-the-police/
@housebroken Right on both counts.
With all due respect, love, and admiration for James Lileks, the HWX guys, and other residents of the city: go for it. Show the rest of the country what life in a major city without a police force would be like. I can picture the caravan of cars fleeing, not unlike the scenes in Independence Day after the aliens showed up.
Now, it could be they’re banking on the Sheriff’s Department to fill in, but unless it’s a metropolitan department like the LA Sheriff’s Department (https://lasd.org/), they won’t be able to handle the increased workload . . .
See: Detroit.
The spillover to surrounding states would be terrible.
Talk about white flight.
There’s a four square precedent: Detroit. 1974 Coleman Young, Mayor
I don’t think I’d stick around!
This is eerily similar to the lawless Muslim enclaves in Sweden. And we all know how much the Democratic Socialists love the Nordic countries…
This.
It is a very nice feature, in many ways, of modern life, but the downside is that most Americans have never been in a fight, seen an animal hunted and killed, or butchered for food, have never played a real contact sport (e,g, football, rugby) and may not even have play-wrestled much as a kid—if you are one of two children in the standard, two-kid household, and the other kid is a girl…the chances are pretty good no one ever got punched in the snoot. (Whereas if you have four kids, and two of them are boys…plenty of experience with violence!)
So they really, really don’t know. They have no idea just how fast and merciless violence can be. They think there is time to talk, and room to negotiate. They honestly believe that bullies just need to be understood, and maybe loved. They believe that surrender is an option.
That’s a feature for the planners, not a bug.