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So You Want to Defund the Police? Brace Yourself for Vigilantes
Seemingly overnight, progressives have decided to set their goal for how to capture the George Floyd moment: They want to defund police departments across the country. Their plan has already borne fruit in Floyd’s hometown of Minneapolis, where the City Council voted to defund their local police force. It’s a public policy decision that’s as well-thought-out as you would expect:
This is the most hilarious, terrifying thing.
Minneapolis City Council member is asked “if you disband police, who do you call if your house is broken into?”
And she says that question comes from a place of PRIVILEGE. You can’t make this garbage up.pic.twitter.com/IviVgoYmKN
— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) June 8, 2020
Here in my area, we recently had a disturbing incident. A man riding his bicycle happened upon a group of older teenagers hanging flyers advertising a protest in memory of George Floyd and assaulted one of the young women in an attempt to get the posters out of her hands and off the fencing.
They were putting up signs to commemorate the death of George Floyd. He wasn't having it. pic.twitter.com/eukrXrxoLN
— Victor Stoddard (@VicStoddard) June 4, 2020
Usually, with these kinds of videos, I’m in the wait-and-see camp, because you never know what happened before the camera started rolling. In this circumstance, I decided to share it right away because there could be no possible justification for a large, grown man aggressively approaching a woman and grabbing her in order to take a piece of paper out of her hands. I hesitated, though, because I knew the Internet machine would try to take the investigation into its own hands, and of course, I was right. Despite the Park Police posting asking for information, Internet vigilantes decided to take up the case themselves.
Eventually, the Park Police found their man, but not before not one, but two men were falsely identified and accused of being the “Bethesda biker.” These men had their social media profiles attacked, they had their home and work addresses and phone numbers publicly posted, they had their lives ransacked by Internet mobs.
This is our future if we defund the police: Internet mobs acting as judge, jury, and executioner, all while actual criminals roam the streets. And now with my local councilmen considering the same actions, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be looking into picking up a few more guns.
Published in GeneralAre you going to listen to residents who don’t want to form private militias to keep our families safe?
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) June 8, 2020
Bethany,
Never underestimate the sheer mindless stupidity of the left. Their logic goes like this. “I have good intentions, therefore reality should conform to my will. If reality doesn’t conform to my will and goes terribly wrong do to my interference then I will blame somebody else for the bad results.”
This hopeless merry-go-round will go on until the leftist idiot is removed from all decision making.
Regards,
Jim
Maybe the country just needs to offer up Minneapolis as a sacrificial lamb. It would soon become apparent how ridiculous the idea is.
Jumping on the “defund the police” bandwagon, at least rhetorically, makes sense because city budgets will collapse anyways. So just say that it was a policy goal. A savvy mayor or city manager will also be able to artificially claim they have shifted resources from the police to social services because budgets are down anyways and those social services tend to be used more when the economy is down anyways. It’s kind of clever as a form of raw political position-taking.
I’m skeptical at the idea that police need to be defunded, though I understand that some, but not all, imagine that defunding really means shifting resources to other services so that calls for intervention don’t always fall to police officers. That could make some sense! But even then, my imagination has to work overtime. Ex: People call the cops on family members who are having psychotic episodes because they feel the family member is actually dangerous. Would the idea be to send really strong (or really patient) paramedics? I don’t quite get it.
Congress should ask social media companies what they plan to do to curb such mob activities. All states have laws against libel and threats of violence or other criminal behavior. All states charge people for being accessories to criminal activity.
While social media companies elect to censor some activities and users of their services, they can be expected to censor or report criminal activities which utilize their services.
Or else, again, they can choose to adopt the habits and protections of utility companies, like telephone and Internet providers.
Hey, let’s do what the left always wants to do to big business and nationalize social media companies under the guise of protecting the general public. I can’t wait to see how they cry about private property rights in the aftermath . . .
My compromise proposal: Disband police unions and put police officers under the umbrella of the regular municipal employees union (also do the same for firefighters and paramedics). i.e. I’m not saying police cannot be unionized, only that they don’t get their own separate union.
I wonder how long the peace circles will last. In public school we were constantly being told that we needed to give restorative measures more time to work, but there would be some incident that would send the whole thing to hell fast and pull in other students too. Security would have to get involved, some male teachers would leave their classes and try to help de-escalate (because by then a crowd would have formed) and the cops in the building would come and sometimes they’d end up taking the kids away, depending on what had happened- if knives were involved, etc.
And yet, the refrain from admin was always, “how can we use restorative justice? we have to work on creating equity. Send us an email and let us know how you worked a peace circle or restorative practices into your classroom recently.”
It didn’t work in schools to replace regular disciplinary tactics and I cannot imagine it on a larger city-wide scale.
Politics is about compromise and a separate police union probably allows police to get away with more police specific and extreme demands when it comes to policy like when body cameras have to be turned on, and negotiations over budgets. So doing that would eliminate some of those issues (though it isn’t the case that every police demand is illegitimate or benefits only the police). But if the key issue is the ability to fire bad cops and prevent them from suing to get their jobs back, I’m not sure how keeping cops unionized would help. I mean, firing teachers is also really hard because of the union dynamic. I guess I’m wondering what specific problems this might solve? It’s an interesting proposal to be sure.
Intersting. I wonder if the same could be done for teachers’ unions. Don’t prohibit national membership, but only do collective bargaining with local municipal workers’ chapters. I like it . . .
No police means no citizens. People will abandon the city. RE prices will collapse. Schools will close. The only ones left will be those in Section 8 and public housing. We’ve seen this before – Detroit, Baltimore, Allentown, Camden, Newark, Bridgeport, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, on and on- when industry moves out, people move out, and the only ones left are wards of the state too scared and poor to move. Crime and drugs take over as the new growth industry. Voilence and gangs rule. This time people will move out because they are easy pickin’s with no one to keep the peace, but the result will be the same. Minneapolis is a goner.
They are BRAIN DEAD. This will not stand. I can’t imagine people will support this for more than a few months. Will any Democrat please stand up and object. Please.
If your objective is the collapse of civilized society, logic isn’t relevant. Radical, adept, ruthless opportunism is. That’s what this is – progressively aggressive pushing a society toward chaos in order to assume power. It was just poking along until Obama’s administration legitimized the extreme techniques. Thank you Eric Holder for dropping the Black Panther case, hiring radical attorneys top to bottom in DoJ and accepting and validating the premise of Occupy Wall Street, not to mention Obama purposefully weakening the military and becoming submissive to Islam.
In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Judges 21:25.
How did that work out for Israel?
Once the election is passed things will settle down into a new normal (whatever that is). In the meantime chaos is a means to a successful election result (they think)
You are so right Doug. There are many whole countries in central and South America in this condition. Razor wire and barbed wire abound. Private security in neighborhoods, Dobermans everywhere. Thievery is a way of life.
We’ll have to ask Ilhan Omar to tell us what her vision is of what the “beautiful something” is that rises from the ash heap that will be Mogadishu…ahem, sorry, Minneapolis–
Jamaica.
My husband was forced to resign because he was trying to keep kids from hurting each other –in elementary school.
If you think gun sales are brisk now…just wait.