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Defunding the Police
Defunding the police, the new fad among city councils around the United States, that will magically reduce violent encounters between police officers and violent offenders is not going to end well. The latest police encounter with a mentally ill, knife-wielding man has led to more rioting and looting in Philadelphia.
The family has stated that they wanted an ambulance not police officers to respond to their 9-1-1 call. I’m not aware of a metric on how many EMT’s must be injured or killed before police officers can be called to secure someone so they can be transported for a psych-hold.
The police budget in Philadelphia has been cut by $33 million. Tasers and training are expensive, and the officers that were sent to this incident were not equipped with Tasers.
“Every police officer is not issued a taser at this time,” Outlaw said, adding that they have requested additional funding so more officers can have tasers. The police commissioner says it’s common for officers to show up to domestic disturbance calls with a gun.
Outlaw says she can’t guarantee that body camera footage of the fatal shooting will be released within the next 48 to 72 hours.
“We are currently reviewing everything that we have right now to ensure what we can release and by when we can do that. I can commit to releasing information or actually commit to communicating what information will be released in the next 48 to 72 hours. Whether or not the bodycam footage will be a part of that, I don’t know at this point in the day, but I am committed to being transparent as possible,” Outlaw said.
Police Commissioner Outlaw will have to navigate the minefield of a woke city council and a woke prosecutor in Philadelphia. She will not be the first commissioner, or police chief to lose her job if she doesn’t support the new woke vision in Philly.
I’m cynical enough to believe that District Attorney Larry Krasner might suppress the bodycam footage of the incident to further his anti-police narrative. It might have to be leaked to the media by officers.
Perhaps city council members should be issued pagers that would call them to deal with a mentally ill man wielding an edged weapon. That might mean increasing the city budget for special elections to fill empty seats on the city council.
Published in Policing
You got to admit that Outlaw is the best name for a Police Commissioner evah.
As a one-time West Philly resident, I still miss Frank Rizzo.
The EMTs rely on the police for their personal security …
… because …
… the EMTs are neither trained nor equipped to defend themselves.
Anyone who can’t follow that two-link chain has no business being in government.
Love th pager idea
In Portland currently, the fire bureau and (privately run, contracted) ambulances won’t respond to violent incidents until the police secure the scene. Is the city going to create a new organization of non police first responders? Who will want that job? If the city finds enough naïfs, how long before they unionize and demand police protection or police powers?
Yeah, when you want more nonlethal options you need to spend more, not less.
That just sounds like an oxymoron
If there is no money for Tasers, then the department is not budgeting their money correctly. Google tells me they about $2,000 each.
What the heck did the family expect the EMTs to do?
She was the police chief in Portland before going to Philadelphia. She ran afoul of the Portland city Council when she informed them that the councils’ lack of support for the police bureau was making it difficult to hire new officers. The new police chief is Black and the city council will probably fire him as well for not sharing their vision of Woke policing.
The best argument against defunding the police? A looter filled his car with stolen products from Walmart. As he was leaving the scene he was carjacked at gun point.The looter called the police on the carjacker. This actually happened in Philadelphia. It takes Democrats to be this stupid.
It will not, DW. The idea that defunding police reduces violence makes as much sense as the idea that defunding firefighters reduces fire. But I wouldn’t put anything past the wokesters. They might think defunding firefighters is a good first step towards ameliorating the long history of antagonism between firefighters and fire.
Some of my favorite things on police-dispatch type shows are the people who sold someone some pot or crack or whatever, and they call 911 because the person didn’t pay them for it.
This made me actually laugh out loud!
Just an aside to Bro Doug’s post, in the early 1980s, Mountain View, CA, had a police chief named Schatz and a fire chief named Burns.
Not quite the same thing, but here’s a sort-of example. (Just in case you thought I was making it up, and that nobody could ever be so dumb as to call 911 because someone didn’t pay for their dope.)
There have been cases where someone has called in to complain that the meth they had just purchased was fake. The cops offer to test it if the complainant would bring it to the precinct – which is exactly what they did.
Turned out that it was good enough.
Yes, I’ve seen those stories too.
But of course, if they were actually smart, they wouldn’t be doing drugs to begin with.
The Portland city council has already cut 15 million from the police budget, now two council members are demanding another 18 million dollars be cut from the police bureau’s budget.
Advocacy groups in Philadelphia are demanding deeper cuts for the Philadelphia PD above the 33 million that has already been cut.
I’m not sure how you can budget for training, and less than lethal tools when police departments cannot be sure how much money they will have in their budget.
As producing/tax-paying people flee the cities, their budgets will be coming apart anyway.
As a former EMS medical director I can state categorically that the police are required to be on scene and have the scene secured before EMS will make contact with the patient if there is a potential for violence or a weapon. This person charged the police with a knife. The police responded appropriately.
Anyone within 20 feet with a knife is a deadly threat.
I have had several conversations with people in my life about “defunding the police”. First of all, I’ve got my share of issues with police. I get frustrated with the over-policing I’ve witnessed, and suffered, in my quiet, little, low-crime town.
That said, there’s one fact that (while obvious) I’d never thought through before. That just a police presence reduces crime, even if they don’t show up in time to prevent it. How many crimes are Not committed because of the police is something that I’d never factored in. It took the police backing off some communities, and noticing the rise of crime against innocents, for me to have my “aha” moment.
Whenever someone mentions anything to me about defunding the police, (inevitably it’s a young man) I reply: easy for you to say. You’re not a 5’0″ (late) middle-aged woman who could be killed by literally more than half of the population. The nerd who helps me with computer problems at Best Buy could take me out. And probably a pretty sizable percentage of women. And they wouldn’t have to be armed to do it.
I’ve led a blessed and safe life (thank you police!) for me not to realize that until now.
Remember a COPS episode where a woman flags down the police because someone “stole 20 dollars” from her. Very vague on the details. Cop goes over to the guy in question and turns out she flagged them down because the dude sold her a piece wall board as crack.
The sad thing is that the officers you need, and want to keep will leave, and this includes the good supervisors. They know how good they are and will leave for agencies that will support them. They might even leave police work altogether which is even sadder.
Portland has gone from around a thousand officers to eight hundred sworn officers, and more plan on leaving. That’s a lot of experience that will not be passed down to new officers. The communities that will suffer the most is those that need proactive policing. There are families in poorer neighborhoods that are doing the right thing, but the greater narrative doesn’t include them.
Yeah, I remember some of those on COPS too.
Another favorite would be the (usually black) suspects running from police with plastic bags of dope dangling from their pockets, while yelling “It’s not mine! It’s not mine!”
Hopefully that show will be back again, if sanity returns once more following the election.
Decades ago I was a reserve deputy in Siskiyou County, CA, assigned to a remote substation. One day when our sergeant was the only officer in, there was a knocking at the door.
“Yes?”
“Hi, hey, can I get my .22 rifle back?”
“What rifle?”
“You know, the one you picked up at my grow.” (A week or so the deputies had found and cleaned up a marijuana patch deep in the woods.)
“Do you mean the one we found in the woods?”
“Yeah. I understand the plants are gone, but that rifle belonged to my grandfather, and it really means a lot to me.”
“Well, come in and have a seat, and let’s talk about this. I do need to tell you that you have a right to remain silent . . .”
“Yeah, I know all that. Can I get my rifle back?”
“Can you describe the rifle?”
“Sure. It’s . . .”
“Well, step back here into our “waiting room,” and I’ll look into this.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
CLANG!
When I got there for my next shift, a few days later, all the deputies were still laughing.
Apparently he was smoking it all himself, not selling it.
Criminal defense attorneys I knew would refer to this type of case as involving “criminal stupidity in the first degree.” LOL
Thanks. I have been trying to put my thoughts into words about police for a good while, and this about does it for me.
The same could be said about the individual right to bear arms.
Shoot ‘em in the leg!
No, that’s also too extreme. Just shoot the knife out of their hand!