Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Getting rid of the police. Now there’s a brilliant, progressive way to improve the criminal justice system.
There’s no question there are systemic problems with the way we police our cities that we need to address and fix.
But when Black Lives Matter and its allies begin demanding that cities like Minneapolis “defund the police” or get rid of their police departments altogether, it’s obvious they haven’t thought through what comes next.
What will happen in the real world of cops and robbers if the police are gone?
Apparently, you’ll call 911 to report a serious crime in progress and you’ll get a SWAT team of social workers — in a day or two.
Getting rid of cops won’t pose a problem for rich people in the nice parts of town or for movie stars in Beverly Hills.
They’ll just hire private cops and security services, which is what most of them already do to protect their mansions and gated communities.
Don’t tell the “Disband the Police” crowd, but it’s the people who live in the poorest parts of town — where the most serious crimes of violence are concentrated — who will pay the price by losing their police protection.
Even with cops on patrol 24/7, it’s already dangerous for law-respecting people living in the inner-cities.
But now the professional cop-haters, anarchists and “woke” progressives-without-a-clue want to get rid of police departments or turn them into church groups, which will ensure criminals and drug gangs have even less to worry about.
Despite a few brave proclamations from radical council members in dark blue towns like Minneapolis and Seattle, however, I don’t think we’ll be seeing city police departments disappear anytime soon.
In fact, if anything goes seriously wrong in liberating Seattle’s newly formed “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” we might see public support for police departments grow tremendously.
In Seattle several hundred protesters have occupied several blocks of the city’s downtown entertainment district, chased police from their precinct building and set up their own cop-free fantasyland.
The New York Times reporter on the scene romantically described the “CHAZ” as “part street festival, part commune” where hundreds “have gathered to hear speeches, poetry and music” and make chalk drawings on the pavement.
He never got around to telling readers what the residents or business owners in the neighborhood thought about their new rulers, who reportedly already are doing despotic things like shaking down businesses for protection and brandishing semi-automatic weapons.
The “leadership” of CHAZ is splintered, but they agree they aren’t leaving until the city meets their demands to defund the police, fund community groups and do dozens of other undoable things.
But the protesters better be careful. Their urban land grab could very easily backfire and wreck their dreams of a cop-free world.
If their occupation ends in violence, it will fuel the growing law-and-order backlash created when the country watched dozens of George Floyd protest marches turn into unpoliced rioting and looting.
As my father knew, you have to stand up to people who take the law into their own hands, not surrender to them.
One of his most famous mottos was “Peace through strength.” It’s not peace through weakness, which Seattle’s spineless mayor apparently believes.
Michael Reagan is the president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Contact him at: