“Depolicing”

Minneapolis voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal to replace the city’s police department with a new Department of Public Safety, an idea that supporters had hoped would bring radical change to policing in the city where George Floyd’s death under an officer’s knee brought calls for racial justice.

The initiative would have changed the city charter to remove a requirement that the city has to have a police department with a minimum number of officers. Supporters said a complete overhaul of policing was necessary to stop police violence.

Opponents said the proposal had no concrete plan for how to move forward and warned it would leave some communities already affected by violence more vulnerable as crime is on the rise.

A recent study claims so—but don’t be so sure.

Does egregious police violence hurt community trust? A recent working paper from a group of economists led by Harvard’s Desmond Ang suggests the answer is yes, but readers should be skeptical.

The paper examines what it identifies as civilian behavior in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis last year, comparing changes in shootings (which skyrocketed) to 911 calls (which were flat or fell) across eight cities. This pattern, the paper’s authors argue, shows that “high-profile acts of police violence may severely impair civilian trust and crime-reporting.”

Marques Warren got a late-night phone call at his Seattle home last year during racial justice riots and it turned him against the idea of “defund the police.”

The call came from the security alarm company for the liquor store he owns downtown. A break-in was in progress.

Amid the mayhem of protests over the killing of George Floyd, sensors on the store’s plate-glass windows detected the repeated blows of people trying to smash their way in. Mr. Warren quickly answered “yes” when the security company asked if he wanted them to call the police.

While the ticking of the clock exposes problems for major U.S. cities, the calendar also remains far from friendly to the safety of their citizens and businesses.  As unprecedented numbers of police officers opt to resign or retire — or even face termination — protesting working conditions and the vaccine mandate, many of America’s cities race toward lawlessness.

A recent conversation with a retired Seattle police officer paints a grim picture.  According to the nearly thirty-year law enforcement veteran, the mismanagement of Seattle’s police force could take a generation to repair.

Lawmakers take aim at a program equipping police with military-surplus gear.

Can anyone forget the images of Taliban fighters riding around Kabul on U.S. vehicles, wearing U.S.-supplied uniforms, and carrying U.S.-made rifles? In addition to stranding people in Afghanistan, the Americans also abandoned Humvees; trucks and armored vehicles, including Mine-Resistant Ambush Protection (MRAP) vehicles valued at about $800,000 each; artillery; aging but operable helicopters and attack aircraft; drones; artillery and mortars; and millions of rounds of ammunition. No one is quite sure how many of these items were disabled or are too sophisticated for the Taliban to operate. Estimates of their value range from $24 billion to $83 billion. Whatever the true figure, U.S. agencies and a few independent investigators agree that close to one-third of what Washington spent on the Afghan defense forces went for war matériel now held by an enemy we ousted 20 years ago.

A record 60,105 police officers were physically attacked in 2020. That’s 4,071 more than 2019, or roughly 11 more attacks per day, according to a report by the FBI. This, despite the nation being locked down for part of the year. Almost 31% of cops attacked incurred injuries, and 46 were killed, which is two fewer than 2019.

The city of Portland, Oregon has set a new record for the number of homicides in a year, having already registered 67 homicides so far this year.

Portland’s record for total homicides in a year previously stood at 66, which was set in 1987.

Oregon’s largest city has seen more than 1,000 shootings in 2021 with 314 bystanders injured by bullets. Firearms have accounted for three-quarters of homicides.

For the past year-and-a-half, “police reform” has been at the center of public debate. After President Joe Biden and leftist Democrats took power, the radicals reintroduced their legislation to “reimagine” policing — the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

We were told that it was of momentous importance, yet three weeks ago, when it was announced that Senate negotiations had failed and the bill was finished, the overall reaction from the left was general indifference. Ruling class media expressed perfunctory outrage for a day or two, and then the issue disappeared. Why?

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A crowd of 100 people wreaked havoc in downtown Portland, Oregon, this week – smashing storefront windows, lighting dumpsters on fire and causing at least $500,000 in damage – but police officers didn’t stop them.

Portland Police Bureau officials say that’s because of legislation passed by Oregon lawmakers this year, which restricts the tools they can use to confront people vandalizing buildings and causing mayhem.

“The reason that we did not intervene goes back to what we talked about last month with House Bill 2928 and the restrictions placed on us in a crowd control environment,” KOIN reports that Portland Police Lt. Jake Jensen said in a neighborhood meeting Thursday.

You probably wouldn’t know it by watching CNN or reading the front page of the Washington Post, but the city of Seattle, Washington has reached another level of crisis. Despite being mired in crime and ongoing protests, the staffing situation at the Seattle Police Department has reached such a dire level that they have declared a “stage three” emergency condition. At this point, detectives, plainclothes officers and non-patrol units will now be responding to 911 calls. And residents are being warned there may be increased delays in response times.

It’s been a year since local officials across the U.S. voted to defund police departments in the wake of widespread protests over George Floyd’s death, but now, many are having a change of heart.

The fighting over vaccine mandates continues, but the tug-of-war may soon displace a huge number of Seattle’s law enforcement.

The city of Seattle, Washington, recently established a vaccine mandate for all city employees, which includes police, with a deadline of October 18th – or face possible termination of employment.

Defunding the police is a wildly unpopular position that more than half of Democrats support and Republicans have used its unpopularity against them.

“We are going to ensure every voter knows Democrats want to Defund the Police,” NRCC spokesman Michael McAdams said in a statement earlier this year. “Whether it’s Rashida Tlaib demanding an end to policing and incarceration, or Maxine Waters encouraging rioters to engage in violence, Democrats can’t be trusted to stand with law enforcement and keep Americans safe.”