Defund The Police

This cartoon should ignite a lot of debate on social media over the next few days.

A lot of Black Lives Matter protesters are calling for defunding the nation’s police departments. There’s a lot of talk about what that means exactly and concerns Donald Trump and Republicans will milk it for the 2020 presidential campaign. Guess what. They’re already doing that.

It doesn’t really matter what the facts are for Donald Trump and Republicans to take something, fill it full of lies, and run with it. Remember how President Obama was going to take all our guns? Do you remember President Obama actually taking our guns? During the 2018 midterm elections, Trump and Republicans ran on the message the Democratic Party wanted to abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). That did not work, the Democrats took the House, and we still have ICE. A lot of Republican voters probably thought Nancy Pelosi was coming to take their ice makers and we’d have to go back to trays.

Republicans and Trump gaslight and lie on a political issue? Remember, this is the same party that ran on saving Obamacare in 2018. Donald Trump also claimed George Soros was funding Central American caravans to “invade” our southern border and he even admitted he had no facts to base this claim.

Donald Trump stated yesterday that we’re not going to defund the police despite the fact he actually doesn’t have much of a say in it. Funding your local police department is mostly from your local government. But, the federal government can create laws restructuring and regulating police departments which is exactly what this nation needs.

While people argue most cops are good and the bads ones are just a few…the rotten apples have rotted police culture. While you can argue it was just a couple of cops who pushed the elderly man in Buffalo, there were multiple who walked past the man without offering any assistance. Then, it was an official statement from the department that the old man tripped and fell on his own despite there being video evidence contrary to that. Then, after two of the cops were punished, 52 of their colleagues resigned from their task force in protest of cops being held accountable. That is a culture that doesn’t need restructuring. It needs to be eliminated. Do we have to defund police to eliminate that rotten cop culture?

When the Minnesota State Police arrested a black CNN journalist who was only doing his job, reporting, they later issued an official statement saying they released him after verifying his credentials. The arrest was actually caught on tape with the reporter, Omar Jimenez showing the cops his…wait for it…credentials. The camera recording him and the microphone in his hand were also helpful clues, but hey, you never know when rioters will grab fake cameras and microphones to loot a Hardees. But the point is, at a moment when the public is protesting police, and the police need to rebuild trust, the entire department lied. Cops lie. They lie to cover their ass. They lie to cover each other’s asses. They lie to nail your ass.

It’s also extremely difficult to prosecute police not to mention how hard it is to get a cop to arrest a cop.  As it’s been noted and obvious to everyone except police and Republicans, the only way to get the ball rolling to prosecute a cop is to catch a cop breaking the law on tape. How many days did it take for the police to arrest and charge George Floyd’s killer? How many more days to charge his accomplices? The police record almost everything they do (they’re supposed to anyway), but we have yet to see the police’s tape from the George Floyd case.

So what does it mean to defund the police? Does it mean to cut their funding, restructure the department, or to actually eliminate the entire department?

In Minneapolis where George Floyd was killed, it means getting rid of the entire department. I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

The group MPD150, which says it is “working towards a police-free Minneapolis,” argues that defunding would be more about “strategically reallocating resources, funding, and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety, support, and prevention.” So, who ya’ gonna call if someone breaks in? Ghostbusters? What if all the NRA gun nuts who took one shooting class start acting as vigilantes when they’re not marching about how much they need haircuts? You saw what happened when those two white right-wing racists in Georgia tried a citizens arrest on Ahmaud Arbery.

The main problem is the slogan, “Defund the police.” “Restructure the police department and reallocate resources to more proper agencies” just isn’t as catchy, even if liberals are more capable than Republicans with handling chants longer than three syllables.

Chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Karen Bass, said she’s not in favor of eliminating police departments, but cities and states need to look at how they’re spending their resources and probably invest more in their communities. She said, “Maybe this is an opportunity to re-envision public safety.”

Right now, there is momentum to restructure the nation’s police forces. Everyone knows, even Republicans, that the nation’s police forces are corrupt. Yes, they are corrupt. When you have just one bad cop on a force and the entire department allows him to stay, you have a corrupt police force. If 19 good cops cover for one bad cop, you have 20 bad cops. In case you’re a Republican, 19 + 1 = 20.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would move funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services,  but he didn’t say how. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti vowed to cut as much as $150 million that was part of a planned increase in the police department’s budget.

Trump is using this to help portray himself as the “law and order” candidate, despite being the same guy who calls FBI agents “human scum,” attacks law enforcement agents who investigate suspected Russian spies, ruined the lives and careers of agents for his political ambitions and petty insecurities, and has literally broken the law by asking for foreign governments to help his reelection campaign. Yes, he did all that.

Plus, the guy promising us he’s the “law and order” candidate is a huge racist. Sheriff Buford T. Justice wouldn’t want to be aligned with this guy. Yes, the nation’s police unions, who create super PACs for Republicans, are totally in bed with Donald Trump, who told police they shouldn’t be “too nice” when arresting brown suspects. Donald Trump has literally encouraged police to engage in police brutality. How did the police in attendance react? They laughed and applauded. Again, cop culture is corrupt.

The LAPD union representative said, “Cutting the LAPD budget means longer responses to 911 emergency calls, officers calling for back-up won’t get it, and rape, murder, and assault investigations won’t occur or will take forever to initiate, let alone complete.” So basically, the cops will respond slower to the neighborhoods they don’t patrol anyway and suspects will be prosecuted almost as slowly as bad cops are prosecuted.

As we know from history, the Democratic Party’s biggest obstacle to winning a presidential election is the Democratic Party. The Democrats will defeat themselves before Donald Trump will. Right now, it looks like Joe Biden, who said he’s against defunding the police, is on his way to a historic landslide in the presidential election. And, the Democratic Party only has to defeat a stupid racist who lost over 40 million jobs, over 100,000 lives, and the nation’s respect and credibility on the international stage. So, yeah…Democrats should be terrified.

I know the socialist Democrats are passionate to the point they don’t really care about winning elections. You want change and you want it now, damn the politics of it. But you need the politics to get what you want. It’s like saying, “Fuck it, I’m voting third party” then not understanding why you don’t see any liberal change after getting Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Should we defund the police? Yes, to a point. Should we eliminate police departments? No, but we should tear them apart and rebuild. But before we can do any of that, we have to get rid of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. What I don’t understand is why that is so hard for the Bernie Bros to understand. It’s like a four-syllable chant to Republicans…or math. They can’t do it.

Before we can restructure the Po-Po, we have to get rid of the orange Ho-Ho.

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