Defund the police? Americans have witnessed how quickly a tragic death and reasonable calls for reform can be so quickly hijacked by radical activists who just want to see the world burn. The most recent calls to defund the police are not only as irresponsible as they sound, but they embody the most dangerous elements fueling Joe Biden’s aimless presidential campaign.
Make no mistake, despite desperate attempts by apologists to either ignore the issue or convince America that “defund the police” means something other than “defund the police,” Black Lives Matter activists and far-left Democrats are just gaslighting the nation. “Defund the police” means getting rid of the police, plain and simple.
Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, in contrast to her more clever colleagues, is too obtuse to hide what she means.
“The Minneapolis Police Department is rotten to the root, and so when we dismantle it, we get rid of that cancer,” she said to a crowd of protesters chanting “defund the police.”
When others have attempted to convince the “defund the police” crowd that it could be something less than completely dismantling the police, the mob has pushed back decisively and unequivocally. They mean what they say: no more police.
Incompetent Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey tried to straddle the line during a peaceful protest after rioters burned more than 500 businesses in his city. He tried to reason with the people calling on him to abolish law enforcement, groveling to their demands but pleading, “I do not support the full abolition of the police.”
The crowd’s rejection was immediate and unambiguous. “We don’t want no more police, is that clear?” insisted the Black Lives Matter activist who was castigating him, before sending the mayor off with his tail between his legs amidst chants of “go home, Jacob, go home.”
In Washington, D.C., it was the same story. Mayor Murial Bowser tried appeasement, having city workers paint the words “Black Lives Matter” in large yellow letters along 16th Street NW, the avenue leading to the White House. It wasn’t enough. Activists tweeted that “Black Lives Matter means defund the police” and then took it upon themselves to “complete” the phrase on their own.
It is a remarkable tragedy that we are in the position of having to defend the police against efforts to defund the police. The professionalism and vigilance of law enforcement officers across the country have saved more black lives over the past 30 years than any other single force in American society.
In many of the communities of color that suffered the most in the wave of violence that consumed urban America in the 1970s, cops managed to reduce homicides by 70 or even 80 percent. Not only that, but in direct contravention of the notion of “systemic racism” and rampant brutality among police, they managed to do it while reducing the number of people of color killed by police by up to 90 percent over the same period.
Now, anti-police activists are telling us that it’s merely a symptom of our “privilege” to expect that there will be police to call if our homes are broken into. It is outrageous. But we don’t need to guess what happens to those lives and those neighborhoods when public officials give up on policing.
Crime was already on the rise this year as big-city liberals aggressively pursued soft-on-crime insanity such as New York’s “bail reform” and San Francisco’s election of District Attorney Chesa Boudin on a platform of letting crime slide. And just last week, Los Angeles saw homicides go up 250% and victims shot went up 56%.
If the radicals get their way now, American cities — and especially the communities of color that are most often victimized — could have much worse in store for them. Just witness the disasters that befell Ferguson, Missouri and Detroit, Michigan after police pulled back after riots in 2015 and 1967, respectively.
Joe Biden, a lifetime politician, knows how badly “defund the police” rhetoric will play in a presidential election, but refusing to endorse it is just weak-kneed political posturing. He needs to do more. It is time for Joe Biden and Democrats to stop bending their knee for radicals who want to dismantle our institutions of public safety, and it’s time for them to stand up for America’s law enforcement.
Kimberly Guilfoyle (@KimGuilfoyle) is a Senior Advisor to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and National Chair of the Trump Victory Finance Committee