REfund The Police | Defenders And Disciples

Thank you my friend PO1 H Gene Lawrence for posting the link.
I certainly concur it is time to refund the police. Hopefully police officers will be welcomed in communities that support law and order.
For those benighted communities that want to defund police, I hope those who made that decision will suffer an increase in crime directed on their person :-)
justice is rarely that swift and focused and yet God has a great sense of humor.

Monetary Value and Funding
Monetary value is value measured in terms of currency. Certain items and services have more monetary value than others. Factors that affect monetary value could include quality, effectiveness, efficiency, or even factors such as brand name or social proof.

Funding is providing financial support to a business, mission, or other entity. The amount of funding we provide is indicative of the monetary value we place on that business, mission, or other entity.

I personally don’t place much value on abstract art exhibits (Please contain your surprise), therefore I do not donate to these groups. However, I do value the work done by Pro-Life groups and I donate to (fund) these groups.

We all understand this, and these concepts are outlined in great detail in Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. However, I find it useful to cover first principles of a concept when setting the stage for a contentious discussion.

Law Enforcement
Societies cannot function well without laws. Laws are basically an agreed set of boundaries and standards placed on individuals within a society in order to preserve the society and protect the individuals within the society. Now, we could have a discussion on the arbitrary nature or morality of various laws that have been passed; however, that is beyond the scope of this discussion (though, look for one in future posts). Generally speaking, there are laws that are necessary for the preservation of a society. If you are an anarchist, this discussion is not for you.

If we were a virtuous and responsible citizenry, these laws could be agreed upon and every man, woman, and child would follow them out of an altruistic motive to do the right thing. However, that has never been and will never be the case. Thus, there must be some system in place to enforce the laws. This system needs to ensure laws are being observed, stop unlawful activity, and discipline those who commit unlawful activity.

Social Workers in lieu of Police?
A growing naive narrative is that unarmed social workers could replace police. One of the main ideas behind this narrative is that the presence of armed police can actually escalate a situation, whereas an unarmed social worker might result in a peaceful resolution. I will concede that there might be a FEW situations in which a suspect might not be as likely to shoot a social worker as they would a cop. However, I would argue that the reason for this is that the social worker has no real means for coercing the suspect into compliance. Therefore, when the social worker cannot get the suspect to comply, they will be left with two options:

Disengage from the suspect and allow them to continue doing what they were doing.
Call the real police.
Note, these two options would be a best case scenario, should a suspect not comply. Worst case would be that either the victim or the social worker be assaulted or killed. There is a reason police carry firearms and other less-lethal tools, because when a situation goes sideways, it is too late to gear up.

I think another reason many feel that armed police should be replaced with unarmed social workers is a lack of understanding for what arms are intended for. Arms (lethal and less-lethal) are tools for imposing one’s will on another when verbal demands fail. Good and bad guys both use arms for this purpose. Bad guys use arms when a victim will not comply with their demands and good guys use arms when a bad guy will not stop being bad even after verbal commands.

An unarmed police officer is like a bite dog without teeth. Now, if you think that what I just suggested is that police are only good for shooting people, then you don’t understand the analogy. Bite dogs are not only used for biting, they are also used to intimidate a suspect into compliance. Bite dogs are often held on leash as they bark viciously at the suspect while other officers give commands to the suspect. However, if a suspect sees a bite dog without teeth, the intimidation is lost. This also does not mean that police should, or are, always brandishing their firearms and threatening to shoot someone but that the fine print of every law enforcement command is “or else”. Without the “or else”, you have neutered the officer’s authority.

Not only is it a bad idea to try and replace police with social workers, it still doesn’t address the root of the issue. Police departments, along with every other organization on earth, have issues because they are composed of people, and there is nothing we can do to change that.

Now, one might suggest that this fact is the reason why an unarmed social worker is the answer. Because an armored social worker cannot mistakenly kill someone. Theoretically this might be true and the few individuals who were unjustly killed by police would still be alive. However, considering that the vast majority of police shootings are justified, what is more likely to happen is that we would have a bunch of social workers killed by armed suspects.

Police Brutality
Does police brutality exist in this country? Yes. However, when you factor in all the interactions police have with citizens on a daily and annual basis, police brutality is statistically zero. The reason police brutality seems like more of an issue than it is could be because our society gives most of its focus on examples of brutality while marginalizing examples of professional policing.

Defending the case that police brutality is not as much of an issue as it is portrayed by the media is beyond the scope of this article, but I encourage you to watch the following discussions.

NYC Jesus Matters/Refund the police Bevelyn Beatty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xge__rDc3s


FYI LTC (Join to see)SGT Steve McFarland SFC William Farrell MSgt Robert "Rock" Aldi SMSgt David A Asbury PO1 H Gene Lawrence PO2 (Join to see) SPC Nancy Greene SSG Robert WebsterSSG Franklin Briant TSgt David L. Sgt (Join to see) PO2 Frederick Dunn SSG Michael Noll MSgt Paul Connors PO3 Phyllis Maynard SPC Diana D. Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D.

PO1 H Gene Lawrence I just took out time to email this to our City Manager, City Council Representative, City Zoning Manager, A Businessman in the Community. Thank you.