By Steve Pomper
Everything, and I mean everything that involves public safety that the anti-cop radicals touch, they obliterate. You’d think some of the stuff they do would work—even by accident, but it doesn’t. And that will continue until pro-cop (law-and-order) officials replace the anti-cop radicals.
Think about it. Petty, property, and violent crime crises and issues like self-inflicted “homelessness,” which adds to crime, remain unsolved despite the radical’s efforts. At best, dousing the problem with buckets of money didn’t result in less of a crisis. In some cases, the crises may have remained unchanged, but even that is a costly failure.
Look at what’s happened with anti-police laws radicals in states like Illinois and Washington have passed over the last few years. Crime, traffic deaths, and drug overdoses that the new laws were supposed to “fix,” increased. This has led to legislatures reluctantly having to fix what they intentionally broke.
Astonishingly, some cities are revisiting plans to replace police with civilians for certain law enforcement duties. Like sending social workers instead of cops to 911 mental health calls. You know, because you can predict when the cops will or won’t be needed, right?
As I wrote about in a recent NPA article, just as “homelessness” shouldn’t imbue automatic virtue, mental issues shouldn’t immunize people from the harsh consequences of their violent actions.
When I was still an active cop, my beat had a large concentration of mental health facilities. If I responded to a call and I needed a mental health professional (MHP), I’d call for one. But if the mentally ill guy or gal decided they wanted to hurt people, it was a good thing I was there first.
In my city, right on cue, while officials were discussing sending MHPs alone to mental health-related 911 calls, a client at a mental health facility stabbed a social worker to death. As The Western Journal so aptly titled an article, “Seattle Case Worker Stabbed to Death Same Day City Council Defunded Police.”
This time, these great ideas resurfaced in L.A., which is not shocking with a D.A. like Soros-slime bag George Gasçon, who, among other insults, tried to overturn a cop-killer’s conviction. So, while this is not a new idea, it’s still a bad idea: Taking traffic enforcement away from the cops.
According to Sarah Akey at Law Enforcement Today, “The defund the police movement caught new traction four years ago, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This was true across the nation, especially in Los Angeles, where reform advocates called for an all-out end to police reliance in the city.”
This lunacy is nothing but anti-police bigotry. The radicals manufacture myths about and caricature cops as thugs. They perpetuate those myths with the help of radical left media. And then they base their calls for police “reform,” defunding, or abolishing on those lies.
Akey continued. “Citing ‘persistent racial disparities’ in searches and arrests as well as traffic stops, some advocates even insisted that city leaders remove sworn officers from traffic enforcement.”
This attack on cops is at best disingenuous and at worst diabolical because of the harm it does to public safety. The sprint to accuse cops of racism happened in my department to the point they started mandating we keep race stats for traffic stop.
At the time, I was writing a column in our police union’s monthly newspaper. I consistently asked those pushing the “cops are racist” slur to explain “racial disparities,” why they wouldn’t consider the disparity may be with the violators. Were drivers of certain races or ethnicities committing more infractions than other groups? What was the racial or ethnic demographics of the geographical area?
Maybe these weren’t the reason for the alleged disparities, but if you’re using the scientific method, don’t you have to ask these questions and examine the answers before any conclusions can be valid? Otherwise, aren’t you employing confirmation bias motivated by your radical ideology?
An EPA study explained, “Confirmation bias is a… tendency to believe that you are right, disregarding things that conflict with your ideas [ideologies].”
LA’s anti-cop radicals want to deploy “unarmed city workers…” to “take over most traffic duties” because cops racist. As a cop who did cop stuff and who now writes about other cops doing cop stuff, this is so stupid my brain flashes over white that anyone would seriously consider the idea.
The sad thing is that some of the people supporting such a ludicrous idea are likely well-intentioned—being stupid—but they mean well. First, they create a fantasy world where something like this could work. Then they disregard that the police exist for the horrible what ifs, not for the routine, what if nots. I’ll concede most traffic violators are not dangerous.
So what?
Are cities now in the business of risking people’s lives on the belief that they will never stop a violent person for a “minor” infraction? Perhaps someone who’s just committed a crime. Murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and robbers speed, run stop signs and red lights too. This idea is so dumb that I think I’ve lost IQ points while writing this article (see what I do for the readers?).
How many cops have been severely injured or are in the ground because of traffic stops “gone bad.” Here’s a reminder: Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was arrested by an Oklahoma state trooper after he’d stopped that mass murderer for a “minor” traffic violation.
You can read about Trooper Charlie Hanger’s remarkable capture of one of the most infamous mass murderers in U.S. history, at Police1.com. Think about how that stop might have gone if conducted by an “unarmed city worker” instead of an experienced law enforcement officer. McVeigh likely would have added one more name to his death toll that day.
The stupid L.A. City Council has authorized a study to assess unarmed city workers conducting traffic enforcement. How do I know they’re stupid? It’s because they “authorized a study to assess unarmed city workers conducting traffic enforcement in the city.”
To add to the stupidity, they are also exploring violating the Equal Protection Clause by “limiting fines in poorer communities [and] ending traffic stops for minor violations such as expired tags [then why get them?] … [oh, no—another brain flashover].”
Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said, “I think the city of Los Angeles can lead the nation.” This dumb thinking comes from an ideological—maybe pathological—refusal to consider the ideas of those who do the job—the cops.
Unarmed city workers conducting traffic enforcement is another flawed idea where cops and supporters will hop back on the “I told you so, bandwagon.” And the imbeciles suggesting these stupid ideas will once again be responsible for another epic failure. But don’t worry. Like always, they’ll fade into the background and refuse to accept culpability for the harm their stupid policies have caused.
Dangerous ideas like these must be discussed openly and under the harsh light of intellectual challenges to them. This means including professionals who understand the negative consequences, so the people who will be affected can understand what those consequences could be. But the radicals won’t participate in a truly open, intellectually challenging discussion because they’d have to come intellectually unarmed.
To paraphrase a common refrain: Don’t bring stupid to a smart fight.
The anti-cop radicals don’t want people to hear from others just why their public safety (all) ideas are so stupid. These radicals are the cause of the problems we’ve seen in America since the manufactured scourge of the Saint Floyd riots. The radical left is not allowed to be wrong—but wrong is all you’re allowed to be.
Let’s end this discussion with liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof and surprising column he recently wrote about the west coast cities’ slide into decay. As reported by FOX news, “In a column for the New York Times, Kristof argued that ‘west coast liberalism’ is more focused on the intentions behind its policies rather than its outcomes [Nailed it!]. As a result, deep blue states like Oregon have major homeless and drug problems, ‘below-average’ high school graduation rates, and high murder rates.”
That is worth repeating. “[L]iberalism is more focused on the intentions behind its policies [radical ideology] than its outcomes [failure].” That’s how the radical left always has been, is now, and always will be.