Refund vs Defund the Police Is the Wrong Argument

No matter where they are campaigning or what party they belong to, candidates for political office are almost unanimous in denouncing calls to “defund the police.”

Republicans like to use the phrase as a bludgeon against virtually any Democrat running for office. Democrats, like U.S, Senate candidate and former police chief Rep. Val Demings of Florida are tarred with this brush because Republicans think they can win by painting Democrats as soft on crime, as they’ve been doing for years  

It doesn’t matter how many times Joe Biden says, “No, I don’t support defunding the police,” the mythology surrounding the concept continues to be treated as if it were reality. 

And God forbid anybody should challenge the claims surrounding cutting police budgets. Saying that defunding the police didn’t happen is akin to saying you’re in favor of more crime.

Facts don’t matter when “defund, defund, defund” is uncritically drilled into our heads by a compliant news media. 

There was never any significant defunding of police. Total U.S. police budgets are higher now than they were when George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were killed.

The reality is that this conflict over police budgets is a manifestation of a larger problem, one I’ll call the law enforcement complex. It’s a complex, not in the sense of a related group of things, rather it’s a group of related ideas, ideas that carry a significant emotional charge.

The threat of things unjustly being taken away from people is a fundamental political tool, and –for most people– police are there to keep property and lives from being stolen by presumably bad people.

Over time, law enforcement agencies have developed a protective bubble, a shield if you will, that extends over prosecutors, jailers, and suppliers. There have been good reasons for this, namely a history of cops and prosecutors being bought and paid for by assorted legal and illegal business operations.

Things were so bad in San Diego fifty years ago that a federal investigation into bookmaking uncovered crimes by the loftiest heights of the community’s civic leadership. More than 100 SDPD officers were called before a grand jury. The chief of police resigned, but managed to keep possession of a car given to him by the Yellow Cab company, a business then licensed by police and owned by yet another member of San Diego’s elite.

These days that bubble is all-too-often used to protect agencies and their personnel from consequences stemming from a distorted view of what’s considered necessary to accomplish their jobs. A San Diego cop busted (via his own body-cam) for lying about the circumstances leading to the arrest of a homeless man never faced disciplinary measures or prosecution, presumably because people in the DA’s office respected the cop’s rights more than the homeless guy’s.

A thriving trade in weapons seized by county sheriffs went on for years, involving sales to political VIPs until the State of California got wind of it. The retiring incumbent Sheriff knew about the operation, but failed to act in a manner prescribed by law.

Political upheaval in the wake of the murder of George Floyd brought on demands for reform. Absolutists within the reform movement called for cuts in police funding; those calls magically became proof that the police were under attack. Street confrontations between angry demonstrators and defensive police made it personal for many officers, who felt they were no longer supported by the community.

The real power of the bubble is its political influence. There is an ecosystem of players dependent on the good graces of law enforcement, from reporters needing access to politicians needing cash and endorsements. Even more powerful than support for politicians is the threat of opposition, of being cast as indifferent to keeping the citizenry safe from the forces of evil. 

I’m not saying that officers would deliberately rig crime rate data, but the mere possibility of something like that happening is all it takes for some very liberal icons to look the other way when nefarious political ploys are underway. Dig into why an upgrade to citizen oversight of the San Diego Police Department is taking forever, despite overwhelming public support, and you’ll see just how effective the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” system of lobbying is.

This year’s elections represent a last-ditch defense by law enforcement against what they view as interference in the way things get done. “Liberals” get blamed –and George Soros gets named– for measures and policies that disrupt the notion of incarceration as a solution to what’s considered crime. Look for ballot propositions and recall elections, all using fear, to roll back the results of past elections.

Much is being made of a spike in crime, especially violent crimes, here in California and nationwide. Mayor Todd Gloria and the Chief of Police held a press conference earlier this week to call attention to an 80 PERCENT increase in shooting deaths so far in 2022. While even one death from gun violence is too many, the actual rate of these crimes compared to the population conveniently gets overlooked when it’s time for a tough on crime media event.

It’s never apples to apples when it comes to crime statistics, but San Diego consistently rates as one of safest cities in the United States.

Amid all the warnings about increasing crime, some things generally don’t get the attention they deserve. First of all, crime rates remain near historic lows. Secondly, the things that drive violent crime are way up.

The country has (and is) being flooded with weapons. Now many of those weapons are untraceable. Just how bad this situation is we’ll never know, since the collection of data –particularly at the federal level– is hampered by restrictions imposed by gun lobby organizations.

As long as the right to own a weapon is considered more important than the right to life we’ll have a problem. Fund or defund police, it makes no difference.

What the defund the police argument is really about is the same as the one running throughout U.S. politics, namely what kind of country are we going to be, aka, What’s more important, property or people? 

I know this is simple minded, but sometimes it’s best to just break things down to their essence. 

In their role as guardians of wealth, law enforcement is inevitably going to be cast as warriors; that is largely where we’re at today.

In a people-centric society, law enforcement would be part of an integrated approach to addressing all sorts of community problems.

Again, I know it’s complicated, but if we looked at what it takes to keep order in society through a different lens, that is a much better way to debate what the role of law enforcement (and government in general) ought to be.

 Polls show voters being increasingly concerned about crime in their communities. There is no statistical proof of a connection between the political ideology of prosecutors and crime rates. States that have embraced reforms like shorter prison sentences are not experiencing more violent crime than other states.

What will happen in California is that local crime statistics –like the 80 PERCENT in murders in San Diego in 2022– will be used out of context. San Diego’s had 10 murders this year; similarly sized Dallas had 30 as of February 14. 

Violent crime in San Diego and elsewhere is still mostly a phenomena experienced by people of color living in poorer neighborhoods. What the people who want police to continue as warriors hope to do is instill fear in residents of neighborhoods not as much impacted by crime– the concept of somebody coming to take your stuff is a serious motivator.