After Further Review, A Change Of Heart

With great amusement I am watching politicians who eagerly jumped on board with calls from cop haters to defund and even abolish police now having to contort themselves into a more serious public policy proposal now that they see the foolishness of these suggestions after polling suggests there is nearly zero public support across all demographics for defunding police.

What started out as blatant calls to defund and abolish have turned into a game of wordsmithing by two-bit politicians who got too far out in front of their skis on this inane idea. Now defunding, abolishing and cuts have been replaced by words and phrases like “redirecting”, “repurposing” or “reallocating” police resources to disguise and mislead their true intentions.

Democrat vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris calls it “re-imagining” policing. All of this is being done after cities like Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland (OR), Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City and Los Angeles have experienced spikes in violent crime rates as police stood down and backed off the need to be assertive in order to keep crime and violence in check, to keep the peace and maintain law and order. Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden gave his vision of police reform saying he should send social workers along with police on calls to talk them out of using force when they legally need to. You won’t find many social workers who will sign up for that.

The New York City council recommends cutting the six-billion-dollar budget of the NYPD by one billion dollars. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett submitted a city budget for 2021 that includes cutting funding for 125 officers on a police department already operating with vacancies. The liberal local newspaper that shills for the liberal mayor said in a story on the budget that Barrett’s proposal was not a true defunding move. Really? Then what is it? In Seattle, calls for cutting the police budget in half led to “only” a 1% reduction in the police budget. In Portland, the police budget has been cut by $10 million or 4% of the budget and far less that the police hater had sought. In Los Angeles, the city council cut the budget by $150 million. The Philadelphia Police Department was scheduled for an increase in its 2021 budget but that was nixed.

As a law enforcement chief executive and former sheriff of Milwaukee County, I know a thing or two about budgeting. A budget is a plan about what you will do to keep the area safe. Most of what is contained in a budget, about 92%, is eaten up in salaries and benefits. That leaves only 8% left for discretionary spending. That’s working on the margins. My budget, like most law enforcement agencies, was underfunded to start with. That means that the slightest cut is a big deal. Cuts don’t include the rate of inflation-the rising cost of collectively bargained salaries and benefits.

All of this has consequences for the public, especially those who live in areas ravaged by street violence. Poor black and Hispanic people who live in these urban centers will bear a disproportionate level of being victimized. Minneapolis has had more homicides in the first three quarters of 2020 than in all of the previous year. Rising crime in cities cutting police budgets has left clueless politicians scratching their heads. In Minneapolis, for example, at a recent city council meeting, several council members have asked where the police are as their constituents demand that something be done about crime. Council President Lisa Bender even accused the police of not enforcing the law or making arrests.

These absent-minded politicians cannot and will not make the connection between fewer police and rising street crimes like robberies, aggravated assaults and homicides. They cannot make the connection that all this cop-hating and physical attacks are having on the psyche of officers. Chief Medaria

Arredondo had a chance to let them know that cuts mean fewer police and longer response times and that his officers are mentally and physically fatigued. He did not. He stood down. Instead, he said he would discuss it with his commanders. I was recently in Minneapolis and talked to several police officers including one who still has not been cleared for duty having been injured during the riots following the death of George Floyd. They told me that the department was totally demoralized. That Arredondo doesn’t know that is telling how disconnected he is from his officers.

Other city leaders have also had a change of heart. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan was all in with Antifa and Black Lives Matter about abolishing the Seattle Police Department. After an awakening that saw her come under attack from the same insurrectionists she once supported, she had to walk back her initial anti-police position. Her veto of police budget cuts was overridden.

Add to this that retirements and resignations are skyrocketing. The Milwaukee Police Department is experiencing an over 40% retirement rate compared to a year ago. In Minneapolis, 100 officers have left the agency. NYPD is seeing what is described as a “troubling surge in officer retirements”. Most officers surveyed say they are leaving due to all the anti-police rhetoric. Losing a police officer in and of itself places a heavier workload on an already overworked staff. An overworked officer is subject to making more mistakes. Add to that all of the experience that is walking out the door. Politicians don’t consider that. Most agencies do not have a succession plan to capture that knowledge and experience before officers retire. That is not replaced by simply hiring a new officer. Most officers know that it takes about 5 years for an officer to become truly seasoned in the science of policing.

I am sounding the alarm now. The fire is getting closer. We need more effective police leadership today more than ever before. The question is whether we’ll see it or not before this proud profession collapses.

Sheriff David Clarke Jr. is former Sheriff of Milwaukee Co, Wisconsin, President of AmericasSheriff LLC, Board member of the Crime Research Center, author of the book Cop Under Fire: Beyond Hashtags of Race Crime and Politics for a Better America. To learn more visit www.americassheriff.com