Defunding Police is a Major Mistake

Throughout the last year, America has heard members of Black Lives Matters, Antifa and many elected officials demand that our police departments across America be defunded and disbanded for the betterment of society. Where these idiots come off with trying to defund our police is beyond me and many other hard-working American citizens. With the amount of anarchy and destruction being forced upon major cities at this time is horrendous. Then to read in the news how various mayors are demanding that the President of the United States fork over federal funding to reimburse them for cleaning up their city where they allowed protesters to cause havoc and destroy businesses, homes, parks, and monuments is downright insulting to the average taxpayers. Any elected official who goes after our police officers and demands for them to be defunded should themselves be put in jail for dereliction of duty and violation of their oath of office. 

Protesters claim that they are trying to protect individuals like George Floyd against police brutality. While it was a shame that Mr. Floyd died as a result of his own criminal activity actions, the entire country should not be held responsible for his criminal deeds. America need to wake up and realize that those who are create marytr status for George Floyd have their priorities out of order. By defunding the police you are asking for more murders, robberies, rapes and other destruction throughout the streets of our country. Who will benefit from this type of stupidity? No one will benefit unless you look at the money trail of those within the BLM movement and those who are snatching up real estate at pennies on the dollar within your own destroyed communities.  Not to mention taxes being raised due to government property being destroyed, like police stations, cruisers, and then the cost of businesses that can no longer pay their employees, their local and state taxes, guess who will pay those prices besides the insurance companies? YOU will pay those fees to rebuild the community and infrastructure of your hometown. Wake up people, stop listening to celebrities who have no clue about reality much less politics and community infrastructure. Most of them can't get acting jobs so they have to try and stay in the public eye to keep their name in the press, so their agents can find them work. Lets call them what they are, political activists who are hasbeens. 

Everyone thinks that Black Lives Matter movement created the slogan “Defund the Police” sorry to bust the bubble of those who think they formed such a violent phrase, but in fact it has been around since the Black reconstruction movement timeframe in the 1930s. Activists who want to defund the police department want the money spent on police forces to be placed in other programs such as housing, employment programs, community health, education and other potential public safety programs within the city. Guess what, your tax dollars already pay for those programs and if they are underfunded, then it’s the responsibility of your local government to cut back in other areas to help financially fund those programs better, it’s not the police department’s fault that your local mayor or even your governor can’t manage their budgets.

According to my research over the last month, throughout the United States only 4% of general expenses over the last 40 years has been spent on policing. In large cities such as Los Angeles which uses 18% (1.86 billion out of a 10.5-billion-dollar threshold budget) or New York City 6% of the City’s budget ($5.9-billion out of a $97.8-billion-dollar budget). Let’s get a grip people, police budget is much lower than say social services budget which is usually between 8 and 24% of a cities budget because social workers have student loans to pay off and they get bonuses for kidnapping your children out of your home without a warrant or legal precedence. And these activists want to give more authority to social workers who don’t do anything to help the community at all, yeah give me a break. I say cut the budget on social services and give that money to the police departments and let them hire more cops to combat the crime in the cities. Activists are made up of academic driven sociopaths who write papers that make no sense and companies like Rand Corporation pick up those papers and rewrite them and present them to the public as pure fact, when in essence they are dribble nonsense that should never see the light of day or even allow the public to read because they make no sense whatsoever to reality.

As a student of criminology, I’ve read many a paper over the course of my career that made absolutely no sense whatsoever when it comes to policing. Then again, I’ve read a couple that really did make sense and should be implemented, but I am only one person therefore, I can’t promote the common-sense style remedy myself. However, to create a stronger community, I say we allow people to police their own neighborhood, but creating what the police department created back in the 1970s which was neighborhood watch groups that police their own neighborhood and root crime out where it starts.  If we empower citizens to stand strong against crime in their neighborhood, they can combat crime before it starts. If parents would teach their children respect for authority and their elders, maybe they wouldn’t be so dangerous to both as they get older. Instead of politicians getting in the way with their stupid ideas and rhetoric during campaign stops that fire up those who wish to become anarchist against society and their community

Throughout my master’s degree program, I was forced to research and read all sorts of academic papers produced by students and scholars advocating for justice reform in our jails that promote releasing criminals who promoted drugs, petty crimes such as theft and non-violent crimes to be let out of jail because they didn’t really cause anyone to die. I say bullocks, if you did the crime, you go to jail. No reform available for stupidity. We should bring back the work houses of old and put petty criminals in there and have them work their fingers to the bone to repay society for their stupidity.

If we allow the defunding of our police departments, we will see an increase in victimization and crime which will cause serious harm in our minority communities which we all know needs more policing and help than in other communities that can afford private security. We know from research that a city that has a large number of police on the force have lower crime rates, because it’s more police per capita that can patrol the city and deter crime. If we continue to expect our police departments to be responsible for every ill will in our city such as mental health, social worker issues, school resources, babysitting city officials, and every other social program advocates want them to police, we could cut their budget down and allow them to be better trained not just in law enforcement practices, but also other areas such as acute traumatic response, social interaction, community building, etc. What we need to consider here is a realignment of police budgeting to reflect a broader diversity of funding within the police department. Remember that for every protest the overtime budget increases which prevents law enforcement from allowing their staff to attend additional training for say, program-oriented training that would help with community accountability satisfaction. So you see, you can’t have it both ways, protests vs allowing the budget to be used as designated in the budget. Let’s use Washington DC police department for example, each year they look at the calendar and see that there are protests, military and political events and other social events on the docket to cover and they allocate personnel and funding to cover each event, throw in an unexpected protest in the street, or even a riot and their budget is shot to hell. Right now, according to my sources, Washington, DC Police Budget is now into using funds in the 2023 budget because they’ve exhausted the budget for 2021 and 2022. Hell, they were already into the 2021 budget back in 2019. So you see for every unseen event or unscheduled event that happens in a large city costs the police department money, and your tax dollars are then used to supplement their budget. Tax increases are inevitable.

Bottom line message: Think before you protest and think before you open your mouth to defund your police department, because you will eventually have to pay the price in your local and state tax bill. Increase in taxes causes financial burdens on everyone including YOU! 

Author Elizabeth Kilbride is a former political operative, author, scriptwriter, historian, journalist. business professional, and creative artist, and life coach consultant. Ms. Kilbride holds a Masters in Criminology and a BS in Business Management who stepped out of the loop for a while, but who is now back with a powerful opinion and voice in the direction of this country and our economy. As a life coach, she is available to counsel individuals to enjoy their dreams and a better life. Ms. Kilbride loves to travel, photograph her surroundings and is also a gourmet cook who loves to garden and preserve food for the winter months.