There has been much legitimate public call-out to "reimagine policing" in the wake of the brutal Minneapolis murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white cop, as three other law enforcement officers passively allowed it to happen. Ironically, that reimagining has become irrationally conflated as a "defund the police" movement in many communities hardest hit by permissive lawlessness.
You already know much about the horrific aftermath of chaos and calamity that played out in many cities on national media.
Some of those constitutionally-guaranteed peaceful protests devolved into violence and destruction that laid widespread waste to businesses in their path and caused other tragically senseless deaths.
David Dorn, a retired 77-year-old Black former small town Missouri police captain was shot and killed outside a pawn shop owned by a friend he was trying to protect from looters who had taken advantage of St. Louis protest bedlam to commit thievery.
A Las Vegas officer was shot in the head and permanently paralyzed from the neck down. Four active service officers were shot in St. Louis. Two New York police were also shot, another was stabbed and nearly 400 others were injured during the two weeks of demonstrations.
More than 4,000 people were arrested for charges ranging from looting and blocking highways — to breaking curfews that were imposed in major cities around the U.S., including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
A mob enacted a forced takeover of a six-block area near Seattle's central downtown business district, took control of the East Precinct police headquarters and declared the area a cop-free "autonomous zone."
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan shrugged off any necessity to regain municipal control of the area, describing the worst case outcome as nothing more than a block party and a "summer of love."
All that purported love had some dangerous and deadly consequences. Four people in the zone have been shot, including 19-year-old Horace Lorenzo Anderson, a Black man, who died. Protestors blocked officers from responding at the scene, and there were no arrests.
Seattle's city council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda has capitulated to threats of further violence with a plan to slash the police department's $400 million budget in half. Time will determine whether this new reimagined model of public appeasement and officially-sanctioned lawlessness is in their citizens' larger interests.
The Minneapolis City Council even went so far as to reimagine policing out of existence altogether. The new plan is to replace its entire police department with a more woke "department of community safety and violence prevention."
According to draft language posted online, the new department's director will expressly have "non-law-enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches."
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti wants to follow suit, proposing to redirect $250 million from police public safety to social programs.
In New York, with blocks of stores boarded up everywhere, the city council has agreed to cut the city's police budget by $1 billion, or one-sixth. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a plaintive request to the destructive rioters: "You don't need to protest. You won. You won."
It's important to realize that duly elected officials in Minneapolis, Seattle and all other American cities among the 18,000 or so that provide and control public safety services have every right to determine how they define and administer policing policies to protect their citizens.
It is the states, counties and municipalities, after all, that establish police hiring and retention protocols, approve means and methods of response protocols and implement community interaction and cooperation programs. Accordingly, their agencies, not the federal government, are directly accountable for the results.
One important outcome is that police morale due to officially-condoned public disrespect is already at an all-time low.
Kevin Stuckey, president of the Seattle Police Officer's Guild, warns that many are quitting in unprecedented numbers. He explained, "I have spoken to several officers who say they would rather go somewhere else because they didn't sign up to be the bad guy. They had no desire to be the villain in this scenario. Most people signed up to be a police officer because they want to help people and they've felt like they've been vilified by the City of Seattle."
Paul di Giacomo, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association in New York, told Fox News that his union's 19,000 active and retired police officers now feel "abandoned by everyone." He said, "There is no one supporting the police, from the governor to the mayor to the D.A.'s to the city council."
So now perhaps try to reimagine yourself as a Fredericksburg, Virginia mother who frantically called 911 to report that protestors had surrounded and jumped on her car were shouting obscenities and terrifying her young daughter. She was dismissively told by the operator to communicate her frustrations to the mayor.
Worse, reimagine calling 911 to report someone attempting to break into your home at 2 in the morning — then being informed by a recording that "your call is very important to us," but the community social services complaint offices don't open until 9.
So let's wait for other cities to test such "progressive" policies before we ever reimagine voting to adopt them in ours.
Or if you're already living in one of them, best of luck. Let the rest of us know how it all works out.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. Larry has written more than 600 articles for Newsmax and Forbes and is the author of several books. Included are: "Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure and Our Future" (2020), "The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives" (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful" (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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