Yesterday a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council announced that they would move forward with a plan to defund the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). Council president Lisa Bender said, “It’s our commitment to end policing as we know it, and recreate systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.”
This comes in reaction to the death of George Lloyd, a black man being arrested on suspicion of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase groceries. While handcuffed, a white MPD officer knelt on Lloyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes, which led to his death.
We’ve all seen the protests, riots, arson, beatings, lootings and shootings since. In the face of the violence, it seems odd that the city council is determined to create a “police-free future.” In Minneapolis the average number of violent crimes per year over the past five years is 1,777. In 2017 there were 2,075 violent crimes; crimes like murder, assault, robbery and criminal sexual conduct.
The obvious question is, Who do victims call if there is no police department?
The truth, as they admit, is that they don’t really know what new “systems of public safety” look like. But they have great confidence that their community does.
Ward 3 councilor Steve Fletcher suggested that instead of police, mental health professionals could be dispatched “to mental health crisis calls, and fire department EMTs to opioid overdose calls. Traffic offenses meanwhile could be handled by an increase in camera coverage, or the city’s street parking teams.” Primary law enforcement (i.e. when you need a gun) they suggest, might be provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office.
Lest you think that this is impractical, it has the support of an initiative called MPD150 which is “working towards a police-free Minneapolis.” Their goal is
“to shift the discussion of police violence in Minneapolis from one of procedural reforms to one of meaningful structural change. We will achieve this by presenting a practical pathway for the dismantling of the Minneapolis Police Department; the transference of its social service functions to community-based agencies and organizations; the replacement of its emergency intervention functions with models not based on military methods; and the redirection of resources to support community resilience and people-directed development.”
It sounds great in theory, but how does something like that work in the practical world? Ah, not to worry, they tell us:
Crime isn’t random. Most of the time, it happens when someone has been unable to meet their basic needs through other means. By shifting money away from the police and toward services that actually meet those needs, we’ll be able to get to a place where people won’t need to rob banks.
Sure, in this long transition process, we may need a small specialized class of public servants whose job it is to respond to violent crimes. But part of what we’re talking about here is what role police play in our society. Right now, cops don’t just respond to violent crimes; they make needless traffic stops, arrest petty drug users, and engage in a wide range of “broken windows policing” behaviors that only serve to keep more people under the thumb of the criminal justice system.
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To really “fight crime,” we don’t need more cops; we need more jobs, more educational opportunities, more arts programs, more community centers, more mental health resources, and more of a say in how our own communities function.
More “arts programs.” Who knew it was so easy?
Their radical experiment is not supported by the majority of Americans. In a report last week, the Cato Institute wrote,
“It’s also useful to keep in mind that few Americans of any racial group support some of the more radical changes demanded by some activists. For instance, few people support calls to abolish or defund the police: 9 in 10 black, white and Hispanic Americans oppose reducing the number of police officers in their community—and a third say their community needs more officers the Cato survey found.”
Minneapolis’s decision is also of a piece with broader trends to defy current law, such as freeing prisoners, declaring sanctuary cities, and refusing to hand over illegal aliens to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In addition to Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York are planning to defund their police forces.
What we’re observing is a breakdown of law and order, without which a constitutional republic like ours cannot survive. If people don’t show an inner restraint, they need an external restraint—and “law enforcement” officers provide exactly that. If they are eliminated, we will get chaos, no matter what the progressive armchair psychologists say.
And the reason for that is simple:
“There is no one who does good, not even one.” Romans 3:12
That is perhaps the biggest miscalculation these social reformers are making. Mankind is not inherently good, and no art program will change a heart. Only God can do that.
I wish Minneapolis well. I really do. But if they follow through on their plans, I predict that in ten years they will have an increase in poverty and homelessness, an increase in crime and violence and a mass exodus as people flee the chaos. See if I’m not right.