The Patriot Post® · It's NOT a 'Police Problem'

After the death of Minneapolis thug George Floyd on 25 May, leftists and their mainstream media outlets did what they do best — used one death as political fodder to support their agenda, which launched a murder, assault, burning, and looting campaign nationwide. They also launched a national movement vilifying ALL police as racists, insisting they are the frontline of what the Left errantly claims is a “systemically racist justice system.” Meanwhile, they are maintaining a deadly silence on the most lethal threat to black Americans — being murdered by other black Americans.

The latest of their absurd populist “defund the police” political charades is at the epicenter of the latest outrage, Minneapolis, where the city council unanimously passed a proposed amendment for Charter Commission consideration that would abolish the police department and replace it with the Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention (DCSVP).

According to Council President Lisa Bender, “It’s a structural change that allows us to invest in a holistic approach to safety, using evidence-based strategies using the brilliance and expertise of our staff from all different disciplines, with all different kinds of experience.” She added that the new agency “will have responsibility for public safety services prioritizing a holistic, public health-oriented approach,” and it will be headed by somebody with “non-law-enforcement experience in community safety services, including but not limited to public health and/or restorative justice approaches.”

The plan does not abolish police completely, as it allows some “licensed police officers” (as if current police officers have no qualifications) to work under the new DCSVP bureaucracy. Memo to violent felons — the Blue Wall is coming down, so get ready for open season in Minneapolis.

For the record, who was in charge when Floyd died? In Minneapolis: The mayor, all but one (Green Party) member of the city council, the police chief, the county prosecutor, and the U.S. House district representative (radical leftist Ilhan Abdullahi Omar) are all Socialist Democrats. In the state of Minnesota: The governor, the state attorney general (radical leftist Keith Ellison) and both U.S. Senate members are all socialist Democrats. So where exactly does the change need to begin?

As for the Democrats’ disgraceful blame-shifting of their epic urban failures by claiming it’s a “police problem,” the words of one NYPD top cop who just resigned in protest of that condemnation sum up the issue that the majority of cops experience as they put their lives on the line for fellow citizens every day. NYPD’s Deputy Inspector Richard Brea, who received a hero’s farewell last week, including an NYPD helicopter fly-by and NYPD bagpipers, declared as he departed his Bronx precinct, “[Cops’] blood is in the concrete of every street corner, but these politicians don’t want to remember that. They want to blame and vilify everyone here. I won’t have that. No sir.”

Meanwhile, New York City – like Chicago, Atlanta and many other Democrat-controlled urban centers – is spiraling into a lawless pit. In his recent letter to Chicago’s Mayor and Illinois’ governor, Trump wrote: “More Americans have been killed in Chicago than in combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq combined since September 11, 2001, a deadly trend that has continued under your tenure… Your lack of leadership on this important issue continues to fail the people you have sworn to protect.”

Regarding the “police reform” narrative based on the fallacious presumption that the problem is “systemic racism,” AKA “racist cops,” former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy notes: “The racism narrative is driving the nation to ruin. … The object of the game is patent. Using the hocus-pocus of ‘disparate impact’ theory, Democrats will argue that the disproportionately high percentage of black males in forcible police incidents is conclusive evidence of racism. Such factors as disproportionately high incidence of criminal behavior, and the race (often black) of the responding police officers will be ignored (the individual’s race makes no difference, you see, if the institution is racist — indeed, incorrigibly so).”

And regarding police use of deadly force, Wall Street Journal Editorial Board member Jason Riley notes: “Police shootings have fallen precipitously since the 1970s. … Empirical studies have found no racial bias in police use of deadly force, and that the racial disparities that do exist stem from racial differences in criminal behavior. The problem isn’t a shortage of data but a race-based narrative that is immune to any data that challenge it.”

After a lifetime observing how the Left has manipulated black constituents, Walter E. Williams notes, “The true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called ‘systemic racism,’” adding, “We need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities.”

(Updated)