The Patriot Post® · Democrats Vote to Defund the Police
If you want to trigger a gaggle of Democrats, tell them their party supports defunding the police. It’ll trigger them because they know it’s true.
And if they doth protest too much, just point them toward HR 1280, The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a cleverly named and exquisitely timed piece of, er, legislation that passed the House late Wednesday evening without a single Republican vote — and that, yes, defunds the police. Here it is — all 66 pages and 22,326 words.
Power Line’s John Hinderaker, who lives little more than a stone’s throw from South Minneapolis, which was ground zero for last summer’s George Floyd riots, says of the bill, “It reflects the Democratic Party’s view that there is really no such thing as crime, and the principal threat to our populace comes from violent, depraved police officers. In general, it puts the heavy thumb of the federal government on the scale in favor of criminals, and against law enforcement.”
Did we mention it also defunds the police? If not, maybe House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will weigh in.
“Democrats just voted to defund the police,” tweeted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, as if on cue. “The unfunded mandates in their bill, H.R. 1280, would cost police departments hundreds of millions of dollars — the equivalent of taking 3,000 cops or more off the streets. Our men and women in uniform deserve better.”
Republicans, if they’re smart, will be beating Democrats over the head with this “defunding the police” language between now and the November 2022 midterms.
That the Floyd bill defunds the cops is bad enough. But it’s worse than that, because it actually discourages anyone from ever wanting to be a cop. How so? By limiting the “qualified immunity” of law enforcement officers, which is the policy that has long protected government officials from being subject to civil lawsuits for their conduct on the job. Essentially, qualified immunity keeps trial lawyers from suing individual officers into oblivion.
“Imagine you’re thinking about becoming a police officer,” said McCarthy, “and you think you’re going to be personally liable for every fracas you try to break up. Some think you don’t become a police officer in that circumstance.”
Here, it might be helpful to reflect on how the Democrats got into this mess, and why they’re so terrified of owning their efforts to defund the cops. Remember: They spent their summer encouraging the nationwide rioting and extolling the virtues of the Black Lives Matter thugs. And remember: Kamala Harris herself said, “They’re not gonna let up, and they should not.”
Democrats now know that defunding the police is an electoral loser. Their polling told them so, which is why they finally began to denounce the rioting of BLM and antifa as the 2020 election drew nearer.
On Wednesday, Republicans even tried to throw their BLM-beholden colleagues a lifeline. Prior to the vote, New York freshman Representative Nicole Malliotakis gave them a chance to add an amendment that “recognizes and appreciates” those who serve in law enforcement and “condemns calls to ‘defund,’ ‘disband,’ ‘dismantle,’ or ‘abolish’ the police.”
219 Democrats voted against her amendment, which kept it from being added.
Did we mention that their bill also defunds the police?