Tired of the "Defund the Police" label [View all]

[Joe Nation]

I know precious few Democrats that actually want to "defund the police" in this country. But none the less, this is exactly how the Right characterizes the Democrats every chance they get. It is a Right-wing tailor-made scare tactic that came along during the George Floyd pretests and they haven't let it go since. Defunding the police isn't the answer even as we witness video after video of police malfeasance across the country with few officers ever held accountable.

As a Democrat, I don't want to see the police defunded. What I want is far more civilian oversight and police accountability, and it is long overdue in my opinion. If you have any organization tasked with protecting the public and trusted with the use of deadly force, it is absurd to think that this organization should investigate itself and police its own. That is a recipe for corruption in just about any situation.

I couldn't agree more that police have a hard job. Police are being used to do work they were never trained to do. Nobody suggests that police work isn't difficult or even dangerous but when it is done with a lack of transparency, it just makes the job that much harder because you lose the trust of the public. You lose good officers that are unwilling to participate in the inevitable cover-ups, and you corrupt otherwise honest cops that go along to get along. It's a self-defeating dynamic that slides further and further into an authoritarian security nightmare.

A list of suggestions for improved community policing:

-Fund mental health personnel for domestic issues that do not need police involvement
-Extend police training from 6 weeks to one year
-Set-up civilian review boards with teeth to oversee individual police activities
-Put more cameras on the police, on their cars, and in high crime areas
-Hold officers accountable if they break the law and make them ineligible to serve anywhere if they are fired
-Embed non-police personnel with patrol officers
-Put their pensions on the line if they are found to have committed illegal acts as policemen
-Pay them more

The overall goal is oversight and accountability. Without such steps, we will only see the distance between community policing and the communities they serve grow wider.