It’s 6 a.m. on a Monday morning. You grab a coffee and head to the Metro station to ride to work. On the way, you unexpectedly meet a mysterious thug on a poorly lit side street. He approaches wearing a black hoodie and in a low tone says, “You know what time it is.” He thrusts a
9 mm polymer ghost gun
into your freshly pressed suit. Being a smart person, you give him everything. He runs off into the darkness. Luckily, this time, you aren’t punched in the face, beaten, or shot like some of your neighbors.
Welcome to the brave new world of urban
lawlessness
. How did we get here?
I lived this as a sergeant with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C.’s Third District. I’m retired now, which allows me to speak out freely, so you are probably not going to like what you are about to hear.
In the spring of 2020, the national consciousness was fixed on the first
pandemic
since 1918. Our response was to close everything down, require the wearing of ineffective masks, and isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. This was not a great outcome, as people quickly caught a fever of another kind: cabin fever.
As the old adage says, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” and this situation was no exception.
Then came the
George Floyd
tragedy. As with Rodney King and Ferguson before it, the public grouped all cops into one category and painted them with a broad brush. Law and order became the bad guys. The “Summer of Love” was about to commence.
The idle social justice lemmings came out in force and were led to the cliff. Like a hurricane, the throngs expressed their outrage by destroying everything in their path. Anger was the prevailing emotion of this soupy summer season. Wreck it, trash it, destroy it … all in the name of “justice.” The streets were chaotic as looting, burning, and mayhem took over Washington. America was on fire. Unlike Gil Scott Heron’s 1971 recording, this revolution was televised, live and uncut, all over social media and cable.
But there was an island of sanctuary from this widespread civil disorder — it was dubbed “BLM Plaza.” Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) obsequiously kowtowed to the protesting masses and had work crews paint that name down the middle of the street alongside “Defund The Police.” The writing was literally on the road … paid for with your hard-earned tax dollars.
Politicians are always looking to score points, but the D.C. Council is something very special, never having met a cop they liked. Anti-
police
sentiment runs deep in the Wilson Building. They wasted no time retaliating by cutting millions from the police operating budget. They instituted sweeping changes in police policy and codified legislation that all but castrated police union members’ bargaining rights upon ratification of the next contract. Most importantly, they took away the union’s right to bargain in good faith on issues of discipline.
Additionally, lawmakers included a slew of ineffective public safety measures that severely limited the discretionary powers of law enforcement. It seemed like it went from “Get the bad guys” to “You are the bad guys” in very short order.
The union faced a serious dilemma. If they sought to raise wages and improve working conditions for their members, it would trigger the loss of discipline protections, as enacted by D.C. Council. This is classic
union
-busting, a city that brags about its union support.
Finally, there is the court system. Most arrests are “no-papered” — a term used at case intake to determine the charges have no prosecutorial merit, so essentially the arrestee skates. Criminals have an unlimited revolving door, whereby their actions have absolutely no consequences. The absence of punishment is actually a reward, which encourages further criminal activity and removes the fear of arrest. This, in turn, ups the ante for more confrontational, violent interactions with law enforcement. This self-perpetuating, vicious cycle puts officers’ lives in danger. But more importantly for you, the reader, it makes your community a free-for-all criminal wasteland. This is the stuff of cheesy novels, only it’s real.
So, where are we now, a few years later? Well, some of the money was put back into the police budget because of the stark realization that an unsafe city would drive corporate Washington to the safer shores of
Virginia
across the river. You finally speak the politicians’ language when you threaten their stash of tax dollars. But most of the ill-considered and hastily enacted reforms remain.
Practical, commonsense legislation is required to restore a sense of security for the citizens of Washington. That means restoring more discretionary police power without fear of petty reprisal. We need to institute punishment, not for the police but for the criminals, as a consequence for violating rules and laws that govern a civil society.
I think we can all agree that the “defund the police” movement was a train wreck from the start. What we need to do now is to reverse the entire hastily enacted, pathetic social experiment. It was an utter and complete failure. The police are not the bad guys — the criminals are.
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David J. Terestre served as a sergeant with the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C.
