Over the past few years, the American Civil Liberties Union has fallen from a reputable civil rights organization to a left-wing activist group indistinguishable from its peers. That fall from grace apparently hasn’t reached the bottom just yet.
The ACLU endorsed the idea of abolishing the police yesterday from its Twitter account. “Police in the US fatally shoot over 1,000 people per year,” the tweet read. “It’s past time we divest from policing to truly keep our communities safe.”
Police in the US fatally shoot over 1,000 people per year.
It’s past time we divest from policing to truly keep our communities safe. pic.twitter.com/fDLQFMomAM
— ACLU (@ACLU) December 7, 2020
Fresh off accusing the police in Washington, D.C., of murder over a seemingly justified shooting, the ACLU now argues that the best way to keep communities safe is to “divest from policing.”
Of course, that isn’t the case, clearly. Minneapolis, whose city council has committed itself to abolishing its police force, has seen 500 people shot this year, along with a sharp increase in all forms of violent crime. New York City has seen a 95% increase in shootings this year and a 38% increase in homicides. New York City’s plan to slash the New York City Police Department’s budget has also resulted in the city’s homelessness situation rapidly deteriorating.
Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Detroit are among the many cities that have seen increases in homicides and violent crimes this year after Democratic mayors and governors decided to spend more energy labeling their own police departments as racist than pushing back on rioters and looters in their cities.
The future the ACLU wants has already played out in Seattle’s “autonomous zone,” where the police were banned by a group of Seattle residents. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan refused to address the zone in any way until the protesters marched to her home. Before that, there were four shootings in 10 days, which resulted in two deaths. Business owners in the zone described it as “lawless.”
This exact lawlessness is what the ACLU is advocating for nationwide. The 1,000 fatal shootings the ACLU is warning about, without any regard for police shootings that are actually justified, pales in comparison to the 18,830 homicides in the United States in 2019. That number will almost certainly be higher this year. And that is ACLU’s idea of keeping our communities “safe.”
