The idea that we should strip police departments of all funding and come up with a better way to maintain law and order is picking up steam in the wake of George Floyd’s death. But, like so many of the far-left’s policies, “Defund the police” is not realistic.
Why not, you might ask? After all, we the taxpayers pay law enforcement to protect our communities, and if it cannot do that, why should we continue to pay for services we’re not receiving? And, if past reforms haven’t worked, what more can we do besides getting rid of the problem entirely?
These questions are important, but the answers are not as simple as activists would like to think. The fact is that defunding the police, which activists hope will ultimately lead to the total abolition of police, will create more problems than it will fix. And to understand why that is, we need to ask why law enforcement exists in the first place.
Police departments are supposed to protect and serve their communities, and they do so in a variety of ways. They field emergency calls, respond to urgent situations, and imprison those who violate the laws. But on a more fundamental level, our law enforcement agencies exist to protect our lives and liberties from, well, each other.
And herein lies the fundamental disagreement. The far-left tends to view humanity through a liberal, rose-colored lens. They believe that we as human beings are constantly bettering ourselves, and that all we need is a push in the right direction. So, it makes sense, then, that the Left wants to push law enforcement away from its traditional focus on surveillance, prevention, and punishment and toward programs that foster healthy communities, such as health insurance, education, and so on.
What these activists don’t account for, however, is human nature. We are fallen, sinful creatures, and we need laws to hold our passions in check. If men were angels, we would not need laws or governing officers to enforce them, wrote James Madison.
And make no mistake, the problem is not a lack of opportunity. If what the “Defund the police” crowd is proposing worked, crime should have disappeared after President Lyndon B. Johnson implemented the Great Society. But here we are, 60 years and trillions of dollars spent on Medicaid, welfare, public housing, public schools later, and cities run by liberals are struggling to contain the looters and rioters who have recently taken to the streets.
We can pump money into all sorts of programs, but human nature will not change. And if you eliminate the hand that keeps human nature in check, otherwise known as law enforcement, we will collapse into anarchy, and every single one of humanity’s worst instincts will run rampant.
This isn’t to say the system is above reform — quite the opposite. Cops are human beings too, which means they also need to be kept in check. The past few weeks have made it quite clear that we need more accountability and transparency within law enforcement. And many police departments across the country have proved that there is a deep-rooted institutional and cultural failure that needs to be addressed. But the way to address these failures is through more training and more accountability, which means more funding and more oversight. (Abolishing qualified immunity and overhauling police unions would also be a step in the right direction.)
And most importantly, we need fewer laws in general. Law enforcement’s primary responsibility is the protection of life, liberty, and property, but arbitrary laws have turned its attention elsewhere. The “War on Drugs” is a perfect example of this. Let’s train our cops how to do their jobs well, but let’s also make sure their jobs have purpose.
So, no, defunding law enforcement is not feasible. We need better, more responsible policing. But we also need policing in general. And that’s not going to change.
