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According to some among the ranks of D/S/Cs, America’s police are inherently, systematically corrupt.  Racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, pretty much any “ist” or “ic” one might imagine, they live to murder young black men without cause, and get their jollies by harassing innocent illegal immigrants, mostly by ripping crying infants from the arms of loving parents and putting them in cages.  Most of the photographic proof of the latter comes from the Obama Administration, but that’s not part of the narrative, so shut up you racist.  As Gropin’ Joe Biden said, D/S/Cs recognize truth over facts, so there.

Policing is an issue in the 2020 presidential race, with President Trump supporting the police, and D/S/Cs accusing them as loudly and often as possible.  During his expensive and abortive presidential run, Mike Bloomberg led the way with essentially comparing stop and frisk with the most horrific human rights abuses imaginable.  I set the record straight on this issue in Stop and Frisk: It’s About Power.  

The anti-police narrative has been used to call for the abolishment of ICE, and some toward the S/C side of D/S/C have called for the abolishment of all police.

A number of years ago, I was invited to a “Safe Streets” Conference in Austin, TX.  I participated in a sort of debate with an earnest young fellow over whether the police should be abolished.  He took the general “police bad” view, and argued that we really don’t need the police.  He produced a few anecdotes about supposed police misconduct, and thought neighborhoods could take care of policing, propounding a sort of a “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” Kumbayah view of human nature.  There would be block committees, and people would talk out their problems, that sort of thing. The conference was pretty well attended and well covered by local media.

The young fellow would speak for a time, answer questions, and then it was my turn.  We occupied about an hour.  I gently explained the reality of policing, and equally gently explained how without the police, we’d quickly slide into a survival of the fittest chaos where the biggest, meanest and most violent would rule, and vengeance would rule the day.  I pointed out radical concepts such as policing is governed, day by day, by the Constitution, a concept not well grasped by many to this day.

Because the overall narrative was anti-police, everyone was polite and pretty much let the narrative fly, but a great many of those in attendance, including many in the media, quietly took me aside later and told me they agreed with me, and the earnest young fellow was pretty much clueless.  He was well intentioned, but like so many D/S/Cs, ignored human nature, or was confident he could transform it.  I have not been invited back.

As one might expect, Ivy League fellow travelers are in the forefront of establishing civil disorder, as The College Fix explains:

Two of the more radical proposals to come out of our nation’s colleges of late are the dismantlement of the country’s prisons … and police forces.

Last Thursday, Harvard Law School hosted Alex Vitale, coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. He discussed his book ‘The End of Policing’ which examines ‘alternatives to the police system’ and ‘the dangers of modern policing tactics,’ according to The Crimson.

Vitale says mental health is ‘the number one indicator of likelihood’ of being shot and killed by police, but funding for cops continues instead of being funneled to mental health and drug treatment. ‘Improving training, increasing gun control, and ‘hiring a few black police chiefs,’ Vitale says, are ineffective in dealing with ‘harsh drug policies.’

Is it just me, gentle readers, or is Vitale—or the Harvard Crimson—making no sense here?

From the story:

In his talk, Vitale acknowledged the impossibility of eradicating all police services at once. However, he maintained that there is a great need for systemic change.

‘No one is talking about, ‘tomorrow we flip the switch and there are no police,’’ he said. ‘The reality is we have a massive infrastructure of policing and criminalization, and we need strategies to get out of this mess, and those strategies do not include implicit bias training, community policing, body cameras, et cetera.’ …

Hmm.  Perhaps if legislators quit making pretty much everything illegal…?

According to his faculty page, Vitale has degrees in urban studies, cultural anthropology, and sociology. He worked with the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness in the early 1990s ‘defending the civil rights of people living on the streets.’

We pretty much understood where Vitale was coming from when we learned he was coordinating “policing and Social Justice.”  The two have nothing in common.  The rule of law, which is what the police enforce, and social justice are entirely different things, the latter being a flexible political strategy aimed at essentially immunizing certain favored victim groups from the consequences of criminal behavior.

I’ll not provide a book-length treatise on the necessity of policing.  We have police for two primary reasons: the existence of evil, and human nature.  There have always been, and there always will be criminals.

One of the primary bones of contention between D/S/Cs and normal Americans is the right to private property.  Here I speak primarily of physical property, things that may be stolen, damaged or destroyed, but private property is the manifestation of our intellectual and physical labor, the concrete benefits of that work.  Many D/S/Cs believe it belongs to government, that there really can be no such thing as personal, private property.  If private property exists, that means the individual has sovereignty and rights, rights that compete against the government’s power.

The Founders, however, believed private property is very much a part of the cornerstone of our representative republic.  Government that does not recognize and protect private property interests is illegitimate and destructive, and may be abolished, which is a primary, perhaps the primary, reason for the Second Amendment.

credit: policemag.com

To protect those interests, and the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, police forces evolved.  Part of the executive branch, they do the dirty daily work of enforcing the law, and as such, circa 2020, find themselves the whipping boys and girls in the battle between those that believe the only true evil is opposition to D/S/C policies.  I speak of those who think they are uniquely qualified by their intellectual and moral superiority to transform human nature.  The police are those, and represent those, who understand evil exists, it has always existed, and must be opposed, and human nature cannot be transformed, it can only be somewhat contained.  This is painfully obvious in the innumerable cases of criminals released by “enlightened” politicians, who go on to commit horrific crimes.

To be sure, the police sometimes make mistakes.  We limit the police by requiring they recruit exclusively from the human race.  However, considering the millions of contacts they have with the public every day, their record of getting things right is, by any reasonable measure, impressive.

The solution to police mistakes and malfeasance is proper and effective supervision.  Police officers are public employees, and an informed and aware public can make a real difference.  In most respects, we have the police we deserve.

credit: hiplatina

Consider ICE.  D/S/Cs want to abolish the agency, which is primarily responsible for the enforcement of immigration laws.  D/S/Cs cry ICE is breaking up families, putting children in cages, and forcing local jurisdictions to assist them in enforcing immigration law.

In reality, they are doing precisely what the law, written by Congress, requires of them.  When parents are arrested for any reason, if the police cannot turn their children over to relatives or others willing and able to care for them, they have no legal, moral alternative but to provide for their care, and considering these particular minors are prone to escaping, they must be kept in detention facilities.  People arrested for being illegally in the country generally don’t have anyone to care for their children, leaving ICE and the Border Patrol no alternatives.

It’s rather like the homeless.  They are only in the news during Republican administrations. When a D/S/C is in the White House, they vanish, as the detained children of illegal immigrants did during the Obama Administration.  D/S/Cs care about them, and related immigration issues for primarily political reasons.  Illegal immigrants represent a block of people, many of who, dependent on D/S/Cs for support, will tend to vote for them.  They are also a useful club, with which to beat supposedly cruel and heartless Republicans.

Illegals arrested in camo

ICE and the Border Patrol are not enforcing nonexistent laws.  They’re not making it up.  The obvious solution is to change immigration laws, but D/S/Cs know most Americans want border control, so they seek extra-legislative change through the media and the courts.

Few have greater sympathy for illegal immigrants coming to America to improve their lot than Border Patrol and ICE officers, but un-policed borders also allow great evil such as human trafficking, sexual slavery, terrorism, disease and drug running.  There’s that annoying human nature—and reality—again.

We continue to have police forces because reality dictates there is no viable alternative.  Anyone that says otherwise isn’t recognizing reality, or acknowledging the immutable reality of human nature.