Minnesota’s dream has come true. The police no longer exist. Zero tax dollars are provided to the local police force. No state police. No federal police. No army, navy, air force, marines, coast guards, no border patrols, no prisons, no space guards … nothing to stand in the way of you and your dreams. You are 100% free.
Do you want to play at an online casino? No restrictions. No law, nobody’s a winner, but who cares. Everybody is free to do whatever they want. If a casino download wants to create casino games that are rigged, so nobody is a winner, nothing is stopping them.
Do you want to commit robbery? No problem. No police are going to stop you.
Do you want to murder somebody? No problem. Nobody is going to stop you.
And you do not even have to worry about armed citizens, because, hey, the 2nd Amendment to the US constitution has been abolished.
Isn’t life grand?
Is this a Fairytale, a Utopia, a Dystopia, or a dream come true?
This is not the next greatest Steven King fiction novel. This is reality. This is Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020. And no, we were not reading “The Onion”.
“Minneapolis City Council president, Dem Jeremiah Ellison claims they’ll ‘dismantle’ police” That was the title on a Fox News article dated June 4, 2020.
“Jeremiah Ellison, a Minneapolis city councilman and son of state Attorney General Keith Ellison, is calling for the ‘dismantling’ of the Minneapolis Police Department following days of nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd — and he soon got the support of the City Council’s president.”
So let me see if I understand things correctly. The US has had over 10 days of nationwide protests that have included peaceful protesters, looters, and violent rioters. The situation is so out of control that the police have still failed to be able to take control of the situation. Even our elected officials have not been able to take control with all of their words.
Past President Obama “called on demonstrators to channel their anger over George Floyd’s death into an opportunity to make leaders ‘uncomfortable’ and pressure them into making real policy changes.”
What are these policy changes? What is the end product going to look like?
Obama was great with words like that when he was the President. He would talk about “change”, but he never exactly said what “change” would look like when he was done and how exactly we would get to that point.
What exact policy changes do you want to see, ex-President Obama? Show us the bill, and don’t give us this, “You can read the bill AFTER it has been signed.” The nation fell for that with Obamacare, and the nation is now in a worse position in terms of health care than when we started.
According to Jeremiah Ellison, “When we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together. We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response. It’s really past due.”
City Council President Lisa Bender, a fellow Democrat, later replied, “Yes. We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a transformative new model of public safety.”
As the saying goes, “The devil is in the details.”
Do you notice how they never provide any details? Do you also notice that they do not back up the claim that “white suppremetists” are behind the riots with police arrest records? Oh, wait, there are no police arrest records, because there have been zero arrests in Minnesota. I have seen video footage of Antifa people starting trouble, as well as arrest records, and even police mug shots.
But I have not seen anything about the other side, except somebody claiming some made up group that just formed on May 30, 2020, according to Wikipedia, has somehow within less a week become a well-funded nationwide organization that is a danger and a threat to society.
Do you believe that? No, I do not either.
Oh wait, there are no threats to society. That is why we no longer need a police force or border patrol or prisons or an army, navy, airforce, marines, coast guard, national guard, etc.
Why 3 months of police academy training is NOT enough
Only requiring that a police officer needs 3 months of police academy training is the root of the problem. This is enough time to train a person in how to use a gun, self-defense, and to learn how a police department works.
But it is NOT enough time to weed out the “bad seeds”, or provide all of the other training that is required to help make police officers what people want police officers to be.
What does work? Formally trained youth police officers
I have lived in a community where they are doing things right. Captain Jose Curbelo of Highland Park, NJ is a youth police officer. He was formally trained to be a youth police officer by obtaining a degree in child psychology as well as the standard police academy training.
The police officer acts more like a “peace officer” (what many people want police officers to act like), but he was provided the proper training to accomplish that goal. He still wears a badge. He still wears a gun. He still was trained in self-defense. He was still trained in how to take down a criminal without killing the person. But it is all of the other training that he has been given that allows him to actually accomplish the goal of being a “peace officer” instead of just a “police officer”.
Formal Associate Degree Programs for regular Police Officers needs to be the standard, the law of the land – 2 years of education instead of only requiring 3 months
In order to change a police officer from being a “police officer” to being a “peace officer” they need more education. They need education in:
- Law and the US Constitution – can’t stand up for what you do not understand.
- US History (its good as well as its bad).
- Psychology and how it applies to police officers.
- Sociology and how it applies to police officers.
- Comparative communities – traditions and customs of different communities in the US. Not just Black and Hispanic, but also Native Americans, Gay, Religious Christians, Religous Jews, Amish, Constitutionalists, Liberals, Conservatives, etc.
- How to take down a prisoner without killing them.
- Anger management – how to stay calm and in control even during the most volatile arrests.
- Domestic issues (psychology as well as the law).
- Youth issues (psychology as well as the law).
- First aid (during a COVID-19 crisis when not being able to breathe is a common symptom, even for people recovering from COVID-19, when a person says they can’t breathe, take it seriously).
- Logic and common sense skills (how to actually think).
- Personal finance — too many crimes are related to money. If a police officer does not know these skills, how are they supposed to help teach it to others to help them.
- Research skills (how to actually find the information to get the root of the problem).
- Role Playing — Using actors to help train police officers.
I am sure that I am missing stuff, but you get the idea. It is all of the other stuff that is going to create the change that people want. Police officers need to have the education to be professionals, not just people who are legally allowed to carry a gun.
Using actors to help train police officers
Actors can be used to help train police officers on how to interact with the public. Yeshiva University is an example of a school that uses paid actors to help train their Rabbis. The actors play the role of congregants who are coming to the Rabbi with various problems.
The goal was to expose the Rabbis to different situations BEFORE they would encounter then for the first time with “real people”. There are acting professionals who specialize in this area. If this works to help train Rabbis, there is no reason why it cannot work to help train police officers.
Can police duties be taken out of the public control and into private organizations?
No. The same people who say that it would be okay for police officers to be only under private control would not make the same claim about public school education.
Let’s look at a different example, COVID-19. In NYC, a lot of organizations came to NYC to help with the crisis. Several setting up field hospitals in NYC including a Navy hospital ship and converting a convention center into a field hospital.
One of these organizations was Samaritan’s Purse who set a up a field hospital in Central Park. The end result was that Samaritan’s Purse treated more COVID-19 patients than either the Navy hospital or the Convention center hospital. But yet NYC’s mayor DeBlasio was furious and angry with Samaritan’s Purse being allowed into NYC from the second they setup their tents and until the second they left town. I do not even think that DeBlasio even said “Thank you” to them.
Why the anger when the private field hospital provided more help than the federal provided field hospitals? Because they did not like the fact that a private company would teach about religion to anybody who walked in their door and asked.
So which private organizations are going to provide this police protection? Privately owned police forces that earn a profit? Does that work for schools, including private colleges? What about private hospitals? What about private prisons? Police forces do not make money. They always have been and always will be a financial drain on society. A required drain, but still a financial drain.
Take out for profit organizations. Take out religious organizations. The only thing left is private non-profit organizations. In other words, ideological organizations that do not believe in the existence of God. And of course, it cannot be constitutionalists, because that would mean that we are right back where we started.
So what does that leave? Gangs? Antifa? These are the same people who were doing the rioting and looting over the past 10 days, and you now want to put the protection of society into their control? Explain to me how exactly that is going work.
Summary
Police need to be reformed, but in my opinion requiring police to have two years of training covering the areas I stated above as well what most police officers are currently taught is the way to go.
That means that we cannot defund police forces. We have to increase their funds, especially in the area of helping them to create the foundations of proper educational programs nationwide.
Update: Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender was asked what would happen when a person needed to call the police because somebody was breaking into their home. Lisa Bender replied:
“I mean, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors,” Bender said. “And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege. Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.”
So now asking for and expecting police to help you is now considered “white priviledge”? So when a woman now gets raped, if she expects the police to help her, she is displaying “white priviledge”. You can’t make this stuff up. Anybody who actually does have “white priviledge” is not going to accept for one second living in a community with no police protection. They are going to pay for a private police force, and that police force is now only going to be responsible for the people who are paying them. And what about the poor? Do you remember Chicago in the 1920s when business owners had to pay a protection fee to the gangs to get protection from the gangs? Or what about in Muslim majority countries, where the police force is the sharia police where woman are beaten if they show an ankle? Are either of those options really going to provide the protection that the poor in Minneapolis, Minn. reallly want and expect?
Anybody who can afford to move is going to be gone within 3 to 6 months. So there goes your tax base for all of your social reform programs. Then what happens?