Army Bob: Defund the police and crime stats go up

by Robert M. Traxler

I googled “Is building a wall on our southern border a racist act?” Google posted eight links calling former President Donald Trump a racist, before one saying that the Biden administration was forced to build a portion of the wall and not describing it as a racist act. “Come on man” forced?

President Joe Biden stated that he had to build sections of the wall because he could not get the money allocated to other uses. The way the process works is that if the money is not spent in a set time frame it goes back to the general fund. The dollars simply do not disappear, and could be used to lower taxes, or not increase the debt — what a concept. Ask yourself why President Trump building a wall was the largest sin ever committed, it was racist, elitist, and dangerous, but President Biden building a wall is an economic necessity?

Good question for our media, but one that will go unasked. 

Crime is going up even though the defund the police/reimagine policing movement told us the opposite would happen. The defund/reimagine movement is replaced with a call for more police by the defund folks, as this column maintained it would. History and the science of criminology back that prediction up.

The first “modern” police agency was the London Metropolitan Police, founded in 1829 and headquartered in a portion of London known as Scotland Yard. The founder was Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel; the uniformed police were nicknamed Robert’s men, shortened to Bobbies Men, then just Bobbies, and are to this day. Sir Robert proved in 1829 that more police on the street reduced crime, and that removing criminals from the streets reduced crime. It did then, does now; why the progressive movement does not ever learn that is puzzling. One can only assume that the mission is not to reduce crime, but give the criminal element a leg up in the system to be equitable and inclusive.

The progressive district attorneys in major cities have reimagined crime by decriminalizing and reducing reportable crimes. They do this by reducing the maximum sentences for those crimes of violence and property and making the elements of proof of the crime more difficult.

Some categories of crime have gone down; the number of victims has increased, but the newly defined reportable crimes have in some jurisdictions gone down. This will be trumpeted by the progressive media as the elections near; it is smoke and mirrors, but it fits the politically correct narrative, so the media will go wall to wall with the cooked up lower crime numbers. 

Interestingly, the crime rates in major cities not cooking the books are stable or going, up a fact that the media will testify is proof the tough on crime district attorneys have failed, and the defund concept is a valid crime prevention policy.    

President Biden and his progressive “advisors” have seen the polls and know their prestigious positions with their pay and benefits are in grave peril, so they are now building walls at the border and hiring more police officers. A problem is that in many jurisdictions the police have been so vilified that people just do not apply for the hundreds of openings. And with some 5 to 8 million “migrants” in our nation the damage is done; it is closing the gate after the millions have entered, and continue to do so. Not to fear, the media will find a way to blame President Trump for the crime and immigration related problems. It is past time for the American people to say I am mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. It’s time to stop reimagining government and go back to proven procedures, practices, and laws. 

The progressive movement has come to an election year conversion after the polls tell them that the border and crime are a major concern for the American people. The numbers do not currently look good for the socialists, but the media has yet to go wall to wall in their support. We will see months of the media, broadcast and social, beating the drums of war against politically incorrect thought. The next eleven months will be an unending attack on anyone not deemed sufficiently socialist, woke or progressive; couple that with the massive power of government currently being used against conservatives, and the polls may change.  

If the fact that two nuclear capable nations with more than 6,377 warheads (up to 127,540,000,000 tons of TNT) are engaged in war does not concern you, it should. We were told the world would be a safer place under President Biden; how’s that working out?  My opinion.