We Don’t Need to Re-Imagine the Police - Part 2

By Patrick Hall

When things have gotten entirely out of kilter with the socio-political narrative of police killing black Americans, a delegation of diplomats of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employed this charge to slap around the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. A beat-down took place at a meeting in Alaska a few months ago. The Chinese delegation pointed out the discrimination and systemic racism that exists in the United States. They directly referenced Black Lives Matter as some guardian of Black Americans against the various manifestations of racism, including Police killings of blacks. Of course, true to form, Blinken gave a very weak, if not a groveling defense.

Put, like his boss, Joe Biden, you were left with the distinct impression that Blinken agreed with the genocidal maniacs of the CCP.  Yes, indeed, there is no doubt about it.  Even the Red Chinese adroitly recognized that America is a racist nation, beset with the reemergence of white supremacy. During his Presidential Inaugural, Joe Biden’s little tutorial on systemic racism and white supremacy wasn't lost on the CCP.

A Luxury

In the working-class community I call home, we have a very diligent Neighborhood Watch Program.  We all know one another, or at least watched out for anyone or anything, that is out of place in the immediate area. Question? Why do we take such a posture? It is not to protect ourselves from the police, but criminals, who too often are black. Many of us have firearms and other protections to guard our homes and loved ones. We don't have the luxury of deluding ourselves into thinking that the police will do us the most harm. We certainly don’t believe the utterly unencumbered by reality social justice lunatics pushing the Defund the Police Movement.  This movement alone has probably gotten more innocent black people killed in concert with Black Lives Matter. The police hesitate to confront the thugs that prey on blacks in places like Chicago or Baltimore. This hesitancy among law enforcement to engage the criminal element in many black communities is now referred to as the "Ferguson Effect."  However, over two decades ago, I wrote about this backing-off by the police if the suspect is black in Commonweal Magazine.

The black criminal element is the problem. We have security systems and dogs in our yards. Some even have bars or gates on their lower windows and doors.  This is not done to shield us from the police, but from blacks, who engage in far too much criminal mischief. In many parts of the city, if things are not tied down or taken in at night, they will quickly go missing.

If many young (and not so young) black men seem to come into contact with police; it is because they disproportionally behave like criminals.  Disparities in criminal offending and victimization are the real culprits.

Black criminals represent the true existential menace to the lives and safety of the majority of Black residents. Like most of us, they don't wish to live under the constant specter of black-on-black lawlessness. This lawlessness has little or nothing to do with the effects of systemic racism, nor the legacy of slavery, as proposed by the mind-numbing, intellectually lethargic Critical Race Theory Quacks. In short, we don’t need to “reimagine” policing the secular homilists are currently preaching that within the Democratic Party. When Democrat Progressives like Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) continue to campaign for, and support the insanity of Defund the Police, they are dangerously replacing things that work, like cops confronting the criminal element in urban areas, with ideas, social justice abstractions, chimeras and slogans that sound good.  In the end, their actions will only get more people injured or killed.

[Patrick Hall is a retired university library director. He is a graduate of Canisius College and the University of Washington, where he received three advance degrees. He has published in Freedom's Journal Magazine, America, Commonweal, Headway, Journal of Academic Librarianship, American Libraries and others. He currently volunteers at a local VA hospital in the town of Erie, Pa.]