{"id":14841,"date":"2020-06-23T08:17:03","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T12:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=14841"},"modified":"2020-09-17T12:47:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T16:47:43","slug":"defund-the-police-start-by-repealing-the-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/23\/defund-the-police-start-by-repealing-the-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"“Defund the Police”? Start by Repealing the Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Thanks to Peter Quinones for this meme<\/p><\/div>\n

Mises Institute, June 23, 2020<\/h2>\n

Repealing Useless and Abusive Laws Might Do More Good Than “Defunding” the Police<\/a><\/h2>\n
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by James Bovard<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cDefund the Police\u201d is the latest rallying cry for protestors in many cities across the nation. Many activists, enraged by the\u00a0brutal killing of George Floyd<\/a>\u00a0by Minneapolis police, are calling for completely disbanding the police, while others are seeking reductions in police budgets and more government spending elsewhere. However, few activists appear to be calling for a fundamental decrease in the political power that is the root cause of police abuses.<\/p>\n

Many \u201cDefund the Police\u201d activists favor ending the war on drugs. That would be a huge leap forward toward\u00a0making police less intrusive and oppressive. But even if police were no longer making a million plus\u00a0drug arrests each year, they would still be making more than 9 million other arrests. Few protestors appear to favor the sweeping repeals that could take tens of millions of Americans out of the legal crosshairs.<\/p>\n

How many of the \u201cDefund the Police\u201d protestors would support repealing mandatory seatbelt laws as a step toward\u00a0reducing police power? In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that police can justifiably arrest anyone believed to have \u201ccommitted even a very minor criminal offense<\/a>.\u201d That case involved Gail Atwater, a Texas mother who was driving slowly near her home but, because her children were not wearing seatbelts, was taken away by an abusive cop whose shouting left her children \u201cterrified and hysterical.\u201d A majority of Supreme Court justices recognized that \u201cAtwater\u2019s claim to live free of pointless indignity and confinement clearly outweighs anything the City can raise against it specific to her case\u201d\u2014but upheld the arrest anyhow. Justice Sandra Day O\u2019Connor warned that \u201csuch unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there are endless pretexts for people to be arrested nowadays, because federal, state, and local politicians and officials have criminalized daily life with hundreds of thousands of edicts<\/strong>. As Gerard Arenberg, executive director of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me in the 1996, \u201cWe have so damn many laws<\/a>, you can\u2019t drive the streets without breaking the law. I could write you a hundred tickets depending on what you said to me when I stopped you.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about repealing state laws that make parents criminals if they smoke a cigarette<\/a>\u00a0while driving little Bastian or Alison to soccer practice? What about repealing the federal law that compelled states to criminalize anyone drinking one beer in their car\u2014or, better yet, repealing the federal law that compelled states to raise the age for drinking alcohol to twenty-one? Or would today\u2019s enraged reformers prefer to take the risk of cops beating the hell out of any twenty-year-old caught with a Bud Light?<\/p>\n

Would feminist zealots calling to \u201cDefund the Police\u201d be willing to tolerate the legalization of sex work? That would mean they could no longer howl about vast \u201chuman trafficking\u201d conspiracies<\/a>\u00a0exploiting young girls every time an undercover cop is illicitly groped by a 58-year-old Chinese woman<\/a>\u00a0in a\u00a0massage parlor.<\/p>\n

Some Black Lives Matters activists are calling for a ban on \u201cstop and frisk\u201d warrantless searches for drugs, guns, or other prohibited items. But some \u201cDefund the Police\u201d activists also favor government prohibitions of private firearms. It is as if they were seeking to formally enact the old slogan: \u201cWhen guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the media coverage is whooping up the recent wave of protests, perhaps hoping to stir public rage to support sweeping new government edicts. According to Washington Post <\/em>assistant editor Robert Gebelhoff<\/a>, “It would be a mistake to try to resolve the problems with police behavior without also acknowledging and addressing America\u2019s epidemic of gun violence. Police reform and gun reform go hand in hand. Reducing the easy availability of guns would not eliminate the problems with policing in America nor end unwarranted killings, but it would help.”<\/p>\n

After heavily armed government agents forcibly confiscate a couple hundred million<\/a>\u00a0privately owned guns, the\u00a0police won\u2019t worry about any resistance and can behave like perfect gentlemen. Repealing most gun laws would produce a vast increase in self-reliance, especially in urban areas where police dismally fail to protect residents. But few street protestors are making that demand.<\/p>\n

Many \u201cDefund the Police\u201d advocates presume that poverty is the cause of crime and that that shifting tax dollars from police budgets to social programs and handouts will automatically reduce violence. The Great Society programs launched by President Lyndon Johnson vastly increased handouts on a similar assumption. Instead, violent crime skyrocketed, especially in inner cities where dependence on government aid was highest. \u201cThe increase in arrests for violent crimes among blacks during the 1965\u201370 period was seven times that of whites,\u201d as Charles Murray noted in his 1984 book\u00a0Losing Ground<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Many advocates of defunding the police believe that a universal basic income, along with free housing and other services, would practically end urban strife. The history of Section 8 housing subsidies provides a stunning rebuke to such na\u00efve assumptions. Concentrations of Section 8 recipients routinely spur crime waves<\/a>\u00a0that ravage both the peace and property values of their neighbors. A 2009 study published in the\u00a0Homicide Studies<\/em> academic journal found that in Louisville, Memphis, and other cities\u00a0violent crime skyrocketed<\/a>\u00a0in neighborhoods where Section 8 recipients resettled after leaving public housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefund the Police\u201d demands are already being translated by politicians into a justification for additional spending for social services or the usual sops. In Montgomery County, Maryland, police chiefs issued a statement announcing that they were \u201coutraged\u201d over George Floyd\u2019s killing and then pledged to \u201cimprove training in cultural competency<\/a>\u00a0for our officers.\u201d Elsewhere, politicians and police chiefs are talking about relying more on mental health workers to handle volatile situations. Radio host Austin Petersen predicted that the George Floyd protest \u201creforms\u201d would result in \u201cmore social programs meant to give jobs<\/a>\u00a0to liberal white women.\u201d Author and filmmaker Peter Quinones<\/a>\u00a0deftly captured the likely reality with a meme where Minneapolis police were renamed the Tactical Social Workers and still looking hungry to kick ass.<\/p>\n

Politicians are claiming to have seen the light thanks to the Floyd protests. Floyd was killed, because politicians at many state and local levels have dismally failed to constrain the lethal power of police. There was nothing to stop politicians from banning the vast majority of no-knock raids<\/a>, or torpedoing the perverse \u201cqualified immunity\u201d doctrine<\/a>\u00a0concocted by the Supreme Court, or repealing the even more perverse \u201cLaw Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights\u201d that can convey a license to kill<\/a>. One of the most powerful members of the House of Representatives, Eliot Engel\u00a0(D-NY), embodied the political reality when he was caught on a hot mike: \u201cIf I didn\u2019t have a primary<\/a>, I wouldn\u2019t care\u201d about denouncing the George Floyd killing. It is unclear how much longer other politicians will pretend to give a damn.<\/p>\n

Police have too much power, because politicians have too much power.<\/strong> There is little chance that the George Floyd protests and riots will reverse the criminalization of daily life. How many \u201cDefund the Police\u201d activists are also calling for a radical rollback of politicians\u2019 prerogatives to punish almost any activity they disapprove? There will be some reforms and plenty of promises, but as long as cops have pretexts to harass and assail millions of peaceful Americans every day, the outrages will not end. Until protestors realize that the problem is Leviathan, not the local police chief, oppression will continue.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Author: James Bovard<\/a><\/div>\n
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James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012\u2019s Public Policy Hooligan<\/em>, and 2006\u2019s Attention Deficit Democracy<\/em>. He has written for the New York Times<\/em>, Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Playboy<\/em>, Washington Post<\/em>, and many other publications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mises Institute, June 23, 2020 Repealing Useless and Abusive Laws Might Do More Good Than “Defunding” the Police by James Bovard \u201cDefund the Police\u201d is the latest rallying cry for protestors in many cities across the nation. Many activists, enraged by the\u00a0brutal killing of George Floyd\u00a0by Minneapolis police, are calling for completely disbanding the police, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2412,2414,2410,2413,113,2411,2343,2409,203,2407,2269,57,140,2408,612,2200],"class_list":["post-14841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alcohol","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-charles-murray","tag-drug-law","tag-drug-war","tag-gail-atwater","tag-george-floyd","tag-great-society","tag-maryland","tag-massage-parlor","tag-montgomery-county","tag-police","tag-protests","tag-seatbelt-laws","tag-section-8","tag-shootings"],"yoast_head":"\n"Defund the Police"? 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14841"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15076,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14841\/revisions\/15076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}