In the wake of the George Floyd death in Minneapolis, the idea of defunding police departments has gained momentum in the national conversation about law enforcement and race.
However, according to Manhattan Institute Fellow Rafael Mangual, the data shows an entirely different story. Only .003 percent of all interactions between a resident and a cop results in the use of deadly force. And of the over 10 million interactions with police officers every year, only 1000 of them involve deadly shootings.
While 1000 is still too many, the narrative that illegal actions within a police force should characterize the policing institute as a whole is unsubstantiated.
As we vote in the next few weeks, remember which party is antagonistic towards law enforcement.
Interviews with 54 Democratic National Committee members, convention superdelegates and members of a criminal justice task force convened by Mr. Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders found a near-unanimous sentiment that local governments should redirect more money away from the police.
A Siena College national poll found that 63 percent of registered voters oppose spending less money on the police. But among Mr. Biden’s supporters, 55 percent favor reducing the amount of resources spent on law enforcement.
Nioaka Marshall says
I back the blue. I will never give my vote to ANYONE who plans to derund police.
Sorin Varzaru says
Any thoughts on how police forces in other developed nations manage to enforce the law while killing A LOT LESS of their citizens ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country
Maybe less funds for armored vehicles and more funds for social programs to reduce crime?
MJM says
I actually went and looked at the referenced page supplied here for information on citizens dying at the hands of the police. What I found is a collection of statistics gathered and supplied in different ways by different organizations. There are different references and different “facts” with regards to many of the different countries. What I am saying is that I believe I am looing at stats that compare apples to oranges to cranberries to mangoes to bananas and cherries and the stats are all supplied in different years. They are not much of an accurate indicator at all.
Some of the countries are worse than us, and some are better. So……..?
What I do know is that at this point in our history there is one thing that our press seems to always place front and center for our eyes, and that is when we have the tragedy of a police involved death.
At the same time I believe that many of the countries listed here do not have the same situation. They do not at all have the same kind of media nor do they have anything at all like the laws of our supposed free press. That being the case, how much can we believe their statistics ?
Then I get to the closing suggestion that America’s budget begin to supply more funds for social programs to reduce crime and at the same time supply less armored vehicles for our law enforcement community.
Well, here in America the flood of money into social programs hasn’t ended crime or poverty. I see zero stats supplied or referenced to as to how much $ these other countries place into social programs and what the result of those programs are.
What has ended some poverty and lowered crime has been the creation of jobs and opportunity zones which had reduced the unemployment rate to all time lows. Prior to the China virus our economy was headed in the best direction in a long time. Maybe forever. Now today, 10/29, it has been announced that our GDP rose 33.1% in the 2nd qtr. This even while some of our economy is still on lockdown. Open it all up and the economy will be even better.
I am not one to be able to gather many stats. I can find some but I am far from the best at it. I would love to see a comparable stat supplied here that shows just how much $ The U.S.A. already spends on all our social programs from area to area and state to state.. Then see what we spend on our police.
My guess is that the flood of social programs has soothed the minds of we the savage beasts. What does calm us all down is jobs and the pride of making our own way that comes with it.
BACK THE BLUE
Any Trump in 24
Sorin Varzaru says
Well, that is disappointing from someone that proved in the past that can think.
When you cannot reconcile your opinions with the numbers you just discount the numbers. Yes, police forces across the industrialized countries kill A LOT less of their citizens. Why, because ENFORCEMENT is not the only tool used to reduce crime, like in US. The information is out there, if you care to inform yourself. It’s not that hard to find.
Ray Otton says
For a different perspective, here are the deaths of US LEO’s due to violent offenders for the past 11 years –
2010 – 180
2011 – 187
2012 – 141
2013 – 128
2014 – 158
2015 – 164
2016 – 171
2017 – 152
2018 – 150
2019 – 49
2020 – 33 ( so far)
Seems to me, the police have some pretty good reasons for using lethal force in this country.
Generally speaking, the chances are you won’t get killed by a cop if you don’t commit a crime.
For some reason that doesn’t resonate with the criminal element and so we’re stuck in a circle of violence. To break the cycle the criminals must go first, the cops aren’t going to unilaterally disarm.
Of course, criminals can’t be reasoned with, so here we are.
Sorin Varzaru says
So Ray, is it your assessment that Americans are more violent then other nations? Or that the lack of (sufficient) social programs and the way LEOs are trained to respond is making it worst here then in other developed nations? Or what else?
Paul Plante says
Or what else?
How about the fact that the people in America are seriously **** up mental health wise, which was the issue in Philadelphia:
THE ATLANTIC
“Why More Americans Suffer From Mental Disorders Than Anyone Else”
Alice G. Walton
October 4, 2011
That mental health disorders are pervasive in the United States is no secret.
Americans suffer from all sorts of psychological issues, and the evidence indicates that they’re not going anywhere despite (or because of?) an increasing number of treatment options.
There are the mood disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, and the less severe dysthymia (low grade depression); anxiety disorders like generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, agoraphobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD); substance abuse; and impulse control disorder (like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder).
Research shows that while we’re seeking treatment more, rates have not dropped much, if at all, in recent years.
For depression alone, about one in 10 people in America has suffered from it in the last year.
Twice that number will be affected over the course of a lifetime.
end quotes
Why are the police being forced to have to deal with this in these poorly-managed Democrat-controlled cities?
What are the police supposed to do when they are ordered into an area where the people hate them, and are hostile to them, and they are confronted with a violent mental case?
We have some real sociological experts in here.
I would like to hear them address that question.
Ray Otton says
“So Ray, is it your assessment that Americans are more violent then other nations? Or that the lack of (sufficient) social programs and the way LEOs are trained to respond is making it worst here then in other developed nations? Or what else?”
There’s certainly room for improvement in how the police are trained however, as I said, the criminals bear the burden for the violence.
That brings up the glorification of the “Thug Life” by the black community and the media.
Lets face it, when a rapper makes millions of dollars singing about offing pigs and raping women, there’s something really wrong in our society.
There’s also something wrong when sadi rapper can use the “N” word with impunity but a white employee using the same word loses his job.
The nation will not survive with a multi-tiered justice system, legal or social.
I guess it comes down to personal responsibility, which is sadly lacking in our nation.
You know, Chris Rock, in one of his comedy sketches said if you don’t want to get shot by the police, don’t argue when caught.
I say, better yet, don’t do the crime.
Sorin Varzaru says
Watch this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0f_nFKVoyQ
MJM says
I forgot to mention in my original post what I personally believe is the most important opinion of them all. That is when the police yell ‘STOP ! POLICE !!! That you stop and calmly follow the directions of that Policeman. For some reason America seems to be raising more and more angry and ignorant people who like to yell at the police and angrily threaten the police when they are in that situation. Some of them even think they can wave weapons and aggressively confront the blue and create danger rather than follow their instructions. Ye reap what ye sow. Anyone and everyone really needs to understand the most important job every cop has, and that is to get home safe at the end of the day to their family. If any of us threaten that safety and raise the anger level of the confrontation it is indeed on us, not the police, what happens.
Ray Otton says
I’m not one to use the “Fox News” argument, where another person’s opinion is discounted because of the source, however, Cenk Uygur is pretty far out there. I’ll just leave it at that.
The thing is, you haven’t addressed my points after asking me my opinion on the state of affair with the US police.
To reiterate, don’t blame the cops for the violence, blame the society that encourages anti-social behavior by civilians.
Sorin Varzaru says
“To reiterate, don’t blame the cops for the violence, blame the society that encourages anti-social behavior by civilians.”
The point of that video is that cops killed people completely unnecessarily. Not all offences deserve the death penalty. There are criminals in other countries and somehow their police forces manage to maintain order without killing anywhere as many people as here. Also, your answer pretty much suggests that black folks deserved to be killed because they are criminals. Even white people in US are way more likely to be killed by cops.
Paul Plante says
Police violence and brutality are nothing new anywhere in the world, and the police cannot be separated from the political structure of the village, town, city, county, or state that they are a part of:
New York City was the Island of Vice.
And then suddenly in 1894, after a series of particularly ugly police scandals involving brutality and shakedowns of even bootblacks and pushcart peddlers, Tammany lost the mayor’s election.
– ISLAND OF VICE – Theodore Roosevelt’s doomed quest to clean up sin-loving New York by Richard Zacks
Tammany is a reference to the Democrat political stronghold of Tammany Hall in New York City.
Democrat political boss of the corrupt Democrat-controlled city of Albany, New York had a police captain shoot the gangster “Legs” Diamond in the head while he was sleeping in an Albany hotel room on December 18, 1931 because “Strongman” Dan didn’t want “Legs” Diamond giving him competition in the city he owned.
And who can forget the brutality of Democrat boss Daley’s police force in the corrupt Democrat-controlled City of Chicago during the 1968 fiasco known as the Democrat National Convention in that city in that year.
Paul Plante says
Police violence and brutality are nothing new in the United States of America, and there is no scalpel sharp enough to separate the police from the political structure of the village, town, city, county, or state that they are a part of, which political structure either controls or corrupts the police:
The Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, adorned with an abundant goatee and steel-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses, just shy of his fiftieth birthday, stood on February 14,1892, before about 800 well-dressed parishioners in Madison Square Presbyterian Church, at 24th Street off the park.
The understated building — a long and narrow slab of drab brownstone with a classic steeple — evoked earnestness, in stark contrast to the exuberant yellow-and-white Madison Square Garden tower nearby, topped by nude spinning Diana.
In the pews sat the city’s elite; scrubbed boys and girls fidgeted but their parents certainly did not, not that morning.
Parkhurst sent no advance notice of the subject of his sermon nor did he distribute the text to the press during the prior week, but afterward almost every newspaper requested it.
Parkhurst didn’t thunder from the pulpit.
He spoke evenly and favored erudite words, befitting an Amherst graduate (class of 1866), one who had studied abroad at Leipzig and once penned an essay on similarities between Latin and Sanskrit verbs.
He sometimes showed a sly dry wit.
On that Sunday winter morning, his calmly delivered words stunned his audience.
He called the Tammany men (Democrats) ruling New York, especially the mayor, the district attorney, and the police captains, “a lying, perjured, rum-soaked and libidinous lot.”
He accused them of licensing crime, of polluting the city for profit.
He said he would “not be surprised to know that every building in this town in which gambling or prostitution or the illicit sale of liquor is carried on has immunity secured to it by a scale of police taxation” as “systematized” as the local real estate taxes.
He asserted “your average police captain is not going to disturb a criminal if the criminal has means.”
– ISLAND OF VICE – Theodore Roosevelt’s doomed quest to clean up sin-loving New York by Richard Zacks
Paul Plante says
More funds for “social programs” to reduce crime?
What kind of “social programs” reduce crime?
Can you name even one?
How about welfare?
Is that a “social program” that reduces crime?
David Moore says
If this S–t keeps up their going to need more than armored vehicles.
Blue Hoss says
They will have plenty of help when the time comes. Their hands are tied right now, ours are not.
Paul Plante says
“The city has also failed those police officers.”
“It failed them tremendously.”
That is a Black lawyer named Shaka Johnson making those comments after viewing the bodycam footage of Monday’s incident, in which 27-year-old Walter Wallace Jr. was gunned down by two officers responding to what his relatives say was a call for help with a mental health crisis.speaking.
The city that failed everybody in that situation was Philadelphia, a Democratic stronghold of the state, often delivering huge margins for the Democrats in statewide elections.
So no wonder the city failed everybody – that is because Democrats are incomnpetent and cannot be trusted with law and order, which they are against and our public safety.
Paul Plante says
And while we are on the subject of in the wake of the George Floyd death in Minneapolis, the idea of defunding police departments has gained momentum in the national conversation about law enforcement and race while keeping very much in mind which party is antagonistic towards law enforcement, for a more in-depth look at the subject, for it is indeed gaining momentum in the corrupt Democrat-controlled ****-hole of New York under Democrat Andy Cuomo, as anti-police and anti-law and order a Democrat as you will ever find, let’s go to the Albany, New York Times Union article “Black Albany residents arrested at higher rates, audit finds
City-commissioned study suggests racial bias in policing, and possible solutions” by Steve Hughes on Nov. 5, 2020, to see how the defunding game is being played by first attacking the police as being “biased” against the Black folks to discredit them, to wit:
ALBANY — An external audit focused on potential racial bias within the city police department found that Black residents are disproportionately arrested compared to other city residents.
end quotes
Now, of course, that can have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that in Albany, it is the Black folks who are the lawless, violent criminals; to the contrary, notwithstanding that in Albany it is the Black folks who are the lawless, violent criminals, it really is the fault of the police that they are arresting more Black folks, because they are biased against Black folks, which is why their funding should be yanked, which takes us back to that article, as follows:
A draft of the audit, obtained by the Times Union, also showed that Black residents are more likely to be charged with resisting arrest, have force used against them and file civil rights complaints against the city.
end quotes
Again, could it be possible that more Black folks are likely to be arrested for resisting arrest because more Black folks resist arrest than do any other skin color?
Getting back to that article, it goes on as follows:
But the audit stopped short of blaming the discrepancies on bias within the department or among individual officers, noting that a combination how the department collects information and the lack of information on individual police stops made it impossible to determine the exact cause of the disparities.
Instead, the report concludes the city should investigate further.
“Without details about the circumstances of the arrests, we cannot say with certainty that this difference is entirely the result of race or bias, but these results are suggestive of those possibilities,” the draft states.
end quotes
Suggestive of those possibilities?
Okay, but how about also suggestive of the fact that Black folks are more likely to be criminals than people of other skin colors?
But wait, we’re trying to defund the police here, which means we have to interpret the data to show that the police are in the wrong, not the Black folks, because Albany, New York, a Democrat-controlled city, is also a BLACK LIVES MATTER city, and BLACK LIVES MATTER does not like the police and wants them gone, and this is how it is done:
The audit by CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization, also examined issues around officer training, community policing and other internal operations.
City Auditor Dorcey Appylrs hired the firm in August for $80,000 as part of a larger city review of its police department and its policies.
That review is required by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s executive order that says municipalities must do comprehensive reviews of their police departments and develop plans to reform them.
Cuomo issued the order amid the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd of Minneapolis by police officers.
end quotes
Now, check out that sentence which says that Democrat Andy Cuomo of New York, as anti-law and order a Democrat as they come, issued an executive order that says municipalities must do comprehensive reviews of their police departments and develop plans to reform them amid the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd of Minneapolis by police officers, and ask yourself why Democrat Cuomo, a “Willy Horton Democrat,” is demanding reform of police departments in New York state when George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, some 1,224.3 miles west of Albany.
Why is Cuomo, whose heart bleeds for the criminals in society, demanding a reform of the Albany Police Department because of something that happened in Minnesota?
And that answer is because for Cuomo, who is virulently anti-police, the George Floyd killing was simply a handy excuse for him to issue his executive order which nobody can challenge, because Cuomo owns the courts.
There is no evidence that the Albany Police Department needed reform prior to George Floyd being killed, and there has been plenty of evidence that the Black folks are violent criminals, but Cuomo doesn’t need evidence that the police are in the wrong – all it takes is for him to hold that belief, and that is it – now the data has to be arranged in such a fashion as to hang the cops while assuring the criminals get the full protection of Cuomo’s office, which takes us back to that article as follows:
The audit’s 62 findings and accompanying recommendations are expected to provide the city with a baseline of information as part of the reform process.
end quotes
Whether it is needed or not, clearly the “Reform the Police” train has left the station and is proceeding down the track full speed ahead.
Getting back to the article:
About 30 percent of city residents are Black, 50 percent are white, 10 percent are Hispanic and 7 percent are Asian.
Black residents also made up 64 percent of all arrests in the city during the 2015-2019 timeframe, compared to 27 percent for white residents and roughly 6 percent for Hispanic residents.
During the 2015-1019 time frame, the department filed 124 resisting arrest charges, with more than 79 percent of those filed against Black people.
White residents made up 16.9 percent of resisting arrest charges and Hispanics just 2.4 percent.
But again, the auditors said they could not prove that was the result of bias — though the results suggested that it was — and recommended the city examine the issue further.
end quotes
Though the results suggested something?
What kind of bull**** is that?
Why don’t the data suggest that Black folks are more likely to be criminals than Hispanics or Asians?
Oh, right, it is the Era of BLACK LIVES MATTER, so it is all about the Black folks and how they are being treated as criminals by white cops using WHITE MAN’S LAW against them to hold them down.
So let’s cripple the police, and then, the Black folks won’t be criminals anymore.
See how simple that is!