Fixing the Unconstitutional Notion of Defunding the Police Through Less Government Intervention

OP-ED ARTICLE

Written by Gillyan Christensen

In the instance of our modern society today, we have become a dominant multi-cohort of pure emotional driven power. Within the last year, our generations of Z and Millennial have completely and entirely taken emotion and ran with it in any circumstance possible, starting in May 25, 2020 with the death of George Floyd to what the media refers to as “racially-motivated” police brutality, when in reality it was evidently just police brutality with no solid evidence of the death being due to racially prejudiced, malicious motivation. George Floyd became the epitome of martyrs for the Black Lives Matter organization, and became a god-like figure to them, and a sacrifice that should be thanked according to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of The United States House of Representatives. In the name of George Floyd aroused the emotionality of police brutality and resulted into the violent, and politically driven notion of defunding the police. Immediately after the death of George Floyd, starting on the exact day, petitions immediately went out calling for the defunding of police, “Black Visions Collective, penned one of the first petitions to defund their city’s police department on May 25, almost immediately after Floyd was killed. ‘Tell Minneapolis City To Defund Their Police,’ the headline on the petition read. Within a week, protests had sprung up in all 50 states, all defined by support of black lives and opposition to police violence.” (Politico, How ‘Defund the Police’ Went From Moonshot to Mainstream, Par. 5). This petition was one of over 10,000 sent out to defund the police in vast states including Seattle, Washington, Los Angeles, California, and Portland, Oregon. The outcry for the defunding of the police, and the constant pathos-filled propaganda began so intensely that it even reached the former President of The United States, Donald J. Trump in which he immediately stated “There won't be defunding, there won't be dismantling of our police and there is not going to be any disbanding of our police,” on June 8, 2020. As many regret to admit it, our former POTUS was exactly correct in stating this, and secretly foreshadowed the unfortunate consequence of why defunding the police administers a crime-crisis resulting in the raising of a dystopian nightmare.

Approaching the obvious crime rise since defunding the police, specifically in the Seattle, Washington Police Department of detention centers has been significant by a 250% raise since defunding this department alone, “The state legislature and voters cut loose prisoners and decriminalized many felonies. The result was a flood of new homeless and more crime. To victims, the crime rate is worse than ever, but to the state, it’s lower because those crimes don’t count anymore. If this passes, Seattle will claim a lower crime rate too and take a victory lap” (INSANE: Seattle Goes from Defunding the Police to Canceling Most Crimes Entirely, Par. 14 ). This was a catastrophe in its own, as the criminals set free were anything but innocent as they claimed their reintroduction into society. Rape is up 53.2%, murder is up 10.7% and petty crime is up 198.4% since defunding the Seattle police department, according to National Review’s article from August of 2020. These statistics alone raise the question of how the people of Seattle are expected to protect themselves from harm entirely without the life-saving assistance from our police force. The answer to the question is simple, and that is through reformation, refunding, and less government intervention on the community’s forms of protection, which is local PD. The police force in Seattle, Washington received funding at $400 million dollars before getting a slamming $3 million budget defunding leaving 700+ police officers unemployed according to King 5 News. In accordance to the FBI 2019 Crime report, from 2009-2019 there was a positive decrease in crime by 4.1 percent and after defunding, crime went up 19.2 percent, but don’t worry, the FBI made sure to indirectly endorse the obvious perpetrations by putting out the statement, “These rankings lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that can create misleading perceptions that adversely affect communities and their residents," the statement continued, "Only through careful study and analyses into the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction can data users create valid assessments of crime” (FBI, September 9, 2020). The utter audacity of this, is astronomical to say the absolute. Upon pondering what steps need to be taken in order to successfully bring down the numbers of crime, everyone must look at what the government in Washington State is currently funding that is entirely useless, unfair taxation and can easily be put towards building new police forces, systems and true law and order-like structure for protecting the general public. Upon examining to the Federal Funding of Washington state, the three most useless funding systems are gasoline taxation where “Washington drivers will pay the third-highest gas tax in the nation after the passage of an $11.8 billion transportation plan by state lawmakers” (The Washington Examiner, Tim Gruver, The Center Square). Federal transportation where according to the Washington state federal funding, infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grants were established for Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects (formerly known as FASTLANE, the name was changed to INFRA in 2017). Another useless governmental funding system is airport improvement programs where “The Airport Improvement Program (AIP) provides grants to public agencies (meaning governmental industries) — and, in some cases, to private owners and entities — for the planning and development of public-use airports that are included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS)” (Federal Funding, leg.wa.gov). All together, these taxations make up a grand sum of $19.5 billion dollars in 2020 that could have easily been given to funding police departments for new reformations and the betterment of the law and order that was set in our constitution under Police Power.

When it comes to the power of the police to our constitution, it clearly states that “In United States constitutional law, police power is the capacity of the states to regulate behavior and enforce order within their territory for the betterment of the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of their inhabitants.” By defunding the police, the Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, and the Seattle, Washington Mayor, Jenny Durkan are directly in violation of the constitution and as are many other state governments in the ideal motives of defunding the police. By looking into the most recent events in Washington State where the size of the police force was extremely relevant in the protection of the citizens of the cities, Puyallup Washington is spoken about. On April 14, 2021 Motion Church in Puyallup announced that they would be having a guest speaker by the name of Charlie Kirk, who is the C.E.O of political activism company, Turning Point USA on May 2nd of 2021 to get a preaching opportunity and a Q/A session afterward. After announcing this, Motion Church was bombarded by an infamous radical terrorist group, with threats to burn down Motion Church’s campus, the faculties housing, and essentially the whole city of Puyallup, “Upon hearing that Mr. Kirk was coming to our church, radical terrorist mobs like the ones that rallied on Capitol Hill in Seattle, they sprung into action,” Mr. Archer, Motion Church Senior Pastor said in a video posted online. He praised the Puyallup Police department with the statement that the “Puyallup Police Department had our back the whole way; however, they have limited resources to completely shut down a terrorist threat across our multiple locations.”, and upon asking countless times for governor Jay Inslee to offer protections of religious freedom, there was no response. Through the defunding of our police, the American people will not have access to even religious freedom. The lack of law and order is so incredibly explicit that even the terrorist organizations who lead petitions, rioted and looted in the streets are happily taking advantage of it, and relentlessly driving the Washingtonian citizens to the ground with fear. These terrorists are creating a federalized police system that hijacks the embodiment of civilian law and order, and turns it into the German Socialist Workers Party overthrow of 2020 and beyond. When one thinks about individual freedoms, you will never come close to that if you are in a position where an individual can’t call 911 due to a shortage of officers. Defunding the police completely deframes the concept of the constitution and throws away the role of what the government should always be striving to do: protecting the American civilians from harm's way.

There are many solutions to this problem, but one solution when it comes to ending the defunding of the police, would end all opportunity to take away the police force once and for all, and that is to abolish federally owned police systems. The government owns the police forces, which is why they have the power to defund and refund the police systems at will, and that takes away the 14th amendment, section 1, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”(United States Constitution), as well as the second amendment if it ever came down to it, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”(United States Bill of Rights, 2nd Amendment).

The police force should be completely owned by the communities, because at least the citizens know what it means to protect each other better than the Governmental officials who live in gated, protected, and gun-protected homes where they will never be affected by any danger that one might face not living under a surveillanced home.