We Won’t Defund The Police

I’m going to be blunt. We aren’t going to defund the police and saying that we will is either naive or irresponsibly incendiary.  And the reason we won’t defund the police or disband them is that we need them.

Every society, no matter how Utopian, has its share of bad apples. So long as humans are humans, with all the limitations there-of, we will have among us criminals, bullies, trouble makers, vandals, domestic abusers, and, yes, murderers. And so we will always have a need for someone to control such people.

Ergo, to say that we will do without them is as silly as saying that we’ll have no more fire-fighters because, in a truly enlightened society, there will be no flames.

What we can do, though, is revamp and reform the police so that they and the community are thoroughly intertwined. If we can do that...if we can make certain that police officers are recruited from every walk of life...if we can make “community policing” the norm...if, each time a demonstrator, or even just a pedestrian, confronts an officer of the law, both people in the equation see the other’s humanity....

Then, at last, we have obtained a form of law and order which is also compassionate and kind.

With justice For All

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

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