Police departments around the United States have sucked up billions of dollars in resources and delivered questionable results along the way. There are some parents who have had their children go missing to allegedly be told by their local departments that they should 'do their own investigation' in the matter or they might go with the "child ran away" narrative meanwhile that child is in danger.

Could you imagine facing that type of result in service if your own family member were to go missing? To be ignored or treated like you aren't a priority by the people who should be helping you.

This sort of response has and can come from the people who are tasked with that job specifically. What do you do when you aren't satisfied with results and when bad actors seem to be protected? What can the public do when a harmful culture is fostered that increases the risk to the community? You might think about giving that service less money because they aren't demonstrating good results with the bloated budget they have.

Money Matters

This is billions of dollars going toward this endeavor and the results matter, the job needs to be done we need security forces but we don't need security forces that vilify members of the public and treat them like the enemy.

Police investigation is important and it will always be needed. However, we don't need to ever see any officers being jury, judge, and executioner, on the side of the road. That behavior is and always will be unacceptable and should be dealt with swiftly and if it happens on too many occasions, maybe you've got a problem with your police culture? Those bad actors will only end up costing the city more in the long run and don't deserve the authority they are given if they are going to abuse it for one moment.

There are thousands of family members of victims that you can find who have honest and negative stories to tell about the service that they received when they needed it most, or lack of it. Do their stories not matter?

Do the people tasked with finding justice get to pick when they will or won't care about an injustice?

What is curious is that police departments and individuals working there have in the past acted like don't feel they need to be held accountable by the public. For example, there are laws being proposed that would defund cities who move to defund the police. They don't want their resources taken, despite getting billions; over the years police around the U.S. have collectively taken billions of dollars from Americans.

How much is enough? Will it never be enough? Do the results not matter? Is the public supposed to pay for something that they aren't happy with the results of and have no way of impacting change toward? If the police didn't protect bad actors so frequently then this problem wouldn't have come about in the first place.

What we see is a culture of abuse toward the public, a culture of disrespect for the people, and a blatant disregard for Constitutional rights, and when the people try and respond with suggestions of less money or reform, we get threats that crime is rising as a result now and threats that cities will be defunded if the people even try to make a change in this regard. Seems to be fairly aggressive attitudes coming from those who are paid by the people but who don't want to answer to the public.

Rise In Crime Nonsense

Prior to the 'defund the police' movement there is no way we could be aware of how much crime had been going on. The amount of crime we have is the crime that officially gets reported. Based on those numbers alone we might see rates go up or down but there are many factors that could contribute to that rise in reporting and might not necessarily be a rise in crime occurring in the community, just more being exposed finally.

Are all crimes caught and reported? No. There are many crimes over the decades that have likely gone unreported and haven't been solved etc. Not everyone is going to report a crime that happens to them and all those who engage in wrongdoing aren't going to be stopped, if this wasn't the case then we wouldn't see activities like human trafficking becoming one of the fastest growing criminal industries today.

It is easy for the media to get the public to think crime is going up because all they would need to do is start reporting more frequently on it. That might get people unreasonably scared about the communities that they live in to the point that they might reverse their notion that departments need reprioritize their spending so it isn't so wasteful, or that they don't need to examine the results they have been providing the community. Unfortunately, aside from clips of crime in town occurring, there are countless other videos to be shown where officers are abusing their authority and abusing members of the public too.

With the media showing clips day after day of crime taking place it wouldn't take long for people to assume that their society was falling apart because of the frequency of bad actors they'd be able to witness.

The criminal activity is wrong no matter which side engage in it.

Even worse though is when someone is being paid to protect and they do the complete opposite. Drastic reform is needed when that has become the norm today because that sort of culture is unacceptable and dangerous to the public these security forces serve.

Is crime really rising or are they reporting more on it to make it look like it is rising so that they can push back against discussions of defunding and reform? One thing is certain and that is that authorities often only show up after the crime has already been committed which means they wouldn't have been able to stop it or influence a decline in crime with their presence or funding unless they show up before it occurs.