GordonGekko
Footballguy
Direct Headline: 'We need them desperately': US police departments struggle with critical staffing shortages
...Police departments from Atlanta to Kansas City to Portland are coping with critical staffing shortages and struggling to fill their ranks from patrol officers to 911 operators, as the warm weather historically portends bursts of violence in many parts of the United States...."The people (who) work here are working long hours, extra overtime to cover other shifts," said Kansas City Police Interim Chief Joseph Maybin during a recent tour of the department's 911 call center, which is experiencing longer wait times....."But we have to have someone answering the call. We have to have someone dispatching otherwise we can't get officers to people. It's critical...."
The Kansas City Police Department is down about 100 crucial non-law enforcement positions, including 911 dispatchers, mechanics and analysts, and down more than 200 officers....Atlanta, Dallas, Portland, Seattle and other cities cope with shortages...across the nation, the challenges police departments face in retaining and recruiting officers are daunting -- a staffing crisis exacerbated by retirements and resignations, as well as high-profile killings that have put policing under increased scrutiny and made it a frequent target of protests and calls for budget cuts.....
Chicago Police Department lowered its hiring standards amid staffing shortages....Other cities are looking for officers as well. The Dallas Police Department is down about 550 officers. In Portland, the department is looking to fill more than 100 officer positions.....In Seattle, a shortage of police officers recently led to fewer detectives working on sexual assaults. In a statement last month, Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz said he had to move detectives and support staff from other units to help. But challenges remain, the chief said, noting that the department was down to 135 detectives compared to 234 in 2019.....The superintendent said the time-off decision was made for officer safety, adding that "when that cop in a dark alley is calling for help" more officers are needed on the streets.
A June 2021 national survey found that police departments around the country .... showed a 45% increase in retirements and an 18% jump in resignations over the previous year....On average, officers spend 8 months training before they can patrol the streets alone, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That means it will take years to fill open jobs at departments across the country....The reasons for the recruitment and retention crisis are attributable to "multiple social, political, and economic forces," including generational differences, negative perceptions of policing and the long hiring process of many agencies....additionally, low pay and the so-called great resignation -- in which workers voluntarily left their jobs in unprecedented numbers after the pandemic -- hit policing as it did other professions....
....The effects the crisis has on cities, the survey said: "Longer wait times for calls for service, fewer crimes solved and cleared, and on-duty officers who are burned out and overworked threaten the quality of life in our communities."...Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said job shortage cuts across all sectors of the government and the city is doing all it can to ensure public safety....The city is taking that recruitment message to military bases and historically Black colleges and universities -- and increasing efforts to recruit female officers, according to Lucas....
By Ryan Young, Devon M. Sayers and Ray Sanchez, CNN Tue July 19, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/us/police-staffing-shortages-recruitment/index.html
VIDEO: Record number of officers quitting their job | Morning in America Jun 13, 2022
Some police unions are sounding the alarm of a police officer shortage. Retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar joined "Morning in America" to discuss the mass police exodus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj7e0KqGRvw
VIDEO: NYPD officers quitting Jul 6, 2022
The NYPD is seeing a major exodus of officers. The department said 523 members left in June alone.
2020 : 553 Resigned / 2599 Retired
2021: 1053 Resigned/ 1654 Retired
2022 To Date: 497 Resigned/ 594 Retired
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aakhNFhbhWk
Direct Headline: Why are America’s Women Police Chiefs Resigning?
The retirement of Carmen Best, Seattle’s beleaguered police chief, is the most recent upending of the careers of women leading major city police departments. Best, who retired on August 11 after the city council shrunk her department and cut her salary by more than $100,000, is only the latest female chief to have fallen....
...Women chiefs were once seen as harbingers of systemic changes in urban police departments. But in Atlanta, Erika Shields and, in Portland, Ore., Jami Resch, each resigned within days of protests by Black Lives Matter (BLM) and allied groups. In both cities, their mayors quickly accepted their resignations....
Shields served in all ranks before becoming Atlanta’s second woman and first openly gay chief. With bachelor’s and master’s degrees, her earlier assignments included patrol, internal affairs, and accreditation. She seemed to epitomize the modern police chief, but the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) had criticized her after she fired two officers who had tased two college students during the Floyd protests....Their criticism, apparently, arose from her comments that the District Attorney’s decision to charge six officers was part of a “tsunami of political jockeying” because he was in a runoff election against his former deputy chief D.A....
Across the country, in Portland, Ore., Jami Resch also resigned after barely six months as chief ....A 21-year veteran of the Portland Police Bureau (the police department), Resch, like Shields, pledged to work with the community. At her swearing in she promised to be a “collaborative chief.”...But also like Shields, there were calls for Resch’s resignation from within the black community....In what Portland’s daily newspaper, The Oregonian called a “caustic letter,” Resch was criticized for her “all-white leadership team” and for having replaced a departing Asian-American assistant chief with a white male without community input....
....Violence also continues nightly in Seattle since Chief Best was ordered by Mayor Jenny Durkan on June 8 to abandon the East Precinct police station when BLM protestors and various hangers-on moved into a six-block area they called the Capital Hill Occupation Protest (CHOP)....Best warned then that police were unable to respond to calls about “rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent act that have been occurring in the area.” But Durkan, elected in 2017, likened the area to San Francisco’s “summer of love” in 1967, when about 100,000 people turned Haight-Asbury into a park fueled largely by sex, drugs, and rock and roll.....After armed gangs took over the area and two African-American male teenagers were shot dead, Durkan advised protesters that: “It’s time for people to go home.”.... Despite vast media coverage, Durkan had little to say and she rarely spoke about the chief. Best, on the other hand, was often the city’s spokesperson, presenting an upbeat message despite the nightly violence. She generally demurred when asked about her plans to remain as chief.....Finally, in the face of the city council’s votes to shrink the department and to reduce her salary, Best announced her retirement after 28 years with the department......former King County Executive Ron Sims, who is black, said he found the council’s treatment of the chief “incredibly offensive” and “humiliating” to city’s first African-American woman chief...
...Right now, the odds don’t look favorable for women chiefs anywhere. Ironically, not so long ago, reformers and feminists advocated for more women in law enforcement, particularly at the senior ranks. The goal was to move policing from a warrior culture to a community-based model and in the process heal troubled departments....But these kinds of women leaders are now being felled by weak mayoral support and protester vitriol towards the police.....
By Dorothy Schulz August 13, 2020
https://thecrimereport.org/2020/08/13/why-are-americas-women-police-chiefs-resigning/
Direct Headline: ‘Why would anyone want to be a cop today?’
There is a potential law enforcement crisis getting ready to manifest itself in the next few years. The crisis doesn’t have anything to do with crime, police violence or civil unrest, but is at least partially a direct consequence of all three.
Who wants to be a cop?
After several years of repeated societal upheavals including political divisiveness, civil unrest, and even the COVID-19 pandemic, the question is, who would want to be a police officer now? Across the country, thousands of police departments are trying to persuade people to consider a career in law enforcement....The No. 1 reason for the influx of funding is increased crime and fear of lawlessness....
...Years of negative branding, a shrinking labor pool, prolonged adolescence, and even the great resignation have had an impact on people considering law enforcement as a good career choice. Even cops don’t seem to want their children getting into the profession. A survey by Calibre Press and Police1 of over 10,000 officers found that only 7 percent would recommend the profession to their children.
In response, police departments have had to aggressively pursue marketing strategies that include engaging social media posts, career fairs, and live-streaming question and answer sessions with police recruiters.....At a time when departments are the most challenged, they have to be exceedingly diligent when hiring. After years of negative public sentiment, police departments need to be especially careful during the selection process. To get good cops you need quantity. If you have a lot of applicants, you can usually screen through and find good applicants that rise to the top. Astonishingly it’s not unusual to see only single digit numbers hired for every 100 applicants who go through the process....For departments that need to hire large numbers that means processing thousands of applicants. The trouble is every agency is fishing in the same pond. In California alone there are over 500 law enforcement agencies and pretty much all of them are hiring....
Departments are now in a competition to get prospective applicants to choose them....Even monetary incentives are being utilized now. It’s common to see $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000 signing bonuses. In December, an Oakland City Council member even proposed upping the ante to $50,000. Of course, the bonuses would be paid out over the course of years with officers paid an amount for every year they stayed with department....The staggered payout is necessary because one of the ways departments get officers is by wooing officers from other departments. Cash incentives, better job opportunities, and supportive communities are just some of the ways officers are convinced to make the move to another department....
Hiring, training, and deploying a police officer is nearly a year-long process. In the meantime, natural attrition is occurring as well, as officers leave for any number of reasons including job dissatisfaction, physical injury and even termination. For some agencies, additional budgeted positions must also be filled....More funding doesn’t automatically translate to more bodies on the street....What happens when law enforcement can’t hire enough bodies? For many departments this requires restructuring. In other words, agencies have to decide what they will stop doing in order to continue answering the 911 calls and investigating crimes....If departments can’t hire officers they have to be creative in making sure their patrol deployments are not impacted. So now investigators and detectives are reassigned one or two days a month to patrol duties — which means less time available for following up on reports and arresting bad guys....
....Fear of crime and disorder necessitate a response by law enforcement. For that, police departments need boots on the ground. When departments can’t get enough people interested in the job, the pressure to compromise standards can become overwhelming. Agency leaders just hope the pressure to hire, and compromised standards, don’t result in problems further down the road....
Like a lot of veteran cops are saying, “Who would want to be a cop today?”
By Joe Vargas May 12, 2022
https://behindthebadge.com/why-would-anyone-want-to-be-a-cop-today/
**********
The average police officer in America is not a racist. They are not a bigot. They are mostly every day working class Americans with a very tough and complicated career path. Most are just trying to do the best they can each day, serve their community and put food on the table for their children. Like any profession, there are some that are elite at what they do and are a credit to their profession. There is a larger wide segment that are in the middle of the pack and as Parcells would say - Just Another Guy. Then there are some that are idiots and corrupt and shouldn't have a badge. And as Michael Alcazar points out - Those who can get to early retirement aren't going to risk hanging on, getting caught up in some current anti law enforcement sentiment infused political "red ball" and face losing their pension. And that many who aren't even near retirement are weighing out what are the long term risks to their life, their finances and their freedom if they stay on in a culture that is progressively more hostile to them.
You can't maintain a high quality widespread type of community policing if you keep demonizing the entire collective over the actions of a few. And you can't effectively maintain basic civil order if you keep demonizing the entire profession because it's politically expedient for Team Blue to do so to hold onto the black vote and the radical vote.
If you tell a specific profession constantly that you want to defund them, that they are all secretly a cabal of racists, bigots and White Nationalists, that they must endure modern "bail reform" and enabled lawlessness from their City Councils, Mayors and Governors, that they will never be supported even if they do their jobs right, that they should endure countless months of rioting and looting and be the focal point of the blame, and that those that remain should simply be overworked as many of their ranks are retiring and resigning in droves, then what is the practical benefit of being a police officer in modern American society?
Consider the irony in that the hard push for "social justice" ended up with a black female police chief, Carmen Best, resigning. Much in part because Best opposed her then sitting mayor's efforts to defund her entire department, amidst endless rioting and looting, and gave her orders to actually abandon an entire police station to the lawless and career criminals. And multiple other female police chiefs across the nation resigned as well. Did anyone want to ask about the many women who were rank and file officers that retired or resigned in the past few years due to this kind of open stupidity? And the shortages means fewer officers to respond to calls for domestic abuse and rape where women are disproportionately impacted. Also fewer detectives to investigate crimes like sexual assault and rape in general. So when predominately black communities call for help, then who is there to help them when staffing shortages means there is a longer wait ( which could mean the difference between life and death) and less overall coverage? Is the price of "woke" here causing more harm to women and minorities in general?
Team Blue can't demand better quality of overall community policing when all their public policy is built around enabling criminals and lawlessness, sabotaging their own police departments as scapegoats for personal political gain, demonizing officers in general as bigots, racists and the true representation of the enforcer arm of "systemic racism", defund them and slash their budgets and then setting a pathway where only the most mediocre recruits with constantly degrading standards will even want the job.
That's just plain stupid.
On top of that, there is a consistent hard push, like in New York, to try to take everyone's guns from them. Newsflash for the Democratic Party, if you incentivize criminals over tax paying citizens and if you kneecap your law enforcement agencies then you will naturally corner many every day people into seeing buying a gun as their only option to keep themselves and their families safe. You can't abandon civil order and then demand the working class to be left out as prey to be hunted down by the career criminals you let out while you use the tax dollars of good honest people to surround yourself with highly trained armed security.
That too is just plain stupid. And toxic. And it will drive away voters in droves.
Intentionally crippling basic civil order across the entire country is a clear national security crisis.
My viewpoint? The price of Identity Politics means it's simply more politically expedient to make it easier for America's children to die. Your children's future is being cashed in for Woke Points. And you are told that you need to be happy with being abandoned to be a future victim lest you be called a bigot and a racist.
Some of you voted for this, so ask yourself what that vote might cost you and your loved ones if you need the police and you end up waiting endlessly for help in the most critical moments.
I'll leave this here for others to discuss.
...Police departments from Atlanta to Kansas City to Portland are coping with critical staffing shortages and struggling to fill their ranks from patrol officers to 911 operators, as the warm weather historically portends bursts of violence in many parts of the United States...."The people (who) work here are working long hours, extra overtime to cover other shifts," said Kansas City Police Interim Chief Joseph Maybin during a recent tour of the department's 911 call center, which is experiencing longer wait times....."But we have to have someone answering the call. We have to have someone dispatching otherwise we can't get officers to people. It's critical...."
The Kansas City Police Department is down about 100 crucial non-law enforcement positions, including 911 dispatchers, mechanics and analysts, and down more than 200 officers....Atlanta, Dallas, Portland, Seattle and other cities cope with shortages...across the nation, the challenges police departments face in retaining and recruiting officers are daunting -- a staffing crisis exacerbated by retirements and resignations, as well as high-profile killings that have put policing under increased scrutiny and made it a frequent target of protests and calls for budget cuts.....
Chicago Police Department lowered its hiring standards amid staffing shortages....Other cities are looking for officers as well. The Dallas Police Department is down about 550 officers. In Portland, the department is looking to fill more than 100 officer positions.....In Seattle, a shortage of police officers recently led to fewer detectives working on sexual assaults. In a statement last month, Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz said he had to move detectives and support staff from other units to help. But challenges remain, the chief said, noting that the department was down to 135 detectives compared to 234 in 2019.....The superintendent said the time-off decision was made for officer safety, adding that "when that cop in a dark alley is calling for help" more officers are needed on the streets.
A June 2021 national survey found that police departments around the country .... showed a 45% increase in retirements and an 18% jump in resignations over the previous year....On average, officers spend 8 months training before they can patrol the streets alone, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That means it will take years to fill open jobs at departments across the country....The reasons for the recruitment and retention crisis are attributable to "multiple social, political, and economic forces," including generational differences, negative perceptions of policing and the long hiring process of many agencies....additionally, low pay and the so-called great resignation -- in which workers voluntarily left their jobs in unprecedented numbers after the pandemic -- hit policing as it did other professions....
....The effects the crisis has on cities, the survey said: "Longer wait times for calls for service, fewer crimes solved and cleared, and on-duty officers who are burned out and overworked threaten the quality of life in our communities."...Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said job shortage cuts across all sectors of the government and the city is doing all it can to ensure public safety....The city is taking that recruitment message to military bases and historically Black colleges and universities -- and increasing efforts to recruit female officers, according to Lucas....
By Ryan Young, Devon M. Sayers and Ray Sanchez, CNN Tue July 19, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/us/police-staffing-shortages-recruitment/index.html
VIDEO: Record number of officers quitting their job | Morning in America Jun 13, 2022
Some police unions are sounding the alarm of a police officer shortage. Retired NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar joined "Morning in America" to discuss the mass police exodus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj7e0KqGRvw
VIDEO: NYPD officers quitting Jul 6, 2022
The NYPD is seeing a major exodus of officers. The department said 523 members left in June alone.
2020 : 553 Resigned / 2599 Retired
2021: 1053 Resigned/ 1654 Retired
2022 To Date: 497 Resigned/ 594 Retired
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aakhNFhbhWk
Direct Headline: Why are America’s Women Police Chiefs Resigning?
The retirement of Carmen Best, Seattle’s beleaguered police chief, is the most recent upending of the careers of women leading major city police departments. Best, who retired on August 11 after the city council shrunk her department and cut her salary by more than $100,000, is only the latest female chief to have fallen....
...Women chiefs were once seen as harbingers of systemic changes in urban police departments. But in Atlanta, Erika Shields and, in Portland, Ore., Jami Resch, each resigned within days of protests by Black Lives Matter (BLM) and allied groups. In both cities, their mayors quickly accepted their resignations....
Shields served in all ranks before becoming Atlanta’s second woman and first openly gay chief. With bachelor’s and master’s degrees, her earlier assignments included patrol, internal affairs, and accreditation. She seemed to epitomize the modern police chief, but the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) had criticized her after she fired two officers who had tased two college students during the Floyd protests....Their criticism, apparently, arose from her comments that the District Attorney’s decision to charge six officers was part of a “tsunami of political jockeying” because he was in a runoff election against his former deputy chief D.A....
Across the country, in Portland, Ore., Jami Resch also resigned after barely six months as chief ....A 21-year veteran of the Portland Police Bureau (the police department), Resch, like Shields, pledged to work with the community. At her swearing in she promised to be a “collaborative chief.”...But also like Shields, there were calls for Resch’s resignation from within the black community....In what Portland’s daily newspaper, The Oregonian called a “caustic letter,” Resch was criticized for her “all-white leadership team” and for having replaced a departing Asian-American assistant chief with a white male without community input....
....Violence also continues nightly in Seattle since Chief Best was ordered by Mayor Jenny Durkan on June 8 to abandon the East Precinct police station when BLM protestors and various hangers-on moved into a six-block area they called the Capital Hill Occupation Protest (CHOP)....Best warned then that police were unable to respond to calls about “rapes, robberies and all sorts of violent act that have been occurring in the area.” But Durkan, elected in 2017, likened the area to San Francisco’s “summer of love” in 1967, when about 100,000 people turned Haight-Asbury into a park fueled largely by sex, drugs, and rock and roll.....After armed gangs took over the area and two African-American male teenagers were shot dead, Durkan advised protesters that: “It’s time for people to go home.”.... Despite vast media coverage, Durkan had little to say and she rarely spoke about the chief. Best, on the other hand, was often the city’s spokesperson, presenting an upbeat message despite the nightly violence. She generally demurred when asked about her plans to remain as chief.....Finally, in the face of the city council’s votes to shrink the department and to reduce her salary, Best announced her retirement after 28 years with the department......former King County Executive Ron Sims, who is black, said he found the council’s treatment of the chief “incredibly offensive” and “humiliating” to city’s first African-American woman chief...
...Right now, the odds don’t look favorable for women chiefs anywhere. Ironically, not so long ago, reformers and feminists advocated for more women in law enforcement, particularly at the senior ranks. The goal was to move policing from a warrior culture to a community-based model and in the process heal troubled departments....But these kinds of women leaders are now being felled by weak mayoral support and protester vitriol towards the police.....
By Dorothy Schulz August 13, 2020
https://thecrimereport.org/2020/08/13/why-are-americas-women-police-chiefs-resigning/
Direct Headline: ‘Why would anyone want to be a cop today?’
There is a potential law enforcement crisis getting ready to manifest itself in the next few years. The crisis doesn’t have anything to do with crime, police violence or civil unrest, but is at least partially a direct consequence of all three.
Who wants to be a cop?
After several years of repeated societal upheavals including political divisiveness, civil unrest, and even the COVID-19 pandemic, the question is, who would want to be a police officer now? Across the country, thousands of police departments are trying to persuade people to consider a career in law enforcement....The No. 1 reason for the influx of funding is increased crime and fear of lawlessness....
...Years of negative branding, a shrinking labor pool, prolonged adolescence, and even the great resignation have had an impact on people considering law enforcement as a good career choice. Even cops don’t seem to want their children getting into the profession. A survey by Calibre Press and Police1 of over 10,000 officers found that only 7 percent would recommend the profession to their children.
In response, police departments have had to aggressively pursue marketing strategies that include engaging social media posts, career fairs, and live-streaming question and answer sessions with police recruiters.....At a time when departments are the most challenged, they have to be exceedingly diligent when hiring. After years of negative public sentiment, police departments need to be especially careful during the selection process. To get good cops you need quantity. If you have a lot of applicants, you can usually screen through and find good applicants that rise to the top. Astonishingly it’s not unusual to see only single digit numbers hired for every 100 applicants who go through the process....For departments that need to hire large numbers that means processing thousands of applicants. The trouble is every agency is fishing in the same pond. In California alone there are over 500 law enforcement agencies and pretty much all of them are hiring....
Departments are now in a competition to get prospective applicants to choose them....Even monetary incentives are being utilized now. It’s common to see $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000 signing bonuses. In December, an Oakland City Council member even proposed upping the ante to $50,000. Of course, the bonuses would be paid out over the course of years with officers paid an amount for every year they stayed with department....The staggered payout is necessary because one of the ways departments get officers is by wooing officers from other departments. Cash incentives, better job opportunities, and supportive communities are just some of the ways officers are convinced to make the move to another department....
Hiring, training, and deploying a police officer is nearly a year-long process. In the meantime, natural attrition is occurring as well, as officers leave for any number of reasons including job dissatisfaction, physical injury and even termination. For some agencies, additional budgeted positions must also be filled....More funding doesn’t automatically translate to more bodies on the street....What happens when law enforcement can’t hire enough bodies? For many departments this requires restructuring. In other words, agencies have to decide what they will stop doing in order to continue answering the 911 calls and investigating crimes....If departments can’t hire officers they have to be creative in making sure their patrol deployments are not impacted. So now investigators and detectives are reassigned one or two days a month to patrol duties — which means less time available for following up on reports and arresting bad guys....
....Fear of crime and disorder necessitate a response by law enforcement. For that, police departments need boots on the ground. When departments can’t get enough people interested in the job, the pressure to compromise standards can become overwhelming. Agency leaders just hope the pressure to hire, and compromised standards, don’t result in problems further down the road....
Like a lot of veteran cops are saying, “Who would want to be a cop today?”
By Joe Vargas May 12, 2022
https://behindthebadge.com/why-would-anyone-want-to-be-a-cop-today/
**********
The average police officer in America is not a racist. They are not a bigot. They are mostly every day working class Americans with a very tough and complicated career path. Most are just trying to do the best they can each day, serve their community and put food on the table for their children. Like any profession, there are some that are elite at what they do and are a credit to their profession. There is a larger wide segment that are in the middle of the pack and as Parcells would say - Just Another Guy. Then there are some that are idiots and corrupt and shouldn't have a badge. And as Michael Alcazar points out - Those who can get to early retirement aren't going to risk hanging on, getting caught up in some current anti law enforcement sentiment infused political "red ball" and face losing their pension. And that many who aren't even near retirement are weighing out what are the long term risks to their life, their finances and their freedom if they stay on in a culture that is progressively more hostile to them.
You can't maintain a high quality widespread type of community policing if you keep demonizing the entire collective over the actions of a few. And you can't effectively maintain basic civil order if you keep demonizing the entire profession because it's politically expedient for Team Blue to do so to hold onto the black vote and the radical vote.
If you tell a specific profession constantly that you want to defund them, that they are all secretly a cabal of racists, bigots and White Nationalists, that they must endure modern "bail reform" and enabled lawlessness from their City Councils, Mayors and Governors, that they will never be supported even if they do their jobs right, that they should endure countless months of rioting and looting and be the focal point of the blame, and that those that remain should simply be overworked as many of their ranks are retiring and resigning in droves, then what is the practical benefit of being a police officer in modern American society?
Consider the irony in that the hard push for "social justice" ended up with a black female police chief, Carmen Best, resigning. Much in part because Best opposed her then sitting mayor's efforts to defund her entire department, amidst endless rioting and looting, and gave her orders to actually abandon an entire police station to the lawless and career criminals. And multiple other female police chiefs across the nation resigned as well. Did anyone want to ask about the many women who were rank and file officers that retired or resigned in the past few years due to this kind of open stupidity? And the shortages means fewer officers to respond to calls for domestic abuse and rape where women are disproportionately impacted. Also fewer detectives to investigate crimes like sexual assault and rape in general. So when predominately black communities call for help, then who is there to help them when staffing shortages means there is a longer wait ( which could mean the difference between life and death) and less overall coverage? Is the price of "woke" here causing more harm to women and minorities in general?
Team Blue can't demand better quality of overall community policing when all their public policy is built around enabling criminals and lawlessness, sabotaging their own police departments as scapegoats for personal political gain, demonizing officers in general as bigots, racists and the true representation of the enforcer arm of "systemic racism", defund them and slash their budgets and then setting a pathway where only the most mediocre recruits with constantly degrading standards will even want the job.
That's just plain stupid.
On top of that, there is a consistent hard push, like in New York, to try to take everyone's guns from them. Newsflash for the Democratic Party, if you incentivize criminals over tax paying citizens and if you kneecap your law enforcement agencies then you will naturally corner many every day people into seeing buying a gun as their only option to keep themselves and their families safe. You can't abandon civil order and then demand the working class to be left out as prey to be hunted down by the career criminals you let out while you use the tax dollars of good honest people to surround yourself with highly trained armed security.
That too is just plain stupid. And toxic. And it will drive away voters in droves.
Intentionally crippling basic civil order across the entire country is a clear national security crisis.
My viewpoint? The price of Identity Politics means it's simply more politically expedient to make it easier for America's children to die. Your children's future is being cashed in for Woke Points. And you are told that you need to be happy with being abandoned to be a future victim lest you be called a bigot and a racist.
Some of you voted for this, so ask yourself what that vote might cost you and your loved ones if you need the police and you end up waiting endlessly for help in the most critical moments.
I'll leave this here for others to discuss.
