“Defund the Police” was one of the principal targets of GOP candidates during the last election. As the basis for federal policymaking, it is a political disaster, for the following reasons:
- Yes, crime is down relative to where it was years ago, but you would never know it by watching the local news in any market you might choose. TV stations virtually always lead with crime stories, because they are colorful and make for good ratings. Americans are consequently hypersensitive to crime regardless of the trends and statistics. They aren’t going to vote to get rid of the people who protect them from the bad guys they see at 6:00 every night, to say nothing of the crime dramas in prime time in which cops are invariably portrayed as heroes.
- America has thousands of jurisdictions with law enforcement responsibilities. Many of them probably don’t have excessive force or racism issues; their residents have no interest in defunding the police. In some of them, the problems are limited to a few bad apples, who need to be identified and disciplined. In a few, the problems are systemic, and require a sweeping response. There is no one size fits all federal solution to these problems; they have to be addressed based on their individual facts.