Defund the police

Tuesday

Amber Duke

Defend the police

President Trump is signing an executive order today on police reform. The order, while relatively toothless, does one important thing: it accepts the premise of progressive activists that police institutions must be fundamentally changed. Trump administration officials revealed during a background briefing on Monday night that the order will include incentives for departments to update their training and use-of-force standards. It will also incorporate a demand of the #DefundThePolice movement, which is to send along social workers with responding officers to calls that seem to be non-violent — ie, drug offenses, mental health breakdowns, complaints related to homelessness.

defend

Wednesday

James Lileks

Madness in Minneapolis

My City Council in Minneapolis has decided to de-something the police. Defend? Nah. Defund.But by 'defund', they don’t mean 'abolish', silly. And by 'abolish', they don’t mean 'abolish' at all. They mean something far less radical, which is why they chose the most alarming and polarizing words in the dictionary. Except also they mean 'abolish'.Confused? Don’t worry — the result will be so much better, because the idea is the reimagining of the power structures that have systematically arisen to systemize systemic systemism, structurally. Also, no debate, it’s a done deal, because this is what democracy looks like.

minneapolis
Dan Bongino at Politicon
Amber Duke

EXCLUSIVE: Dan Bongino’s prepared testimony on police brutality

Dan Bongino, a conservative commentator and former Secret Service agent, will testify Wednesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on police brutality and federal reforms. Bongino will appear alongside a dozen other witnesses, including George Floyd's brother. The Spectator has obtained an advanced copy of Bongino's prepared remarks to Congress. 'Police Officer Dan O’Sullivan was a friend of mine. We went through the Police Academy together but we lost touch when we graduated, as we were assigned to separate precincts. Dan and I were briefly reunited in 1998. But it wasn’t a joyous occasion.

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John Fund

The Camden solution

The left is demanding 'defund the police' in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. President Trump’s allies are hunkering down with calls for 'law and order.' Both miss the plot. When pressed, the left really wants a new Great Society. Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told NBC's Meet the Press that 'defunding police' is really about 'increased funding for quality of life of communities who are over-policed and over-surveiled.' But the Great Society didn’t work, and a new one would also be ill-fated. For its part, the right fails to acknowledge real problems with our criminal justice system. President Trump addressed some of them in a much-praised federal sentencing reform bill last year.