It is now abundantly clear that the hard left doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing when it comes to police brutality and crime. After a year of exploiting the murder of George Floyd to push an anti-cop agenda, it can no longer be argued that their absurd ideas are going to keep anyone, least of all black people, safe.
As it turns out, demonizing law enforcement officers and pushing to have fewer of them on the streets isn’t exactly the winning strategy that the hard left is telling us it is. Indeed, amid skyrocketing homicide rates and increasingly short-staffed police departments, one has to wonder if this was their plan all along. But unfortunately, it is the average citizen who is reaping the consequences of the white progressive intelligentsia, and it does not seem that they desire to rectify their atrocious decisions.
In Portland, Oregon, the police department is having trouble staffing a patrol group intended to handle the rapidly increasing murder rate. The Wall Street Journal reported that only four officers have applied for the position. However, there are 14 spots total on the Focused Initiative Team.
Lt. Greg Pashley told the Washington Examiner that “not very many people applied” for the positions. The Examiner noted that the team is a “reincarnation of the Gun Violence Reduction Team” that was disbanded last year as protesters called for police reform. Pashley explained that the department is “working on choosing sergeants first” before putting together the rest of the squad. He noted that “there is no specific date for the team to be formed.”
Daryl Turner, head of the Portland police union indicated that the anti-cop sentiment is fueling the lack of interest in the new team. He said:
They’re demonizing and vilifying you, and then they want to put you in a unit where you’re under an even bigger microscope.
Of course, one of the factors that might also be contributing to the lack of interest could be the job requirements which include the “ability to identify and dismantle institutional and systemic racism in the bureau’s responses to gun violence.”
That’s right folks. Anyone who wants to be part of this team must know how to eradicate systemic racism while they are trying to arrest bad guys with guns because that’s the world we live in now.
The increase in the number of police officers who are resigning is not only an issue in Portland but in many other major cities across the country.
From the Examiner:
Nationwide, police departments experienced an 18% increase in resignations and a 45% increase in retirements from April 2020 through March 2021, when compared with the same time period from the previous year, according to a June survey by the Police Executive Research Forum.
As the number of police in major cities decreases, crime rates have been on the rise. The issue has disproportionately impacted the black community. Still, instead of addressing the crime issue, leftist activists are maligning Mayor Ted Wheeler, claiming he has not done enough to curb excessive force on the part of the police. As usual, these white progressives are more than willing to accept more dead black people from homicides as long as they can use their murders to signal their faux virtue.
In New York City, the left’s stupidity when it comes to these matters is how Eric Adams secured the Democratic nomination for mayor. Instead of running on a “Defund the Police” campaign, he promised to clean up crime in the city which, coincidentally enough, is exactly what people in every major city want. What a shocker!
Perhaps New York City is just the start. If so, Democrats who glommed on to the effort to decrease the number of police officers on the street might be in trouble. The left’s cluelessness on crime and law enforcement is sure to become yet another nail in the Democratic Party’s coffin in 2022.
