Platform point: Safety and Security.
__________
"... an armed minority makes for a polite majority." - Jennie and Obby Breeden
__________
While I've been a personal reader of this webcomic for years, this warrants comment.
(My apologies, The Devil's Panties... I'm on a zuckering and can't comment directly to the post, I'll attempt to not overly politicize your message and platform. Consider this a one off. Thank you for making the point for me.)
This year has been volatile to say the least. We have polarized our world to the point that a silent majority is sitting on their couches wearing nothing but their underwear, NODS, and plate carriers. It's a bit ridiculous.
We are lucky there's a middle ground.
Calls to "Defund the Police" have echoed off the glass buildings of Corporate downtown for months now, exacerbated by continued deaths at the hands of Law Enforcement. Why does this feeling persist? Why do the protests continue? Why do they appear to spiral into riots?
If you have ever been pulled over because your license plate light is out, you know, deep down, why.
When I was a kid, my parents participated in a proctor family program. They contracted with a state entity to be foster parents for kids who were juvenile delinquents. Now the fun part here is that I went into the program on a bet with one of these kids that lived in my house and said it was impossible to graduate from the program. What he didn't understand was that my parents had stricter rules that I had to follow then the program did and he was flabbergasted when it took me all of three weeks to finish their program.
During his time in my life, we had an election of a County Sheriff. At the outset of this election, somehow, I'm not completely sure how (I did go to school with his kids), the candidate for Sheriff identified me in a crowd, singled me out, approached me, and in front of my dad, stated that he would be watching me like a hawk because he felt that the proctor kids that lived in my house would turn me into a juvenile delinquent.
This same candidate managed to win the election and took all of the deputies off of other duties and put them all on traffic. He did this because he felt that putting them on traffic was the best way to combat issues in the communities that we lived in. I remember him being quoted something to the effect of, "this is where drugs are found" as justification for putting everyone in his department on traffic duties. (There was no second term.)
So, to some extent, we do need to "defund" police. This isn't actually taking money away from police and removing capabilities as much as it is redirecting where they spend the money, how they do their training, and what their job actually is.
We need the law enforcement community to serve the people again. We need them in a position where they can investigate capital crimes and punish those who actually commit crimes against people. We don't need law enforcement to harass and interfere with our lives; this makes them nothing more than revenue generation agents.
I see law enforcement as being a lot like the fire department: they should be at their offices taking care of the business of the day and training instead of trolling the streets looking for people who might be possibly breaking the law and writing citations.
To further this, we need to remove bureaucracy from law enforcement as well. To give you an example, no one should come to your business or home and demand that you allow them to inspect your business or home without a warrant and a law enforcement officer to serve that warrant. then, that inspector should not be able to levy a fine on you without a court date, which should be in a court of law and not a court of bureaucracy.
No warrant, no court, no authority.
This is where the middle ground starts: in order to have less law enforcement intervention, to "defund the police", we must remove barriers to self-defense. Our neighbors must be able to exercise their rights as free people, to keep and bear arms, publicly, without constant barrage of law enforcement intervening for walking down the street.
People with guns, properly holstered or slung, is not a reason to involve those who are supposed to be defunded.
As a society we need to stop being afraid of things that are inanimate objects. Instead we need to give the public more reasons to get information and overcome their fears. Then, as a matter of principle, once the fear is trained away, we need to act on it further and carry those inanimate objects, not because of fear, but because that fear is instantly overcome by the empowerment of capacity to provide for your own self-defense.
This is my intention: my primary campaign focus is going to be about the Safety and Security of our public.
We have horrible response times for our law enforcement community, not because they aren't doing their job, but because they are not physically capable of being in two places at the same time. Assaults are over in seconds and response times are in minutes. (One response to an active crime in Portland took over an hour and a half.)
Officers are always outnumbered, often outgunned, significantly overworked, and definitely underpaid to put up with the crap they are saddled with. This is just as wrong as harassing the public.
We can do better for all of us.
R. Leon Noble
Comments