“Defunding Police” Leads Places Some Don’t Want Us Going

Proponents of “defunding the police” arguing that money should be taken from police budgets and funneled into programs that may, in theory, reduce violence and thus reduce the need for police seem to think they’ve hit on a brilliant idea. In and of itself, I don’t have an issue with trying to reduce violence at the source. In fact, I’ve been a proponent of that for some time.

The problem is, it takes time for such programs to actually yield results. It’s why politicians tend to jump on “quick fix” legislation instead of programs that may not produce any real outcomes until after the next election.

The idea of defunding the police to funds these other programs creates a bit of a problem. In particular, because these programs take time to yield any results, you’re still going to have violent crime, but you’re also going to have fewer police resources in place to deal with them.