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June 18, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
06:15
LAPD Officer: What Happens if we #DefundThePolice?
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The money will be taken, as you point out, from exactly some of the reforms that people want to institute.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
I mean, what's going to probably happen first is civilians are going to be let go, let off.
So now you're going to have civilians that had good jobs will be no jobs.
You're going to take away money from training, which is one of the things you need to try to...
Put into practice some of the things that these reformers are trying to talk about.
You're going to take away money from technology, which is critically needed.
I mean, we're working from the 1990s with paper reports and everything else.
And you're not going to be taking back accountability, which is a problem.
And I'll give you an example when you talk about defunding.
And so the mayor just stood up and said, and the city council, we're going to take $150 million and put it to other programs that are more community-based and community-centric.
I don't know if many people know this, but right now, the programs that are about community and about kids at the LAPD are not funded by the city through the department budget.
They're not even funded by the city through the city budget.
They're funded by private individuals or foundations for the most part.
The cadet program, Operation Progress and Project Blue, CSP, the Community Safety Partnership, which actually puts police...
in these communities and gives them the time to work and establish relationships to expand that it was so successful in the areas where it started a number of years ago to expand it the city had to go out and The police department in the city went out and raised money from Steve Ballmer to pay for police officers to go in these communities and do what these politicians have been clamoring for them to do.
So the hypocrisy of this and the absurdity of standing up there and saying we're taking $150 million away from you to put it in places that will better serve the community when they've never done it in the first place and it's always been done by private individuals is just nauseating to me.
What do you mean?
Oh, yeah.
So now I want to deal with another thing that's raised.
Oh, well, look, let's rethink those who say, look, it's true, we can't defund the police, but we can, in fact, reinterpret or redefine what their job is.
And so to a lot of people, it sounds reasonable.
Why should you send police with guns?
This is the rhetoric.
I read it all the time.
Why should you send police with guns to a domestic dispute?
Well, I will say this.
If, as I said earlier, if the communities and society decides that they would rather have social workers, mental health workers, drug interventionists all go to the calls that are domestic disputes or mental health issues or whatever it may be, family arguments, and we get called to non-crime calls that all the time, which are just a mother can't control their 14-year-old daughter, well, that's pretty standard anywhere.
But we get called for things like that.
If they want to send those other times to professionals, I will tell you across the board, every police officer would say, including to deal with the homeless problem, would say, fine.
Yeah, you're not dying to do this.
No, this is all the stuff that gets dumped on us when the other parts of society and government doesn't want to fund the other stuff.
So it gets dumped on us.
So now, alright, so that the police may celebrate...
If this happens is one thing, but now let's talk about what's good for society.
Who should go to these disputes?
Here's what I think will happen if that happens.
Let's just say it happens and now there's those three or four groups of people, professionals, that go to deal with these things.
I would venture to guess after the first time one of those social workers goes into a domestic dispute or domestic violence call...
The next time they're asked to go, they're going to call the police first to say, will you show up with me to make sure I'm safe?
Because as we know, as police officers and many others have learned over the course of time, domestic disputes or domestic violence calls can turn very ugly and very violent very quickly.
Mental health calls can turn the same way.
We don't want them to.
We never go to these hoping they're going to turn violent or turn bad, but they do.
And when they do...
What's going to happen to the professional that was there trying to solve the problem?
We would love for that scenario to take place.
And if it worked, it'd be phenomenal.
We're all for that.
But reality is such that it's not the way it's going to work.
The mother who calls in, I can't control my 14-year-old, in general, what is a policeman supposed to do?
I'll tell you from my very own experience, that was a call I received about two years ago.
The call was mother-daughter dispute.
We get there, we walk in, and the mother says, my 14-year-old won't go to school this morning.
And my partner and I, literally for a moment, were dumbfounded.
And we said, okay, what would you like us to do?
I want you to take her to school.
We said, ma'am.
We cannot do that.
You know, we talked about it.
And then she kept insisting, and we said, ma'am, so what you're asking us to do is physically put hands on your daughter to remove her from the sofa, put her in her car, drive her to school, and put her in her classroom.
And she said yes.
Right.
I don't blame her.
But that's not your role.
It's not our role, and you can...
But this is what...
Back to you again, what does society expect of police?
Well, that's...
That's a question society better answer.
That's what society has to answer.
Same with the DUI, as you pointed out.
And the DUI. What do you want us to do with these people?
You don't want us to arrest them?
Fine.
And we're fine.
Whatever way you choose, we're fine.
Yes, exactly.
We're fine with it.
Believe me, I think the vast majority would be perfectly happy riding around in their cars and hoping nothing happens during the day.
Yeah.
We only show up because we're called.
Whenever I see a policeman, I wish him a boring day.
Exactly.
So if you want to do these things, society, communities, politicians, unions, the police, we all need to get together and have a discussion and decide what does society want, and then we will do what we're asked to do.
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