To the editor:
When it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement and calls to “defund the police,” partisan name calling gets us nowhere. This is about examining and adjusting budgets so that the needs of a community can be better served by specialists in their fields instead of increasingly handing municipal tasks over to police departments.
It also involves taking a look at over-zealous spending on law enforcement equipment and manpower while leaving many other essential services underfunded.
A simple example would be animal control or, as we used to call them, dog catchers. Back when the Perry Police Department made the information available, we would often see reports in The Perry News like “Police Search For Dog At Large” or “Officer Captures Family of Raccoons Under Front Porch.”
In those cases, it would be more efficient to put more funding towards animal control than to tie up the police department’s finite time and resources in chasing stray cats.
That one is simple. Another item we’d see in the blotter was calling an officer when a child didn’t want to go to school in the morning. Instead of having a trained counselor come over or arranging a later meeting, we have an armed police officer enter the home.
This could be a child’s first interaction with the police. The child now fears that the parent could call the cops on them for any infraction. How can this have a positive future outcome for those involved? Granted, the child gets to school, but it could also sow a lifetime of fear and mistrust that later yields larger issues, without fixing the underlying behavioral problems.
There is also the matter of spending disproportionate amounts of money on equipment and maintenance. The Des Moines Police Department is equipped with several tactical combat vehicles. Have we been prepping for an invasion from Omaha?
Much taxpayer money is poured into these departments. Hundreds of law enforcement personnel are fully equipped with every armament and matching accessory known to man, most of it military grade. We’ve all seen this on the news in the last weeks. The police gear is excessive, top of the line, expensive to procure and, even if “donated” by the military, expensive to maintain.
They were so well stocked that I can’t recall the president having to order Ford or GM to manufacture riot gear in order to make up for a shortage, yet hospitals around the country had to solicit donations of personal protective equipment (PPE) to get through this phase of the virus outbreak.
This is unbalanced, ineffective and turns the police into an occupying force, both in their minds and in that of the citizens. Some found it reassuring. I found it terrifying.
We’ve eliminated many public service budgets and transferred those tasks over to the police. This is not about eliminating the police. It is about allocating resources to better handle the needs of a modern, civilized society.
Indeed, we could start having the police deliver for Pizza Hut. Your pizza might get to you much quicker (lights and sirens!), and we’d reduce possible future outbreaks of pie theft.
Yes, that is a false and ludicrous argument, but so is claiming that defunding police departments and reallocating municipal budgets means no more police at all and criminals will be running wild in the streets.
William Romanowski
Perry
