What Will Replace the Police? 10 Historical Examples

h/t systemically confused.

American Thinker:

The future of local police departments has become a top election issue. Rasmussen released recent polls showing that Americans pay close attention to debates about law and order.  For instance, 50% of likely voters want to see harder crackdowns on urban unrest, while only 38% support continuing protests in cities.  Overall, 72% are concerned about recent reports of urban violence.  Over 60% of Americans said their feelings about the protests will have an effect on their November voting.

Perhaps we have found the Democrats’ Kryptonite.  Conservatives have noticed for quite some time that the left never showed adequate concern about far-left extremism (listen here).  The far left has greater numbers and, unlike the far right, is entrenched in major institutions like colleges.  The far left hopes to claim the anti-police violence as a historic win for its side (see here).  Democrats can’t claim that the Floyd protests had nothing to do with rioting.

Protests have become linked in Americans’ minds with riots.  The organization seen as leading these demonstrations was Black Lives Matter (BLM), whose premier issue was defunding or abolishing the police.  BLM leaders like Alicia Garza never hid their intent.  Most BLM activists rejected talk of mere reform as too weak and compromising.

Attempts by skittish Democrats like Jim Clyburn to disown anti-police slogans can’t undo the effect of many fellow Democrats’ embracing of a group whose trademark demand is shutting down police.  While some Democrats insist that “defunding” means simply reinvesting in alternatives to standard policing, Americans remain wholly unsupportive of replacing their local police departments with social workers, mental health respondents, charities, community elders, or healers — all stand-ins put forward by advocates of taking away police funding and firing cops.

The Democrats have wedded themselves to Black Lives Matter and Antifa.  Let’s consider the widely ridiculed video broadcast at the Democratic National Convention, a montage of anti-police rallies.  A compilation of recent Black Lives Matter and far-left protests plays in the background.  Cross-dressing Billy Porter, sporting high heels and draped in a cheap split-trained cape reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn’s famous gown in Sabrina — sings a Buffalo Springfield classic from 1967 — “Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?”

Perhaps to offset Porter’s effeminacy, the producers chose to include images of 75-year-old Stephen Stills, now plump and avuncular, dressed in a crumpled blazer and what looks like thick bifocals, floating around with his guitar like a straggler lost on his way to the fiftieth anniversary of Woodstock.  The washed up septuagenarian and the gender-nonbinary curio float through the protesters like a drug-induced nightmare from The Big Lebowski.

What would alternatives to police look like?

Thanks to the left, we’re stuck with police abolition movements.  At least 13 cities have moved to defund the police, including small Norman, Oklahoma, and metropolises like New York and Austin.  According to Forbes, 34% of Americans support defunding while 53% oppose it.  Democrats must explain what the world will look like without local police departments.  They say people will be kept safe by less violent experts: counselors, neighborhood organizers, clergy, artists, doctors, etc.  They suppose that enforcement can be transferred into these community hands.

The Democrats’ not so novel idea has been tried.  Many times.  Whatever rules a society promulgates, someone will break them, and communities need agents of enforcement, deterrence, and restitution.  Absent a perfect deity to administer justice directly, we settle for flawed humans monitoring and limiting the behavior of other flawed humans.  Past generations have tried to soften the harshness of policing by suggesting less overtly brutal agents of enforcement.  Let’s see which of these historical examples most resembles what will happen in America.

The Spanish Inquisition… MORE