The famously moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA) put a fork in it yesterday. As reported in Roll Call:

West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin III wants to make clear that he will not be the 50th vote in favor of eliminating the legislative filibuster or expanding the size of the Supreme Court in a potential 50-50 Senate….

“I commit to you tonight, and I commit to all of your viewers and everyone else that’s watching. I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about whether it be packing the courts, or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that,” Manchin said in the interview. “I will not vote to pack the courts … and I will not vote to end the filibuster.”

Manchin said that in his estimation, efforts to defund the police and advance “Medicare for All” lacked support among members of the Senate Democratic Conference as well.

This is an enormous breakthrough, and a vindication of Mitch McConnell’s decision to proceed with the Barrett confirmation notwithstanding a good deal of grumbling that doing so would push (or, alternatively, allow) Chuck Schumer to push ahead with a court packing plan. The conservative bloc on SCOTUS (if it can really be considered a bloc, which I largely doubt) thus stands at 6-3 for the foreseeable future, thereby obtaining the previously absent luxury of still holding a majority even if one of their number wanders off.

Source: https://www.crimeandconsequences.blog/?p=2375

The post The End for Court Packing and Defunding the Police first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

At its core, the idea of defunding the police was aimed at either punishing the police—all of the police—for what happened to George Floyd, or abolishing the police completely. The former is emotionally driven and found mostly in already anti-cop circles, but the latter is anarchist in nature. If either of their visions are ever brought to fruition, the result on crime rates would be both immediate and apocalyptic. Fortunately, neither have been fully implemented, and even where defunding has occurred it has often been more of a shell game than actual substantive cuts. In other cases, moves to reverse the mistake are already in progress.

The very best mechanism for improving policing is and always has been through training. Not the kind of training that tells recruits that they’re racists (implicitly) and “teaches” them how not to be. Instead, we should focus on communications, de-escalation, fitness, prioritization of the sanctity of life, constitutional policing, ethics, and, yes, use of force.

It is important to understand that a fit and skilled police officer has more options when it comes to force and is likely to perceive a threat differently than an unskilled, out-of-shape officer. The latter will justifiably escalate their force response to a threat. Society has a vested interest in having fit, competent, and confident officers, because their force decisions are almost always better.

Defunding the police forces departments to cut everywhere—including training. That means less capable officers will be patrolling our streets and it increases the likelihood of a bad use-of-force decision. The resulting viral videos will set more cities on fire. Defunding will have a tragic downstream affect on police and community interactions and will guarantee more, not fewer incidents like the ones that have caused protests and riots. This seems to be the exact opposite of what those in favor of defunding claim to want.

But that result is in the future and its effect on crime rates is less clear. What then should we consider in the current crime crisis? I believe we can look to the anti-police environment created by a combination of false narratives fueled by an agenda-driven media and politicians who engage in anti-police rhetoric, for starters. When a police officer feels that anything they do will be wrong, or at least painted that way in the media, and that the governing unit he or she works for will use them as a political pawn, there is no incentive to engage in proactive policing.

Police officers are not paid by commission. They make the same amount of money whether they make 10 arrests in a day or none at. Same goes for writing traffic tickets. What would motivate them to engage in anything confrontational when they can instead simply respond to calls they receive?

Proactive policing is done because officers are passionate about protecting their communities, and they actively seek out criminal activity. How much of that is going to happen in the environment we find ourselves in now? The answer is obvious, and crime rates reflect that. When there is little-to-no law enforcement pressure on criminals and gangs, they do what they do.

Defunding the police is a dangerously bad idea, but as with our teachers abandoning the classrooms, it might take some time to realize just how bad the consequences are. The immediate danger can be found in the thinking behind the defunding movement. Anti-police rhetoric and actions, false narratives, and the resulting de-policing of our cities will have a more immediate negative impact on crime, it likely already has.

Source: https://www.texaspolicy.com/rising-crime-rates-and-the-defunding-movement/

The post Rising Crime Rates and the Defunding Movement first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.