My nephew is a detective in a major city. For years he was a beat cop who encountered every conceivable situation at every time of day and night, sometimes not knowing who was the victim and who was the perpetrator. In split seconds he was required to determine who had a weapon and who didn’t, who was being threatened with harm, and who was doing the threatening. His stories make the hair stand up on my arms.
He’s been in law enforcement for two decades and is a consummate professional, yet I still worry about him. I’m stunned to read and hear that he and his fellow officers are the bad guys to some in our society. In fact, police officers are the people who save us. They come to our rescue when the worst is happening. They put themselves between us and people committing carnage and crime, who threaten our lives and livelihoods.
We need more people like my nephew, not less.
The ‘defund the police’ crowd couldn’t be more misguided. That’s why the paper authored by Locke’s Jon Guze is so vital to ensuring that we stabilize our cities and towns and address the crime surge that’s underway. To get there, Guze recommends intensive community policing and a four-pronged plan to move forward:
(1) hire more police officers
(2) increase the pay for police officers
(3) arm police officers with state-of-the-art training, direction, and support
(4) deploy police officers as “peacekeepers” in communities that suffer most from crime and disorder
In a recent Shaftesbury Society panel discussion, Jon made the moral case for adding more police officers, using research and data to make his case. WATCH.
