Repealing Useless and Abusive Laws Might Do More Good Than "Defunding" the Police
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July 03, 2020Repealing Useless and Abusive Laws Might Do More Good Than "Defunding" the Police by: James Bovardmises.org "Defund the Police" is the latest rallying cry for protestors in many cities across the nation. Many activists, enraged by the brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, are calling for completely disbanding the police, while others are seeking reductions in police budgets and more government spending elsewhere. However, few activists appear to be calling for a fundamental decrease in the political power that is the root cause of police abuses. Many "Defund the Police" activists favor ending the war on drugs. That would be a huge leap forward toward making police less intrusive and oppressive. But even if police were no longer making a million plus drug arrests each year, they would still be making more than 9 million other arrests. Few protestors appear to favor the sweeping repeals that could take tens of millions of Americans out of the legal crosshairs. How many of the "Defund the Police" protestors would support repealing mandatory seatbelt laws as a step toward reducing police power? In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that police can justifiably arrest anyone believed to have "committed even a very minor criminal offense." That case involved Gail Atwater, a Texas mother who was driving slowly near her home but, because her children were not wearing seatbelts, was taken away by an abusive cop whose shouting left her children "terrified and hysterical." A majority of Supreme Court justices recognized that "Atwater's claim to live free of pointless indignity and confinement clearly outweighs anything the City can raise against it specific to her case"-but upheld the arrest anyhow. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor warned that "such unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse." Unfortunately, there are endless pretexts for people to be arrested nowadays, because federal, state, and local politicians and officials have criminalized daily life with hundreds of thousands of edicts. As Gerard Arenberg, executive director of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me in the 1996, "We have so damn many laws, you can't drive the streets without breaking the law. I could write you a hundred tickets depending on what you said to me when I stopped you." What about repealing state laws that make parents criminals if they smoke a cigarette while driving little Bastian or Alison to soccer practice? What about repealing the federal law that compelled states to criminalize anyone drinking one beer in their car-or, better yet, repealing the federal law that compelled states to raise the age for drinking alcohol to twenty-one? Or would today's enraged reformers prefer to take the risk of cops beating the hell out of any twenty-year-old caught with a Bud Light? Would feminist zealots calling to "Defund the Police" be willing to tolerate the legalization of sex work? That would mean they could no longer howl about vast "human trafficking" conspiracies exploiting young girls every time an undercover cop is illicitly groped by a 58-year-old Chinese woman in a massage parlor. To continue reading this article please Click Here. | |||||
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