In response to the unfortunate death of George Floyd on Memorial Day at the hands of the Minneapolis Police, protests and riots have swept the country, destroying property and claiming several lives, many of them African American. To make matters worse, Colorado Democrats have hastily cobbled together a bill (SB20-217) that would gut our state law enforcement agencies and officers, destroy our right to privacy, and hasten the demise of our once great state.
It’s ironic that the party of government – that wants a big, intrusive state at the center of all our lives – has suddenly discovered that armed agents of the State can and sometimes do bad things.
The Leftist backlash against law enforcement also includes removing School Resource Officers from schools, which puts school children at much greater risk of violent crimes including the plague of school shootings. Of course, progressives blindly believe that by merely designating a location as a “gun-free zone” the children will be protected from harm. Experience has taught us, however, that gun-free zones are ineffective at preventing gun violence and that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.
One practical result of SB20-217 would be that many of the professional police officers currently serving would leave the profession, opening the door for the recruitment and hiring of less qualified, less desirable candidates, thereby lowering the quality of police forces statewide and further jeopardizing public safety.
Another practical result would be the vast erosion of our privacy. In one of eleven scenarios Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith points out in a post on Facebook: “A person is interviewed by police and charged with a serious crime. They have not been convicted and a judge has never ruled on the admissibility of that police interview. Under our principle of a right to a fair trial, that information cannot be released publicly under the rules of criminal evidence and procedure. However, under the new rules, that interview must be released, unedited within 14 days.
The right to a fair trial has just become the obligation to a trial by social media.”
Clearly the unintended consequences of this bill would be considerable.
Cognitive Dissonance
On a larger level, though, this bill and the mindset that produced it is just another example of the cognitive dissonance inherent in the chaotic emotion processing that constitutes progressive thought.
On the one hand, progressives want the State to be omnipresent and omnipotent. They want the State involved in every aspect of our lives. They want to take money by force from the productive people who earned it and redistribute it to others based on their “need”. They want government to regulate, monitor, and oversee all business and many interpersonal transactions. They want government to tell people what they can and cannot say, how much they must pay and the benefits that the owners of a business must provide to employees.
As I’ve written elsewhere: “To the Left, government is mommy and daddy, God, big brother and the Universe all rolled up into a big benevolent teddy bear. Government is your friend and your confessor. Government is what you think of when presented with any of life’s challenges. And because this is a childish worldview, the Left tends to think that their fellow citizens are children too, who need to be managed and controlled by the big government teddy bear. When we resist, they throw temper tantrums and insist that we comply. And the best part of all? Because they think (despite zero evidence) that they know what’s best for you, they think THEY should be in charge of government.”
Without armed agents, however, government laws, rules, regulations and mandates would be completely meaningless. The government relies on armed agents to enforce its will. Those armed agents are called “police”. In terms of national security, those armed agents are in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. The Left needs those armed agents in place to enforce their will upon society, yet at the same time they deeply distrust them.
The police in America have a tough job. They are the blue line between tyranny and anarchy. They must enforce the law while respecting the constitutional and natural rights of citizens. They see the dark side of human nature on a daily basis and must find ways to cope with those things. They have personal power, and that power must be carefully monitored and controlled. When police edge too far on the spectrum toward tyranny, they can do terrible things.
This brings us to the current progressive desire to “abolish” or “defund” the police. Without the police, we would have anarchy, which is just as bad. With anarchy, the weak are at the mercy of the strong. We would have a society where strong individuals would wield the police power in their immediate communities. The elites, who can afford to hire private security in their gated communities, would continue to prosper. Women and minorities would be the first to fall victim to whoever seizes the power in their communities.
This dichotomy between tyranny and anarchy perfectly illustrates the illogic of the progressive mind in SB20-217. They want the police to enforce the law, yet they fear and distrust the police. They want the effects of the police without the actual police. It doesn’t work that way.
I am supportive of police wearing body cameras, and the footage of those cameras being released to the public in certain circumstances following a due process and subject to privacy and other concerns. Some police reforms I’d like to see that are not included in SB20-217 are abolishing civil asset forfeiture and removing qualified immunity. I don’t support the concept of suing officers as individuals, but they (like everyone else) should be accountable for their actions. Police officer public employee unions protect “bad apples”. I’d like to see police (and firefighter, and all other) public sector employee unions disbanded and outlawed.
No On SB20-217
This bill was cobbled together hastily in an emotional response to a tragic event. It was crafted without any stakeholder input from the law enforcement community, citizens or anyone other than progressive activists in the waning days of a legislative session that was truncated due to a pandemic and should actually be over. It is ill-conceived and would be illegitimate.
I urge my fellow Coloradans to read and ponder this bill. Then, if you agree with me, contact your state representative and senator and ask that they vote “No” on this bill and work toward a meaningful police reform bill in the next session after November’s election.
In The Great Big Book of Horrible Things, author Matthew White writes in the Introduction: “Chaos is deadlier than tyranny. Most of these multicides result from a breakdown of authority. In comparison to a handful of dictators such as Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein who exercised their absolute power to kill hundreds of thousands, I found that more and deadlier upheavals like the Time of Troubles, the Chinese Civil War, and the Mexican Revolution where no one exercised enough control to stop the death of millions.”
On the other hand, Professor Rudy Rummel documented on his website how during the 20th century over 260 million people were killed by their own governments in compliance with their sovereign laws. It is clear that both anarchy and tyranny are evils to be avoided.
The solution is limited, constitutional government. I’m glad that progressives are waking up to the danger of unchecked government power. Now they need to wake up to the fact that police are necessary and serve a valid government function: to protect life, liberty and property.
Hopefully SB20-217 doesn’t even make it out of committee.
By Richard D. Turnquist
June 6, 2020
Further reading: ‘Abolish the Police’ Is A Slogan For The Destruction Of America by John Daniel Davidson
