Abolishing the Police
A Terrorist Dream Come True
by PATRICK DUNLEAVY
IPT News [1]
What began as a sincere cry for justice in the tragic killing of George
Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has evolved into a
critical examination of policing in the United States. Some are calling for
drastic changes in the way police departments operate in society.
And while that call has garnered support and triggered debate, it has also
produced confusion. Some voices demand that we "defund the police." What
that actually means is not yet clear.
A more dangerous clarion call has come forth reaching fever pitch among
some and that is to put an end to policing altogether. Mariame Kaba,
director of Project NIA [2], penned an oped [3] in the New York Times
recently Friday calling for just that.
"The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the
police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers," she wrote. "But
don't get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We
don't want to just close police departments. We want to make them
obsolete."
Words are important and while we can debate what is or isn't meant by the
word defund, there is no ambiguity in the word abolish.
The group Muslims4Abolition [4], which counts [5] Louis Farrakhan's Nation
of Islam and Linda Sarsour's [6] MPower Change among its supporters, wants
[7] "... to be part of the movement to abolish bail, abolish jails, abolish
the police, abolish prisons, abolish immigration custody, abolish state
surveillance, and to build the world we deserve."
In other words, they want to completely eradicate every important component
in the criminal justice system. "It is a fact," they claim, "that police
brutality is a leading cause of death amongst young Black men."
While black people, especially black men have been killed [8] by police, it
is far from a leading cause of death.
Accidents, illness, and homicide [9] are the dominant causes of death among
black men 44 years old and younger, Centers for Disease Control data shows
[10].
So far, the movement to abolish police seems limited to activists and
protesters. Elected officials [11] seem more focused on reforms [12].
But what would the Muslims4Abolition world look like if the politics
changed, and who would be happiest in it? One group that probably would be
ecstatic over the thought of no cops are the terrorists.
Police are often expected to wear a variety of hats: counselor, confessor,
protector, etc. The role of the local police officer and how he or she acts
as a deterrent to terrorism is often overlooked.
We think of elite federal agencies like the CIA, FBI, or the even Navy
Seals as the vanguard in defense from terrorist attacks. Too often, we
forget the numerous occasions where it was a local cop who saved the day.
The FBI's vaunted Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) is comprised of city,
state, and local law enforcement officers. The JTTF could not successfully
operate without them.
Historically it has been a local officer or beat cop simply doing his or
her job that deterred or thwarted the terrorists' evil goal.
For example, it was a New York Police Department cop named Don Sadowy who
in 1993 uncovered [13] the rear axle of the van used in the first World
Trade Center bombing. That piece of evidence was used to identify the
perpetrators who had rented the van from a company in New Jersey. Before
becoming a cop, Sadowy attended an Automotive High School in Brooklyn where
he learned to distinguish and recognize every component part of a motor
vehicle. To the untrained eye, that axle might have simply appeared as
another piece of twisted metal in the rubble.
Two years later, a routine traffic stop [14] by Trooper Charlie Hanger
resulted in the arrest of domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, responsible
for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City,
which killed 168 and injured hundreds more.
Hanger later remembered noticing "an old yellow Mercury" driving with no
license tag. After pulling the car over, Hanger noticed a bulge in the
driver's jacket. It turned out to be a loaded .45 caliber Glock, which led
to an arrest.
It was hours later that Hanger learned he nabbed the Oklahoma City bomber.
In 1997, two Long Island Railroad police officers with less than two years
on the job, John Kowalchuk and Eric Huber, played key roles in uncovering a
plot [15] by Islamic terrorists to bomb the New York City subway. They were
approached by someone with information regarding a terrorist bomb factory
in Brooklyn. The officers relayed the details to the NYPD Emergency
Services Division, which responded to the location and captured the
terrorists and defused the explosives before innocent lives were lost.
In 2015, Garland, Texas police officer Greg Stevens took down [16] two
heavily armed ISIS supported terrorists as they exited a car, hoping to
attack a cartoon contest involving images of Islam's prophet Muhammad at
the Curtis Culwell Center.
Stevens returned fire as the two terrorists started shooting.
"This whole event probably didn't take no more than 10 and probably 15
seconds," Stevens remembered several years later. "I'm a pretty good
shooter. I'm not a great shooter. My training kicked in. I wasn't
formulating a plan."
In 2017, NYPD officer Ryan Nash single-handedly captured [17] Sayfullo
Saipov, an Islamic terrorist who had just mowed down eight innocent
civilians with a truck and injured 11 others during an ISIS inspired
attack. Officer Nash was on a routine call at a nearby high school when he
heard the call of the terror attack.
Saipov tried to run off after crashing his truck, but Nash and other
officers were able to stop him. Nash shot Saipov in the abdomen, but the
suspect recovered and remains in jail pending trial.
How many more people might have been injured or killed that day if Nash and
his fellow officers weren't there to respond?
The list goes on of ordinary men and women wearing the uniform and carrying
the badge who, with extraordinary courage, save lives, prevent tragedies,
and capture the bad guys every day.
Calls for police reform are reasonable.
But to abolish the police would mean removing the very fabric of American
society that protects us. That is neither wise nor well thought out. It is
perilous.
Copyright © 2020. ACT for America, All rights reserved.
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