As desperately as woke politicians are to get on the Defund the Police bandwagon, it seems that they are just as eager to make sure that their city’s richest residents don’t have to go without. That’s why Atlanta is currently mulling a budget of $1.6 million with which to hire a private security force to patrol and protect the exclusive, wealthy neighborhood of Buckhead. According to The Independent, a recent shooting near a mall in that area has put the city council into a quandary: How do we look like we’re defunding the police while also…not really defunding the police?
Hmm!
A plan proposed on Monday comes with the following objectives: “Funding and establishing a supplementary, multi-car dedicated security patrol utilizing off-duty sworn officers of APD, Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, and Georgia State Patrol. The supplementary patrol will be for exclusive use within Buckhead commercial corridors and will be managed by the Zone 2 Commander at APD to augment on-duty APD patrol (NT).”
Uh-huh. So, are police still police when they are conducting off-duty security? What if that security is being paid for by the city – the same employer who pays their police salaries? Are woke protesters dumb enough to fall for this fiscal sleight-of-hand?
Wait, don’t answer that.
As Atlanta smoothly steals money away from the police budget (without an outright “defund” mandate), violent crime in the city is skyrocketing predictably. There have been more than 155 homicides in 2020, making it the worst year on record since 1998. Atlanta authorities have blamed everything from the pandemic to the economic lockdowns for the spike in crime, reluctant to take any responsibility for their own role in demoralizing police officers.
“We owe it to our children, as well as to all of our communities, to do everything in our power to eliminate gun violence,” said Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. “If there are solutions that we have not explored and enacted, I welcome the suggestions.”
She’s tried nothing, and she’s all out of ideas!
It seems, bizarrely, that cities like Atlanta would rather have spiraling crime rates than to take the risk of upsetting woke protesters who want nothing more to do with law enforcement. Eventually, these cities will either get a clue, or we will “correct” one of the greatest steps forward in civilized history: The moment we outsourced violence to the state. That step will put us back into the world of the barbarian, and back into a land where might makes right.
We’ll see how much concern there is over “social justice” in that landscape.
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