Montreal night of terror = the future for police defunded cities?

Chris Rock: "How not to get your ass kicked by the police"
From 14 years ago, ever more relevant.
Click Chris for the Vid

Steven Pinker, the psychologist, popular science writer and a fave of mine (and not him above), was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. He recalls how an infamous wildcat police strike unfolded, back in the sixties: 

“As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist).”

-- The Blank Slate, Penguin, p285. 

One would think that that would be a lesson for what happens when you don't have the police around, much as you might despise them. But no. What we have in the US at least, is a strong push to "Defund the Police" pushed by the BLM and their acolytes. The push is even stronger after the George Floyd guilty verdict. "We haven't finished" the crowds are chanting. Asked what they mean they say "Defund the f***ing Police". Some of their apologists have said all they mean is that funding should go to other ways to handle crime. To some extent that's true. But in the main, they really do mean "defund the police". And it's happened. 

Early results are in:

Minneapolis: December 2020 shifted $8 million from the police to "violence prevention" and other programs. Result: Between Dec 11, 2020 and March 28 of this year, murders in the city rose 46%.

Los Angeles: City leaders voted in July to cut the LAPD budget by $150 million. Result: Murders up 38%. Shootings up 92%. 

New York City: The NYC Council voted in July to move $1 billion away from the NYPD budge into education and social services in 2021. Result: Murders up 12% (to March 21). Shootings up 40%. 

Portland: City commissioners voted in mid-June 2020 to cut nearly $16 million from the police budget in response to "concerns about the use of force and racial injustice". Result: form July 2020 to February 2021 (the most recent data) murders rose 271% over the same period the year before. 

Austin: In August 2020, the Austin City council unanimously voted to cut $150 million from the police budget. The funds were redirected to social services. Result: Murders up 39%. Aggravated assault reports up 26%. 

[Sources: City governments, City Police Departments, Statista, NPR, USA Today, WaPo, various other]

These are not trivial figures. And the communities most affected are minority -- aka, usually, Black -- communities, who cry out for more not less police protection. But the elites in the BLM movement, and their acolytes are oblivious to all this. They continue to call for "defunding the police". Which strikes me as a "thing I don't get". Unless we choose to believe that what they after is the crumbling of society so they can build their own better, more enlightened, non-racist society on the rubble. We saw how well they did that in Seattle last year when they set up their own "Autonomous Area".... Like "Lord of the Flies", it was chaotic, violent, dingy, dirty and .... well, basically a failure. But have at it. Again. 

If BLM really did care for Black Lives, they would be addressing the far more serious issue of Black-on-Black deaths in minority communities, which dwarf those at the hands (or guns) of police (97% Black-on-Black vs 3% by police); and they would be calling for Black youth to "Don't Resist Arrest" when stopped by the police. They would be calling for more police training, not for defunding them. 

And that's why the Chris Rock video above. It ought to be played on loop to all Black kids. Indeed to all kids, especially adolescent boys, instead of the nonsense that the police are simply out to murder them at random. That's a dangerous, wrong and wicked narrative. 

PS: Rock's vid is up to 20 million views. Last time I posted it, a few years back, it was on 14 million. It continues to get views and comments up to today. BLM would do more good promoting this vid than all their street actions.