By Matt Agorist
As TFTP reported last week, president Joe Biden has doubled the budget for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (or COPS Office). For the last several years, under the Trump presidency, this funding has remained consistently around $380 million. But now we live in Biden’s “domestic terror” police state and things are changing — fast. Last year, the entire COPS Office appropriation budget was at $386 million. This year, Biden is spending $388 million on the hiring program alone.
This year’s budget (FY 2021) for the hiring program, approved under Trump, was set at $156.5 million. Biden more than doubled the funding for it in FY 2022. Now, under the Biden administration, the FY 2022 budget has been increased to a whopping $651 million. How’s that for “defunding the police”?
But this was just a drop in the bucket compared to what he just approved — massively bolstering police budgets from coast to coast. Using the rise in violent crime across the country as the impetus behind his plan, Biden approved the use of $350 billion in Covid-19 relief funding to hire more law-enforcement personnel and expand the police state.
The measure approves the hiring of cops even if the total number of officers exceeds that of pre-Covid levels.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report, in the last three months of 2020, homicides rose a massive 32.2% in cities with populations of at least a million. While conservatives incorrectly attribute this to the left’s push to “defund the police,” that simply hasn’t happened — at least not on a large enough scale to make any discernable difference.
While it is true that several of the country’s largest departments reallocated around $840 million in police funds to other community services, this is a drop in the bucket of the $100 billion spent on policing in America annually. What’s more, many departments actually saw in increase in funding.
Still, the right wing blames the rise in violence on this less than 1 percent drop in funding for a few police departments. In reality, however, police have pulled back and are refusing to serve the communities who pay them. The problem has gotten so bad in many areas that business owners have gone so far as to refuse to pay taxes until police go back to doing their jobs.
While the idea of withholding taxes from the government is certainly welcome, the driving force behind why they want to withhold those funds is misguided. In reality, police don’t stop crimes. They simply show up after a crime has been committed and attempt to solve it — and they are not that good at this aspect either.
The research shows that 70% of robberies, 66% of rapes, 47% of aggravated assaults, and 38% of murders go unsolved each year.
The majority of the “crimes” police stop in the act, are for victimless infractions like jay walking, seatbelt violations, license plate lights, window tint, and other laws designed for the generation of revenue. It is extremely rare that a cop will stop an assault, robbery, murder or rape.
The rise in crime has nothing to do with how much money is spent on America’s police force. In fact, we have the largest and most expensive police force in the world and some of the worst crime rates, proving that throwing money at cops does nothing to prevent crime.
In reality, America’s law enforcement system actually creates an environment for criminal activity, fostering bad behavior and ensuring a perpetual cycle of violence and incarceration.
For decades there has been a perfect storm brewing in this country as minorities and poor people have their doors kicked in and are terrorized by cops during botched raids for substances deemed illegal by the state and watch helplessly as their family members die in video after video at the hands of cops. Now, we have record unemployment, cops murdering people on video and facing no immediate charges, and those in charge sit at the top and point fingers and dole out more of your tax dollars.
Because the system will always refuse to accept responsibility for the situation it has forced onto the people, the blame game always comes next — and it is always misguided.
Naturally, this will never lead to any positive change. It will only prolong suffering, create more divide, and perpetuate a system of injustice for decades to come. Those who want to incite peaceful change, however, have been pushing these ideas out for a long time.
To lower the likelihood of future chaos, America’s system of law enforcement needs radical change. Instead of threatening to execute suspected looters with no due process — the discussion we should be having right now is how to fix this broken system. It is not difficult, it is based in logic and reason, and its effects would be significantly felt almost overnight.
Ending the war on drugs would have a massive effect on lowering crime, far more so than simply throwing more money at cops.
Richard Nixon, in his effort to silence black people and antiwar activists, brought the War on Drugs into full force in 1973. He then signed Reorganization Plan No. 2, which established the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Over the course of the next five decades, this senseless war has waged on. At a cost of over $1 trillion — ruining and ending countless lives in the process — America’s drug war failed, miserably, and has led to the largest overdose epidemic in history as well as the largest prison population on the planet.
This is no coincidence.
For years, those of us who’ve been paying attention have seen who profits from this inhumane war — the police state and cartels.
The reason why the drug war actually creates a drug and violence problem is simple. And those who profit most from the drug war — drug war enforcers and cartels — all know it. When the government makes certain substances illegal, it does not remove the demand. Instead, the state creates crime by pushing the sale and control of these substances into the illegal black markets. All the while, demand remains constant.
We can look at the prohibition of alcohol and the subsequent mafia crime wave that ensued as a result as an example. The year 1930, at the peak of prohibition, happened to be the deadliest year for police in American history. 300 police officers were killed, and innumerable poor people slaughtered as the state cracked down on drinkers.
Outlawing substances does not work.
Criminal gangs form to protect sales territory and supply lines. They then monopolize the control of the constant demand. Their entire operation is dependent upon police arresting people for drugs because this grants them a monopoly on their sale.
It is incredibly racist too. The illegality of drug possession and use is what keeps the low-level users and dealers in and out of the court systems, and most of these people are poor black men. As Dr. Ron Paul has pointed out, black people are more likely to receive a harsher punishment for the same drug crime as a white person.
This revolving door of creating and processing criminals fosters the phenomenon known as Recidivism. Recidivism is a fundamental concept of criminal justice that shows the tendency of those who are processed into the system and the likelihood of future criminal behavior.
The War on Drugs takes good people and turns them into criminals every single minute of every single day and removes all future opportunity. The system is set up in such a way that it fans the flames of violent crime by essentially building a factory that turns out violent criminals.
It also creates unnecessary police interactions — disproportionately carried out on black people — which leads to resentment, harassment, civil rights violations, and even death. When drugs are legal, there are far fewer doors to kick in, fines to collect, profit prisons to fill, and money to steal.
So, Biden, like Trump before him, and Obama before him, can continue to throw money at cops and hope for a different outcome, but until real solutions like this are talked about, we can expect more of the same.
Source: The Free Thought Project
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.
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“Reformer” Biden Approves $350 Billion in COVID Relief to Go to Hiring More Police