Minneapolis socialists are going to defund the police, it appears. Have they been reading the ancap literature?
No, because the City Council intends to redirect the money (taxes) to social workers, psychologists, housing, and healthcare, etc. Not only that, they haven’t said a word about defensive violence or the markets for it.
Defensive violence is absolutely essential to deal with criminal behavior (aggression). This incontrovertible fact is not obvious in the Council’s public statements. They are silent about crime and dealing with crime.
If the defensive violence of police is ended, will the Minneapolis City Council allow private defensive violence to occur?
Clearly, private policing is the sole alternative. But that doesn’t mean they’ll allow it. Will private self-defense be allowed to mushroom? Will citizens be allowed to organize their own private police? Will they be allowed to hire private police companies? Will they be allowed to patronize a public police force located in a jurisdiction outside of Minneapolis? Will the City Council impose regulations that hamper a free market in policing? All it will take to bring that about is a case in which the private police have an “incident”. Who is going to settle disputes when people claim to be innocent? Will due process be followed? What if innocent people still get wounded or killed or have property damaged by other people intent on apprehending criminals? What if private defenders inflict punishments that are beyond the state-mandated penalties?
Will private police be allowed to patrol everywhere? Will they have the power to arrest people and hold them? Will the rest of the justice system, prosecution and trial, be next in line for dismantling? If private police have no legal immunity, will they be super-cautious, and will that cause crime to jump?
The State of Minnesota and even the federal government may have something to say about all of this, but that’s another matter.
The biggest question is one that City Council President Bender failed to answer. She was asked “What if, in the middle of the night, my home is broken into? Who do I call?” Her answer, not worth quoting, was a non-answer.
She didn’t say that defensive violence is necessary and it will have to be supplied by someone, once public police are ended. She didn’t say that the “community” would have to come together to solve this problem. She didn’t say that social workers would stamp out all such aggression.
Bender spoke some words that had nothing to do with a genuine answer. Her answer was that whites, including her, who paid taxes and had some services from police were privileged; and unnamed others, presumably poorer black people, got worse than nothing from police. So, therefore, she answered that everyone should go without police and the money transferred to the poorer people.
Bender’s non-answer tells us that the Council hasn’t thought this through and has no real idea of what is going to happen next. It can phase in the elimination of police, but unless it allows private defensive violence to phase in, criminal activity will jump and people will demand that public police be maintained or restored.
4:09 pm on June 8, 2020
