Penna Dexter

As protesters in cities across America call for abolishing or defunding police, we wonder: who are these people? If black lives truly matter, why defund the protection that helps minority-owned shop owners and businesses to operate in these cities. Charles Blain heads up two non-profits: Urban Reform, which seeks to offer solutions that will revive American cities, and Urban Reform Institute, its associated think tank. He points out that “the movement to defund police has a crucial flaw; the policy that it seeks would harm the minority communities whom the protesters claim to care about. Moreover,” he writes in City Journal, “those communities don’t even agree with it.” He cites a recent Gallop poll which finds that a large majority — 81 percent — of black Americans want to see police presence in their neighborhoods preserved at current levels or increased. Black Americans also respond that their exposure to local police is slightly higher than the national average. Thirty-two percent say they see the police very often in their neighborhoods. Yet, 61 percent are okay with that level and 20 percent want more police protection. Police budgets are being cut significantly in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Portland. Houston, Chicago, and Newark are maintaining, even increasing spending on law enforcement. Charles Blain says there’s a “glaring differentiator between these cities: those with black mayors or many black council members have opposed demands to cut their police budgets.” Riots, looting, and the destruction of property are ruining lives and livelihoods in many of our cities. Blacks own and work in some of these businesses. Ask them if they want the protection of law enforcement. It’s often white hipsters from affluent neighborhoods who say they hate police and want them abolished. Radical Black Lives Matter protesters and rioters from outside the neighborhoods they are destroying don’t care about the devastation if it advances their revolutionary agenda. As lawlessness increases, law-abiding people know we need police.