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Thank you for sharing this. It's amazing to me that the left NEVER takes responsibility when the logical consequences of their utopian ideas unfold in the real world. The battlecry is always, "If only we implemented these ideas more thoroughly, everything would be glorious."

What's more frightening...they actually believe that.

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I was a police officer for five years in Georgia (2014-2019). It’s hard to put into words how hard this article hits home, to sort through the impact the job had on my family and me, and to know the continued impact it has on a dwindling number of friends who have stayed the course and remained on the job.

I see a two-fold problem with policing as we know it. For decades now, we have come to expect more and more of our LEOs. We needed a mental health expert, we needed a marriage counselor, we needed a swat sniper, we someone who knew how to talk to kids who had been traumatized, etc. I could dwell forever on all that was and is expected of a good law enforcement officer. We demanded perfection, and anything less was insufficient. What’s more, we demanded it on a budget.

Enter into this already untenable scenario a very vocal and influential element of society that think everything America traditionally stood for was vile and racist. Taken to its extreme end, this philosophy sees the Constitution itself as garbage. Since our laws (and therefore law enforcement) are beholden to that document, law enforcement became the de-facto enemy and required defunding. The only trouble was (and as mentioned in the closing part of the article) no one thought about the cans the rest of the world had been kicking down to local police station for years. Just defund the police. No one considered the folks who might actually need or want the police to be around, or what might happen if the machinery came grinding to a premature halt. Defund. That was the refrain I heard. That was the refrain that thousands of experienced and disheartened officers across the nation felt when they turned in that badge they’d worn with so much pride.

We are seeing the results of this dolly now. I believe it is too late for some cities. An agency can replace bodies, but when a department has people with combined experience equal to several hundred years flowing out the door, there is no salve for that.

It is early, and I am rambling, but I am reminded of what my first Sergeant (a better leader and man I have not found) told me when I called to tell him I was thinking about hanging it up: he said emphatically, “if we don’t have good people in policing, we are doomed.” By we,” he meant all of us.

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One of the biggest crisis happening in USA, is decline of its big cities. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, LA and many others are declining in front of our eyes, they are turning to unaffordable crime ridden places that look more like like sci-fi dystopias from movies or comics.

Nowhere has this decline been more visible than in LA and San Francisco. Last week I watched episode of TV Show "Full House", in the middle of video, I realized, that intro for the Show (with Family driving trough San Francisco), would not be possible to make today, since streets are riddled with homeless, drug users, junk and trash. LA is even worse, it is literally falling apart, and is each day more like large cities of third world, with slums surrounded by Villas of rich people.

Sure many conservatives might be tempted to say, "I don't care, I don't live there".

This might have been truth, if the migration wasn't bringing people who voted for those policies to other small cities across USA, and those people in many cases continue to vote for same polices they escaped from.

I ask myself, how did we get there?

I find it crazy, that election after election, voters like sheep, go and vote Democrats on local level(event though they city is collapsing) only because they disagree with Republicans on Federal or State level. I mean, aren't you tired of jumping over human excrement on streets? Don't you want to let your kind go play in park without worrying that they will be attacked by some drug users or get hold of used needles on the street?

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When ideology ignores reality disaster ensues. Homicides are up across this nation and thousands have died and communities devestated. The defund police crowd cannot acknowledge this as it would make them culpable for policies that are covered in tragedy.

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And did those who have trashed Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, SF, NYC etc ever get justice? The VP advocated for their release. City attorneys didn’t prosecute. Why not? Would those on the left here please explain why these looters, thieves and worse got off scott free?

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There was a 43% increase in the murders of black Americans in 2020 compared to the past 10-year average.

Anti-police movement + prosecutors and lawmakers who invoked extreme leniency, forcing judges to release legitimate suspects who then go out and do the same shit if not worse.

There's an ideological culprit here. Everyone knows it.

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“I’m actually a left-wing guy on just about every issue,” says Christopher Young. “I want the United States to be a Scandinavian-style welfare state. So I’m very sympathetic to people’s concerns.”

How can a cop with decades of experience be this naive? How can anyone? The state of Washington alone has greater population than Finland with far greater cultural and ethnic diversity, and Washington is one of the least diverse states in the union. Yet he thinks what works there should work at the federal level in the US.

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"Christopher Young, a detective in the investigative support unit (previously named the criminal intelligence unit)"

This little snippet tells you everything you need to know. Priorities out of whack. Saw the same with left focused on renaming schools rather than reopening them during the pandemic.

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C'mon folks. It isn't as if this stuff is particularly daunting. About 2-3% of the population are flat out sociopaths and another 10% are just opportunistic followers. Although they wouldn't break into a store normally, they'll happily join in the looting. Or throwing rocks at cops. If you control the sociopaths, arresting and locking them up, the followers stay under control, too. If you let them do what they want, chaos ensues. This was all proven by Giuliani and Bloomberg decades ago with broken windows policing.

Everyone could see that Chauvin had no business being a cop. But it was a one-off that the Left - "don't let a good crisis go to waste"- and their media stooges used to fuel an anti-police frenzy and a summer of violence, destruction and chaos. And what did we get? Better policing? Nope. Better minority neighborhoods. Nope. Less racism? Nope. We got more crime, violence and outright racism in attacks on elderly and vulnerable Asians and Whites. The aim was to weaken America and it succeeded. Beyond measure. Are you getting the picture? Elect a Democrat halfwit such as Durkan and your city is toast. When someone says they're "progressive," a BLM supporter and want police "defunded" or "reimagined," they're actually saying "I hate America and I want to destroy our country." Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise.

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Having lived in the Pacific Northwest for over 20 years, what has happened to Seattle breaks my heart. The city and area were incredibly law-abiding when we moved there. One of the police chiefs (I think in the 90s) said he took the job after looking out of his hotel window at 3 am and seeing someone wait for a green light before crossing the street. When the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl (2014) there were jokes all around about how Seattle celebrates, such as by honking a car horn and then getting out to apologize to other drivers for the noise.

What changed? You can't look just at the past few years. There was a stolen/contested governor's election where ballots that were found in a couch changed the seat to a Democrat one. There was Occupy Wall Street where hooligans were allowed to cause damage. There was a change from a civilized society to one where it was "cool" to be Left. Boeing was replaced as the main employer by Microsoft and Amazon.

When the article quotes a befuddled policeman saying, "“I’m actually a left-wing guy on just about every issue,” says Christopher Young. “I want the United States to be a Scandinavian-style welfare state. So I’m very sympathetic to people’s concerns,” that explains what happened. Leftist policies don't work and they make people miserable. Scandinavia is not run in the way people think it is and it also isn't dealing with American diversity. The destruction of Seattle did not happen overnight.

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Obama led the charge to dystopia. When he ran for President, he promised to bring the country, the races, together. Instead, he is responsible for the burning of our cities. It seemed to me, every time a policeman shot a black thug, he would call up the family and commiserate with them. Not once did he call the families of cops killed in the line of duty but he sure called up the families of the thugs.

Not once did any Democrat/Communist speak out against the burning of our cities by the Marxist organizations BLM and ANTIFA. Nancy Pelosi called the Tea Party's peaceful demonstrators NAZIs but she and her Dem pals encouraged Occupy Wall Street who were nothing more than drug attics and thugs. Women were raped and there were murders and three of these thugs were arrested trying to blow up a bridge.

The Dems through their silence encouraged the burning of out cities. That moron Dem congressman, Jerry Nadler, called "called violence from Antifa in Portland a ‘myth'." Not once did Obama speak out against the burnings and murders in our Democrat run cities.

I find this disgusting yet Democrats don't and they will vote for their Communist Party pals come November. I guess they want more of the same.

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Please someone Look at Baton Rouge Louisiana. Since the city is “led” by democrats the crime is rampant. Mayor just announced a “week of peace” last week after a 4 year old was killed in his bed but it lasted maybe one hour. Every single day there are shootings and killings. Every day.

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Lorenzo Anderson, a young black man was shot and killed in CHAZ (or CHOPT as it was also called). His father and pastor both appeared on Sean Hannity and Mr. Anderson stated that his son, who had mental development issues, lived with him. He wasn't home when one of his son's friends stopped by and they decided to visit CHAZ to see what it was all about. There was gunfire in the pitch black darkness; a chaotic scene ensued and Lorenzo was a fatal casualty when the leaders refused to let in an ambulance. For around eleven days, Mr. Anderson did not know where his son's body was; he received no phone call from the mayor or governor. Last November, Lorenzo's mother, Donnitta Sinclair filed a lawsuit against the city that was dismissed. No one "said his name."

Seattle has a long history of being a magnet for the underbelly of society. The 1984 Martin Bell documentary, Streetwise chronicles the lives of adolescent and teen runaways (or in many

cases, throwaways). Followup includes a list of who died; many from drugs, suicide and one young woman fell victim to a serial killer.

Lorenzo Anderson had loving parents; he was a good kid whose only "offense" was curiosity and living in a city mired in cruelty masked as ideology.

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If you’re in the Zoom class you don’t care and pick up and move. The people, business owners, thousands of workers in a big city who work in restaurants, etc. all suffer tremendously.

Cops save lives daily, too. There are never articles written about this.

Social workers to do cop’s jobs? The poor pay and attrition rate of that job is high enough as it is. Now expect them to get into physically dangerous confrontations and see how that goes.

NYC turned after eight years of DeBlasio’s incompetence. And he thinks he’ll run for congress! I was a life long liberal democrat. Not anymore.

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Apr 25, 2022·edited Apr 25, 2022

Progressives are idiots. Floyd was a career criminal, a dangerous man, he personified everything whites fear in blacks. Clearly he didn’t deserve to die, he was murdered by a cop, tragic, but lionizing him was idiotic. Cops don’t kill blacks disproportionately, that’s a progressive lie. Seattle is a disaster because idiot progressives run it. Tom Cotton was right, the military was needed and NYT progressives were idiots to fire James Bennet for publishing that opinion. I hope the ascendency of idiots at NYT has the same effect as it has on Seattle: wonton destruction. Go speak to your children, I bet you they are idiots, they were polluted by this idiocy in school and their friends are also afflicted: this ain’t over for the foreseeable future.

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People on this board, and most people in general, are ignoring the most active groups of Rioters that are pushing this behavior. The Democratic Socialists of America, groups of Black Block Anarchists and other Communist groups are leading most of the destruction. Their signs are at every riot and protest, but the media rarely shows them on the news. My kids roll their eyes and think I’m talking about the 50’s when I mention the DSA, but they have gotten a large amount of people elected to various public offices on both coasts - see New York and the West Coast.

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