New York Times says that Cops not Crooks are the problem

In an op-ed "The Police Can't Solve the Problem. They Are the Problem," written by two attorneys, who else, declare that police fill prisons so that the only way to avoid mass incarceration is to have fewer police.

The obvious but unstated assumption is that police and prosecutors are framing people for crimes they don't commit. Otherwise the article would be saying that it's good to allow criminals to remain on the street preying on innocent people.

Bizarrely they credit pre-school and jobs programs for the 26% drop in crime from 1993 to 2000.  In their minds more cops and more people in prison didn't cause crime to drop.  Of course if most of the people in prison are really innocent--an idea that only makes sense to attorneys--then more people in prison wouldn't reduce crime.  However the logic is clear; the fact that as more people were put in prison there was less crime shows that we have been incarcerating criminals not innocent people.

The insane people who wrote this article actually say:

"The police do not help vulnerable populations — they make populations vulnerable. Excessive force is the No. 1 investigated complaint against police officers, and sexual violence is the second. People with mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by the police,"

Note that they don't mention how often police are convicted of using excessive force. They can't because it's an amazingly tiny fraction of the times that the police interact with criminals.

That the authors find it odd that police, rather than random passers by, are likely to kill the insane demonstrates either an amazing level of dishonesty or pure evil.  Who confronts knife wielding lunatics other than the police?  Who do the insane turn to to perform suicide by cop other than cops?  The reality is that in nearly every confrontation with violent insane people the police are present and sometimes they need to protect themselves.

To see the true evil, or insanity, of this NYT piece all one has to do is realize that the logical conclusion of their claim that police are the problem is that a society without police would be great.  We know that's not true since when police stopped policing in certain areas of Baltimore crime shot up.

Of course the fact that the victims of crimes are disproportionally Black probably plays a role in the authors position. Thousands of Blacks are shot in Democrat run Chicago every year and the authors are saying that that is due to the police.  The reality is that if thousands of whites were being shot each year, if the criminals who are released preyed on white people not mostly Black people it's unlikely that the authors would be declaring that the police are the enemy.

The mass incarceration mantra is always coming from people who live in very safe, if not gated, neighborhoods who won't be impacted by more criminals walking the streets. Neither of the authors have to live in high crime neighborhoods. Hence they don't care about the suffering that is caused by releasing criminals into the general public.

It's truly vile that the NYT should attack the police who put their lives on the line every day to protect us from criminals while defending the criminal who disproportionately prey on Black Americans.