Clarence Page: Hey, Chicago, New York Democrats sent you a message: Fund the police, but wisely

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Jul 13, 2021

Indeed, as popular progressive slogans go, “rethink the police” makes more sense. As Chicago police Superintendent David Brown, among other knowledgeable cops, has said, we too often ask the police to do too much. The domestic disturbances and mental health cases that sometimes have led to abuse could be better handled by specialists, while police go after serious criminals.

Unfortunately, sensible solutions have a tough time getting past the noise of today’s Twitter-fueled anger industry of politicians, activists and political commentators — sometimes, yes, including me when I can’t help myself.

With that in mind, I was encouraged by Biden’s White House meeting on Monday with Brown, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, among other officials including Adams, where they mainly discussed gun violence and what to do about it.

The closed-door discussion centered on Biden’s announcement of a new comprehensive strategy to push back against the gun violence that has surged more than other crimes during the pandemic.

In the past, liberals have tended to tackle root causes of crime through social services while the right has pushed for tougher police tactics like stop-and-frisk street searches. Biden’s strategy calls for some of both, but aimed more heavily at stopping the flow of firearms used to commit crimes.

Instead of defunding the police, it calls for offering more funds, mainly from the pandemic American Rescue Plan, to put more police on the beat, support community-based violence intervention programs, and improve “reentry” programs for ex-offenders and summer jobs programs to lure more young people off the streets.

The Justice Department also has announced five new “strike forces” to work with local law enforcement to disrupt gun trafficking to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington.

There’s more, but you get the idea. These are the sort of ideas we’ve seen produce good results in the past, which polls show most people want.

Even so, as Biden was announcing his new efforts to put more police on the streets, the conservative media chorus — Need I name names? — continued to falsely claim that Biden wants to “defund the police,” as if that were part of his name. No surprise. By now, we have learned to expect a lot of name-calling in politics, especially from people who are running out of ideas of their own.

(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)