The following article contains editorial content written by a retired Chief of Police and current staff writer for Law Enforcement Today.
DENVER, CO- While the unfortunate shooting of Daunte Wright in Minnesota has brought about the usual gaggle of left-wing nuts like Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) talking about “eliminating the police,” and former president Barack Obama flapping his gums about “reimagining” policing, there are some much more thoughtful people who argue that more police funding…not less…may have averted this situation.
Whenever an incident like this happens, be it Daunte Wright, or George Floyd or Jacob Blake, one factor that plays into these incidents, but which is ignored by people such as Tlaib and Obama, as well as the mainstream media is the fact that if none of these men resisted arrest, they would likely still be walking around today (in the case of Blake he survived, but is paralyzed from the waist down).
It’s called personal responsibility. In all of these cases, these men set the wheels in action which led to them dying or losing use of their legs.
There are certainly cases where police use of force is inappropriate, but in a majority of cases, these uses of force can be avoided through a matter of simple compliance with police commands.
In the case of Colorado gubernatorial candidate Danielle Neuschwanger, she believes that the death of Wright at the hands of the officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota this week could have been avoided if police were better trained, which would of course require additional investments in law enforcement, not less.
Neuschwanger, who has a degree in criminal justice and who worked in the healthcare security field, also traveled across the country teaching courses in aggression management.
Through her experiences, she discovered that many law enforcement agencies in the United States are in fact underfunded, not overfunded as Black Lives Matter and other far-left organizations and people claim.
In a recent interview (available on Locals or Apple Podcasts), she shared what appear to be some common sense solutions which would lead to reductions in crime, while increasing prosperity. She agrees that the country is in need of some type of police reform however argues that reducing financial support of police agencies is not the answer.
“I know there are opportunities within our system because I have personally dealt with them<” she said.
“And so right now, we have this whole culture of ‘we have to defund the police.’ But I’m here to tell you that the police have never actually been funded appropriately.”
Ignoramus’s like Tlaib, who wants to “eliminate the police” should take the lead and have all of her security protection removed.
You know, that whole “putting your money (or security) where your mouth is” thing. Of course Tlaib, being the hypocritical left-wing nutjob that she is would never do that.
“We have politicians who will bend over backwards to not support the police because they’re afraid to have difficult conversations,’ Neuschwanger continued.
She was asked if she believes police are receiving too much funding. Neuschwanger claims that by and large, police budgets were already stretched thin long before the “defund the police” cattle call began, primarily in the aftermath of Floyd’s death last May.
“We have historically only given our law enforcement the bare minimum to get the job done,” she said.
“Most of them are paid under what you can make at McDonald’s in a year, and these are the same guys that strap on a badge and gun to come protect the city.”
Neuschwanger claims that police need to receive proper training, and equipping them with resources and knowledge required to keep their citizens safe.
By so doing, she says police departments will be able to recruit and retain the best people.
She says that BLM and others claim suspects have rights, which of course they do, but the best and easiest way to ensure those rights are protected is to “improve, not weaken” law enforcement.
“We don’t pay them to have additional training, we barely get them through state-mandated training, and a lot of times these departments are so poorly funded that they can’t even get rid of the police officers they want to who have these problems, who are not the greatest officers and not the greatest role models, because they can’t effort to rehire new deputies and police officers and train them,” she said.
Speaking to the shooting of Wright, who was shot by a veteran Brooklyn Center police officer, Neuschwanger addressed the officer’s use of her duty firearm when she thought she was reaching for her Taser.
“We just saw an officer-involved shooting this weekend in Minneapolis” [Brooklyn Center, a suburb], she said.
“The excuse we were given was she accidentally reached for her taser instead of her gun. That’s a training issue.”
Neuschwanger emphasized that law enforcement training shouldn’t be a “one and done” but should be ongoing.
This is especially important because since law enforcement is such a challenging position, skills must “be constantly honed with new skill taught and old skills sharpened.”
She said that due to defunding (and prior lack of funding) of police agencies, that is happening less and less.
“I would want to ask the question of what was your training like prior to this?” she said.
“Did you have enough funding? Could that life have been saved if we could have properly funded and trained that officer and implemented remedial training throughout the year?”
We have to admit that when we heard the officer had pulled her firearm when she was intending to pull her taser, it seemed rather bizarre.
Most officers we have seen carry their taser in something of a cross draw position in order to prevent situations such as this officer found herself in.
However as Neuschwanger noted, more training, not less certainly couldn’t have hurt. Through the process of repetition and proper training, this situation may have been avoided.
“A lot of these situations that we’re running into with police brutality and black deaths by police officers and just officer-involved shooting, it comes down to a lack of training and a lack of funding,” she said.
As mentioned before, having people who comply with simple directions and not fighting with or attempting to flee from the police would also be helpful. It’s called personal responsibility.
Also, one would think given the narrative that “police are hunting down black males” for the purposes of killing them, that demographic might be a little more careful when dealing with the police and not provoke the type of situation that Wright did.
Neuschwanger said that as governor, she would work to provide law enforcement agencies with adequate funding which would protect all people, including law-abiding and criminals.
“Part of my platform, especially in Colorado, let’s refund our police but let’s to so that makes sense for the community so that we have community partnerships and we’re implementing verbal de-escalation training and safe body positioning training and we’re not going to lethal options right away,” she said.
Finally, she said the best way to fix the issues facing today’s law enforcement officers is to properly fund police departments and provide adequate training of officers.
She believes that will make police better at their jobs and hopefully avoid situations such as what happened in Brooklyn Center earlier this week.
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This content was originally published here.