Every profession or trade has good and bad apples. Most are good, some not so good, and a few extraordinarily good or bad. This is true of all professions and trades: doctors, mechanics, lawyers, etc.
Incompetence and corruption are found in every field. It’s up to professional and trade organizations, regulatory agencies, and the general public to insist on competence and honesty in the marketplace, demand reimbursement or restitution for bad service, and exact penalties for egregious errors.
Calling for the elimination of an entire profession or trade would hardly be a measured response to an occasional instance of bad service. What person in his right mind would suggest getting rid of all doctors, mechanics, lawyers, or plumbers just because he happened to have had a bad experience with one?
Nevertheless, in this moment of madness, we seem to be surrounded by frenzied fanatics demanding that police forces have their budgets drastically reduced or be defunded and eliminated altogether – supposedly for the benefit of inner-city minorities, the ones whose lives and property would be most endangered by an absence of police.
It’s ridiculous that this needs to be said, but it does. To his credit, Marine Corps veteran and longtime law enforcement officer Jeff Larner is saying it as he campaigns for Madison County sheriff.
“The ‘Defund the Police’ initiative is reprehensible,” he affirms in a commentary published this week in the Record. “With the increased accessibility to social media platforms, this concept weighs on deputies and their families. I believe this is part of the design. An initiative to terrorize law enforcement and make their jobs more difficult. To force reductions in staff. To limit the ability for law enforcement officers to maintain rule of law. Providing criminals with more protection than they deserve. The ‘Defund the Police’ narrative compromises the safety and welfare of our Madison County residents.”
So it does, and it needs to stop. The bad apples are the ones we should hone in on and discipline or remove. The good ones deserve our undying respect and support.