Bowman: There Are Ways Other Than Police to Respond to Issues
Wednesday on CNN Newsroom, radical Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) stood by his previous calls to reduce police forces and said “there are other ways to respond to the variety of issues that are happening in our community.”
“Police are one part of the solution. They are not the only part of the solution,” Bowman stated. “And police cannot work in silos and in isolation. They have to work with education officials, with clergy, with workforce development, and with mental health professionals as well.
“We have to do a better job of identifying young people who are at risk, people who are at risk, whether it’s in the education system or whether it’s through mental health or whether it’s people who have been arrested for a minor crime,” he continue. “Once we identify and assess the needs of vulnerable people, how are we providing intervention? So, we have to do a lot more when it comes to intervention and prevention.”
Asked how he would describe his position about the police, Bowman replied, “What I’m saying is, there are other approaches to respond to mental health crises so someone doesn’t end up dead when they shouldn’t end up dead. There are other ways to respond to the variety of issues that are happening in our community. So, again, police are part of the [solution], but they are not the entire conversation and they’re not the entire solution to what’s happening.”
This is just political pontification. Of course police are only one part of the solution to crime. But as Bowman himself acknowledged, police generally enter the picture only when a crime has been, or is in the process of being, committed. It’s too late then for social worker “intervention.”
The police are on the front line at the most dangerous juncture of mental illness and criminal activity, and deserve every ounce of respect and support we can give them. They don’t deserve the disgusting, false Democrat narrative that all cops do is make a bad situation worse and end up killing the innocent.