Monday on SiriusXM radio, Rep. Rashida Tlaib doubled down on her unhinged call to end policing and incarceration, accusing law enforcement of being built on “structural racism.”
Asked if she agreed that “this whole criminal policing apparatus we have” is nothing more than a cash cow for judges and clerks and everyone else in the criminal justice system, Tlaib replied, “Absolutely. Even in Detroit, $300 million dollars [goes] toward policing, toward the police department. Do you know how much we have toward public health? $8 million. We have a public health pandemic we weren’t ready for and we’re trying to handle it and address it, but even with all of that you wonder why 40 percent of the deaths, the statistics of been seeing out of Michigan of COVID, have been my black neighbors…
“Enough with the constant pretending that more training is going to work. When Mr. Castile died in Minnesota, they invested $12 million in training. From George Floyd to now Daunte Wright, you see this constant push and then people throw up their hands, black and brown communities say enough. Even many of our white counterparts are calling my office saying, ‘Rashida, you’re right. I think we need to reimagine, we need to really think. I said, ‘absolutely,’ because police can’t be the answer to poverty, police can’t be the answer to all these ills in our country and can’t be the answer to addressing the fact that they were built on very much [sic] structural racism. Look at the history of policing in our country.”
It’s true: police can’t and shouldn’t have to be the answer to all the ills in the country. But the notion that policing is built on “structural racism” — a Marxist fantasy for which there is no evidence — and that eradicating the police will solve any of America’s ills, is simply irrational and destructive.