May 25, 2021 - 7:00am
The mother of all social trends in recent years has been dispersion. Contrary to what people hoped or feared about the sexual revolution turning everyone into “girlymen”, as Arnold Schwarzenegger once put it, some men and women have become more gender-neutral, while many others have gone the other way; either spending vast amounts of time and money on beauty products to accentuate their femininity or hitting the weights (and steroids) to resemble Khal Drogo. Far more men take testosterone supplements – by some distance – than transition or identify as gender fluid.
The same is true with almost every lifestyle trend, even politics; in the late 90s commentators wrote that the major US parties were converging and educated people were coming to develop bland, middle-of-the-road views, yet the opposite has happened. Among those with degrees, people tend to move into niches that are increasingly extreme and divorced from mainstream opinion — which is pretty much what you’d expect from a society with greater freedom and less conformism. (And with assortative mating, our personalities are most likely becoming more divergent and extreme even on a genetic level.)
Crime is another example of dispersion. It is now known that the American murder rate increased sharply following the George Floyd protests, with an extra 2,000 homicides associated with the June 2020 protests, on top of the several thousand already linked with BLM and its influence.
Yet compared to the 1965-1990 US crime wave, this time the murder surge is highly dispersed, with a huge increase in the most dangerous areas but almost no change in the safest.
Wealthy Americans are often accused of “talking the 60s, walking the 50s” and the very nature of dispersion means that they can pretty much talk as much as they like and be immune to the negative consequences.
This is why “defund the police” was the ideal example of what Robert Henderson called luxury beliefs: “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.”
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SubscribePortland experienced two homicides in the first three months of 2020. In the first three months of 2021 it experienced 24 or 25 homicides. This followed a defunding of the police and the elimination of the Firearms Investigations Unit. But we all knew this would happen and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it. Meanwhile, the police are taking early retirement, or simply resigning, in droves, so things are going to keep getting worse. Whatever, it’s what BLM would have wanted.
Exact. One of the purposes of this extremist organization is to give criminals a free-pass. Anyone can see that.
First society as we known it must be completely teared down, before it can be Build Back Better.
Latest incident in Peckham where the BLM woman received the bullet meant for someone a gang had a disagreement with . A few years ago a gang called ‘The Burger Boys’ ( perhaps in homage to their favourite food?) went round to give their ‘friends’ a new year’s greeting & ending up killing one of their sisters. However look at all the excuses given for this behaviour especially from the politicians
I read that she was shot in a garden at a party for 20-40 people at 3 a.m. in the morning. I bet she and her friends were being quiet and respectful of the neighbours as BLM people would be.
Shot at 3 AM, and her 3 children were being watched by who, exactly?
Their grandmother, I would guess; or nobody at all.
“Latest incident in Peckham where the BLM woman received the bullet”
anyone else find that story invoked Schadenfreude? self-petarded?
I wonder if a study could show a correlation between shootings at gatherings and the amount of twerking being done?
… and as far as I know, no one was ever convicted of anything in the Headley (near Dorking) murder. Of course, the cops made some early arrests to take the heat of them, but I don’t think anyone ended up in the dock.
Built Back” Better” ?
UrineTown?
I am sure that most commentators on Unherd are less than 100% surprised at the alleged circumstances of the recent shooting of the BLM activist in London. She was allegedly most likely not the target, it was more likely the cross fire between two sets of gangstas….police are looking for four black males. Until the police are defunded, of course.
I wonder if the BLM would prefer to defund the police after they have apprehended MsJohnson’s assailants or before?
They’re trained Marxists, dontchaknow. They must be aware of Lenin’s old saw, about “the worst it is, the better”…
Yes, I am fully aware of their MO and intentions.
100% BLM is totally about destroying Middle Class society. It wishes the rule of the crime boss, the gun-Lord.
It’s the drug dealers, gang-bangers, muggers and street criminal’s ultimate dream, effectively they get a pass. Now they can rule the streets completely, but who gets hurt most in the end? The whites, Latinos, Asians and working, law abiding blacks move out. The tax base collapses, the city becomes another Detroit or East St. Louis. The only people left are mainly black and poor, women and children, the sick, the old and of course the now fearless and unchallenged criminals who prey upon them.
Agree. But look: Detroit has gotten its sh* together.
It can be done.
There is hope.
But we all knew this would happen and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.
So, a foreseeable consequence. Those are never accidental.
No, they are certainly not accidental. I would add that there’s plenty we can do about it, starting with re-funding the police. (Unless Mr. West means any one individual, with which I would agree. But that’s true of so many situations that it’s hardly worth mentioning.) A whole society is different, there are things it can do that a lone person cannot.
“The movement is hurting the people it was meant to help”
HaHaHaaa, sure…. It was NEVER meant to help anyone! It is merely a Marxist ‘Frankfurt School’ organization to destroy the West.
BLM is a criminal’s Charter, it insists the criminals have the same rights as the law abiding, that the Rights of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, are for criminal and victim alike (although the victim is not going to be as happy as their oppressor is in reality).
It is a charter than those unwilling to work have the full right to spend money and so use the work of others without reciprocation.
It is the nu-Robin hood charter where Robin hood is allowed to rob the rich and poor alike, to fund his drug habit.
Thank you, my thoughts exactly! SBLM (Some Black Lives Matter) only cares about blacks killed by police, and most of these “victims” are, to put it plainly, thugs. There’s simply no political advantage to be taken in discussing black-on-black violence, unless one of them in such an incident is a police(wo)man of African descent. Ed West seems remarkably naive about that.
Only some blacks killed by police. If the police officer is black, no story. If the killing doesn’t look bad on video, no story.
A black woman was shot in the back of head by a Chicago police detective in 2012. The officer was eventually charged with manslaughter. The judge ruled that the charge should have been murder, so the officer was innocent of manslaughter, and dismissed the case; the officer walked free. No protests.
Well, a few years ago there were protests in Charlotte, NC, and Milwaukee, WI, over the shootings of blacks by police officers of their race. I think that SBLM sponsored them, though I could be wrong.
So-called “Black Lives Matter” has been responsible for the destruction of more American Black lives than any other political group over the last year, by several orders of magnitude.
At most two, not several. An “order of magnitude” is a factor of 10. I would guess that George Soros’s funding of “progressive” candidates for District/State’s Attorney (local prosecutor) has killed 500 blacks, due to increased crime. BLM has not killed 5,000, much less 50,000 or 500,000.
Sadly, it seems only a matter of time until the BLM organisation(s) campaign to remove any references to Martin Luther King from the education system.
Education for the poorest will be the biggest casualty.
It is on the Indie. I mentioned the fact that black people in America are 8 times as likely to murder someone than a white person.
My account was summarily deleted.
Breitbart has a section where they mention weekly death count in Chicago – all b on b-gang related probably & otherwise totally ignored. Yet let some criminal ,whose activities have been apprehended ,die in a police incident & suddenly the media are all over it with, protests for whatever ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ has been cruelly ‘slain’. This makes the average person less caring about these communities as everyone is lumped together as ‘troublemakers’.
I’m willing to bet that the BBC are desperate for the shooting of a BLM activist to turn out to be “racially motivated”
The ‘usual suspects’ MPs were loading their comments , ‘She had received death threats ‘ etc until the culprits became known-who sadly didn’t fit the profile they desired. I would have to say if I were a 25 year old , mother of 3 , graduate of Oxford ( Brookes) University who had received death threats I wouldn’t be partying in the small hours in Peckham.
Fortunately it’s still legal in England to have a thought like this (as I did).
Don’t move to Scotland …..
Im not on social media, but I do wonder if there are any politically-oriented musings that don’t result in a death threat …
Abbott is a deranged and dangerous disgrace. Given that she probably loses Labour about 25,000 votes every time she opens her mouth you might think that the Party would take her aside and suggest that she retire. But no, for some reason they continue to tolerate her wicked nonsense.
Retire?Surely elevated to the HOL.
Defund the BBC,ITV , ch4,ch5 …iTV midlands had an Article of Why Blacks shuld be ”Proud of their hair”nothing about literacy or future employment ?.
It already is, effectively.
BLM doesn’t actually care about dark skinned people. If they did then they’d give all their money and time to helping Africans in Africa. They are simply racists and marxists who want to overthrow the US govt steal the power and money and execute whoever displeases them.. Same as all revolutionary marxist organisations have done throughout recent history. (Russia, Cambodia, Rhodesia etc)
BLM hate Black Westerners almost as much as they hate White ones – and they absolutely loathe foreigners too – especially poor ones. It is a creed of hate, it is out to tear down, taking all, rich and poor down with their nations. It is Global Marxism gnawing the foundations of civilization.
The USA embassies in some nations flew the BLM Flag today – the day Biden takes the knee to Floyd’s family.
My two years in Detroit (1998-2000) were fascinating. I lived in Farmington Hills, which was out in the western suburbs. And it was white as snow. Bloomfield Hills, the suburb to the north of FH, was allegedly the wealthiest suburb in North America. And yes, Detroit has a Beverly Hills. Not quite as nice as the California version, but still desirable. Downtown, less than half an hour’s drive away, you had over 500 murders a year. Almost as much as the entire UK.
I can recommend a great book “The last days of Detroit”, which describes the scene around 2010. Things had not improved since I moved back to the UK. It describes a city with no space for “luxury beliefs” (terrific phrase). Even an atrocious murder attracts no media attention. Sadly, the dead and dismembered dude was too old, too poor, too black and too drug addicted. So he lost out to the thirteen year old girl who attempted to stick up a convenience store.
I am not sure if defunding the police would have made much difference in the hellhole districts, seeing that the mayor and a senior cop were arrested for various financial misdemeanours.
BlackLivesMatters wants to replace the police, not just defund them. They’re getting paid millions to pursue their own brand of medieval social justice. They care less about the plight of black people and more about punishing those happier and more successful than themselves.
They’ve had a look at the council tax ( or whatever Americans pay) & fancy getting the portion allotted to the police. As the people paying the tax would then move out , this would be a short-term advantage to them.I think we should de-fund the police & re-employ people whose job is to protect people & property. The people chosen would have to fit the height, weight & fitness level & no quotas or wokes. Will that happen-no.
They are actually about destroying the West, they are only for that. That they are not on every law enforcement groups list of subversive and terrorist organizations shows how sick the West is with the disease of Liberalism.
Foreseeable consequences are not accidental. Read that again. This crime is not some unfortunate by-product of the current situation; it is a direct cause of it. When criminals are emboldened and cops are treated like an enemy force, what do you think will happen? When public officials decide to eliminate bail or refuse to prosecute certain crimes, what do you think will happen?
Too often, people want to search for reasons that make sense in order to comfort themselves about bad situations. But none of those reasons make sense here, so you have to start considering explanations that defy the natural order. Did the likes of BLM want more crime? Well, their actions and those of their white “allies” guaranteed the outcomes being seen, so Occam’s Razor would suggest that these folks are getting exactly what they want.
I honestly believe the aim of BLM from the get go was to bring identity politics, CRT and anything and everything they could to attack society at large and the perceived myths of tyrannical hierarchies. They are not, and never have been interested in equality. Equality of opportunity across the first world has never been as good as it is and it will continue to improve. What the marxists and anarchists want is equality of outcome in which ill suited and less able people, afforded the same opportunity, are rewarded through colour and gender and not ability and suitability to the role(s) applied for. This will never result in anything but resentment, the dropping of standards and service and the reduction in progress and benchmarks made.
The redistribution of funds to social services to help people in need is not the answer. The answer is more money being provided to social services and the police. The predominately black areas in the big American cities are no go zones, with black on black murder and crime at an all time high.The local agencies tend to be black run and the police within the precincts have a large black police presence yet, wherever they go, they have become targets of violence and murder. Just look at Portland and California to see what happens when rule and order is overtaken by politics and the good old white liberals who in large parts are to blame for the encouragement of this rascist and violent organisation and continue to be through their generous donations.
When do you ever hear about Black communities addressing the shocking levels of misogyny, rascism, sexism, crime and murder within their own communities and actually taking responsibility for them? What about the many young black men lacking in positive role models? Social justice? What about the many young black children caught in gang shoot outs? Where are BLM and their cronies when this happens? Nowhere to be seen because inconveniently they can’t blame a white person for the tragedy.
Having lived in London for many years I have seen the imtimidtaion and racism some elements of the black community dishes out to other cultures that dare challenge some of their cultural norms (especially the level of violence towards women and the misogyny in general). The fact BLM is rascist and bigoted to the core does not surprise me in the slightest, what does surprise me is the millions of black people that don’t agree with BLM, but won’t speak out against them for fear of losing what they perceive to be ground breaking progress of the plights of their communities and being socially ostracised. I actually believe BLM are dividing communities more than ever before and are doing absolutely nothing to promote racial harmony in the slightest.
BLM is a racist marxist dictatorial deluded clique,slowly being recognised as that by more each outrageous act and insane decree.
There are brave black critics who openly condemn them , their policies , the corrupt acts , their revenge racism,etc , imcluding people like Candance Owens and Republican Tim Scott. While the left cancel cult systemically muzzles and persecutes dissent from any and all sources, they are particularly suppresive , dismiisive and malicious to black dissenters.The liberal media bias tends to highlight and publicise and progandisdise BLM missives and issues and views and much less on the many black dissenters to woke left dogma.
There seems to be a natural emergence of grassroots opposition to the woke tyranny that is more diverse ,inclusive and truth/ justice based than the deceptive ,manipulative ,intolerant white liberal./ BLM woke mob.
The DT coverage of the shooting of this nasty Oxford Poly woman shows how totally potty these nutters are.
Her activism has seen her previously call for a “race offenders’ register” which would bar people from jobs based on accusations of racism
So anyone could prevent her working by accusing her of racism.
Ms Johnson’s friend Imarn Ayton told BBC News “As far as we are aware, she was at a party.
“There was a rival gang that may have heard about someone being in that party that they didn’t feel quite comfortable with or trusted and so they resorted to driving past and shooting into the garden”
Indeed, indeed. As you do. Who among us can say, with their hand on their heart, that they’ve never driven past the garden of someone they didn’t feel quite comfortable with, at 3am, and opened fire?
“But I don’t believe she was the intended victim.”
So that’s all right, then.
Commander Alison Heydari said: “Around 3am a group of four black males dressed in dark coloured clothing entered the garden of the property and discharged a firearm.”
She’s going to be in trouble for saying that.
Notice how we just accept gangs as normal now? Someone with balls ought to make a manifesto commitment to bring the armed forces into action, and clean out every town and city in the UK. Before they become uninhabitable by decent people.
I wish people could let old tropes die–until the woke revolution and the election of idiot woke mayors, American cities, even NYC, had become comparably as safe as many European cities. Today we return to the bad old days of leftists mayors and violent cities. It is a choice the voters made.
An odd article. A disjunct between the headline (which implies some sort of moral dimension to BLM which it clearly doesn’t have) and the text, which doesn’t develop the headline. The violence between blacks associated with BLM is the point, as we see every day. Whites have bought into this, and on this, the author is more accurate. It costs nothing, but depresses many, when the whites do this. As for assortative mating, the author is speaking claptrap. It was ever thus; like sex, morals and war, other generations discovered assortative mating long before 2021. Where he does have a point is his comments on the slackening of moral standards, and the rise in moral ambiguity. But this could be simply the manifestation of a sea change in social mores, where we are too close both contemporaneously and physically, to see the bigger picture. It may become better defined 30 years from now, as one generation espousing the fracturing of current societal standards begats the subsequent one, for whom the taboos around racism, antisemitism, sexuality and power disappear entirely. What replaces it may be a moot point, because at the same time, of course, the transition to bipolar and thence to unipolar geopolitics will probably be almost complete. The home of wokery becomes a talking shop, and leadership through intimidation takes the stage.
Their claim does not accord with reality. I think that was Lee Floyd’s point, though (s)he can correct me if I’m wrong.
Hmm, I will leave others to comment whether that is true of major US political parties, but I would say that so-called educated people do have bland, middle-of-the road views.
Look at the views on immigration, just to take one, for example.
I do not see much among my educated contemporaries other than nice people, improved the restaurants (a very popular one), needed for the workforce, contributing etc.
Now this is bland.
And also very much “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.”
To give a counter-example, a close friend of mine, educated, middle-class etc, recently told me he thought *any* Israeli killed by Hamas rockets “had it coming”, and stuck to this position, becoming increasingly irate the more it was challenged.
I agree that issue is one that polarises and supporters of both sides seem to think anyone on the other side has it coming.
I wonder how your friend would react if you were to say that any of the dozens of black crime victims “had it coming.”
They do have it coming.
A week ago the Soros-backed Philadelphia District Attorney ran for re-election in the Democratic primary. Larry Krasner, the DA, has been in office during a steady rise in murder, shootings and violence, especially in black areas of the city. He has favored decriminalization, reduced sentencing, early release programs and no cash bail policies…the usual panoply of Soros’ policing preferences.
Krasner, who is white, was running against an Hispanic. He won by a 2 to 1 margin.
“In the end, most of the city’s Black political leaders coalesced around Krasner, and he received high levels of support from Black neighborhoods across North, Northwest, West, and Southwest Philadelphia.“
The Inquirer, 5/19/21
They want it. They vote for it. They’ve got it coming.
Let ‘em have it.
BLM is hurting the people it espouses to help because their entire movement is based on a microscopically thin sliver of black folks’ deaths: a bad police encounter.
So they base an entire worldwide movement on that, which ends up hogtying many police forces, and seeing massive drop-offs in their numbers.
Meanwhile, blacks are murdered in droves at the hands of other blacks, and urban despair accelerates.
This, and its root causes, such as fatherlessness driven by a broken and corrupt welfare system, are totally avoided, and even seen as “racist” to discuss.
Imagine one side of a house is on fire. BLM goes to the side that’s not burning, checks the smoke detector batteries, then leaves.
Just as well the demographic is an irony free zone, otherwise they would be all tangled up in the irony of a movement called Black Lives Matter actually making black lives matter less.
Luxury beliefs? Can’t help but noticed that white actors are being replaced by blacks in the low pay commercial ads on TV. The A-list actors, who are doing all the talking about diversity and inclusion, still dominate big budget films, and, seem in no hurry to step aside to accommodate their black brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, the white guy, who used to put bread on the table through peanut butter ads, is probably more into unemployment than inclusion in the BLM era.
A great article but the subtitle is mistaken. BLM will never feel shame. I doubt it is even possible.
But BLM have never claimed to support poor black people in urban areas. They couldn’t care less.
Their chief interest has been in destroying the social fabric of our society, both in the UK and America. The increase in murder rates and changing crime patterns were predicted last year as another ‘Ferguson effect’ and that’s the way its worked out.
BLM are a race hate group.
What if the truth is no more complicated than that some people simply love looting and smashing things up, and are glad whenever they can find an excuse to go on the rampage?
Look what happened here with those riots a few years ago. People of all ethnicities came together to riot, loot, commit arson and unleash destruction.
The shooting that preceded those riots was used an excuse, but it was not the reason for the rampage. The reason for the rampage lies entirely in the psyches of those who rampaged.
I agree – the old adage of ” x is what x does ” is relevant here. HUMANS TALK A LOT – but you can not really tell what really motivates them until you see WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO. All i see are a lot of ignorant angry people who want to act out their anger towards whatever issue they can hang it on. Forget any cunning strategies etc – these people are functionally stupid and, at a guess, scared and angry about life in general – but are too ignorant to know what to be angry AT – and so contribute to making their world more disfunctional and scary – maybe in an ever increasing positive feedback loop. I think that global capitalism is where they should be directing their anger but IT MAY BE TOO LATE for many to ever get a decent life – and that is a very REAL reason to get angry !!!!
“This is why “defund the police” was the ideal example of what Robert Henderson called luxury beliefs: “ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.”
Welcome to reality. What did the author think was going to happen if urban areas with high crime rates defunded their police? That criminals would suddenly quit committing crime?
Most of America could not care less if violent cities defund their police because most of America doesn’t live in violent cities. If crime remains in urban areas where the police do not have the funding they need, so be it. It keeps it out of our neighborhoods.
“Many of these murders involve seemingly minor disputes over the real issue of status”
No, it is far more simple than this. Most murders in US cities are drug related or gang related and sometimes both. If you are robbing a convenience store, you want cash. No one is arguing over “status”. That’s a middle class white belief.
Interesting. In ecology, niches, regimes and landscape form the holarchical basis of ecosystems. A species will disperse in order to form niches depending on available energy. An energy rich human ecosystem like America will see much more dispersion than an energy poor ecosystem like Malawi.
Ecosystem succession will tend to modify ecosystems from the bottom up, ie, via successful energy dependent adaptive strategies at the level of niches which, when critical mass is reached, will result in change at the regime level and from there possibly at the landscape level.
The dogma of critical race theory (pretending to be Critical Theory) is occuring at the regime level and is seeking to consolidate energy/support at the niche level as a means of displacing support for other regimes.
The positive and negative feedback mechanisms means nonlinearity so whilst BLM and critical race theory are engaging in social experiments trying to encourage the formation of critical mass at the niche level, what is actually occuring is that the perceived empowerment that is being derived from Black Power politics is simply resulting in increased competition at the niches level rather than the formation of a coherent critical mass that will facilitate regime change.
Presumably the energy being transferred from an affluent middle class white liberal regime down to the poor urban black niche levels is not being returned but instead being dispersed across the level of niches. Thus rather than achieving critical mass, the Woke regime is causing increased competition between the niches who are presumably fighting over the political power being experimented with by the regime of Woke elites.
Meanwhile, the Woke regime in its refusal to acknowledge ecological reality, will remain in its mentally constructed dogma, driven by its virtuous sense of superiority and the hope for critical mass. This will result in further competition at the niche level and consequently a movement of support for non-Woke regimes who will be seeking stability, security and order as an alternative to black power anarchism.
BLM legitimized the blame game. It sold the idea that all black problems were created by whites and that only whites could correct it. Blacks had no responsibility but to protest and riot.
When the BLM leader was shot at a garden party , curiously,there was no mention of description of the perpetators of the witnessed event, just some vague references , like she has received death threats before.
The BLM and liberal media actively covered up their knowledge of the race of the shooters, obscuring truth that disputes their one sided propaganda .
Highlighting, sensationalising and exclusively racially focusing on any and all white aggressor / minority victim events in the free democracy, even going back in history to take events out of context , feeds the racist propaganda machine that unjustly incites the racist anger towards the peoples of the free democracies of the west, as the marxist woke left grab power and control.
The woke left is built on hypocrisy and falsehoods, and thats needs to be challenged and exposed…with truth.
good article
Isn’t this a case of mistaking causation and correlation? BLM protests are most common in areas suffering most deprivation and areas suffering most deprivation suffer most crime.
That would make the high murder rate and BLM symptoms of the same thing, deprivation, rather than than BLM being the cause.
Normally UnHerd readers would be the first to this sort of thing out when Racism is blamed for inequality/deprivation.
I would recommend listening to Sideways on BBC Radio 4, presented by Matthew Syed, episode 6 – A Recipe for Happiness, especially the first 8 minutes but the whole show and series is excellent.
Thanks, for the pointer. It is a very interesting show.
Sorry, but “defund the police” does not mean eliminating the police, or reducing their presence where they are most needed. It means re-allocating funds better spent elsewhere, such as training to handle mentally ill people instead of buying surplus military vehicles. Whether it is right, wrong, or misapplied, it is certainly not an aim of BLM.
Do you mean drug addicts and their dealers, as opposed to ‘Mentally ill people?
You can engage in mental gymnastics all day, but defund means what it says. And how has it worked out? Crime has not spiked due to a lack of crisis counselors and social workers. It has spiked because criminals were given primacy over law abiding citizens and law enforcement.
Whether it is right, wrong, or misapplied, it is certainly not an aim of BLM. When you take an action that has a predictable outcome, then it’s a good bet that the outcome IS your aim.
You defund by removing funding i.e. giving less money. That’s totally different to allocating the same funding to different priorities.
Wherever funding might go – if the rule of law is compromized then you will see what comes out of that Pandora’s box – and it is never ‘love’. If the ‘thin blue line ‘ is overrun no amount of funding social workers will help the lot of their “clients” ….who will be living in fear in a ‘state of nature’ – which we all know is red in tooth and claw. Maslow’s hierarchy of human need would posit safety as its most important foundation – any compromising of that is total failure of governance.
Rather lone voice here, I’m afraid.
“Sorry, but “defund the police” does not mean eliminating the police”
no, it doesn’t. It means reducing their funding. And how many police officers are willing to work as volunteers?