The City of Cincinnati wanted to hire 50 new police officers, to replace those retiring from the force, etc. You can’t just hire anyone off the street of course. Candidates have to take a written test, go through a thorough background check, undergo a medical and psychological evaluation, and of course successfully complete a course at the Police Academy.
Rather than the 50 that were needed, only 34 were available. And that’s not the worst part of it. The Cincinnati police force is already 100 officers short of where it’s supposed to be.
No wonder the City of Cincinnati recently experienced the highest homicide rate in the city’s history. And that’s with a population that’s far below what it’s been in the past. For example, back in the 1950s and 60s, the City of Cincinnati’s population was over 500,000. It’s now just over 300,000.
So why do fewer and fewer people want to be cops nowadays? In my opinion, because for far too long now they’ve been targeted as the bad guys by The Left and their allies in the mainstream press.
A few summers back, we had riots in the streets across this country. Antifa and BLM led the chaos, but leftist politicians in Congress and in our nation’s cities fanned the flames with their “Defund the Police” rhetoric and agenda.
On the local scene, my opponent in this year‘s congressional race, Greg Landsman, led the effort to defund the police. As a member of Cincinnati City Council, he introduced an ordinance to take $200,000 out of the police budget and give it instead to the group that pursues complaints against police officers. And if that wasn’t enough, he voted to take another million dollars out of the police budget altogether.
At the time, Mr. Landsman was playing to the mob, but now he realizes what a political liability his anti-police antics were, so he’s trying desperately to deny his own actions. Fortunately, Channel 5 (WLWT) did a story at the time and accurately labeled his effort as the “definition of defunding the police.” And Mr. Landsman‘s attempt to muddy the waters with paid TV ads featuring fellow weak-on-crime local Democrat politicians have been truly pathetic.
Mr. Landsman‘s former boss, Nancy Pelosi, and her fellow-travelers in Congress have piled on with anti-police efforts at the federal level. Their principal response to rioting in cities across America was to make police officers more vulnerable personally to lawsuits.
A police officer by the nature of his or her job will periodically be involved in physical confrontation with the public, particularly when making arrests for DUIs, domestic violence, etc. Currently, as long as an officer follows proper police procedure (essentially what they were taught at the Academy,) they can’t be personally sued. The Democrats want to change that. Who’s going to want to be a police officer if their pension, the equity in their home, and their children’s college education fund is at risk?
The bottom line is this: as fewer and fewer people want to be police officers, the rest of us are more and more vulnerable. That’s what The Left is doing to our country, and that’s why they can no longer be trusted to run our communities or our country.
You get to say what you think about all this on November 8 (or before if you vote by mail or absentee ballot.) See you next week.
Also Read: “Chabot is a true champion for police, public safety” (Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 3, 2022)