Rasmussen Reports released recent findings from a new national telephone and online survey. They found that 49% of Likely U.S. Voters believed last year’s protests against the police hurt public safety. Just 22% said the protests helped public safety and 21% believed the protests didn’t make much difference to public safety.
The RR survey results found twice as many respondents found last year’s anti-police protests to be harmful to public safety rather than helpful.
Here are some key observations from Secure 1776:
- The United States Constitution protects the right of the people to peacefully assemble and seek a redress of their grievances.
- In our article, “The Importance of Us: The Failure of Being Cast as Them,” Thomas Lemmer spoke to the essential nature for both the police and the community-at-large to view the police as among the “community of us.” Efforts that seek adherence to the rule of law and constitutional policing strengthen the police-community relationship. However, efforts that seek to divide the police from the community harm the community.
- In our article, “Tragedy-Free Policing or Else: The Need for Critical Thinking,” Lemmer further explained how some groups, with objectives other than strengthening the working relationship of the police with the larger community, sought to use tragic incidents for their own purposes. Police accountability efforts must distinguish between unintended or unavoidable tragedy and true misconduct.
- At Secure 1776, we believe as Lemmer noted, “The way forward cannot cast the policing profession into the pile of ‘them,’ as we have felt the painful lesson of weakened police-community relationships. The way forward must be one with broad outreach across community partners. As a community, we need our elected and civic leaders to foster unifying approaches that advance constitutional policing, reduce violence, address chronic crime conditions, improve public safety, protect victims, foster wellness, and enhance community support for the police.” See our published articles on this site for more information.
We are interested in your thoughts, and invite you to comment below.
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Hopefully these people will wake up and vote out the anti-police party and politicians in 2022. The defund the police movement is already falling apart in many cities with crime skyrocketing. The problem is most good candidates for the job are going to stay away.
Thank you for your feedback.
Thomas Lemmer is correct. It cannot be an “us vs them” mentality. The police are the “us”. There is a force in this country that want to divide us. By placing a wedge between the police and the community they serve helps to further this along. It is CRITICAL that every community maintains and keeps their police officers who are from the cities and towns they serve. This keeps the officers as part of “us”. The federal government is trying to abolish local police departments and to federalize these positions. When this happens, Policing will be very different. The officers will no longer be part of the community they serve, rights will be trampled, freedoms will be lost and it will then be an “us vs. them” mentality This will then be “ a standing army” in each community which our founders knew is not a good thing. Thank you Tom!
Thank you so much for your feedback. Without question the bond between our police and the larger community must be a strong one.
As Lemmer states “Police accountability efforts must distinguish between unintended or unavoidable tragedy and true misconduct”. Police are only human and not infallible so actual mistakes will happen as in any other profession and these good faith mistakes should not be thrown in as supporting evidence for the defund movement. The media has really seemed to fan the flames by lumping the mistakes in with the occasional criminal act by a police officer, which most reasonable officers also detest because they feel it hurts their relationship with the community.
Thank you for your feedback. In the article, “High Noon for American Policing,” it is clear why anyone might question being a town marshal in “Hadleyville” – and why people might question living there. To maintain safe communities the bond between the police and the larger community must be a strong one.
I believe that a positive connection between communities and LEOs could be significantly better with the support of our elected and civic leaders. Respect for the police needs to be expected and modeled by them. Tougher laws for crimes against police officers would also help significantly!
Thank you for your feedback. There is a key leadership role that needs to be met by our civic and elected officials relative to the police-community relationship, and your observation on the need for “modeling” by our elected and civic officials is a keen one.
The “community” will get reconnected with the police and return to some level of respect once their elected officials and their mouthpiece media quit pandering to the social justice narrative. Probably no sooner than that.
Thank you for your feedback. Relative to your observation – “pandering” never moves us forward to a good place.
Maybe the last several months(defund police) has been an aberration in U.S. History, especially with regards to policing:
“Wednesday, President Joe Biden went before a White House podium to outline his program for dealing with the plague of shootings, killings and murders that have marked and marred the five months of his presidency.
What does all this tell us?
Law and order,” the issue that arose in the ’60s to tear apart President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Coalition, is back. And the emotional anti-cop wave after the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis a year ago, manifest in the “Defund the Police!” demand of Black Lives Matter, has receded.
America is saying: We don’t want rogue cops, but we do want more cops in our neighborhoods and our communities to stop the shootings that are terrorizing, wounding, maiming and killing us.”
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_pat_buchanan/the_return_of_law_and_order
Thank you for your feedback and your article link. In the article Patrick Buchanan wrote:
An additional key element should have been included in Mr. Buchanan’s formula – the role of the community as an active partner with the police in ensuring public safety. In the article, “NewYork, NewYork: A Different Tune,” we see the connection to the role of elected officials that Mr. Buchanan highlights and the importance of the police-community relationship in maintaining public safety.