OUR OPINION: Keep police funding right where it is

Image
Body

The social justice warriors who always have something to say at City Council meetings have gone too far with their suggestion to defund the Lake City Police Department.

The suggestion was made by a local activist Sylvester Warren on Monday night and it is ludicrous.

Mr. Warren is an active voice for the black community in Lake City. He is eloquent and generally respectful when he addresses the council. We support his First Amendment right to petition the government in this way.

Mr. Warren has proven he has the ear of the city manager and council, and they listen when he speaks. But this idea is a disaster that needs to be discarded immediately.

In our opinion, the Lake City Police Department should NOT be defunded in order to shift any line-item revenue to increase social-program spending in any part of our community. We need strong police protection everywhere in Lake City, with expert-level training throughout and fast response times to emergency calls.

There is poverty in this town and there are social needs. These may indeed yield criminal outcomes, but you fund and improve social programs through other public channels or from private groups and non-profits better suited to the task. 

You leave the police strong and intact.

Mr. Warren has at times chided council members with sound advice and solid ideas, but his suggestion Monday is so misguided as to damage his credibility in the public arena. It may have seemed like a good sound bite at the time, but it has little relevance in a community like ours in which police brutality is not widespread. His suggestion was nothing less than reckless.

Those who know how to move the needle in social justice settings have a gift for knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. This was a time for the latter.