Structure CMS™ This editorial is brought to you by LET’s National Spokesman Kyle S. Reyes.
If you’re ready to stop being silent and start speaking up… please visit www.BackupArrived.com. It’s time to join the fight.
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EVERY TOWN, USA – Several months after September 11, 2001, Darryl Worley and Wynn Varble sat down to write Have You Forgotten? And while the song was more about the short-term memory loss that some people in our country had following the terrorist actions that killed thousands, it is just as relevant today as it was the day it was written.
The first verse of the song seems to be extremely apropos to the times we find ourselves in, just 19 short years later.
Whether or not people want to admit it, there is a war raging in this country and the combatants are idiotic people, to include elected officials, taking shots at our law enforcement community, both figuratively and literally.
I hear people saying we don’t need this war, I say there’s some things worth fighting for.
What about our freedom and this piece of ground, We didn’t get to keep ’em by backing down.
They say we don’t realize the mess we’re getting in, Before you start your preaching.
Let me ask you this my friend, Have you forgotten?
So, we must ask that very question.
Have you forgotten?
Hey, New York City, the numbers you need to remember are 373 and 263.
It was in your city where members of multiple police departments, county and state agencies and federal bureaus rushed into burning buildings just moments before the fell to try to rescue people that were still trapped inside and, as Worley’s song reminds us, “going through a living hell”.
Officers, deputies and agents from 23 different law enforcement groups died either on or shortly after 9/11 due to injuries received in the line of duty trying to serve and protect others. Hundreds more have died in the time since of injuries or illnesses contracted due to their service that day.
I told you to remember a couple of numbers, 373 and 263.
373 members of the law enforcement have died as a result of 9/11, every last one of them doing what they always did, serving others.
263 of those were men and women from the New York Police Department. You know, the very department that Bill de Blasio is trying to cripple by yanking $1B from for the next fiscal year.
Now, before you other parts of the country shake your head in disgust at New York and its policy makers looking to significantly reduce police departments operating budgets…you might want to look out your own window and see what is happening.
How about it Dallas?
KERA News shared the following comments regarding the “Defund”movement in Big D.
“I’m calling to demand the city reevaluate, divest and defund the DPD,” Kellie Barrett said.
“We refuse to fund the murder, incarceration, detention and deportation of our brothers, sons and fathers any longer,” Jennifer Cortez said.
“We cannot keep funding a police department that has been proven ineffective and insufficient,” Jennifer Ybarra said.
They also spoke to a local activist who had the following ‘brilliant’ idea.
“Mercedes Fulbright has said the city council should be reducing the size of the Dallas Police Department’s budget every year.
‘The budget should be built around the people, the communities and the things that they actually need to keep themselves safe.’”
But she didn’t stop there.
“I can’t believe they’re still paying for tactical gear or tear gas or those rubber bullets that they used against us in the streets,” Fulbright said. “Like, that could have gone to the kids who are at home right now who don’t have food in their pantries. Right?”
Need we remind the Dallas-area “defunders” of what happened on July 7, 2016?
A sniper, who claimed to be part of the Black Lives Matter movement, took a firing position in a parking garage over looking the protest going on in downtown Dallas. The protest was led by Black Lives Matter. That sniper, prior to being taken out by the Dallas Police Department, killed 5 officers and wounded 7 others.
Two of those surviving officers have shared their stories with us and have become friends to many of us here at Law Enforcement Today. Misty McBride and Danny Shaw were shot while trying to protect as many of the 1,500 civilians that were on the street that night as they could.
So, by all means Dallas defund the police. Just do not be surprised when there are no longer enough of them on the streets to keep you safe.
We are not done yet…some of you other parts of the country need to buckle up…you are next.
“A group of protesters is demanding a meeting with the mayor to urge authorities to defund the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department amid calls for justice and police reforms.
The small group gathered in front of Las Vegas City Hall Wednesday to chant for change and issued the new demands.
‘We feel like the police need to be defunded, on the simple fact, we feel like they’re not here to do their pledge, which is to serve and protect,’ said TayLocc the Entertainer.”
Hey TayLocc (whose real name is Deonte Thurman), were you in Vegas back in 2017 when Stephen Paddock went on a shooting rampage from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay which left at least 50 people dead and more than 200 injured?
Do you remember that Paddock had enough rounds and rifles to continue shooting, but eventually took his own life after the LVMPD SWAT team found and surrounded him? Without those cops protecting and serving, the tragic death toll would have climbed even higher.
Houston, what about you? Are you wanting to defund the police? If you do and are successful in that campaign, what happens to people like these two elderly women who were rescued from a fiery death by two HPD officers who responded before the Houston Fire Department was able to get to the scene.
Sadly, we even have politicians on the national level pushing for massive “reform and defunding” of law enforcement across the country. If they manage to find a way to handcuff police from a federal standpoint, how would the little girl saved from drowning by a sheriff’s deputy in Knob Noster, Missouri, still be a live today?
Or for that matter, what about the infant who was recently saved from choking by an officer in Sterling Heights, Michigan?
Wait, you hadn’t heard of those stories? Of course you haven’t. The mainstream media isn’t going to touch that kind of stuff. It just doesn’t fit the narrative that they are trying to push on American viewers/readers who are too lazy to look for the truth for themselves.
See, what these “defund” idiots refuse to acknowledge is this. The overwhelming majority of people in law enforcement entered that profession out of a passionate calling to help, serve and protect others. They didn’t do it for the money. Many cops have to work overtime assignments pulling security to make ends meet.
The give up many hours of their personal life, sacrificing time with their spouse and their children. They miss baseball games and ballet recitals. They have to work Christmas or Thanksgiving. They go to weddings and birthdays in uniform because they have to get to work immediately following, or just stopped by to make an appearance during their dinner break.
Yet they continue to put on that uniform and work the streets of their communities out of choice, not out of obligation. They consistently run towards the danger rather hiding from it, and they do so willingly, because that is what sheepdogs do.
They put themselves in the fray with the wolves and the lions because they know that the wolves and lions will devour the innocent in their absence.
Do you truly believe that replacing law enforcement with social workers on domestic violence calls is going to do the trick? Of course it won’t.
But that is what many blinded by the ludicrous thought process of this movement are trying to do. You are not going to wind up with peaceful resolutions. You are going to wind up with dead social workers and family members. And the police will still wind up on the scene to investigate a homicide or a murder/suicide.
All those amber alerts that set your phone off will turn into pictures of kids on milk cartons (if they still do that), showing a computer enhancement of what they might look like now, since they were never found over the years since they went missing.
Hey Berkeley, do you really think criminals are going to stop when someone from public works tries to pull them over for a traffic violation?
Let me answer that for you.
HELL NO!!!
They won’t. They already run from, fight and even shoot at cops, who have the ability to shoot back and carry with them arresting powers. You think Mike, who just last week was filling pot-holes as part of a city road crew is going to make a lot of stops in his Department of Public Works Toyota Prius with a yellow light bar on top?
The average citizen is unlikely to stop for that guy…much less the people who have something to hide.
A recent Gallup poll shows that roughly 85% of American’s support our law enforcement community. That is an overwhelming majority, but they must be silent no longer.
If we choose to sit idly by, thinking that the defund movement will lose steam or that cities will never actually vote for it, we are sadly mistaken.
It is time to stand and fight for the very ones who stand in the gap for us every day, or nation’s law enforcement officers.
We must fight for them.
Or have we forgotten?
I hear people saying we don’t need this war, I say there’s some things worth fighting for.
What about our freedom and this piece of ground, We didn’t get to keep ’em by backing down.
They say we don’t realize the mess we’re getting in, Before you start your preaching.
Let me ask you this my friend, Have you forgotten?
