A Police Union Thinks It Will Be Better Off Under Trump

It won’t.

America’s largest Police Union just officially backed Trump for the November election.

The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) have fallen for Trump’s mantra that he is the “law and order” candidate. 

They are not looking at the real world.  Perhaps evidence-based decision-making is not a police strength.

If it was, they would have noticed that Republican states are not police-supportive; in fact, they spend one-third less on policing than Democratic states.

In 2021, blue states on average spent $453.67 per resident on policing while red states only spent $341.37 per resident.

Many of the states accused of “defunding the police” - California, New York, and Illinois - actually spent the most; California was at the top of all states with $634.53 per resident. Eight out of the top ten, in fact, are Democratic states. 23 out of the 25 Red states spent less than average.

The highest salary for an officer is in California (Dem), at $105,000; the lowest is Mississippi (Rep) at $36,000 (2022 numbers).

Given all this, why is a police union backing Trump?

They are backing a man and a Party that actually care nothing about crime, except to use it as a publicity grabber.

The other candidate is a Public Prosecutor who is totally immersed in the knowledge of what a police force needs.

And if they had done their research, they would know that Trump is a felon, a rapist, a notorious grifter and the man responsible for the deaths of five police officers (four by suicide) and injuries to 174 during the attack on the Capitol Building. 

This extends to other violent crimes.  Unfettered civilian use of guns, for example, are the worst enemy of the police force.  But after the most recent school mass killing, Trump’s buddy JD Vance said America should “just get over” the mass death crime.

Nothing to see here; move along.

But here we are, with sentences still being handed down for rioters who punched police officers in Washington, and the Fraternal Order of Police has given Trump their endorsement.

The union is backing the blow-hard bullsh*t that Trump spews out.

He seems to be macho, so they fall for it and fall in line.

These are the guys who receive less training than police in almost every other developed country.

Entry requirements are so low that a high school drop-out can get in. 

According to one report, training standards for the more than 18,000 police agencies in the U.S. are outdated and inconsistent, and often provide training that is too brief -- with an emphasis on weapons and tactics and too little focus on decision-making, communications and other critical thinking skills that officers use every day.

Police training in the U.S. is most often measured in weeks, while in many other countries it is measured in months or years.  Training is outdated, antiquated, trying to do on the cheap what other places have done in a comprehensive way. U.S. training averages 20 weeks; in Germany it is 2.5 years and in Finland it is 3 years.

So the American policing system hoovers up the uneducated and then lets them loose with disastrously poor training.

Then these ‘officers’ rise through the ranks and become leaders of police unions.

Black and brown citizens bear the brunt of this amateurism.

If this is a typical day in America, 65 people will be murdered; most of them will be people of color.  Persons of color are also more likely to die at younger ages than their counterparts, leading to increased trauma among surviving family members, friends, and communities.

This murder rate is undoubtedly a high number. In neighboring Canada, the equivalency adjusted for population size would be 20, and Canadians are all upset thinking that it is a high number.

And yet for some reason the Republican politicians pick up their cudgels again and beat the Democrats about “defunding the police”.

Then they will take credit for things like infrastructure improvement and lower insulin prices, which they voted against.

But the real reason the Republican politicians are so fixated on ‘The Law’ is because they have created an environment that nourishes crime; they see more crime looking out of their windows because they create more crime in their states.

They are in their own Crime Zone.

Republicans have made crime a major selling point over the past several elections. In 2020 and 2022, they ran ads accusing Democratic candidates of wanting to “defund the police.”  In October 2022, one-quarter of ads from Republican candidates and PACs focused on crime. Republican-aligned Fox News aired, on average, 141 segments on crime across weekdays in the two months leading up to the midterms. In the week after the midterm, their coverage of violent crime dropped by 50%.

The voters, even in Republican states, did not care.  They were focused on the Republican theft of their right to an abortion.  But the Republicans would not admit that…because they had their faces pressed against the Crime window.  They couldn’t even tell the truth about their Cause; in the 2022 mid-terms Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott deceptively edited a quote on police funding from Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke to make it look like he was calling for defunding.

This is typical “Red State” behavior.

The last time Trump ran against Biden, murder rates in Trump-voting states were 40% higher than Biden-voting states.  The wide and widening Red State murder gap has spanned the past two decades.  In fact, the murder rate in Trump-voting states has exceeded the murder rate in Biden-voting states every year this century…exceeded it by 23% since 2000.

The top 10 murder rate states have been dominated by reliably red states, namely Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri.  They have been jockeying for top spot:  Louisiana had the highest murder rate in the country from 2000 to 2018, until it was surpassed by Mississippi. Before becoming the state with the highest murder rate in 2019, Mississippi held the number two spot for 16 years between 2000 and 2018. Alabama has been in the top 5 for 20 out of the last 21 years.

Over the last decade, red states have held 7 or 8 spots in the top 10 every year.  And since 2000 murder rates have increased 39.4% in Red states and just 13.4% in blue states.

Republicans do a very good job at persuading people that crime is a Blue-state problem, and like most Republican talking-points, the opposite is true.

In Kansas for example the Republican Party claimed the Democratic candidate was “fueling the Kansas crime surge,” saying Kansas families lived in fear of rising violent crimes in Kansas.  But 2021 data released by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation actually shows a decrease in overall crime in Kansas.  You can’t make much headway if you are sailing against the wind.

But if the Blue states had the same murder rate as Red states, they would have seen 5,000 more murders in 2020 alone. Between 2000 and 2020, they would have suffered an additional 45,400 murders.

As they whipped up a media frenzy over how the Dems were “soft on crime,” the Red State murder gap widened to its deepest level.

There are some fundamental reasons why crime is high in the Red states.

Gun ownership rates are as much as twice as high in a typical red state than a typical blue state. Since 79% of all homicides are committed with a firearm, it follows that the more firearms, the more homicides.

Red states have higher poverty rates than blue states, and there is a correlation between poverty and violent crime.

Educational attainment is less in the South than elsewhere, and those without a high school diploma are more likely to get tangled in homicide, as either a victim or as a perpetrator.

Social services and police resources are far more abundant in Blue states than in Red states.  Cities with Democratic mayors fund police at far higher levels on a per capita basis than cities run by Republican mayors. In 2020, the 25 largest Democrat-run cities spent 38% more on policing per capita than the 25 largest Republican-run cities. In addition, blue states may be more likely to fund social service programs that help steer people away from violent crime than red states.

And when it comes to calling for gun control, "Democrats are nearly unanimous in their support for stricter gun laws," a Gallup study noted, with nearly 91% in favour of stricter gun laws.

Only 24% of Republicans, on the other hand, agreed with gun control. Independent voters lean towards the Democrats on this issue, with 45% of Independent voters wanting gun control.  If the Republicans were looking for an issue to help recruit votes, this isn’t it.

A number of states have also gone as far as to largely eliminate restrictions on who can carry a gun. In June 2021, for example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a "permitless carry bill" that allows the state's residents to carry handguns without a licence or training.

By April last year Georgia had become the 25th in the nation to eliminate the need for a permit to conceal or openly carry a firearm.

Then came the school shooting.

The social policies of Red states do not push for progressive economic measures or for higher education.  Education is suspect in the church-dominated South.  The only time the Red states thrived was during the New Deal of the 1930s, when an economic system was forced on them that was foreign to their nature.  Federal money boosted wages and narrowed the gap for the states that had historically spent little on public services and economic development. Since the time of Republican President George Bush, however, the southern states went back to their old habits and started to slide back again. Now, they typically reject federal funding even if no state funding is required to match it.  The politicians deliberately let their people go without insurance and health care in order to give the finger to the Democrats.  No one asked the voters, of course.

Nevertheless, of the states which receive more federal funding than they give, 84% are Republican.

And 70% of America’s economy in terms of GDP per state comes from Biden-voting states.

Democrats are two times more productive than Republicans.  They are also wealthier, better educated and more tolerant.

And it’s getting worse…the Republican states are slipping in their share of GDP.

There are two very different societies in play. The Blue is oriented to diverse, college-educated workers in professional and digital services occupations more often located in cities, and the Red is whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on “traditional” industries.

Jobs in Blue America rely on national R&D investment, technology leadership, and services exports.

The Red economic base is situated in the nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas. They are failing and resentful.

Here is the playground where high crime rates are incubated:

• Per-person GDP is 25 percent less than in the Blue Progressive.

• The number of their children living in poverty is 20 percent higher.

• The share of working households below the poverty line is about 40 percent higher.

• Health outcomes are also worse. 60 percent of the population lives in states that have refused to have access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

• Gun deaths are almost twice as high per capita in the Dregs of Dixie states.

• Almost all of these states have passed “stand your ground” laws backed by the National Rifle Association, which provide a legal defense for those who use weapons against a perceived threat. None of the Blue Progressive states have done so.

• The COVID vaccination rate is about 20 percent lower, so of course the COVID death rate is about 20 percent higher. Life expectancy is nearly three years less.

• Spending on elementary and secondary education is almost 50 percent lower.

• Right-to-work laws are common so they have a much lower share of unionized workers.

Adding to the social stress is the throw-back outlook of Republican men: so religiously conservative that they might as well have stayed in the manor houses of the old Southern aristocracy.  Women are lesser beings.  Only 38% of Republican men want there to be equal numbers of men and women in positions of power in our society. 30% said that men make better political leaders than women. 67% said there's already full equality for women in work, life, and politics.  61% are more comfortable with women in "traditional roles."

The Red states are also less welcoming to immigrants, who are the prime booster for economic progress in other areas.  Immigrants have a higher proportion of entrepreneurship, starting businesses at a much higher rate than native-born Americans.  And undocumented immigrants have the lowest crime rates; much lower than US-born citizens.

Spelling it out: more immigration means more innovation and less crime.

The above information is something that the Red states would greet with incredulity…but they can’t read anyway, so our secret is safe.

You will note that I didn’t even include a picture that they could color in.

 Another ominous note about the failing social infrastructure in the Red states: their tight abortion laws are leading to the closure of medical clinics throughout the south. 

The abortion ban for example has made West Virginia part of a growing abortion-care desert in the South; people there use neighboring Maryland as an abortion destination. 

Abortion care is still out of reach for many people living in the South. Some still have to travel upwards of 500 miles to seek services even before 15 weeks of pregnancy.

This raises costs and unduly burdens low-income people. In addition to the procedure itself, patients incur the expenses of travel, childcare and lost wages. 

The abortion care vacuum leads to the closure of hospitals and the desertion of doctors from the South.

Already poor, the Red South will be even more unattractive, as it will not be able to provide the level of service found in mid-level countries around the world.

There will literally be two nations: a prosperous Western democracy that lives beside a Failed State.

Died by suicide.

Not that the Republicans would care, as they are focused only on gaining power.  And here their talking-points on crime have left them in the lurch.

In national exit polls, crime was tied for last as a vote driver, well behind both abortion and inflation as the main issues people said determined their votes. And with all the talk that crime would be a huge benefit for Republicans, it was the least politically divided topic; just 57 percent of those saying crime was their top issue voted Republican. By comparison, 76 percent of voters who said abortion was their top issue voted Democratic.

This is the disadvantage of being a party that doesn’t care what the voters think.

All that Republican work on crime is for nothing. 

It dominated about a third of all recent Republican advertising in federal races. Any Democratic candidate or casual television viewer in a battleground state would likely describe feeling overwhelmed by crime ads. And it was not just the top of the ticket. Commercial breaks were filled with “grainy footage”-style ads about murders, rapes, robberies, even beheadings, no matter the office.

Trump himself is leading the latest charge, having learned nothing (as usual) from previous failure.

Instead of being “tough on crime,” Republicans have been actually weak on crime.  They opposed a gun control policy, even though polls showed “gun policy” to be as important as crime.  They said nothing on the horrific school shootings. They voted against greater accountability for tax cheats. They never condemned Trump’s crimes for the storming of the Capitol and other illegal activities. 

They raise the flag of fear and then have no solutions for it.

They exist to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations.

They have no connection to the people or their problems.

They no longer serve a purpose.

Not even entertainment.

Orange man is not amusing.

But a police union thinks he’s great.

So much for the force of reason.

Drive carefully.