Police: [DE]funding vs. [UN]funding

[M]

A treatise by Oren Long;

As a retired law enforcement administrator I both agree and disagree with the movement to "defund" police, just not for the reasons the Left cites.

Like the military, police are absolutely necessary to the preservation of society.  As Madison wrote in the Federalist, "If men were angels, there would be no need for government.  Alas, men are not angels."    

Police agencies, like all government entities, are bureaucracies.  That's just a fact.  The larger the agency, the more bureaucratic.  That, too, is a fact.  "Defunding" law enforcement for administrative ends is doable.  "Unfunding" is obviously out of the question.  

That said, law enforcement officers/deputies are often assigned duties that have little or nothing to do with law enforcement.  Let me give you some examples.  

Law enforcement works traffic accidents.  This is appropriate when injury and/or death is involved.  BUT, roughly 75% of accidents are low-speed, fender-benders, often in parking lots.  Yet, police are often tied up working said accidents when the involved parties could just call their insurance agents and have the insurance companies sort it out.  Insurance companies have successfully sloughed off their responsibilities onto the police out of convenience to the company.  In short, there is little or no need for police involvement in the vast majority of traffic accidents.  Yet, at any given time, law enforcement is busy sorting out these accidents, keeping officers/deputies from performing actual law enforcement.  And, all at taxpayer expense.

Sheriff's departments are usually assigned to serve civil process papers.  These are official notifications to individuals/entities that they are being sued.  Sheriff's departments often have entire divisions/sections of commissioned deputies who do nothing but deliver civil process papers simply because lawyers do not want to hire private process servers at their or their clients' expense.  Again, all at taxpayer expense.  These deputies are paid more than civilians, get retirement (after only 20 years), have department vehicles, etc.  

Staff officers/deputies are often assigned department vehicles when they basically just show up at the 'office' and sit at a desk.  Even when they have to get to the office on their own, they often are assigned a department vehicle and driver in case they have to go to a scene.  Why not just have a couple of department vehicles that a staff officer can jump in a go to a scene?

Senior staff and Chiefs/Sheriffs often have a commissioned officer/deputy outside their office to essentially answer phones and screen arrivals.  Why?  Wouldn't a civilian secretary/administrative assistant be more efficient -- and cheaper?

Many agencies have commissioned officers/deputies in the property room, records, dispatch, motor pool, etc. when civilian employees could just as easily do the same job for fewer dollars.

These are just a few examples of how bureaucratic and bloated law enforcement agencies have become.  Sadly, when law enforcement budgets are cut, the reflexive response of top management is to cut the number of officers/deputies performing actual law enforcement on the street FIRST while carefully maintaining those cited above for last.

I pointed the above out all my career until I became persona not-gratis and finally retired.

Oren