Cuts in San Diego police operations

Sometimes I despair and despair that the police state will only continue to grow.  San Diego recently made drinking on beaches illegal.  When people took to drinking in rafts on the bay during events called Floatopia in an ingenious manipulation of a loophole in the ban, the city council then banned the marvelous defiance that was Floatopia.  This is just one example of the numerous senseless laws that continue to pile on.  Thus, when I saw a facebook ad for a site called  morecops.org, I became quite agitated.  I went to the site, which used the usual fear tactics, declaring the need for more police, more funding, etc.  However, I came across the Cuts link of the website, which declared the following cuts had been made in San Diego, among others:

-Over 10% fewer Sworn Police Officers
-Elimination of Mounted Unit
-50% reduction in K9 Unit
-Elimination of Harbor Unit
-Elimination of over 160 Civilian support positions resulting in most of the work now being handled by uniformed patrol

The quarterly report on police misconduct by David Packman of Injustice Everywhere indicates police are almost just as likely as the average person to commit a variety of crimes.  They are more likely to commit assault and sexual assault.  Before anyone goes defending police by saying that it’s great they are slightly better than the average person, just think about it for a second – you are almost as likely to be killed, murdered or suffer violence by an alleged peace officer/public servant/protector of the public than from a completely random person on the street (bums, psychopaths and gang members included).  Shockingly (or maybe not so surprisingly), you are far more likely to be sexually assaulted by a cop than by some other random person in society.  Given this report, I think what society is less cops, not more.

Morecops.org also has a bit on its front page about a recently fallen officer, Chris Wilson, who was victim of a SWAT operation gone bad.  This brings me to another point –  if they weren’t throwing elaborate parades stretching 12 miles long, complete with motorcades, fire rigs, 1,000 patrol cars and ceremonies at football stadiums for their fallen police officers, they might save some of that allegedly necessary funding (can you imagine if we did that every time someone died in bad circumstances?).  At any rate, I’m glad to see police spending in San Diego go down.  So it appears it can be reversed after all.  This is reason for optimism.