A councilman in a major city proposed disarming police officers, leaving them completely defenseless against dangerous criminals. Instead, he has proposed a controversial strategy for dealing with potentially violent situations.
A North Carolina official proposed that local law enforcement have their weapons stripped of them in an effort to make the communities safer. Charlotte City Councilman Braxton Winston, 38, openly suggested to WJZY that police should be disarmed, making them virtually defenseless and unable to protect civilians against violent criminals.
As radical and illogical as Winston’s resolution is, his answer to how law enforcement officers should handle potentially life-threatening situations is even more inane. The councilman suggested that the police should use their words and “interpersonal skills” in order to de-escalate encounters.
“So, I think if you look right now, most of those, those potentially violent situations already right now, resolve using interpersonal skills, as in talking and being present.”
As woke ideology consumes the political sphere, elected officials are adopting policies pushed by the most fanatical progressive activists. One of the more extreme agendas is the move to defund and, by default, dismantle the police, which swiftly gained traction thanks to Black Lives Matter.
Despite such a move crossing over into the extreme, the movement has grown in popularity due to conniving and shallow doublespeak that paints police officers as inherently racist and maliciously violent. As such, political elitists have pitched a utopian solution that is sure to result in more violence and death.
Winston insinuated that he is against all uses of force when it comes to policing, claiming that officers carrying weapons only instigates violence. Instead, he wants police officers to respond to emergency calls without weapons and attempt to resolve the conflict by simply talking to the dangerous individuals. Previously, Winston pushed for the council to defund chemical agents for police use after officers were forced to use them to disperse rioters.
“I do not believe that…the utilization of violence creates peaceful outcomes,” Winston said. “And I think there’s plenty of evidence in that and we need to do things differently.”
Of course, Winston provided no example of that evidence. Instead, he suggested that men and women in law enforcement should be willing to risk their lives on every call without any means of defense. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t give an answer when asked what the police should do if the situation cannot be de-escalated and instead turns violent.
Fortunately, not everyone is on board with Winston’s radical solution. The president of a Charlotte neighborhood association dismissed the councilman’s proposal with simple logic, arguing that disarming the police only empowers criminals and endangers innocent citizens.
“I think the police, if they weren’t armed, they become a target. And once they become a target, then we’ll be having other situations that will be having vigils for and that is absolutely, absolutely ridiculous,” said Thomas Sadler.
Having lived in Charlotte for 74 years, Saddler has seen enough to know that disarming the police would be bad for the community.
“The police are not bad people. We’ve got a few bad apples, but the police in general, generally good people,” he said. “They went on to that [forest] because they want to help and I believe that the majority of them [sic].”
Winston either has malicious intent or he is utterly incompetent. His shallow thinking suggests that most armed and dangerous criminals will disarm themselves and willingly surrender if the police simply reason with them. Even more disturbing is that his stream of thought ends there, completely ignoring the plethora of encounters in which officers have no opportunity to de-escalate or attempt to de-escalate but are unsuccessful.
Winston either dishonestly or naively perpetuates the idea that police don’t first attempt to de-escalate the situation before resorting to lethal force. It is often that lethal force that saves the lives of countless police officers and victims of violence, who Winston would throw to the wolves.
