We are now in the midst of a heated debate about police tactics and police budgets, and that’s a good thing.
All publicly funded agencies should undergo that kind of scrutiny on a regular basis, and maybe we’ve been lax in that responsibility.
READ MORE: Why some advocates want to defund Canadian police
The rallying cry in some circles is to end racism in law enforcement by defunding police services.
Let’s think this through.
We need laws and rules in a just society, and we need people who are wise enough to craft those rules and others who are compassionate enough to oversee compliance; without that, anarchy and chaos ensue.
Let’s have a discussion about how money is allocated to police services and how it’s spent.
But, will budget cuts to police address the concerns about racism and bias?
Day after day, we send police officers out on the streets to deal with crisis and conflict and we need to re-evaluate how we prepare them to do that, and we must develop a more comprehensive way to weed out the minority of police who are guided by racial bias.
Nobody hates a bad cop more than the majority of good cops who do their best to serve and protect our community.
But, let’s not kid ourselves; racial bias is not just a law enforcement problem, it’s a societal problem that infects workplaces, neighbourhoods and even political institutions.
We’re not going to solve the problem if we don’t acknowledge the magnitude of the problem.
Bill Kelly is the host of the Bill Kelly Show on Global News Radio 900 CHML.