The war on law enforcement has been ongoing for decades, but as we all know, it usually isn’t so visible that most people notice it.
Usually, we hear about anodyne-sounding movements such as “criminal justice reform,” and given how unsuccessful attempts have been to reduce recidivism, “reform” has a nice ring to it. I could name countless things about our criminal justice system that would benefit from reforms, although frankly, few “reforms” have actually led to much better outcomes, so I am flummoxed about what those reforms should be.
It turns out that we have a criminal justice system to deal with breakdowns of social order, and it’s hard to find solutions consonant with social order to remedy them.
But there are times, such as now, 2020, and at various other points in history, when the opponents of law enforcement come out of the shadows, the think tanks, the universities, and the NGOs that want to eliminate the “carceral state.” You get “defund the police” movements, or other forms of frontal attacks on the very idea of enforcing laws.
Zohran Mamdani on abolishing prisons and jail: “What purpose do they serve, besides making people feel good?” pic.twitter.com/KYgD1nRP8U
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 17, 2025
The other day, I wrote a post titled “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” which riffed a bit on the assault on Western societies by the left. I thought it was a pretty good essay, as did most of the commenters, as I recall.
As I noted, the attack on law enforcement is part of a broader effort to undermine and eventually destroy our society itself. It is not about “improving” what we have, but replacing it with what they want. It stems from a revolutionary movement.
The vast majority of cops go through their careers without ever drawing their weapon. They might unholster it in preparation for needing it. Now our geniuses at the City Council want to remove even that potential life saving action, which almost never follows to an actual draw.…
— Bronxilla (@bronxilla) February 4, 2026
🚨NYC Council Wants NYPD Cops To Hesitate During Life & Death Encounters
NYC Council Member Mercedes Narcisse wants the NYPD to declare “Unholstering a weapon a use of force”. This bill like the others incompetently does not define what a “weapon” is.
Is a firearm, a can of pepper stay, a night stick or asp considered a “weapon” ? Well we don’t know.
When would “unholstering” said weapon be considered a “use of force” ? Do you have to point it at an individual or would just taking the weapon out be considered a use of force that must be documented and stay on the officers permanent record for all eternity ?
Let’s say officers responds to a 911 call of an apparent burglary. The officers arrive on scene they observe a door kicked in an a burglar arm ringing. They put over the radio they have arrived, take their firearms out and do a sweep of the home to ascertain if the alleged perpetrators is still in the home. The search yields negative results. Do they have to fill out a “use of force” report ?
Well according to this bill yes and then after a few of these each month the NYPD will deem them a “use of force recidivist”, place them on monitoring which will ultimately have cops seconding guessing themselves and lead to the unnecessary and avoidable death of an officer.
As liberal as New York City has been, it has not really been Ground Zero for this movement. San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland are more consistently anti-law enforcement than New York City for whatever reason, perhaps because the NYPD has a longer, grittier, more blue-collar history, or perhaps because the mayors and governors of the city have more constraints placed on them due to the centrality of the city to the US economy.
New “SAFE-T act” victim is a child who was sexually assaulted by a released criminal. Congratulations to Illinois Democrats. https://t.co/qvmkl8UUWt
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) February 3, 2026
As bad as New York City has become at times, the baseline for sanity in law enforcement has been higher than in the most insane leftist cities.
I’m pretty sure that this trend is in danger under the new Mamdani administration, despite the fact that even HE had to assure the financial community and the large elite there that he would not go whole hog on abandoning criminal justice.
Mamdani, after all, is a communist politician, which means he is at least two kinds of liar.
Mamdani, I expect, will use a similar strategy to defang the police as he is trying to use to seize private property in the housing market. Rather than a straight-up seizure in the latter, or an outright defunding in the former, he will use regulatory power to slowly strangle the police as he will the private housing market.
Changing the rules is far less transparent than simply defunding the police, just as creating onerous regulations that end in property seizures is far more palatable and legally justifiable than simply seizing apartment buildings. It may be less satisfying to use a “boil the frog” strategy, but it may be a surer way to get the result you want.
The left long ago adopted the “Long March Through the Institutions” strategy as superior to outright revolutions, which do not work in advanced societies. Now, Antifa is still using a modified insurgency approach, and they have in fact succeeded to a certain extent in cities like Portland and Seattle, but I am pretty sure that strategy is not easily exported to less…weinie?…cities. Even San Francisco might not tolerate Antifa takeovers, although it may just be that there is no need to even try.
New Yorkers are a different breed. The First Responders in NYC have a grit that more mirrors the Marines than you would find in a bike cop in Portland. And New Yorkers are much more friendly to law enforcement than Mamdani likely expects, given his social circle. After all, New York City elected Giuliani, kept Bloomberg in to keep up law enforcement, and when things got bad, put in Adams, an actual cop.
Mamdani will likely get away with many of his socialist policies, but I am not so certain that New Yorkers will be as friendly to him if the city’s safety begins to decline.
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