Defunding Texas

[TexasTowelie]

Public services are always on the chopping block in the Lone Star State, so why is defunding law enforcement so controversial?


Nothing says “Texas” like rodeos, smoked ’cue, and underfunded government services. When public services are cut, Texas always goes big, and the poor suffer the consequences, so why are Gov. Greg Abbott and other elected officials throwing a fit over the mere idea of defunding law enforcement?

From a symbolic standpoint, it’s great to see the Guv putting his foot down to protect a taxpayer-funded service for once, albeit a system that is understood by many to be unsalvageable in its current form given decades of racially driven policing habits and the too-frequent shootings of unarmed Black men and women. Being pulled over for a DWB (driving while Black) is so commonplace that the term has become cliché. Racist policing habits should not be cliché. Racist policing habits should be abolished, and the officers who perpetrate those acts should be ignominiously fired.

In Texas, law enforcement has avoided cuts while other services like mental health, public schools, and health care services are routinely gutted. The Lone Star State enjoys the dual distinction of being dead last in providing mental health services — 51st when the District of Columbia is included, according to Mental Health America — and a leader (seventh) in incarcerating individuals who suffer from mental illness. The relationship between defunding mental health services and jailing the resulting untreated population is well-known. Taxpayers foot that bill while paying into an incarceration system that preys and profits off the unlawyered poor.

Fort Worth police department created the Mental Health Crisis Intervention Team in 2018, but a police review panel recently said that team does not have adequate resources.

Read more: https://www.fwweekly.com/2020/10/07/defunding-texas/