Boulder, Atlanta underscore our need for police

Activists and advocates who call for the defunding of police departments — or their outright abolition — are notably quiet following such horrific acts as the fatal spa shooting in Atlanta and Monday’s supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colo., which resulted in the deaths of 10 people.

That’s because such atrocities underscore the harsh reality that violent people bent on destruction exist in our society, and we need brave men and women willing to jump into the fray to protect us and make the perpetrators pay for their crimes.

Last month, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill that would prevent cities and counties from making deep cuts in local police budgets. Republicans and Democrats had been duking it out over funding and police misconduct issues.

As Atlanta’s NBC affiliate Alive11 reported, state Rep. Renitta Shannon made a case against the Republican-sponsored bill, and started reading a list of 19 names connected to prominent cases associated with alleged misconduct by law enforcement, starting with Eric Gardner and Michael Brown.

But police reforms, called for in the wake of last year’s killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, are too often conflated with a perceived need to lessen or eliminate police presence in cities and towns. It’s a conversation that continues across the country, and often aligns with anti-police sentiment.

Republicans in Georgia pointed out that reform efforts that include “defunding” police departments threaten public safety.

“When we have local governments that are out of control and putting lives at risk in our state, we have to step in,” state Rep. Houston Gaines said.

He wrote the measure, which would prevent cities and counties from cutting police budgets by more than 5% in a year. Policing is no place to scrimp. In Atlanta, the shooting suspect, Robert Aaron Long, was arrested hours after the incident.

According to the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, they posted Long’s photo on their social media page and his family identified him. Authorities tracked his cell phone to ping his location. A trooper then used a precision immobilization technique — or PIT — to stop the suspect’s vehicle on a Georgia Highway.

Impressive and necessary police work.

We need people to catch the bad guys.

And sometimes those whose job it is to protect and serve pay the ultimate price, as did Boulder police officer Eric Talley, 51, first on the scene of Monday’s supermarket shooting in Colorado. He leaves seven children.

According to the Denver Post, suspect Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa walked in to the King Soopers market around 2:30 p.m. and began firing. Police flocked to the scene, and he was taken into custody an hour later. Nine people were killed in addition to the officer.

The officers on the scene did what police all over the country do when all hell breaks loose — they run toward it. Some don’t make it back.

Unfortunately, chaos can no longer be considered an outlier. America has seen shootings in malls, movie theaters and schools. As Boston learned in 2013, guns aren’t always the weapon of choice. The Tsarnaev brothers used pressure cookers fashioned into bombs.

Incidents such as these should inform discussions about defunding — or abolishing — police departments.