Spread the love









Varnell, GA — The entire Varnell Police Department was fired this week and they will not be replaced with new cops. The police department was dissolved by the city council with a 3-1 vote and–contrary to popular fear mongering–the town has not descended into chaos.

On Tuesday, police officers returning from their patrols were told to hand in all their equipment and they were no longer employed.

As the Times Free Press reports, Lieut. Greg Fowler said he was told to spend the day collecting all of the police department’s materials and locking them up in city hall.

The controversial decision by the city council to disband the department was sparked after the police chief, Lyle Grant, was suspended for arresting a city councilman in June.

As the Times reports:

Elected officials wanted to know if he properly handled the case. Grant and Fowler went to the home of Councilman Shane Fowler, who is not related to the city’s lieutenant. Shane Fowler’s wife had complained that he was drunk and loud inside the house. According to a police report, Shane Fowler yelled at the officers and poked them in the chest. About nine days later, an officer took out a warrant for his arrest. Grant said the long delay occurred for a couple reasons. First, he wanted an independent investigator to review the evidence — which really was just the officers’ statements. Second, Grant said he brought the evidence to the mayor and other council members before deciding whether to charge Shane Fowler. Councilman David Owens felt this was an odd way to handle an investigation.

This insanely unprofessional fiasco came to a head in an executive session meeting this week as the council reinstated Grant. However, moments later Councilman Jan Pourquoi made a motion to disband the police department immediately.

Just like that, the police department was no more.

The Times spoke with a detective who came to turn in his equipment Tuesday morning, who said, “for a city to get rid of his police department is absolutely crazy.”

However, as the Free Thought Project has reported numerous times, the idea of a city firing all of its cops is not isolated and has never resulted in out breaks of criminal behavior.

The idea that police protect you is a misconception, as they will seldom prevent violence. They normally show up after the violence or crime has been committed and then try and find a culprit, or not.

The average response time to a 9-1-1 call is 10 minutes nationwide; for poor areas, that time quadruples. In some cases, the dispatchers do not even take the caller seriously and the victim ends up dead when a crime could have actually been prevented.

The reality is that police act as revenue collectors for the state and solely exist to enforce the law only.

In a perfect world, police would show up prior to a crime and stop it, or at least during a crime, but this is simply not a reality.

Police in America also do not “protect and serve.” If you doubt this claim simply refer to Warren v. District of Columbia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the police do not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.

Sure, Varnell, Georgia is a small town and the likelihood of a crime wave bursting on to the scenes is rare regardless of police presence. However, we’ve seen similar situations involving millions. At the end of 2014, for example, the NYPD stopped doing its job after the murder of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu and something amazing happened — crime went down.

The Post reported that arrests were down 66% in the week following the deaths of officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, compared to the same period in 2013.

For certain offenses, the arrest levels are staggeringly low, according to the numbers put out by the Post.

Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame. Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent — from 4,831 to 300. Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241. Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau — which are part of the overall number — dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.

It wasn’t a slowdown — it was a virtual work stoppage. And, in spite of police not writing tickets for jaywalking, arresting people for marijuana possession, and failing to wear their seatbelts, the city of New York did not descend into chaos either.

UPDATE: The town’s mayor has vetoed the decision to disband the police department. However, it is still worth mentioning that without police forces for several days, the town remained just fine. There was no looting, mass robberies, or crime sprees of any sort.

Spread the love









Sponsored Content: