Ideas have consequences and when people are getting hurt, stabbed or killed even, you realize defunding the police was always a stupid idea. Unfortunately, the Alberta NDP hasn't figured that out yet and as everyday life has never seemed more precarious in the province's downtown cores and on its transit systems, Rachel Notley perversely continues to run candidates who have in the past voted to diminish police protection for regular Albertans. .First, not to overstate the case, how precarious has life become?. Rebecca SchulzAlberta United Conservative Party candidate Rebecca Schulz (Calgary-Shaw) said crime is a top-of-mind issue for people. .Ask the woman stabbed and robbed earlier this year on the Edmonton transit system for her hand bag. Or the elderly man who had his throat cut on his way to work on the Calgary C-Train by an already convicted felon. Or the Edmonton man who witnessed a machete attack on the city transit system. One could go on but a quick search for 'stabbed' in the Western Standard's records brings up 174 stories over the last few years, some of them heart-achingly avoidable: A man who police say failed to comply with a release order is now charged with multiple stabbings a few days ago in Calgary's downtown core..As MLA Rebecca Schulz stated in a campaign-style address this week, "In Calgary alone, of the 45 persons charged with homicides in 2021, 2022 and 2023 to date, at least 23 were on release" at the time of the incidents that led to charges.".Why does our justice system let these people loose?.And, why does our Alberta NDP run candidates who think the police are vicious thugs?.This is not a desperate rhetorical question. It's a real question the NDP must answer. Several of its candidates who've not only been strident in demanding Alberta police forces be defunded — a sadly dishonest attempt to capitalize on the U.S.-based Black Lives Matter movement — but have doubled down with vicious personal attacks on the police themselves.. Druh Farrell .Cases in point: In Edmonton, where 26 homicides were committed by people on some kind of release, Rod Loyola — tempted occasionally, it seems, by abhorrent associations — tweeted that an Edmonton Police Service badge 'gives you the right to beat up citizens and not have to face criminal charges.' Loyola is the sitting NDP MLA for Edmonton Ellerslie. Druh Farrell, whose lengthy career as a Calgary city councillor can only be attributed to voter apathy, thinks the police are wife-beaters. In a Twitter posting she muses, "I can't help wondering about domestic abuse within law enforcement families. There's some sick rage there. I bet it goes home with them and the outcome goes largely unreported.".Farrell wants to represent Calgary-Bow for the NDP. As long as we're betting, I bet she would make a lousy representative for the good people down by the river, but a fit match nevertheless for other NDP candidates such as Edmonton-South's NDP hopeful Rhiannon Hoyle, a past advocate of freezing the Edmonton police budget and sitting Edmonton-Highlands-Norwood incumbent Janis Irwin who in an Instagram post, shared the #DefundthePolice hashtag..The list above is illustrative, rather than exhaustive. Those wanting more should check out Rakhi Pancholi, for example (the sitting MLA for Edmonton-Whitemud) who bizarrely fears any money saved from the law and order budget might find its way to large corporations. Then there's Lethbridge-East candidate Rob Miyashiro who, as a city councillor, supported a motion to cut a million dollars out of the Lethbridge police budget..There seems to be something in the NDP mentality that can comfortably divorce cause from effect. It enables them to cheerfully overspend revenues and run up an $80 billion debt, drive wedges between children and their parents, and to the present point, blithely assume you can punish an institution that progressives have designated (on the basis of a U.S. example) as bad guys — the police — without either just cause or consequence..In this as much else, they show not even the understanding God gave a goose..First, when the call goes out to defund the police, there are two messages..What the NDP wants you to hear is they're woke, progressive and sensitive to victims (as they see it) of 'the system.'.The other message is what the criminal element hears, the addicted and those unworthily released on bail: "Nobody cares. Do what you want. Nothing will happen." And as a result they do, and the very idea of behavioural limits flies out the window. Hence the random violence that exploded across the country since the defund slogan went mainstream a few years ago. Too many people now think it's OK..And nobody lives more in fear than those who use public transit, which is the second thing the NDP doesn't understand..Never mind public transit is no climate-change alternative to the car if people are afraid to use it. The larger point is people who cannot afford a car have no other option than public transit to get to work, school or college, as Western Standard reporter Arthur Green's excellent reporting attests. They're already poor, marginalized and living on the edge, and they're the real victims here, as they daily risk sharing a ride with people shooting up, sitting in pools of their own urine or even having sex in the seat opposite..So whose side is the NDP on? Is it not people such as these that NDP Leader Rachel Notley purports to represent? They claim to speak up for the little guy, but it's Danielle Smith's UCP that is actually doing something about it. Meanwhile the NDP runs candidates who libel police officers, think there should be fewer of them and that more social workers instead is the solution..Enough. In a perfect world, Notley — a person who I have often suspected has more sense than her party allows her to reveal — would simply strike these names from the slate. Recognizing how very hard that would be for her at this stage there's still time, however, for her to demand any NDP candidate who publicly endorsed defunding the police, recant as a condition of their continued candidacy. .This is one of those life-and-death issues you hear about, and the decay of our society obliges us to face it before we become prisoners in our own homes sitting fearfully in our front rooms, left to pray the craziness will happen to somebody else but not us. The message needs to be clear: We're not prepared to live like this, criminality must be brought under control and the police deserve our respect..One thing is for sure: People who don't make the connection between an orderly society and an efficient, well-motivated police force, don't belong in public office..If Notley will not act, the voting public must.
