Their cited research paper on police presence deterring crime does not fully support his claims. FTA: > Defund advocates often claim that police don’t actuall

Their cited research paper on police presence deterring crime does not fully support his claims. FTA: > Defund advocates often claim that police don’t actually prevent crimes, that they only bust the perpetrators after the fact. But that’s untrue. Police presence deters crime. Arresting career criminals takes them out of circulation. And, most important, effective policing bolsters a community’s faith in government-administered justice. From the cited paper: > Since larger police forces lead to reductions in index crimes, the decline in index crime arrests that we observe suggests that larger police forces reduce serious crime primarily through deterrence rather than by arresting and incapacitating additional offenders. More from the paper: > With respect to the prospect for police hiring to “widen the net" of the criminal justice system, we report mixed conclusions. ... we find evidence that larger police forces lead to large and meaningful increases in low-level “quality of life” arrests, in particular for Black civilians, where the per capita arrest increase for liquor violations and drug possession is 2.5-3 times higher for Black civilians.