Among the anti-police leftists who have pushed for defunding law enforcement in recent years, a common response to concerns about public safety involves replacing police officers with counselors or other professionals trained to deal with specific situations.
Of course, the inherent danger associated with a career in law enforcement is that officers never know what they might encounter upon responding to a call. While there is arguably a place for unarmed professionals to aid in certain cases, the idea that police are unnecessary has been met with fierce backlash from many on the right.
For his part, however, President Joe Biden came down firmly on the side of his party’s far-left wing during a meeting with mayors from across the country at the White House earlier this month.
“When a cop turns up in a domestic violence case, or someone’s standing on an edge of a bridge, they don’t need a cop,” he claimed.
BIDEN: "When a cop turns up in a domestic violence case or someone is standing on the edge of a bridge, they don't need a cop, they need a psychologist." 🤡 pic.twitter.com/4dtVgYY2iQ
— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) January 20, 2023
A domestic violence victim might disagree with his assessment, but Biden nevertheless continued with his point and reiterated that such situations actually call for “a psychologist” instead of a police officer.
“I’m serious!” he concluded. “We’re beginning to understand all this again.”
The fact that Biden openly advocated for sending psychologists to de-escalate a situation that could easily involve an armed subject or a person under the influence of drugs resulted in almost immediate backlash from his critics.
During an event marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Biden offered additional thoughts regarding law enforcement, which also drew criticism from pro-police advocates.
After slamming Republicans for rejecting progressive calls for fundamental police reform, the president asserted: “We have to retrain cops as to why you shouldn’t always shoot with deadly force. The fact is, if you need to use your weapon, you don’t have to do that.”
In its response to Biden’s rhetoric, the Detectives’ Endowment Association wrote that his “suggestion that cops should ‘shoot someone in the leg’ if they’re coming at them is insulting and demonstrates his incompetence & inability to understand the grave dangers cops face as they protect the public and themselves from violent, heartless criminals.”
