Last summer, the mantra of the left seemed to be “defund the police.” Everyone was screaming about how what we needed to do was defund the police and use that money to use people like social workers to deescalate problems so the police weren’t needed.

Of course, that was roundly mocked by the right. Even I mocked it a fair bit, not so much because I took issue with the ideas of potentially preventing people from becoming criminals but because the approach called for making our streets less safe long before any such efforts could yield benefits.

Now, communities like Atlantic City are so awash in violence, they’re asking for more police.

Two Atlantic City Council members are among those calling for the New Jersey State Police to be brought in to help curb the recent gun violence.

The call for help comes in the wake of a deadly quadruple shooting on the 1700 block of Atlantic Avenue Sunday night.

…

On Monday she was joined by community members and City Council members Latoya Dunston and Moisse Delgado, pleading for help from the state to stop the violence.

“This war has been going on for a long time, it’s not just yesterday. My son will never be able to use his arm again. He got two daughters and a job, what’s he going to do?” said Faulkner.

“Send in some assistance with the state police. We’re told we don’t have enough police officers, then we need to send someone in here that can help us,” said Councilwoman Latoya Dunston of the 2nd Ward.

“Gov. Murphy, thank you for all you’ve done but we need you to come and help us with this situation going on,” said Atlantic City Council Vice President Moisse Delgado.

So much for defunding the police, huh?

Atlantic City isn’t the only community making similar requests. Albany, New York has needed state police help with their violence problem as well.

It seems that many left-leaning cities are abandoning the “defund the police” mantra, but it’s not just in the cities. In fact, it looks like even President Joe Biden has no interest in defunding the police.

The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office, for short) is a component of the Department of Justice (DOJ) that administers grants to state and local (and tribal) police forces.

There are several grant programs, but the biggest one in terms of dollars obligated is the COPS Hiring Program. Funding is provided to state and local governments to hire and/or rehire law enforcement officers. Some funding goes to bonus pay for existing officers, but overall the program does what its name suggests: inflate the size of police departments.

Biden more than doubled its funding in his budget request for fiscal year 2022. This year’s enacted funding is $156.5 million; Biden requested $388 million, or more than all COPS grant programs got in FY2021 combined.

In other words, Biden wants to spend an insane sum to hire more officers, which isn’t something you’d expect to see from a president who supports defunding them.

The problem with “defund the police” is and has always been that it seems to think programs and social workers can yield immediate results when that’s simply not the case. Right now, we have a violence surge throughout the nation. Normally peaceful communities are seeing violent crimes unlikely anything they’ve seen before.

Taking money from policing–something we know helps with crime–to spend on something someone thought might help with crime is an idiotic way to try and keep a community safe and it always was. As a result, the whole “defund the police” thing was doomed to failure from the start.

Now, we can at least move past this stupidity and start letting the police do their freaking jobs.

While they’re at it, hopefully they’ll recognize just how horribly the state’s gun control laws have failed them.