Denver Decides To Send Drones Instead Of Cops In Response To 911 Calls - Ideology Trumps Public Safety

Denver is broke. It has had to slash its police and fire budgets because it is prioritizing the provision of aid to illegals over services for law-abiding citizens. As part of its cost-cutting moves, Denver has now announced that if you call 911 it may send a drone instead of a police officer. The drone will check out the situation and film what is happening.

That will be very useful to you as you are being murdered or raped.

Understand that we are not talking about robocop here. The police are not sending some futuristic robot to your location capable of dealing with an armed intruder. That would be scary enough for other reasons. The police are sending a quadcopter that looks much like the one you may play with at home or which wedding photographers use. It can send video back to the location from which it was dispatched. That’s it.

The cuts to the police budget completely undo plans to bring on new recruits. Denver was already spending less than most big cities on public safety, and this just made it worse. Ironically, one of the specific problems driving the plan to bring on more cops was the slow response time to 911 calls. Presumably, with the drones that response time will now improve. It just won’t matter, because all the drone can do is watch you get victimized.

It should also be noted that the move to the use of drones will not do anything about the extreme delays people are experiencing in Denver just getting an operator to answer a 911 call. There are regular reports of people waiting on line for 15-20 minutes for a 911 call to be answered. In a lot of situations it is not going to matter whether they send police officers or a drone after that kind of delay.

According to the National Emergency Number Association, 90% of 911 calls should be picked up within the first 15 seconds, with 95% answered within the first 20 seconds.

The latest FBI data shows that Denver ranks near the top for crime among 226 cities with populations over 100,000. It ranks in the top 10% in seven of these ten crime categories – 3^rd in property crime, 4^th in motor vehicle thefts, and 20^th in both aggravated assault and overall violent crime.

Since Denver is doing such a good job managing its resources, it has decided to put out a guide for other cities so they can follow its lead and make feeding and housing illegals a priority.

“We are thrilled that you are interested in creating a welcoming environment for migrants in your city. As part of Denver’s welcoming approach, we use the term “newcomers” to refer to migrants, recognizing that they are new to our city and embracing a more inclusive language. This playbook is a guide divided into two sections, offering recommendations and strategies for successfully integrating newcomers into your city.”

Denvergov.org

The extent of the crisis Denver is facing is almost unfathomable. The city has determined that roughly 10% of its entire budget now goes to paying for people in the country illegally. The Mayor has directed every city agency to prepare to have its budget slashed by 10-15%. These are not frills we are talking about. We are talking about the residents of Denver losing essential services. Nevertheless, Denver continues to maintain its status as a “sanctuary city.”

Take a moment and consider the impact of what we are talking about. We did not establish 911 centers so people could check the time of day or inquire about the weather. We set up this system nationwide so that people facing life-or-death situations could rapidly summon emergency assistance.

It’s 3 am, and somebody is climbing in your window or has already kicked in your door. You need help right now and that help needs to be in the form of a trained, armed police officer who can handle the situation. Sending a drone to fly over your house does not address any of your concerns or needs.

The reality is this. Denver has created a crisis by taking on the task of providing food, shelter, education, and health care to tens of thousands of people who chose to break our laws and enter our country illegally. Every day it renews its commitment to that course of action by proclaiming that it is a sanctuary for these people. The obvious, common-sense solution to the crisis is to change course and stop rewarding people who have broken the law.

The ideologues who run the city have no intention of doing so because to them this is about a lot more than just budgets. It is about fundamentally changing the country. These are, after all, the same people who not so very long ago were all for defunding the police on other grounds. So, instead, Denver has chosen to adopt the fiction that flying a drone over your house while you are being robbed and murdered is the equivalent of sending a police officer to save your life.

Ideology trumps public safety.