A guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast recently appeared to link police inaction during the Uvalde shootings with the “defund the police” campaign, calling it a “byproduct of what society’s forced the police to become”.
Supporters of the movement believe that moving funding from police departments to other industries could lessen police brutality and racial inequalities that arise between officers and citizens. They have pushed in recent years for government funding to prioritise housing, employment, community health and education instead of law enforcement.
Former US Army sniper Tim Kennedy, who was promoting his latest books Scars and Stripes on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, said a “demonisation” of the police force was underway. He was speaking about the mass shooting in Texas in May that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
“What we’re experiencing right now is a byproduct of what society has forced the police to become, you know, they’re demonising military training for law enforcement,” Mr Kennedy, who was a member of the US Army Special Forces, said.
“And, then, obviously, we just experienced ‘Defund the Police’. And nearly every large city has seen a crazy rise in crime... these large cities that defunded their police... to include Austin, you know, we’ve never seen homicides like this,” he added.
The host, Mr Rogan, commented that the police “don’t train the way special operations train, but yet they’re involved in combat scenarios on a regular basis”.
Mr Kennedy lashed out at the “defund the police” campaign, which has been supported by many progressive politicians, saying that it is ridiculous to assume that “less training and less funding” to officers would result in better policing overall.
“And then the people that they’re protecting, [we’re] going to disarm,” he said, hinting at gun control measures that have come after repeated shooting incidents.
“So the people coming to save them are untrained and unprepared. It’s creating this disastrous situation,” he said.
“So why is it so hard to get something implemented? Like a rigorous training course?” Mr Rogan asked.
Mr Kennedy responded: “I think it’s ignorance”.
“I think the first thing is society, culture right now, we’ve been emasculating the law enforcement for a while,” he claimed. “We have been weakening them and we have been making them ill-equipped to respond to that.”
“And then I think Uvalde is a great example of [police] not [being] properly trained, with broken systems, that are not ready to do the right thing. We will have more of that unless we get them the right training and we get our schools to become hard targets.”
The Uvalde police reportedly did not confront the shooter, even when desperate parents urged them to enter the school, until about one hour after the attack began.
