Travelers entering the city of Austin, Texas, on interstate highway I-35 are now being greeted with a stark warning, a matched pair of billboards boldly proclaiming, “Enter at Your Own Risk!” They might as well say, “Welcome to Thunder Dome.” The Austin Police department has been defunded, which means anarchy rules.
Police paid for the billboards
The Texas Municipal Police Association paid for two matching billboards. Both are along the main artery of I-35, one facing north and its companion south. “Austin Police Defunded, Enter At Your Own Risk!” This is not a joke or a publicity stunt.
Kevin Lawrence, the Executive Director for the association which sponsored the billboards, insists that “the safety of Austin citizens and visitors has never been more at risk from dangerous policies propagated by their own locally elected officials.” While the cops are furious with city leaders, the outrage stops at the Austin city limits. “We applaud Governor Abbott’s consideration of a legislative proposal that would put the control of the Austin Police Department under state authority.”
Just last week, Governor Greg Abbot suggested that he “would consider putting APD under control of the Texas Department of Public Safety. That move came right after the left-leaning Austin City Council “voted to cut $20 million from the department’s budget immediately.” The Governor pointed out that it isn’t fair and “called upon Texas to pledge not to defund police departments” but there isn’t a whole lot he can do. For now, they’ve resorted to billboards urging traveler’s to keep moving to a safer location before stopping for gas, food, or lodging.
Chief followed out the door by whole command staff
There aren’t any similar billboards in Rochester, New York, but there should be. On Tuesday, Police Chief La’Ron Singletary handed in his badge and walked out the door, leaving Mayor Lovely Warren wondering who would stop the night’s scheduled protests from turning into burning and looting. The second in command quit too. So did five others right on down the line. Welcome to anarchy, they called over their shoulders on the way out.
In Dallas, Police Chief Renee Hall quit, effective at the end of the year. She isn’t upset over funding cuts, she’s mad because her liberal policies didn’t work. Dallas won’t need any warning billboards because this means a shift back to allowing law enforcement to occur again. She followed the liberal party line and instituted reforms like changes on “who could authorize the use of tear gas and how to train for incidents involving mass arrests.” She threw out all the commanders who cracked down on crime to “transform the department to reflect 21st century policing by streamlining the department’s organizational structure to improve efficient work-flow between units, and strengthen effective policy processes.” The police abandoned the city in droves. Chief Hall can’t even staff enough patrol cruisers.
Patriotic Americans don’t need billboards to see that they’ve entered the Twilight Zone when they visit liberal cities. Conservatives are smart enough not to drink the liberal electric Kool-Aid. While it’s true that police have no right to break heads during a peaceful protest, as soon as someone throws a rock or breaks a window, “law enforcement is compelled to keep order.” If the police won’t enforce the law, episodes like what happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin, have shown that Americans can and will take the law into their own hands if they’re forced to do it.