The Problems with the Police and How to Fix Them – A Libertarian Perspective

What to do about the police? Most people are focused on symptoms instead of the larger problem. And brutality, bad as it is, is only a symptom of something bigger. The Problems With the Police, a free eBook by New York Times bestselling author Tom Woods, gets to the bottom of the questions we need answered. How about: why does the public have so little recourse against the police? Why are so many resources devoted to crimes that don’t involve hurting people or stealing? All these problems have the same answer, but so far we haven’t heard it.

The conversation about the future of the police has shifted dramatically since the death of George Floyd on May 25. At first most people doubtless assumed that activists would demand a series of reforms to American police departments. And yet before we knew it, the call to “defund the police” was being heard everywhere. So far, though, calls to defund the police have been fraught with confusion.

On social media, curious observers have wondered how people will acquire security services in the absence of police. In response, many defenders of the “defund the police” cause have impatiently lectured them (“do your research!”), explaining that of course defunding the police doesn’t mean reducing their budget to zero. ‘Defund the police’ means the police will be funded, but we’ll just rethink the way they operate.