Mayor Peary was not the only politician saying that their police force lacked “adequate resources” to deal with guns, gangs and crime. The television news was and is full of politicians making these statements.

Of course “resources” is politico speak for taxpayer dollars and “inadequate resources” is politico speak for more taxpayer dollars. In other words – tax increases.

The vital question that Mayor Peary and the other assorted politicians have all ignored is “What is an adequate level of resources in terms of taxpayer dollars?”

One can only hope that this failure is political self-interest and not because it never occurred to the politicians to ask “What is “adequate,” what is enough taxpayer dollars?”

Political self-interest because trying to solve social problems using the police, the courts and incarceration creates a black hole into which as many tax dollars as the politicians can wring from the public will disappear – with no discernable effect.

Doubt that? Examine the evidence.

Over the past 7+ decades society has spent more and more money on police services; increased spending which has had no discernable effect on the growth and the problems associated with addiction. Over seventy years of law enforcement and these social issues have grown larger and more costly each of those 70+ years.

This continuing of behaviour that has been repeatedly demonstrated to be so ineffectual as to be pointless is understandable for the police and the politicians. Under this policy the police not only get to keep their jobs but to expand their bureaucratic empires; the politicians get to keep their bogeymen and whipping boys for public hate and fear mongering at election time.

Getting off the merry-go-round of doing the same thing over and over and over hoping that one of these decades (centuries?) the outcome will change would provide the opportunity to stop the continuous haemorrhaging of tax dollars into this black hole.

Focusing on the underlying realities of these social problems, rather than what ideology says is true or what one believes is true or what one wants to be true, would open the door to making policy choices that would acheive positive outcomes in addressing these social problems.

I don’t hold out much hope for this behaviour change until the cost of staying on the merry-go-round of this behaviour becomes so painful to the public they have no other options but to demand a change in approach/behaviour.

In the meantime in this time of economic downturn, with city council’s seeking cutbacks and restraint (except Abbotsford’s council), lower mainland police forces will receive millions of dollars in increases to their budgets.

For all those decades of failure and being ineffectual to the point of open gang warfare on our streets the Police are rewarded with million dollar budget increases.

Irony of the first order.