New York is well and truly on its way to taking a knee in the face of spreading unrest, protests and rioting. That message is coming from the top down this week, with the state’s Governor telling NPR that “If a community doesn’t want its police force, they shouldn’t have it.” Andrew Cuomo made this mind-boggling statement shortly after signing a series of executive orders commanding all of the state’s police forces to be “redesigned.” And how will that be accomplished? We have no idea because the order doesn’t offer any specifics. (Free Beacon)

New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D.) told NPR on Monday that if a community doesn’t want its current police force, “they shouldn’t have it.”

“What the community is now saying, all across this nation, ‘We don’t want this type of police force.’ And if they don’t want it, they shouldn’t have it,” Cuomo said.

Last week, Cuomo signed a package of legislation on police reform following protests over racism and police brutality spurred by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Before getting to the substance (or lack thereof) in the Governor’s remarks, we should first take a look at the vague nature of these most recent executive orders. One of them demands that local governments “redesign their police departments based on community input.” The plans for reimagining the police force must be presented for public comment and then be approved by local councils or legislatures.

That all sounds well and good if you happen to be living in a sane part of the world. But what if a majority of the community has overdosed on MSNBC and their input is to say that they want all of the cops to quit and be replaced with “social justice engineers?” According to the governor’s statements in the interview, they can get their wish, assuming the county legislature or the city council approve the scheme. And these reform plans must be put in place by April 1st of next year. Failure to do so will result in the police forces being “defunded.”

It’s somehow fitting that the deadline to “reform” all of the police forces in the state is falling on April Fool’s Day. Unfortunately, the joke is going to be on the law-abiding citizens of the state. The Governor is throwing around the phrase “police brutality” as if it’s some sort of epidemic rather than some isolated incidents that need to be dealt with on a case by case basis. For most of modern history, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Asking most any citizen if they felt the need for law enforcement to keep them safe and remove the criminal element from their community would produce a resounding answer in the affirmative. But now the mainstream media has been spoonfeeding this madness to the masses for so long that there may actually be communities where a majority will buy this horse hockey and decide to try forgoing the local police.

Of course, a non-criminal proponent of abolishing the police is simply a liberal who hasn’t been robbed, raped or otherwise assaulted yet. When the time comes and you dial 911 only to be informed that a Social Reengineering Specialist will be coming out to see you at the next available opportunity, your vote will change pretty quickly. Let’s just hope that you survive to make it to the next City Council meeting.

At some point, we have to decide whether or not there are any adults left in the room. An idea that should clearly be seen as an insane proposal is now being reported and taken seriously by a significant number of people. And the madness has spread to the highest levels of the state government. I’ve frequently suggested that any of the remaining sane people in New York City flee the place if they have the means to do so. At this point, we may have to expand that advice to cover the entire state.