Economics professor at George Mason University, Walter Williams, is concerned about the growing trend to hire armed police officers to patrol university campuses and hospitals.

In Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins University wants to hire 100 armed police for its campuses and hospital, because people are scared to walk to their cars.

Temple University, in Philadelphia, has the largest university police force in the United States, with 130 officers.

When Williams attended Temple University night school in 1957 there were no campus police. And when people attended the Johns Hopkins and other universities near black neighbourhoods during the 1940s and 50s they weren’t armed camps.

At the black Philadelphia schools from 1942 to 1954 the only policeman he saw was during a boring lecture safety. Now, Philadelphia schools employ over 350 police officers. “What has happened to get us to this point?” he asks.

More police will no doubt have some impact on criminal and disorderly behaviour - but how much can be achieved without creating a police state.

The underlying problem, especially among black Americans, is family breakdown and the absence of fathers. The numbers of blacks born to unmarried women has increased from 11% in 1938, to 25% in 1965, and now to 75%. Even in the past under slavery more black children were raised by their natural mothers and fathers than today.

Children with an absent father are five times more likely to be poor and commit crime. They are nine times more likely to become school dropouts and 20 times more likely to be imprisoned.

Today’s problems among black people have little to do with racial discrimination or past slavery.

For more information, see Police Aren't Enough published by Freedom's Journal Institute:

https://freedomsjournalinstitute.org/latest-news/opinion/police-arent-enough/