Of course, California’s nearly 80,000 sworn officers don’t bother with the small-time grift of stealing electronics during civil unrest. Instead, they prefer to sack the treasuries of the governments that employ them, in both good times and bad.

In communities across our state, the escalating salaries, benefits, and pensions of police are swallowing up municipal budgets—and crowding out the other services, from libraries to summer programs, that poorer Californians depend on most. Over the past 40 years, police spending more than doubled, while parks, recreation, and maintenance budgets remained flat or declined. Police departments are by far the largest piece of any local budget, often consuming at least one-third of the general fund (as in my San Gabriel Valley hometown) and more than half of discretionary revenues.

As policing costs have come to dominate city finances, the police have gained nearly unchecked political power. Police unions, enriched by higher dues from well-paid officers, make the campaign contributions that determine who wins local races. So city council members rarely move to curb the pay or power of police officers who installed them in office. The result is that in many places in California, the city government does not run the police department; the police department runs the city.

This flawed local government structure deserves more attention in our current crisis—because it provides part of the answer to the question Americans are asking: Why does abusive, racist, and deadly police behavior keep happening? The deeper response to that question starts not with Twitter-fueled conspiracy theories about the protestors who have taken over our streets, but rather in recognizing just how thoroughly our police have taken over our city halls.

Police dominance of municipal budgets is a problem all over the country, but it’s most extreme in California. Our 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers—that includes police, sheriffs, and prison guards—are the highest paid in America. California consistently ranks, along with New York and Alaska, among the national leaders in spending on police ($414 per resident, compared to a national average of $354).

The peculiarities of California governance have long accentuated police power, as well as its costs. While local budgets were limited by the Prop 13-tax system, the “maintenance of effort” provisions in the state constitution—via Proposition 172, approved by voters in 1993—required local governments to maintain their spending on police and other public safety personnel. So police budgets, constitutionally, were programmed to gobble up ever higher shares of a limited local tax base.

Then things got worse. The full-scale police looting of municipal budgets began 20 years ago, when unions forced changes in pension rules that made it possible for officers to retire as early as age 50, with pensions that would be nearly as high as their salaries. These pension changes were both retroactive and permanent, and included easily-abused rules that allowed cops to maneuver to spike their pensions astronomically. A Los Angeles program allowed police officers to “retire” briefly and pocket part of their pension and salaries in a lump sum; the current LAPD Chief Michel Moore used it to take home $1.27 million.

With cops also receiving generous disability benefits and costly retiree health coverage, cities have experienced a crushing increase in their retirement costs. In effect, California cities are paying for two police forces—the current one and the retired one. And the last decade of recovery did not produce enough new revenues to keep up with these increases in police salaries and retirement benefits. (Firefighter pay and benefits also have taken big bites out of cities).

These escalating police costs add an irony to the current crisis on our streets. Today’s young protestors will get less in local services because they are paying for the unaffordable retirements of the cops who are using tear gas and rubber bullets against them. The police really should be kinder to their benefactors.

In another irony, police response to today’s protests will only add to another rising municipal cost: legal settlements. In recent years, cities have seen multimillion-dollar increases in amounts paid to settle lawsuits over police shootings, use-of-force, and in-custody deaths. Look for the current police-community clashes to produce hundreds of millions of dollars in new settlements, ultimately paid for by the taxpayers suffering under COVID and curfews.

Maddeningly, all the massive increases in police budgets haven’t given us more policing. Most cities have fewer sworn officers than they did in 2008. The lack of personnel was apparent in recent days, as police departments struggled to muster enough officers to protect property from vandalism, arson, and looting.

To be fair, California police are neither irredeemable nor unaware. Police collaborated with their critics to negotiate pioneering state legislation last year that limits police use of force. Some cities, notably Richmond, have transformed police-community relations.

And the LAPD, once a paramilitary citadel, is now a national model of community responsiveness and diversity, with two-thirds of officers now hailing from ethnic or racial minorities. Watching police and protestors up close recently in L.A.’s Fairfax district, I was struck by how the protestors were more male and white than the cops facing them.

But police departments have faced little pressure to surrender any of their local fiscal and political power—until now. Researchers at Black Lives Matter are building a strong case for rolling back local police budgets. They successfully targeted Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s initial budget proposal, which offered deep cuts in virtually every city program except the LAPD, which got a 7 percent increase. After activists launched a “People’s Budget” to replace police spending with money for the homeless and renters, the mayor announced he would trim the police budget instead. Nationally, some activists even want to end police departments altogether.

That’s unlikely to happen, but California’s system of local government must change so that police no longer dominate our cities. This means empowering citizens to challenge police power in city hall, and perhaps forcing police to work under neighborhood service departments with a broader sense of community needs.

But first, let’s stop the looting.

The post To Rein in California’s Cops, Reclaim City Hall appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Then show it. Defy your state and national governments—and refuse to get a “Real ID.”

There are bad ideas. There are very bad ideas. And then there is Real ID—a concept so dangerous and fraudulent that it deserves to be the target of a massive boycott by patriots of all stripes.

“Real ID” is the term for state driver’s licenses that meet federal guidelines approved by Congress during George W. Bush’s administration. The requirements are only now being enforced by the Trump administration. As of October 1, 2020, you will not be allowed to use a driver’s license to board a domestic flight—or to enter federal facilities or buildings where you would have to show ID—unless that driver’s license is a Real ID.

A Real ID driver’s license will have a star on it, but otherwise might not look much different than the one you already have. The difference is that you have to produce more documents to get one. These may include an original birth certificate, a social security card, a marriage license if your name has changed, two proofs of residence, and other documents to prove that you reside lawfully in the United States.

Such requirements may sound like they provide more security, but in fact the opposite is true. The acts of forcing people to submit more identification and then putting that personal information in databases actually introduces new risks. Real ID will make it easier for hackers and terrorists to steal our identities, and for governments and corporations to discriminate against us.

And by making Real ID a requirement for travel within the country, the American government is effectively creating an “internal passport” of the sort that oppressive regimes (including North Korea) use to limit their people’s freedom of movement, and to create distinct classes of citizens.

With state governments—including, disgracefully, California’s—now encouraging people to get Real IDs, the best defense is to refuse to comply. If enough Americans opt out, Real ID won’t be able to gain enough of a foothold to be a standard.

Those 100 million Americans without Real IDs, or some federally sanctioned ID like a passport, should refuse to get them. Those of us who have compliant IDs should refuse to present them, and insist on our right to access the airports and federal buildings our tax dollars pay for. Such defiance would create unbearable pressure on airlines, and on our governments, to back away from the rule.

And every patriotic American should be calling, texting, emailing, and annoying the hell out of every elected official and government worker they know until the Real ID is as dead as Stalin, the sort of person who would have appreciated it.

This American horror story started with 9/11, when hijackers used fraudulently purchased Virginia driver’s licenses to board planes, which they then flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. After that, states cracked down on driver’s license fraud and beefed up security measures, and the federal government boosted airport security. There haven’t been any hijackings since.

That should have been the end of it, but the American security state never stops pursuing more control over our lives. So Real ID—imposing onerous new requirements on state-issued IDs, including driver’s licenses—passed Congress in 2005, with little debate, since it was part of a bill that funded tsunami relief.

As states started considering how to comply with Real ID, they became alarmed. Issuing the IDs to all drivers would be costly and violate people’s privacy, without producing any demonstrable improvement in security. Under Real ID, states would be required to link their driver’s license databases together, effectively creating a national database that would be searchable by a federal government already engaged in mass surveillance of our calls and digital communications.

So many states, both blue and red, resisted implementation of Real ID, that the federal government issued a series of delays. When President Obama, a critic of Real ID, was elected, his administration essentially ignored the requirement.

But the xenophobic Trump administration has revived Real ID in 2017, claiming it was needed to protect the country against foreigners. The Department of Homeland Security applied pressure by setting an October 2020 deadline for all states to issue Real IDs. Most states quickly surrendered because of carrots (more federal money), sticks (the fear that their citizens would be unable to board planes, creating anger and economic costs), and the politics of looking weak on security. Three states—New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Oregon—have yet to issue Real IDs, though they have pledged to comply before the deadline.

With the states having caved, regular citizens are the last line of defense against Real ID and its many perils.

Real ID will abet the federal government’s already out-of-control discrimination against immigrants and their families. States like California, which offer driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, have to issue two different kinds of IDs, one Real ID and another that does not conform. This instantly makes a potential target of immigrants—and non-immigrants for that matter—who carry a non-compliant driver’s license. ICE will very likely compare DMV databases to Real ID databases to identify people who didn’t qualify for Real ID.

And that is only part of the problem. Real IDs could quickly become national IDs that might be required for getting a job, renting an apartment, arranging child care, picking up a prescription, boarding a train, making hotel reservations, entering national parks, paying with a credit card, or—eventually—exercising your right to vote. Before long, those who can’t get Real IDs will be second-class citizens.

The whole idea is discriminatory—against Americans. Under Real ID, an international criminal with a valid passport can automatically travel around our country as he or she wishes. But your neighbor who can’t find her certified birth certificate can’t fly Southwest to Phoenix to watch spring training baseball.

Real ID will be harder to get for women who changed their last name upon getting married; since they will have to produce more documents to account for name changes. There are also horror stories about naturalized Americans being denied Real IDs because of bureaucratic suspicions about their foreign birth certificates.

This national nightmare may start at the airports. The travel industry has estimated that 80,000 people would be barred from boarding a plane daily under current laws. Such an event would occasion serious disturbances at airports, and put airlines and the economy at financial risk.

The only thing worse than not having a Real ID might be having one. Real IDs have been called “hacker bait,” since they would give criminals and others another supposedly trusted identification to penetrate. Even worse, because Real IDs are machine readable, they would allow for even wider tracking of our movements and actions. And if you lose a Real ID—or it malfunctions—get ready for bureaucratic nightmares that would make Kafka blush. Newspapers will carry stories about people with Real ID problems who can’t access government offices to resolve them, because they don’t have Real ID.

Real ID will also tie California in knots. The vast majority of the state’s 27 million drivers don’t have Real IDs, and the dysfunctional DMV can’t meet the demand. And the federal government has already proven an unreliable partner in complying with Real ID. In 2018, California issued more than 2 million Real IDs—but then the Trump administration changed the standards for issuance without warning. (Fortunately, those Real IDs remain valid, but must be renewed at the higher standard.)

When I went on the California DMV site to inquire about what I would need to do to get a Real ID, the site told me not to get one until 2022, when my license is up for renewal. That’s because I have a U.S. passport, and can fly or enter a federal facility with that. But most Americans don’t have a passport.

For all these reasons (and more that I don’t have space to list), it’s high time that California and its political leaders stop being distracted by lesser threats—like facial recognition—and focus on protecting us from the immediate threat of Real ID.

The legislature and governor should stop the DMV from issuing any more Real IDs and pass legislation that bars California retailers, landlords, and other institutions from requesting or requiring Real ID. And our Congressional representatives should attach a repeal of Real ID to any and all must-pass legislation. This is a cause well worth shutting down the government over.

Defiance isn’t easy, but it’s our best available strategy in this case. It’s also necessary, because Real ID is incompatible with life in a free society.

The post It’s Unreal Just How Awful ‘Real ID’ Is appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.