The resignation of an entire small-town police force in Minnesota over low pay and morale set off alarm bells only three years after the Defund the Police movement and the death of George Floyd sparked anti-cop rioting and looting nationally.
The force in Goodhue, Minn., was reportedly wracked with low morale and recruitment trouble for months, as the now-former chief claimed officers were making only $22 an hour in the municipality of about 1,200.
"Defund the Police lunatics who pine for an anti-cop utopia just got their wish," Washington Times opinion editor Charlie Hurt said Wednesday on "The Five."
Hurt, a Fox News contributor, also reacted to video from Long Island showing a police officer striking a woman with his cruiser who had allegedly been waving a gun and firing it in the air.
After the incident involving an individual identified as Kiber Calderon, the county police chief said the officer "did a great job" with their "split-second decision," according to FOX-5.
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"I couldn't help watching that — I've watched that video, like, 7,000 times," he said, while co-host Greg Gutfeld added the cop likely risked their entire career to subdue the threat, given how police have been treated after striking or detaining suspects on-video.
If Calderon had been killed, the media would have run the video on a loop, Gutfeld added, saying there would be rioting and looting to follow.
"When cops do amazing, good things, you never see it, and when they end up doing bad things, you do. Oftentimes it can be from the same place: Trying to do good sometimes goes bad. In this case, it went well."
He added the Minnesota situation could spark a "great experiment to go private" with the town's police force, citing that "private always does public better."
In some states, certain townships without their own police force often rely on state troopers to cover the jurisdiction.
Gutfeld later referenced Jason Aldean's hit "Try That In A Small Town," saying the Goodhue police force being dissolved could elicit a response like "Try That In A Big Town."
"It almost is an odd compliment that this could be done in a small town… Obviously people think the town's going to survive, right? So you could actually do that… You can't do it in a big town."
Earlier Wednesday, "Outnumbered" co-host Kayleigh McEnany reacted to the incident, saying police face so many troubling "extraneous factors" like no-bail laws and anti-police sentiment.
"We need to protect and prize our police officers," she said on "Outnumbered," noting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis successfully recruited hundreds of police officers with the promise of salary bonuses, citing outflows of law enforcement from blue states.
Media critic Joe Concha added that Goodhue, Minn.'s, reported $22 hourly salary likely boiled down to around $13 hourly post-taxes, which he called ridiculous for such a dangerous profession.
"So if you work a 40-hour work week, that's $520 that you're taking home," he said. "How do you live on that if you have a family?"
"It's not like you have a low-risk type of job, you know? You could be shot."
He added police are also tired of being branded "racist" by liberal activists, and upset with the "guilty-until-proven-innocent" mantra emanating from the media.
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