Relevant History

Thinking of defunding the police?  Instapundit weighs in with a history lesson about how people dealt with crime before there were police.

Remember, in the end the police aren’t there to protect the public from criminals, they’re there to protect criminals from the public. Communities dealt with crime long before police were invented, usually in rather harsh and low-due-process ways. The bargain was, let the police handle it instead. No police, no bargain.

Back in the day, a fair number of guilty-appearing innocents were lynched (or shot) by neighbors in a hurry for revenge. They called it "frontier justice."