Defund The Police Responds To British Policing’s Ongoing History Of Violence
Fleetwood & Lea are keen to distinguish between US and British policing, both historically and in their contemporary forms. While there are differences there are also considerable similarities. They concede that police in the US are a legitimate target for defunding through being âhistorically tainted by slavery and labour repressionâ . However, this is not unique to the US indeed, Fleetwood & Lea themselves point out that the British police were introduced in the metropole for the âdisciplining of the poorest sections of the working classâ and in a colonial context for âpacificationâ . Their argument for difference ultimately depends on colonial amnesia. Just as policing in the US developed simultaneously in the east coast cities and the slave economies of the south, British policing developed in its colonies at the same times as its metropole. Personnel, ideas and strategies moved between settler colonies, slave colonies, extractive colonies and the metropole .
The Case Of Camden New Jersey
Police budgets sometimes shrink after recessions, as jobs disappear, tax dollars dwindle and federal funding is redirected. The Marshall Projectreported in June 2020 that community trust eroded and there were more complaints about officer use of force when police budgets were cut in Memphis and Chicago after the Great Recession.
But, as The notes, there is at least one fundamental difference between recessionary reductions and the defund discussion. Local police budget cuts due to waning financial resources seek the survival of the force. Calls to defund the police over the past year are aimed at rethinking policing entirely.
Camden, New Jersey, often comes up as an example of a city that reframed its approach to policing and reduced crime. It also spent more to do so.
Camden disbanded its police force in 2013 after one of the citys most violent years on record. Camden County took over and in May 2013 formed a new department, the Camden County Police Department, to patrol the city.
CCPD instituted community-based policing tactics along with new technology, such as a video observation platform covering a six-block radius.
Overall crime per 100,000 Camdenites from 2012 to 2020, according to CCPD data, while the number of shooting homicides fell by 68%.
Different Interpretations Of Defund
Defund the police is something of a Rorschach inkblot test people bring their own interpretations to the phrase.
Defund the police means reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality, writes University of Maryland sociologist Rashawn Ray in a June 2020 Brookings Institution blog post. Thats it. Its that simple.
Around the same time as Rays writing, activist and educator wrote a New York Times opinion essay titled, Yes, we mean literally abolish the police.
We are not abandoning our communities to violence, Kaba writes. We dont want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.
Criminologist Brooklynn Hitchens, an incoming assistant professor at the University of Maryland, put it like this: I do feel police are deeply corrupt and troubled and I dont know how to work within a system that is that corrupt, she says. But, at its core, defund the police is about reallocation of funds to more social service-based agencies, whether its housing or mental health.
Peter Moskos, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, questions why money for expanding social services should come from police coffers.
Im all for funding mental health issues and homeless issues, but the idea that it has to come from the 5% of city budgets that goes to law enforcement is absurd, he says.
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A Range Of Policing Futures
Law professors Stephen Rushin and Roger Michalski, writing in the Florida Law Review in 2020, suggest that widespread defunding of police departments could increase crime rates, hamper efforts to control officer misconduct, and reduce officer safety.
Rushin and Michalski take defund at face value, meaning police budget cuts. Instead of defunding police departments, they propose states redistribute policing funds equitably to localities, including money for officer training and accountability efforts.
Just as some state legislatures have passed revenue-sharing initiatives designed to equalize the availability of public goods such as education, so, too, should states act to equalize the funding of local police departments according to need, they write.
In contrast to a redistributive funding framework, Ohio State University law professor Amna Akbar argues in a December 2020 California Law Review article that scholars need to take seriously activist calls for abolishing the police. Akbar writes:
Some prominent law enforcement professionals have indicated an openness for shifting police responsibilities away from non-criminal situations.
University of Arkansas criminologist Jordan Blair Woods, in a forthcoming Stanford Law Review article, suggests redirecting another core function away from police: traffic enforcement.
Outside The United States
In Canada, politicians in major cities have expressed interest in diverting some police funds. In Toronto, city councilors Josh Matlow and Kristyn Wong-Tam have planned to propose a 10% cut to the police budget. Doctors for Defunding the Police have advocated for widespread reforms. In Montreal, Mayor Valérie Plante has said she is in talks about the police budget.
In Scotland, a violence reduction unit run by Police was set up in 2005, which aims to prevent violence with educational and outreach programs.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair criticized defund the police in a 2021 article for the New Statesman, describing it as “voter-repellent” and “the left’s most damaging political slogan since ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat.'” Blair furthermore claimed that the slogan “leaves the right with an economic message which seems more practical and a powerful cultural message around defending flag, family and fireside traditional values.” Both the leaderships of the British Labour Party and the Conservative Party have pledged not to defund any British police forces.
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What Does Defund The Police Mean
It’s a common misconception that “defunding the police” means completely stripping law enforcement of all of their funding. While while some organizations are indeed calling for the abolishment or dismantling of police altogether, “defunding the police” simply means reducing police department budgets and redistributing those funds towards essential social services that are often underfunded, such as housing, education, employment, mental health care, and youth services.
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The idea is not as radical as it initially seems, as Christy E. Lopez, a professor at Georgetown Law School and a co-director of the school’s Innovative Policing Program, recently wrote in an op-ed published in The Washington Post.Defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need, she explained. It means investing more in mental-health care and housing, and expanding the use of community mediation and violence interruption programs.
What Are Some Of The Ideas For Rethinking Policing
Some proposals call for ending no-knock warrants and military-style raids. Others seek to restrict the flow of military-style gear to police departments and change police tactics used against protesters. One group described an idea for policing in which people attending events look out for one another but emergency workers are standing by in the background, handing out water and ready to step in if needed.
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How Are Lawmakers Addressing The Calls To Defund Police
In the face of urgent demands for change from protestors and activists, more and more lawmakers across the United States have been answering the pressing calls to defund police. In Minneapolis, the City Council has already unanimously voted to disband its police force. Los Angeles city officials recently cut $150 million from its police budget to reallocate the funds to services and programs for communities of color. Other cities have followed suit, with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio vowing to slash $1 billion from the NYPD’s budget and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announcing a plan to redistribute $12 million from the police budget to community programs.
As of early June, at least 17 U.S. cities including Los Angeles, New York City, and Boston have proposed some form of action to defund the police. Such recent changes certainly demonstrate that protests and calls for change are being heard and considered by governments and law officials.
Why Defund The Police
Today’s police are tasked with responding to a vast variety of social issues and crises, from homelessness to mental illness yet they’re often not trained to handle such tasks on the daily. Proponents of defunding the police argue that investing in public health and social services, rather than in police, is a more appropriate and effective means to meet the public safety needs of a community specifically, these social services would address societal issues such as poverty, homelessness, and mental health more directly, therefore acting as a better deterrent to crime than law enforcement, which activists point out have historically been a harmful institution of systemic racism.
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Despite the fact that police are often poorly equipped to address such societal problems, police department budgets commonly make up a large portion of many cities’ overall budgets, and often significantly exceed funds for education, employment, and other critical social services. In fact, it’s estimated that over $100 billion is spent on policing nationwide every year. Last year, New York City allocated $6 billion to its police department a budget that exceeded more than that of the health department, homeless services, youth and community development, and workforce development combined.
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Why Not Just Reform Police Departments
Though many politicians argue for reforming police departments using commonsense solutions like installing civilian review boards and banning warrior style training, which instructs officers to view all encounters as dangerous and to prioritize their own safety, advocates argue that incremental reform has failed to combat police violence in any meaningful way. After a white officer shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014, for instance, there was a nationwide push for officers to wear body cameras, which advocates predicted would improve police accountability. It has not been successful. An extensive study of more than 2,000 police officers, published in 2017, found that the body cameras had almost zero effect on deterring officers from acting with unnecessary force and, as evidenced by the recent police shooting of David McAtee, officers can simply turn off their cameras. Another example: The NYPD banned choke holds more than two decades ago, which didnt stop Officer Daniel Pantaleo from holding Eric Garner in one until he stopped breathing.
Police unions, which wield great political power, also push back against criminal-justice reform that would promote transparency and accountability. Amid the protests, pressure has mounted within unions that represent police officers notably, the AFL-CIO to expel all police affiliates many of those putting pressure on the unions also support defunding.
Violent Crime Is Rising
As an array of American voices rose around defund the police, so did violent crime. Homicide rates increased 30% in 2020 in 34 large U.S. cities, according to the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice, a non-governmental coalition of 14 current and former police chiefs, elected leaders and community advocates.
Criminologists hesitate to point to a single factor to explain rising homicide rates. 2020 was a unique year, considering the pandemic, racial justice protests, more gun purchases, widespread layoffs, school and office closures, and a hotly contested presidential election.
Last week, the White House announced a new strategy to address violent crime. At a news conference, Biden struck a holistic tone, with more, not less, federal funding directed toward policing. Biden stressed the $350 billion pool, part of the American Rescue Plan, available to state and local governments to hire more police.
The White House will also work with 16 cities, including Minneapolis and St. Paul, on community violence intervention programs. Violence intervention programs usually rely on trusted community members to mediate conflicts before they become physical and to connect people to social services. State and local governments can also use the federal money to help young people find summer jobs. Studies published in Science have linked community engagement and summer jobs to reduced violence.
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How Do Proposed Cuts Align With Activists Demands
The change in direction is monumental, but the size of the proposed cuts is not, activists have said. In LA, Black Lives Matter has been pushing for a peoples budget that allocates just 5.7% of the general fund to law enforcement, instead of the 51% of the mayors plan. More broadly, longstanding abolitionist groups, such as Critical Resistance and MPD 150, argue that the cities should not be looking for minor savings and cuts, but should be fundamentally reducing the scale and size of the police force and dismantle the traditional law enforcement system. That can start with finding non-police solutions to the problems poor people face, such as counselors responding to mental health calls and addiction experts responding to drug abuse.
Defunding The Police Will Actually Make Us Safer
This OpEd first appeared on Cosmopolitan.
Almost exactly six years after NYPD officers murdered Eric Garner in New York City, Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd. Activists, advocates, and protestors are still screaming I cant breathe and begging government officials for police reform that will end police violence in Black communities. But todays demands are bigger and bolder: Now, protesters are advocating for systemic changes that require a complete reimagining of law enforcement in the United States.
American policing has never been a neutral institution. The first U.S. city police department was a slave patrol, and modern police forces have directed oppression and violence at Black people to enforce Jim Crow, wage the War on Drugs, and crack down on protests. When people ask for police reform, many are actually asking for this oppressive system to be dismantled and to invest in institutions, resources, and services that help communities grow and thrive. Thats why many protestors and activists, following in the footsteps of Black-led grassroots groups, are demanding immediate defunding of police departments.
Budgets are not created in a vacuum. They can be changed through targeted advocacy and organizing. We can demand that our local officials stop allocating funds for the police to acquire more militarized equipment and instead ask for that money to go toward community-run violence-prevention programs.
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What Does ‘defund The Police’ Mean The Rallying Cry Sweeping The Us Explained
Activists have long advocated taking money from police and reinvesting it in services. The idea is now seeing a wave of support
The call to defund the police has become a rallying cry at protests across America this week, and some lawmakers appear to be listening.
Activists who have long fought to cut law enforcement budgets say they are seeing an unprecedented wave of support for their ideas, with some elected officials for the first time proposing budget reductions and divestments from police. Heres what we know about the movement, and how cities and states are responding.
Where Do Leading Officials Stand
President Trump expressed unequivocal opposition during a meeting with police officials from across the country at the White House on Monday.
We wont be defunding our police. We wont be dismantling our police, and theres not going to be any disbanding of our police. Our police have been letting us live in peace, he said.
Trumps presumptive Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, also said Monday that he was opposed to defunding police, but told the CBS Evening News,I support conditioning federal aid to police, based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness.
And, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community, he added.
Congressional Democrats introduced legislation to reform police practices Monday following an event at which most kneeled for eight minutes and 46 seconds, echoing the amount of time that then-Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin kept his knee on Floyds neck.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she could support rebalancing some of our funding to ensure that mental health problems and other matters would addressed more directly than by sending cops to deal with them.
But during an appearance on The View, Sen. Kamala Harris , a potential Democratic vice presidential candidate, refused to give co-host Meghan McCain a yes or no answer on the subject.
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Policing In The Us Was Established To Maintain White Supremacy
The police are not a neutral body, and the institution is inherently biased. In the U.S. slave patrols and night watches were the beginning of a racially directed system of law enforcement designed to secure capital for white settlers.
Over the past 40 years, the expansion of racially targeted policing and policies such as stop-and-frisk and the war on drugs have helped fuel mass incarceration in the U.S., with African-Americans incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white people. Black and Brown people are disproportionately targeted from a young age, with hundreds of thousands of children ages six to 14 arrested, often by police officers stationed in schools as school resource officers.
Police forces have also become more militarized. Since 1990, the federal government has transferred $6 billion of excess military equipment to local law enforcement agencies under its 1033 Program, giving police access to mine-resistant vehicles, assault rifles, and grenade launchers. For years police have also undergone warrior training that teaches them to see every encounter as potentially life-threatening, especially when those encounters involve people of color. Every year on-duty police kill an estimated 1,000 people.
Whats more, a recent study revealed that hundreds of active duty officers from across the country are members of racist and anti-government groups on Facebook.