What Does "Defunding the Police" Mean?
Defunding the police does not mean that we are abolishing the police. It instead calls for funds that are given to the police to be used in other government agencies. Some cities like Camden, New Jersey, have abolished their police force. That was almost ten years ago. While I’d like to see to this happen in more cities, I am first going to outline what are the reasons to defund the police since the movement is calling for this, before I outline a police-free world.
- Police are not trained to respond to calls for service, which most of the time are non-violent encounters. If we shift funding to mental health care, addiction treatment, and homelessness, this will help us respond to these calls. This will hopefully also make people battling these problems feel they have somewhere to go and someone to call when in crisis without fear of being murdered.
- As we already know, the stop-and-frisk program, and programs like it (e.g. No Knock Warrants and chokeholds) result in stopping people who were not doing anything wrong, and were primarily people of color.
- The goal of the police, should be, although it isn’t in America, to reduce crime and protect all people equitably. Studies have shown that increasing funding for police didn’t lead to a decrease in crime. Again, if we redirect the funding, it may actually reduce and prevent crime and violence. If you want to learn more about the original purpose of police, read my blog post titled A History of Policing No One Knows.
Defunding the police has started to happen. The LAPD relocated 100 million for minorities communities. San Franscisco is working with community groups to do the same. Baltimore City Council reallocated 22 million away from the police departments budget to recreational centers, trauma centers, and forgivable loans for Black-owned businesses.
Other cities have called to remove police officers from schools.
There has of course been pushback from police unions as well as many ignorant Americans defending the police. I see people posting about panicking for not being able to find a police officer, while people of color are panicking when they do find one. The hypocrisy, racism, and defense of police are obviously still prevalent in many white people. For the white people who choose to face the truth, and fight on the right side of accountability and justice, we have more work to do educating others while advocating for defunding the police.
While defunding the police may not actually represent what is being done with the funds, it has brought attention to the movement and resulted in the start of some action that may actually make change. As a speech-language pathologist I am all about language that makes sense, but I am more about supporting whatever it takes to dismantle the violent and murderous police.
Sources:
What does ‘defund the police’ mean and does it have merit? (brookings.edu)
‘Defund the police’ movement 6 months after killing of George Floyd – ABC News
Why Police Reform and Legislation Are Not Enough
In her opinion piece in the New York Times, titled “America, This is Your Chance”, Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer and advocate, legal scholar and the author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”, writes:
“We must face our racial history and our racial present. We cannot solve a problem we do not understand. Donald Trump would not be the president and George Floyd would not be dead if, after the Civil War, our nation had committed itself to reparations, reconciliation and atonement for the land and people that colonizers stole, sold and plundered. Instead, white people who enslaved blacks were granted reparations for the loss of their “property” while formerly enslaved blacks were given nothing — not even the 40 acres and a mule they were promised. Ever since, our nation has been trapped in a cycle of intermittent racial progress followed by fierce backlash and the emergence of new and “improved” systems of racial and social control. These cycles have been punctuated by various movements, uprisings and riots, but one thing has remained constant: A majority of whites persistently deny the scale and severity of racial injustice that people of color endure.
It’s not enough to learn the broad outlines of this history. Only by pausing long enough to study the cycles of oppression and resistance does it become clear that simply being a good person or not wishing black people any harm is not sufficient. Nor is voting for Democrats or diversifying police forces. In fact, those efforts have not made much of a dent in ending abusive policing or mass incarceration.”
I encourage you to read the entire article, as Ms. Alexander outlines the action steps we can take to actually protect the lives of black people, and why the lukewarm actions America has been taking after cycles of protests are not working. Even with reforms, new trainings, body cameras, police really just are getting more power and resources and aren’t being held accountable for their violent actions. Police are still practicing the same violence they have been since their start in the 1800s.
Source: Opinion | America, This Is Your Chance – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Federal Police Reform
- George Floyd Justice in Policing Act (passed in The House on 3/3/2021, not yet in the Senate):
- Bans chokeholds and no-knock warrants in drug cases.
- It also reforms “qualified immunity”, so people can more easily make claims against police officers in civil courts.
- Incentives for state attorneys general to investigate police departments, including state grants to develop procedures for investigating police-involved deaths.
- Create a National Police Misconduct Registry
- Racial Bias Training
- Change language from “use of force is reasonable” to “use of force in necessary”. The use of force was a critical argument in the Derek Chauvin case.
- 19-member Commission on Social Status of Black Men and Boys
- The JUSTICE Act- Just and Unifying Solutions to Invigorate Communities Everywhere (Republican Police Reform Bill)
- Federal incentives to train de-escalation and end controversial tactics
- Penalize those that do not reduce federal funding
- Withhold federal funds if states do not have a policy in place to prohibt chokeholds except when deadly force in authorized
- 19-member Commission on Social Status of Black Men and Boys
- Increase funding for Community Oriented Policing Programs
- Fines and a maximum 20-year prison sentence for officers that alters a police report in their favor
A Police Free World: What if Every State Disbanded Police Forces?
Like I talked about earlier, Camden, NJ disbanded their police force years ago. They did so to “root out corruption” because the department was beyond reform. After that, they rebuilt a new, larger force. They retrained officers in descalation, revised the job conditions, added more officers and introduced a community service aspect. They aimed to increase diversity in the force to reflect the black and brown majority in Camden.
First, officers were not judged on the number of arrests or tickets. They completed patrols on foot, and talked with residents so they could build their trust. Murders are down by two-thirds, crime is down by half. The police chief led a Black Lives Matter protest in June of 2020. Imagine if that was the case everywhere. The chief didn’t come in riot gear. He came as a participant to lead the march and support the movement.
Citizens shared that police officers will come in their shops to check on them. Police host barbecues and ride in ice cream trucks, and even host drive in movie nights. It’s hard to imagine this. Overall, the view of the reform is very positive, but black people who grew up in Camden when police violence was rampant of course find it hard to trust, or say that many officers don’t live in Camden or know residents well. The racial makeup doesn’t totally reflect the city’s demographics, with only one of seven captains being African American.
Minneapolis has aimed to follow suit, and hopefully will take note of Camden’s tactics.
More cities have focused on defunding the police. Right now, it’s important to think what disbanding all police and either rebuilding them or focusing the efforts on preventing crime will look like and how we can make it happen. Let’s put pressure on our politicians to disband police forces, and find politicians that are interested in proposing these bills. While Biden is working on funding community policing and social programs as well as restrictions on force, others such as Ron Harris, Alma Gonazalez, and Ray McKinnon want to go even farther. Consider contacting the offices of these public service members, or even get a group in your community protesting, canvassing or calling community members to see who you can get involved in the movement. Feel free to shoot me an email using the form below to let me know your thoughts about defunding or disbanding the police and how to take action to move these actions forward.
This is just one part of an ongoing series of blog posts discussing the systemic issue of police brutality. Come back next week to learn more about what are solutions that may work to keep all citizens safe, regardless of their race.
Feeling inspired to do more? Check out my Racial Justice Resources or Social Justice Book List.
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Source: Disband the police force? Here’s one U.S. city where the idea has been tried | CBC News
This city disbanded its police department 7 years ago. Here’s what happened next (mercurynews.com)
