Most people you speak with probably have a very strong opinion regarding defunding the police, either for or against. Most of those same people don’t know what it is. And I speak from my own experience. A few months ago when I first heard the term I thought I knew what it meant, and I had an immediate negative gut reaction. Getting rid of the police? What a dumb idea! What about actual crimes? Sure, there is an undeniable problem with police being disproportionately violent against African-Americans, but problems with a system should be solved rather than throwing out the whole system.
Well, I thought those things because I didn’t know what I was talking about. And I feel like I’m usually pretty informed on stuff like this so I felt kinda stupid. So I decided to do some research and break my small-child-induced silence to help everyone else with something quick to get a little info.
First I’ll lay down the basis of the problem with some facts from the National Institute of Health and the US Census.
-The largest ethnicity in the US is obviously White/Caucasian with 77%. African-American is in 3rd place, after Hispanic/Latino, with 13.4%. All other things being equal, one would expect to see that violent police actions would involve these groups at something approaching those percentages.
-The percentages of police shootings involving White people is 52%, involving African-Americans it is 32%. Police actions against African-Americans are 2.8 times more likely to be fatal than those against Whites. (More shots fired? More officers on the scene?)
-The vast majority of police shootings are legitimate uses of force against someone that is armed and presenting a danger to other citizens or the police. However, the percentages of cases where deadly force is used against unarmed people are 14.8% for African-Americans vs 9.4% for Whites.
While the point of this post is not to debate the reasons for this disparity, (and I honestly haven’t researched the subject), my own understanding is that police are more likely to be called out to or be patrolling high crime areas and where gangs/drug activity is common, police officers are more likely to go into such a situation feeling that it is going to be dangerous, high crime/high drug/gang areas are more likely to be poor areas, poor areas are disproportionately African-American. These factors alone, outside of any personal biases, is enough to explain a higher rate of violence with respect to African-Americans. I don’t believe that they are the only factors, but no need to blow up the whole post just yet. Suffice it to say that the statistics noted above are correct and authoritative.
There are two separate issues now being convoluted in “public debate”: Defunding the police, and abolishing the police. My understanding is that it is a matter of degree, though a very meaningful matter. Defunding police means reducing the budgets of police departments, and redirecting that money to social services addressing problems that would normally result in police being dispatched. Abolition is what it sounds like, doing away with the police and relying entirely on social services and community efforts. There is absolutely no way to give these arguments the space they call for here. I am going to talk about defunding the police, but if you want to find out more about the argument in favor of abolishing the police, there is a great article in The Atlantic called “How I Became a Police Abolitionist” by Derecka Purnell, a human rights attorney in Washington DC.
I will mention that in that article, the author makes excellent point, right off the bat – that dismissing those calling for abolition/defunding/police reform as not caring about the victims, ignores the fact that in the vast majority of cases they are the victims; not just of police violence, but of the incidents that generate the police calls in the first place. Where are 911 calls for home invasions, burglary, assault, shootings, and other violent crime more likely to originate than in the very high crime areas where the responses are more likely to go wrong? (Despite any commercials you may have seen featuring scared old white ladies in the suburbs) Unfortunately, a side-effect of responding to a high-crime situation like this in a democracy is that voters demand to see action, which ends up being the traditional politician that is “tough on crime”, whether or not that works. Police are visible, arrests are touted on the news, people can take credit. But the conditions that lead to high crime cannot be addressed by police actions; conditions such as poverty, inequality, mental health, homelessness, addiction, etc. Again, items for a future post.
And that is the basis of the effort to defund the police. The most effective way to reduce police related violence, is to reduce the number of responses police make into situations that could be dangerous. A Department of Justice study found that 9 out of 10 calls to 911 are for nonviolent incidents. I would submit that we do not need armed police to respond to these, and that even some dangerous situations do not call for an immediate police presence. In many cities, activists are creating alternatives to 911 and to police, such as support systems for victims of domestic abuse, educational initiatives, work programs, and community de-escalation volunteers. Many situations could be dealt with through these methods and avoid the dangerous situations where police officers would be necessary. A reduced police force would still be available if the community efforts are not up to any specific situation.
Defunding simply reduces the size and scope of what police are expected to do. From my research, it seems that many police already feel that they are expected to do too much, and things that they haven’t been trained for, such as dealing with mental health situations or the homeless, both of which are clear social issues that usually result in police activity. Officers want to be able to focus on “real” police work. (I’m not trying to speak for police officers here, this is just what my research has shown.) Other programs would be more qualified and more effective in dealing with these social issues.
Now obviously this focus on effectively addressing social issues is more likely to appeal to those with a liberal slant. But this is just the surface. Existing defunding efforts, according to a Brookings Institution study, focus on fiscal responsibility and a market driven approach to the use of tax payer money. When tax paying citizens hand their money over to the government (federal or local), the government owes a duty to make sure that money is being spent efficiently and effectively. With social programs instead of a police presence, the problems that are supposed to be addressed can be, in a more cost-effective way and with greater results.
Some may be angry or disappointed that these arguments ignore the moral aspect of the issue. And that may be true. But I personally would be more concerned with the results. If the right thing is being done for the wrong reason, isn’t that still a good result? I’m sure when Dr. King led the boycott of the bus system in Montgomery, no one was under the impression that this would somehow cause all the white people to realize that segregation was a moral evil. The strategy was to hit the city in the budget, and maybe the result would be de-segregation of the bus system – ie a good result for the wrong reason.
And in any case, a joint study by the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve (not exactly bastions of liberal activism) that lasted over 60 years, found no correlation between spending on law enforcement and crime rates. More or less spending doesn’t make the crime rate go up or down. This would indicate that the causes of crime are societal and that mere deterrence doesn’t work.
So maybe the focus on police feels like blame and is leading to automatic defensive responses? Really the focus should be on problems that we all agree are facing society, but which somehow through tradition and the lack of other options have just been fobbed off on police, and we inappropriately expect solutions. Instead of defunding the police we should call it something lame that people won’t get worked up about, like “re-allocating funds in order to more cost-effectively address policy priorities”.
But seriously don’t even get me started on construction details. Wow, do not even get me started.
Used Books 