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I cant breathe!
The last words George Floyd said to his killers became the chant of nationwide protests. Sometime last week a new slogan emerged: Defund the police! even Abolish the police!
At face value, the new slogan sounds absurd. Because it is.
When a CNN news anchor asked the president of the Minneapolis City Council, What if in the middle of night my home is broken into? Who do I call? The Councilwomans response, that the ability to call for help in the first place was a matter of white privilege, was, shall we say, less than enlightening.
Abolishing police is the stuff of utopian fantasies, only possible in worlds without evildoers. Because such worlds do not exist, law enforcement of some kind, at least here on Earth, will always be necessary. To think otherwise is to misunderstand the human condition.
The line separating good and evil, wrote Solzhenitsyn, passes not through states, nor classes, nor political parties. Neither does it pass through occupations, as if policemen are intrinsically evil, while social workers or teachers or protesters are intrinsically good.
The problem is in all of us, in every human heart.
Behind Camdens reforms are a handful of principles worthy of consideration.
A final principle is that civil society must be strengthened. As New York Magazine put it:
Reform? Yes.
Who Is Behind The Defund Police Movement
There is no one face or organization leading the defund police movementit is a decentralized effort with many individuals and groups working independently to achieve the same goal. The idea is to redirect funds away from police departments and invest them in community-based programs that can better address social problems. Proponents of the defund police movement argue that police departments are inherently racist and that investing in them only perpetuates systemic discrimination. They believe that redirecting funds to community-based programs will create a more just and equitable society.
The Minneapolis City Council voted in June 2020 to disband the police department. A lot has happened since then, but the citys interim police department has not been dissolved. There is now a wide range of differing opinions on what the term defund actually means. In the United States, the slogan defund the police is currently in the middle of a political controversy. Some opponents believe that by making it impossible for police reform to take place, it will hinder it. Others argue that defunding is linked to a rise in crime, but others disagree. A member of Atlantas political class claims that the term defund has been used to silence what is most important to the people.
Why We Need To Defund Not Defend The Police
Demonstrators at a George Floyd protest holding up a Defund the Police sign on June 5, 2020.
Defunding the police isnt a new idea, but it has new momentum since George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis. Two weeks later the citys council voted to disassemble its police department and create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.
Officers routinely relied on aggression, violence, and exploitation in their dealings with residents of the Third District, where Floyd died with the knee of a police officer on his neck. The Minneapolis Star Tribune documented multiple abuses from court records and police reports: One officer kicked a handcuffed suspect in the face, leaving his jaw in pieces. Officers beat and pistol-whipped a suspect in a parking lot on suspicion of low-level drug charges. Others harassed residents of a south Minneapolis housing project as they headed to work, and allowed prostitution suspects to touch their genitals for several minutes before arresting them in vice stings.
Officers use force against Black residents at 7 times the rate of white residents in Minneapolis. Disparate force is commonplace in other cities across the country, like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The protests in the wake of Floyds killing have as much to do with these routine abuses as the appalling slow-motion spectacle of Floyds video-recorded lynching.
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Assessing Calls To Defund The Police: Police Budgets And Employment Levels
Tara O’Neill Hayes
Executive Summary
- Recent calls for police reform have included campaigns to defund the policeeither through outright elimination of the police force or, more moderately, through diverting some funding to other programsin order to reduce the number of interactions that individuals have with police and thus the risk of police abuse.
- Given that 97 percent of police budgets is spent on salaries, pensions, and benefits, any decrease in police funding will necessarily result in a decrease in the number of officers employed.
- The wide variation between cities in funding and staffing levels indicates that it is difficult to tell if cities police forces are staffed at appropriate levels, although any universal cut is certain to leave some cities understaffed and would likely reduce the diversity of some cities police forces.
- While spending on police forces has grown over the last 30 years, it has grown in line with spending on other potential priorities such as health care and education, and overall spending on health care and education is already far greater than spending on police.
- Cities are increasingly dependent on federal funding for their police, a fact that gives federal policymakers the option of conditioning federal funding on certain reforms.
Introduction
Police Spending
Police Funding in Relation to Funding for Other Public Services
Law Enforcement Employment
Overall Employment
How Much Of Seattle Budget Goes To Police
There is no definitive answer to this question as the budget for the Seattle Police Department is dynamic and ever-changing. However, according to the City of Seattles 2019 Adopted Budget, the police department made up approximately 16% of the total general fund expenses. This amounted to $409 million dollars.
Over the last 20 years, the police budget in Seattle has increased by 50%, from $121,500 in 2001 to $186,900 this year. In 2001, police spending was estimated to be around $229 million . This year, the budget is $409 million. The City Budget Office has provided SPD with budget information since the early 1990s. About 80% of the departments expenses, such as wages, benefits, and overtime, are related to personnel. A closer look at the 2014 employee roster reveals that more than 600 of them are civilians. This is reflected in the Administration budgets recent growth.
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Alternatives For Safety Exist
Do we want a society governed by a rock-em-sock-em mentality of reactive, violent responses to people in distress and need?
Or do we want to live in a generous society in which community development is the focus of government funding, and policing is no longer a major priority?
It is not a luxury to debate this for many people, especially Black, Indigenous and people of colour in Canada. Police abolition is a matter of survival.
For more discussions about defunding the police, check out the book Disarm, Defund, Dismantle: Police Abolition in Canadawhich confronts policing myths head on. The ideas in the book build on the work of many social movement groups calling for police defunding. The book examines the politics and economics of policing, the history of police violence, the colonial dimensions of Canada that public police continue to uphold, the police targeting of sex workers and migrants, and the need to put defunding on the agenda in every jurisdiction.
Reading these arguments may help communities envision alternatives to police while bolstering arguments to defund police and refund community.
We have decreased the power and scope or done away with harmful social institutions before. Continuing to accept the status quo by handing over massive budgets to public police institutions will not get us to a safe and healthy future. Bigger police budgets and greater police deployments are a recipe for more harm.
Defund The Police: What It Means And What The Research Says On Whether More Police Presence Reduces Crime
Last June, video of white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd, a Black man, went viral on social media. Uprisings took hold across hundreds of U.S. cities, and activist calls to defund the police went mainstream.
For some, defund the police is a movement, a stepping stone toward abolishing police departments entirely.
For others, the idea of defunding the police is limited to simply restricting money for military-style equipment.
For many, the definition lies in the middle there should be police, but their role in communities should be limited to crime prevention. The idea goes that service agencies other than police could and should respond to non-violent calls related to mental health, housing and other issues. Berkeley, California has even moved to create a separate department to handle routine traffic violations.
Here, we explore what defund the police means to leading criminologists, community organizers and legal scholars recent academic research on whether more police presence reduces crime and what the future of policing in America might look like.
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So You Dont Want To Defund The Police Heres Why You Should Fund Public Defense
Whether police admit it or not, their profession is on fire. They areincreasingly taskedwith jobs that fall outside their area of competence, from domestic violence response to crisis de-escalation to mental health first aid. And more police spendinghasnt paid the dividend of reduced crime.
Police officers in the U.S. have also proved to bedramatically more lethal than those in any other nation, killing more than a thousand civilians last year. Police violence echoes other deeply American forms of inequity against Black and brown people. The additional harm done through racial profiling, stop-and-frisk, racialized community surveillance and criminalizing children is difficult to quantify and exists at a near-universal scale. Still, detractors of reform on the right and left are threatening Americans with escalating unrest if we dare to modernize our philosophy on public safety.
In New York, where everyone lives in a constant state of pandemic-fueled whiplash, fearmongers are perfidiously warning people that Alvin Bragg, Manhattans new district attorney, will marshal the city into an era of crime and chaos given his pledge to seek jail or prison time for only the most serious crimes, unless the law requires otherwise. As D.A. Bragg hasdetailed repeatedly in laying out his evidence-based policies, the data doesnt support these litanies of fear, yet this catastrophist perspective persists.
Tell Your Governor: Invest In Our Communities Not Policing
We need real change. Thats why we must stop investing in police and incarceration and instead intentionally invest in alternative models that are centered in community and address the root causes of harm, in addition to making greater investments in schools, health care, and other human needs that keep our communities safe.
Here is why we should all support the call to defund the police:
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Brooklyn Man Running From Manhattan To Montauk To Raise Money For Gun Reform
Sen. Chris Murphy on Sunday suggested withholding federal funds from law enforcement agencies that refuse to enforce state and national gun laws in the wake of mass shootings in Colorado and Virginia.
Murphy , an outspoken advocate for gun control laws and an assault weapons ban, said the Senate needs to have a conversation about funding law enforcement outfits that balk at implementing gun laws in Second Amendment sanctuaries.
They have decided that they are going to essentially refuse to implement laws that are on the books. That is a growing problem in this country, Murphy said on CNNs State of the Union.
And I think were going to have to have a conversation about that in the United States Senate. Do we want to continue to supply funding to law enforcement in counties that refuse to implement state and federal gun laws? he said.
El Paso County, Co., where a man armed with an assault-style weapon killed five people at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub on Nov. 19, is a so-called Second Amendment sanctuary, and authorities declined to pursue a red flag order against the accused shooter following an earlier incident involving his mother.
Chesapeake, Va., the scene of the Nov. 22 mass shooting at a Walmart in which six employees were gunned down by a manager of the big box store, is also a Second Amendment sanctuary.
But Murphy said he doesnt think there are 60 votes in the Senate to pass a ban on assault weapons.
You Won’t Save Lives And Build A Future With Less Crime By Cutting And Defunding
You won’t save lives and build a future with less crime by cutting and defunding
In a rare public display of bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats exploded with applause during the State of the Union earlier this month, when President Biden declared that we must “fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with the resources and training resources and training they need to protect our communities.” Thats something many of us have been calling on for months and even years, especially given recent tragic news.Over the last two years in the United States, we have lost more than 900 police officers in the line of duty, including, tragically, two heroic NYPD officers earlier this year. In New Jersey, my home state, we have lost 20 officers in the line of duty in the last two years alone. Across our country, murder rates spiked 27% in 2020. Violent crime is up, and homicides are at their highest level in nearly three decades.
I represent 79 towns in Northern New Jersey. The officers in these departments dont have large budgets and staff, so things like cloud storage for body camera data and the necessary training and support for officers all put a huge strain on their budgets. If we want to protect our communities and officers, we must act now.
Now, does this bill cover everything? No, of course not. Are these critical steps to make much-needed investment in our local police? Yes.
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Put Black And Brown Communities In Charge
Black and Brown communities looking to defund the police and invest in their communities must be in equal partnership with the government in figuring out what services should be invested in. They should also be the leading voice when deciding what public safety models will work best.
The work of radically reimagining police and defunding incredibly powerful and deeply entrenched police departments will not be easy. But these principles can help guide us as we move, as quickly as possible, towards this future.
What Would It Mean To Defund The Policeand What Would Come Next
Up Next
The movement to defund police departments in the U.S. has been catalyzed by protests over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black people who have been killed by police.
Proponents of defunding want more oversight of policebut they dont necessarily agree on how to achieve that goal, notes Ben Struhl, executive director of the Center on Crime and Community Resilience at Northeastern.
Ben Struhl is executive director of the Center on Crime and Community Resilience at Northeastern. Photo courtesy Ben Struhl.
Some advocates wish to abolish police departments altogether others hope that a portion of public funding that currently goes to police will be routed to social service organizations that are better able to address problems within marginalized communities.
Struhl believes that more attention should be paid to the cycles of violence that are affecting those communities. He says the defund movement could result in new investments in prevention strategies that could be led by community groups. Struhl adds that a reduction in surveillance activities and other police interactions could help reduce tensions.
Ive done work across Latin America, where people are exploring a lot of ideas for breaking communities out of the cycles of violence, Struhl says. I have never seen a big effort work without police being involved.
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Based On The Fact That Federal State And Local Governments Are Facing Budget Shortfalls As A Result Of Covid
The idea is, why dont we take this money that is being spent on the police and put it into other programs? That is a discussion that a lot of researchers have been trying to have for a very long time.
But the big-picture question is: What if everything is going to be defunded? Its a real possibility if the current financial trajectory continues, just given where the state and local budgets are. When people are saying, Defund the police and put the money into research and other things, well, that might not happen. You might see a defunding of the police and other social services.
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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