How Can Police Exist Without Funding Doesnt This Lead To Lawlessness
This is a common refrain not just from police departments but others who might not understand the basis of the defund movement. To properly explain it, McLeod says we should take a step back and first view abolitionist thinking in its historical context.
Calls to defund the police grew out of decades of organization by Black people and primarily Black women. The first point worth emphasizing is penal abolitionnot simply the abolition of prisons or policeand the form of governance that has long propped up white supremacy by caging and subjugating people of color.
Another counterargument is that the current approach to policing doesnt adequately address lawlessness right now. Take Chicago for example, where gun violence is very prevalent in lower income neighborhoods and communities of color. The overwhelming amount of homicides in these communities of color do not result in arrests or prosecutions by the police, McLeod remarks. And even if they did, would that equate to justice in those cases?
With the overwhelming budgets of police departments in areas like these around the country, why arent those crimes seeing the same level of investigation as other communities?
To sum it up, Bell describes it as a need to fully disentangle the idea that policing is how we get public safety.
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:
The Militarization Of American Policing
Over-resourced police departments can also encourage, rather than reduce, instances of police violence, creating an us-versus-them mentality. Wisconsins law enforcement agencies have $28.7 million worth of landmine-resistant armored vehicles, some of which were used to quell protests against civil rights activists in the wake of George Floyds murder. The West Virginian town of Moundsville, with a population of 8,486, has a tank-like armored vehicle called the 2019 Cougar MRAP it, too, is touted as being resistant to landmines.
In both cases, the heavy equipment was provided by the federal government through the 1033 program, and, though coming at no cost to the individual police departments, represents a militarization of police departments and a questionable allocation of resources. When social media offers video evidence of law enforcement officers using their guns, clubs, and knees in an improper manner, the public is inclined to ask the benefit of giving those same officers access to military-grade technology.
It doesnt have to be us versus them, though, and shouldnt be. Effective criminal justice is everyones concern, as are safe policing and safe communities. The question, then, is what is the adequate response to the problems of crime and police misconduct? How do we dispense justice most effectively?
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How Does Defund The Police Relate To Other Radical Movements Like The Disability Rights Movement
On the surface, defunding the police sounds like an insurmountable task but its worth remembering that no significant change comes easy or without persistence. So, are there any precedents for radical movements like this? Legal scholars that study the criminal justice system and reform need to incorporate disability movements into the conversation, says Morgan. The social movement was driven by people with disabilities telling their own accounts, saying they can demonstrate for themselves. The power that grew behind the disability rights movement led to the closure and depopulation of largely harmful psych hospitals, other facilities that poorly housed people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and culminated in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.
While there are a variety of differences, the defund movement shares similar goals. Legislative responses create long-term support services in communities, says Morgan. In the case of the disability rights movement, it meant the elderly and other people with disabilities didnt have to leave their communities to get the help they need. Defunding the police is similarly focused around reallocating funds to prop up the communities in need to help them not only become self-sustainable, but flourish.
Limit Contact With Police
A key way to reduce police violence and racism perpetuated against Black and Brown communities is to reduce contact between the public and police. To do that, we must shrink the size and power of the police force and re-assign responsibilities for social interventions away from police.
We must understand that police officers are not the solution to the challenges that our communities face. Instead, we need non-law enforcement first responders with training and expertise, not officers with guns. That means culturally competent clinicians with lived experiences respond to people in mental health crises, trained counselors intervene in domestic violence situations, and drug treatment specialists support those with substance abuse problems. We must be intentional about not recreating the system of policing in other sectors.
And we must continue to fight programs and policies that increase public contact with the police, including mass surveillance, stop-and-frisk, and the enforcement of low-level offenses.
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Shouldnt We Increase Police Pay In Marginalized Communities To Help Those Communities More
Overfunded police departments already struggle to make arrests for violent crimes in marginalized communities. Bell points out that a lot of police in these areas do not love their jobs.
Its a difficult job for police to function as this facet of social control, especially while caught up in a toxic structure. Many officers work difficult jobs while still losing in the world of capitalism. Even though they might not be bad people themselves, they are part of a bad system. The answer is not to pay them more to stay in the bad system but to find other ways for them to do work in public safety.
We ultimately have to think about where investments should and shouldnt go. If officers are motivated to the defund cause, says Bell, they should be brought on as advocates of abolitionism, because they arent winning in the current system. As allies, officers motivated to do public service could be given better pay to do more for their communities in a potentially safer environment.
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.
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What Does It Mean To Defund The Police
Defunding the police does not necessarily mean getting rid of the police altogether. Rather, it would mean reducing police budgets and reallocating those funds to crucial and oft-neglected areas like education, public health, housing, and youth services. Its predicated on the belief that investing in communities would act as a better deterrent to crime by directly addressing societal problems like poverty, mental illness, and homelessness issues that advocates say police are poorly equipped to handle, and yet are often tasked with. According to some estimates, law enforcement spends 21 percent of its time responding to and transporting people with mental illnesses. Police are also frequently dispatched to deal with people experiencing homelessness, causing them to be incarcerated at a disproportionate rate.
Even some cops resent societys overreliance on them. Were just asking us to do too much, said former Dallas police chief David Brown in a 2016 interview. Every societal failure, we put it off for the cops to solve. Thats too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems. And the outcome can be deadly: In 2015, the Washington Postfound that one in four people killed by a police officer suffered from a serious mental illness at the time of their death.
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.
More From Good Housekeeping
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.
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Why Not Change Police
Many detractors of the defund police movement have asked whether police departments can be reformed without lessening their funding?
D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham warned that underfunding a police department could cause an increase in excess force by police officers.
“The number one thing that contributes to excessive force in any police agency is when you underfund it. If you underfund a police agency, it impacts training, it impacts hiring, it impacts your ability to develop good leaders,” Newsham told “The Kojo Nnamdi Show.”
Cullors told WBUR that Black Lives Matter and other groups have worked on police reforms for years, yet black Americans are still being disproportionately killed or harmed by police. New training protocols and the requirement of body-worn cameras aren’t working, she said.
“The body cameras have done nothing more than show us whats happened over and over again. The training has done nothing but show us that law enforcement and the culture of law enforcement is incapable of changing,” Cullors told WBUR.
Detractors of the defund movement expressed concern that it would lead to increased crime.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the city’s police union, said budget cuts would be the quickest way to make our neighborhoods more dangerous.
Proponents of the movement say the reallocated funding to address other social needs would reduce crime.
Contributing: The Associated Press
What Could Defunding The Police Look Like
The police killings of George Floyd and Daniel Prude, and the police shooting of Jacob Blake, have prompted calls to defund the police. But what does it mean to defund the police and radically transform what community safety looks like? And how can we get there?
The NYCLU is one organization among many grappling with these questions.
First, its important to understand the history of policing in the United States.
Starting with the slave patrols created to maintain slavery, to police officers participating in or condoning lynching, to officers enforcing Jim Crow-era prohibitions, law enforcement has been given power and taxpayer monies to exert control over Black and Brown people and uphold white supremacy and privilege.
Police have served as the vehicle to suppress social movementsbreaking up labor strikes and picket lines, attacking protest demonstrations, and engaging in massive surveillance of those who criticize the government. This has come at an unacceptable price to Black and Brown communities, who have systematically and relentlessly experienced violent and racist policing.
We must defund policing and redirect those funds to enable Black and Brown people to develop and implement new models of promoting community safety, health, and well-being. Defunding police and re-envisioning community safety involves the following:
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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.
Defund The Police Made Headlines What Does It Look Like Now
Watch the CBSN Originals documentary “What Does It Mean to Defund the Police?” in the video player above.
“Defund the police” became a rallying cry during Black Lives Matter protests across the U.S. and around the world in the summer of 2020, following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of police. But in the months since, how has the debate developed, and what does it mean for American communities?
A new documentary from CBSN Originals features voices on different sides of the issue to help shed light on the movement and the future of policing.
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Black Organizers Are Calling For Divestment From Policing And Investment In Human Needs Across The Country
As part of its platform, the Movement for Black Lives calls for the reallocation of federal, state, and local government funds from “policing and incarceration to long-term strategies for education, restorative justice services, and employment programs.
In Chicago, the #NoCopAcademy campaign galvanized thousands of community members and garnered the support of more than 100 community organizations in urging the city to shift funding for a new $95 million police academy to programs that benefit youth and communities.
Faced with budget shortfalls and urgent health care needsat least 13 cities have made cuts to their police budgets.
Policing Diverts Billions Of Dollars From Schools Health Care And Other Vital Programs That Need More Funding To Strengthen Our Communities And Support Shared Well
U.S. cities collectively spend $100 billion a year on policing, while needed investments in education, health care, housing, and other critical programs go unfulfilled, particularly in poor communities and communities of color. New York City, for instance, spends more on policing than it does on the Departments of Health, Homeless Services, Housing Preservation and Development, and Youth and Community Development combined.
Our tax dollars must be reallocated from this system that regularly murders Black people with impunityand instead invested in programs that strengthen our communities.
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How Are Lawmakers Addressing The Calls To Defund
Almost overnight and in direct response to protests, some mayors and other elected leaders have reversed their position on police funding. The mayor of LA said he would look to cut as much as $150m from the police, just two days after he pushed forward a city budget that was increasing it by 7%. A New York councilman has called for a $1bn divestment from the NYPD. In Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, San Francisco and other cities, local policymakers have expressed support for some form of defunding or opposing police budget increases. Most radically, in Minneapolis, council members have discussed potentially disbanding the embattled police department altogether. Colleges, public school systems, museums and other institutions are also divesting from police.
What Would That Mean For Public Safety
Proponents of policing say that an increased police presence increases public safety, but activists disagreefor a few reasons. Proponents of defunding note that police overpolice Black and brown communities when compared to white communities, which leads to increased interactions with the criminal justice system for Black and brown people, and in turn contributes to the economic destabilization of their communities.
“This is a system that was not created or designed to serve communities, especially Black communities.”
“This is a system that was not created or designed to serve communities, especially Black communities,” Jillian Johnson, mayor pro tempore of Durham, North Carolina, said in an interview with NPR. “Our best chance for building a safety solution that puts people first, that puts communities first, that takes care of people rather than criminalizes, incarcerates, and punishes them is by shifting resources that we use for policing into other systems, alternative systems, alternative institutions rather than the institutions that we know are also causing us harm.”
Whether or not other cities take action to defund the police, the rallying cry has galvanized a new era of the Black Lives Matter movement, one that sees widespread pushes for local policy changes and reinvestment in community support systems.
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