Defund The Police Pros and Cons PDF

Defund The Police! A “defund the police” banner at a Miami, Florida, Black Lives Matter protest. Source: Mike Shaheen, “Miami Protest, June 7, 2020,” Creative Commons, June 7, 2020 Amid the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in M...

Defund The Police! A “defund the police” banner at a Miami, Florida, Black Lives Matter protest. Source: Mike Shaheen, “Miami Protest, June 7, 2020,” Creative Commons, June 7, 2020 Amid the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020, calls to “defund the police” began to populate protest signs and social media posts. While there are multiple interpretations of “defund the police,” the basic definition is to move funding away from police departments and into community resources such as mental health experts, housing, and social workers. In the larger scope of the civil rights movement, some advocates would reallocate some police funding but keep police departments, others would combine defunding with other police reforms such as body cameras and bias training, and others see defunding as a small step toward ultimately abolishing police departments and the prison system entirely. According to the most recent data available, police departments received about $114.5 billion nationwide in 2017 from state and local governments, up from $42.3 billion in 1977. Police budgets have made up around 4% of total state and local budgets since 1977. About 97% of police budgets go toward operational costs such as salaries and benefits. However, individual cities or counties may allocate more funds to police departments. The 2017 Los Angeles city budget, for example, provided 23% of the budget to police, while 9% of Los Angeles county’s budget went to policing. In June 2020, 64% of Americans opposed the abstract idea of defunding the police, while 34% supported the movement. 60% were against reallocating police budget funds to other public health and social programs, while 39% were in favor. In Oct. 2021, 21% of American adults wanted police budgets “increased a lot” and 26% wanted budgets “increased a little,” while 9% wanted police budgets “decreased a little” and 6% “decreased a lot.” 37% said budgets should “stay about the same.” Should Police Departments Be Defunded, if Not Abolished? 1 Police Officer and Police Department Reforms Have Not Worked. Mariame Kaba, a “prison industrial complex abolitionist,” states, “Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police. There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people.” Kaba notes the first major police misconduct investigation was in 1894 in New York City, the Lexow Committee, (Which took its name from the committee's chairman, State Senator Clarence Lexow) in which over 100 officers were collectively convicted of 56 charges of third-degree assault, 45 charges of second-degree assault, as well as multiple charges of criminal neglect, oppression, and attempted rape. Only four officers were dismissed as a result, three because they’d assaulted other officers. Philip V. McHarris, PhD candidate at Yale University, and Thenjiwe McHarris, from Movement for Black Lives, argue, “Look at the Minneapolis Police Department, which is held up as a model of progressive police reform. The department offers (1) procedural justice as well as trainings for (2) implicit bias, (3) mindfulness, and (4) de-escalation. It embraces community policing and officer diversity, bans ‘warrior style’ policing, uses body cameras, implemented an early intervention system to identify problematic officers, receives training around mental health crisis intervention, and practices ‘reconciliation’ efforts in communities of color.” And still George Floyd and 51 other black men, along with 15 American Indian men, and 9 Hispanic men were killed by Minneapolis Police Department officers between Jan. 2000 and May 31, 2020. Further reforms have been recommended to the Minneapolis Police Department repeatedly to lower use-of-force violations, but none were (5) implemented. In July 2014, Eric Garner died from a chokehold performed by a police officer after New York banned the hold in 1993. Austin and Los Angeles police were shown firing projectiles at people’s heads, which is prohibited in both jurisdictions. Increased diversity on police forces did little to curb unnecessary police stops of people of color in Ferguson or Baltimore. Two 2016 Harvard University studies found that anti-bias techniques meant to fight stereotypes reduced implicit bias for a few hours to a few days, but not longer. Such training has little to no effect on racial bias in traffic stops or marijuana arrests. 2 Some, including Stuart Schrader, PhD, Associate Director of the Program in Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship at Johns Hopkins University, argue that reforms are not wholly intended to change the departments for the better, but are an excuse for the departments to maintain power and acquire a bigger budget. Reform programs come with more money and little accountability for police departments, continuing the historical cycle of oppression. VOCABULARY DIRECTIONS: Please highlight, define or add any extra words that you are unfamiliar with. 1. Procedural justice - Fairness of processes used by those in positions of authority to reach specific outcomes or decisions. 2. Implicit bias - The attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. 3. Mindfulness - Looking past stereotypes and prejudices to see and appreciate unique qualities of a human being. 4. De-escalation - A behavior that is intended to prevent escalation of conflicts. It may also refer to approaches in conflict resolution. 5. Implemented - To put a plan or decision into effect 6. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 7. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 9. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 10. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 3  Police Misconduct is Severely Overstated The level of police (1) misconduct is overstated, more (not fewer) police are being called for in crime- ridden areas, and reforms are both possible and supported by a majority of Americans. In Camden, New Jersey, the local police department was disbanded due to police corruption and rising crime rates. The county now runs the department, and implemented (2) de-escalation training, defined chokeholds as deadly force, and required that officer’s step in if a (3) colleague is using excessive force. Officers were tasked with patrolling on foot, introducing themselves to residents, and hosting community barbecues. Violent crime dropped 42% between 2012 and 2019. In comparison, the FBI estimates nationwide violent crime fell 9% from 2009 to 2018. Sam Sinyangwe, co-founder of We the Protestors, explained, “if you look at the 30 largest cities, police shootings have dropped about 30 percent, and some cities have seen larger drops. In some of these cities, like Chicago and Los Angeles, activists with Black Lives Matter and other groups have done a lot of work to push for de-escalation, stricter use-of-force policies and greater accountability.” Contrary to the publicly asserted “War” on black people by white police officers, few are actually murdered by white officers each year. An analysis of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police department found white officers were least likely to shoot an unarmed black person, with a threat perception failure (TPF) rate of 5.2% with black suspects. Black officers had an 11.4% rate, and Hispanic officers a 16.7% rate. According to a June 2020 poll, 82% of Americans agree that police use of chokeholds should be banned. 83% support racial (4) profiling bans. 92% agree that police should wear body cameras. 89% agree on requiring officers to give their name, badge number, and a reason for the stop during police stops. 91% support independent investigations of misconduct in departments. And 75% support allowing police misconduct victims to sue departments for damages. If police departments were reformed to focus on policing black neighborhoods the same way they police wealthy white neighborhoods, police violence would decrease. Black neighborhoods suffer from (5) under-policing as police officers focus on traffic and drug stops. 4 Jill Leovy, author of Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, explains that, “Police focus on nuisance and vice—the cheap and easy, low-hanging fruit of the trade, while murders in predominantly black neighborhoods go unsolved: “From 1988 to 2002, the number of unsolved homicides in the L.A. Police Department’s South Bureau was 41 per square mile. Even as many white neighborhoods remained untouched by killings during this period, some predominately black ones had three unsolved cases per block—seven at the especially violent intersection of South San Pedro and East 84th streets.” (6) Amid the George Floyd protests in May 2020, Chicago registered the city’s most deadly weekend in six decades: 110 shootings (85 wounded, 25 killed). Nearly all the victims and shooters were black. Michael Pfleger, a Roman Catholic priest and social activist in the South Side of Chicago, stated, “On Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, ‘Hey, there’s no police anywhere, police ain’t doing nothing.” VOCABULARY DIRECTIONS: Please highlight, define, or add any extra words that you are unfamiliar with. 1. Amid - Surrounded by or in the middle of 2. Under policing - Inadequately policed. 3. Profiling - Looking past stereotypes and prejudices to see and appreciate unique qualities of a human being. 4. De-escalation - A behavior that is intended to prevent escalation of conflicts. It may also refer to approaches in conflict resolution. 5. Colleague - A coworker or associate 6. Misconduct - Misbehavior or delinquency 7. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 8. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 9. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 10. ____________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________ 5