Jun 10, 2020
“Defund The Police” Is An Ongoing Conversation
Many people, when they hear the phrase “Defund the police” assume that those saying it mean to “Eliminate the police force entirely.” Thats not the case for the vast majority. They are saying that the current system is broken, that we need comprehensive changes, and we need those changes on a national level to make sure everyone is playing with the same set of rules and systems.
Are there people who want anarchy and complete removal? Yes, but even a small amount of research reveals they are a tiny minority.
If we can accept the fact that the straw man argument of anarchy is not reflective of the view, it begs the question “why is the idea captivating?” It shows that some people are trying to reimagine the institution of policing and acknowledging that we rely on the police to fulfill many functions that they are ill-suited to do. We have a rare opportunity, where public consciousness is aware of the issue at hand, where real change can happen, and I hope we don’t squander it by being disingenuous in how we frame the issue nor let those who only see the words and not the meaning to steer the conversations.
So what does “Defund the police” mean then? It’s complicated. There are two possible ways to approach this, but the first thing you need to know is that cities and states have a very fixed budget. Unlike the federal government, cities and states simply cannot borrow endlessly nor can they print their own cash, which means when the money runs out they’re out of options. Keep that in mind.
The first, and most logical solution, or at least most culturally logical decision is that we have a problem within police forces across the nation and we need to fix it. Generally speaking that means things like:
- More and better training
- Body cameras
- Computers to store body camera footage
- Staff to oversee and review body cameras
- Civilian oversight boards
- Mandatory reporting of use of force
- Hiring better qualified officers
- Hiring more officers in general
- Better coverage for mental health care
- Better access to “less-than-lethal” arms
- Better access to body armor
You get the picture. Each and every one of those things cost money, and because they’re running on a city or state budget that money has to come from somewhere. What will we cut, because we have to cut something, to pay for an additional 300 hours of training for thirty police officers? School budgets then get slashed and lose their arts programs, maybe the state has to make cuts to public health, or to jobs programs, or to rehabilitation centers, but the money has to come from somewhere.
Now here’s the counter argument: Many of those interventions I listed above might not achieve much of a return on investment. Retraining doesn’t work very well, body cams don’t reduce use of force that much, hiring more officers seems to have diminishing returns, and quality candidates are kind of hard to come by. This isn’t to say that they don’t achieve anything, just that the cost to benefit ratio isn’t really there.
Know what does have a really good cost to benefit ratio? Funding for public health care, funding for mental health care, funding for public housing, funding for drug rehab facilities, funding for public works jobs, funding for education, funding for the arts, funding for extracurricular activities, funding for public broadcasting… there’s a ton of evidence out there that these interventions have have a real and appreciable impact on crime rates, and a hell of an economic return on investment as well.
Here’s the crux of the problem: We’ve given the police too much responsibility in our society. Let me explain:
When somebody’s high on drugs we send in the cops, that’s a problem that could have been prevented with public rehab facilities before it ever occurred, drug abuse isn’t a policing problem, it’s a public health problem.
When some kid is loitering and playing with a toy gun we send in the cops, that’s a problem that could have been prevented with better access to education or after school activities before it ever occurred, bored teenagers isn’t a policing problem, it’s a public welfare problem.
When someone with a mental illness is having an episode (Sorry, I know there’s a better, more genteel word for that, but it escapes me at the moment) we send in the cops, that’s a problem that could have been prevented with better access to mental health care before it ever occurred, when someone isn’t well it’s not a policing problem, it’s a public health problem.
An example of an officer’s call log from the past 28 hours:
Suspicious activity: “5 men congregating in the dark” (4 teenagers were playing Pokemon Go)
Suspicious Activity: “unknown person in a ‘red car or suv’ keeps driving past callers house” (could be literally anything, it’s a public road with 20 houses on the block)
“911-hangup”: No other call information (toddler playing with mommy’s old phone)
Suspicious person: “male and female dropped off at an intersection. Not sure if they’re up to no good or need assistance” (the officer talked to them, they were not breaking any laws, and did not need assistance)
Check well-being: caller wants to report his internet being ‘hacked’ by ‘them’. Doesn’t want police cars by his house and requests officers park at least 2 blocks away or he ‘won’t say shit to them’. Note: officers have responded for similar calls from the caller 27 times in 2020. (Mental health issue. He refuses voluntary treatment referrals and can’t be forced because he isn’t suicidal.)
Indecent exposure: homeless male urinating next to his tent in the woods at a park. (shelters are all full and he’s drunk, so they won’t take him even if they had a spot. Asked to leave the park, presumably to go be homeless somewhere else.)
Disturbance: “14 year old won’t listen to his mother and is being disrespectful” (parenting issue, attempted to have a conversation with the kid and reverse a decade and a half of shitty parenting.)
Medical call: “male lying under a tree for several hours.” (Homeless guy sleeping. Not sure why the caller couldn’t go check to see if he actually needed help before calling two cops, a fire truck, and an ambulance for a guy taking a nap in the shade.)
These are problems that the public is asking the police to solve when the police are not trained to solve or qualified to resolve. This is not a slight against the police, by the way, though it may read as one. Many police deal very well with a variety of situations that they were never trained or qualified to resolve, there’s always the age-old story of the cop delivering a baby in the back of his car. But the catch is that state and local budgets don’t have any other solutions to fall back upon, because many programs are debilitatingly underfunded. This leaves counties with only one real, and well funded, solution to their problem: The police. I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?” For many local governments, they only have a hammer.
This raises the question: With limited state and local budgets, is it smarter to invest in more police, or is it smarter/more effective/more pragmatic to redirect those funds to other programs? If a 10% increase in funding for rehab centers results in a 15% decrease in drunk driving arrests, and a 10% increase in funding to the police results in a 15% increase in drunk driving arrests, which is the better deal? So goes the argument in favor of defunding the police: That money can do more good elsewhere.
In addition to spending the money elsewhere, both to increase the public health with services and programs that actually work to make the public better and to free up police resources to allow them to do what they should be doing, it goes without saying that defunding the police should be accompanied by significant legislative reforms.
Admittedly, “Defund the police” is one of the worst optics ever in the history of politics. There are many millions of people for whom “Defund the police” strikes the same chord as “Defund the arts” does to us. Worse, many, dare I say most, people don’t understand what “Defund the police” actually means. They assume people mean “Eliminate the police force entirely,” which nobody is proposing — they are proposing to change the police force. We’re talking about making the police force a scalpel rather than a machete, shrinking the police down and giving them more specific, and better suited, tasks. “Defund the police” is a scary thought to a lot of people, like, a lot of people. I feel that while “Defund the police is a catchy rallying cry, we’d be better off saying “Comprehensive police reform” or “Reform the police”. I fear that “Defund the police” will send Republicans to the polls more surely than just about anything else I can think of, which will do nothing other than to keep things as they are with little to no lasting reform. We need to rebrand what we’re saying, because no matter how much merit the argument has, what we’re calling it is scary as fuck for many people out there.
