Don’t Shoot: The implications of ‘Defund the Police’ in America
Since the unlawful killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police department, the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) has received extensive and far-reaching support throughout the globe. From politicians, academics, Sports players, TV presenters, and even movie stars, all have expressed their solidarity for the growing movement. However, whilst protests and riots continue to grip American cities, it would appear that the efforts of the BLM movement are being underlined by a more radical movement.
Over the last 30 years, acts of police brutality in Los Angeles, Ferguson & Minnesota have bolstered calls for traditional policing to be defunded, or even abolished entirely. This once again became an issue after George Floyd’s death, when Lisa Bender of the Minneapolis City Council, stated in a CNN interview that she and other councillors were “committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis”. Her comments grew more controversial when she proposed a new model of public safety that “actually keeps our communities safe”, making explicitly clear the councillors’ stance against traditional policing in America.
This begs the question of what exactly is meant by ‘defund the police’, and what public safety may look like if local politicians enacted their proposals. Let us break down their case.
Why abolish the police?
The police abolition movement dates back to the early 1900s. Their claims that American policing is inherently racist, and strictly tied to its white supremacist and colonial past, has been increasingly vocal in light of the beating of Rodney in 1992, the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, and of course, the death of George Floyd in 2020. All of these incidents have only given their cause increased momentum.
Broadly speaking, the movement can be broken down into two strands between those proposing divestment (directing funds away from the police), and those that believe that the police force should be abolished entirely on the other.
Those who make the case for diverting funds, believe that the money spent on police could be invested in different forms of community support, such as mental health services, education, and health care. When sufficient funds are invested into areas with high crime rates, they argue that crime will decline as a result, especially when those funds are directed towards minority communities.
In support of this, Phillip Mcharris, a doctoral candidate of Sociology at the University of Yale, believes that divesting funds would have a positive impact by ending a culture of punishment in the criminal justice system. To McHarris, it is wrong to assume that the police are stewards of the community. Instead, whenever there is a problem within that community, it should be social services, and not the police, that deals with it. The rationale behind this idea is that there is a direct correlation between police presence and violence. That is, the more police you add to a city, the increased likely hood of violence taking place during police interactions.Therefore, to address this problem, divestment supporters argue that reducing police funding is likely to limit the likelihood of lives being lost.
On the more radical side of the defund the police spectrum is the organisation MPD150. Like divestment supporters, they also believe that community resources should be prioritised, but that the ultimate aim should be the total abolition of the police force as we know it. However, the premise of police abolition appears less coherent. For example, on the FAQ page of the organisations’ website, the response to the question “Why outright abolish the police?” was that they had a long history of criminalising communities of colour, and that instead of preventing crime, cops “create crime” by causing violent disruption within communities. Indeed, recent research has provided crucial insight that points towards racial discrimination within American policing. A Nature Human Report published in May 2020 of nearly 100 million traffic stops revealed that the police were more likely to stop Black and Hispanic drivers than they were White or Asian. It also pointed towards a ‘veil of blackness’ where black and Hispanic drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset as it was more difficult to distinguish their race in a moving vehicle.
Against this, there is evidence to suggest that black Americans aren’t being disproportionately criminalised by the police. In 2017, a Quinnipiac university poll found that in New York city, Black Americans strongly supported the cops in their neighbourhood, at 62 percent. That’s compared to 35 Percent who disapproved. And in 2020, a Monmouth University Poll surveyed a national sample of 807 adults between May and June and found that Americans were largely supportive of all their local police departments. If the modern police force was actively criminalising minority communities, this would arguably be reflected in their level of support. The fact that the police enjoy majority support from these groups indicates a different outcome.
There is also the matter of police impact on black communities themseleves, which have been judged by economist Wagner Williams as being largely positive. An economist from NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Williams focuses on the economics of crime and incarceration policy in the US and their impact on racial inequality. After gathering public data on 242 cities between 1981–2018, they were compared to variables such as police employment, homicide rates, reported crimes and arrests. The findings? Williams concluded that the more addiontal officers they were on the street, the more lives were saved as a result. This also led to a reduction in high profile crimes such as robbery, rape and aggrevated assault. When you consider that most black Americans statistically live in areas of high crime, this leads to an increased potential to reduce both serious levels of unrest and victimization. In all, whilst Williams does not consider the levels of racial profiling that occurs and the disparity in incarceration rates, it does nonetheless point towards the positive effects of police involvement in the community.
So if the statistics suggest that the Police are widely supported in America, and have a positive impact on the communities they serve, why then, is there so much outrage directed towards them?
A ‘War on Cops’?
In her book, The War on Cops, Heather Macdonald of the Manhattan Institute examines the impacts of misinformation on American policing. MacDonald believes that there is a strong correlation between the decrease of uniformed police presence in the community (otherwise known as proactive policing) and the increase in crime in urban areas. In what she called the ‘Ferguson effect’, Macdonald argued that when officers endorse the notion that there is a pandemic of racially biased police shootings, they are less likely to engage in these measures that have been vital to reducing crime in America. This damages communities by undermining the creation of a lawful environment in densely packed areas.
There is certainly evidence to support Macdonald’s view. For example, when Freddie Grey died in police custody, the Baltimore Police Department responded by actively reducing their proactive policing (the reports of these cases dropped by nearly 50%). As a result, Baltimore experienced a dramatic rise in homicides. Three years prior to Freddie Grey’s death: 527 homicides were committed in the city — Three years afterwards, when the police reduced their proactive policing: 859 homicides were committed. When asked about whether the community wanted police to back off after the death of Grey, Rev. Kinji Scott, a pastor in Baltimore, replied: “No. That represented our progressives, our activists, our liberal journalists, our politicians, but it did not represent the overall community.” She concluded by stating that she wanted a productive relationship with law enforcement: “we wanted the police there. We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.”. Whilst she acknowledges the need for better policing towards minority groups, Scott’s remarks emphasise the positive effects of police presence in stabilizing urban cities in America. As the case in Baltimore exemplifies, when police back off proactive policing, they do so at tremendous cost to the urban community. This helps to expose the fallacy of police abolition by placing them at the centre of fixing the chronic racial disparity in crimes committed, rather than adding to it. This shows the Ferguson Effect in action. Whilst no one can dispute the fact that violations occur under the police force, capitulating to calls to overhaul the system have ramifications not only for American policing but also for areas where high levels of crime occur.
Not surprisingly, the media also have their part to play in the spread of misinformation. The rise of the 24-hour news cycle and social media has helped to distort the Public’s view of the police force by depicting them in a largely negative light. This is what happened with “hands up don’t shoot”, a defining slogan of the Ferguson riots, which began after Michael Brown was shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson in 2014. Many victims claimed that Brown had put his hands up as a sign of surrender before being killed. But when follow up interviews were carried out as part of a federal investigation, a number of these witnesses later recanted their original statements. As mentioned in the report by the department of justice, witnesses who claimed to see Brown showing his hands up in clear surrender before being shot dead, later acknowledged that they did not actually witness the event.
However, by this time, many of these witnesses had spread this misinformation to local news outlets, who in turn portrayed a false narrative of the incident to the rest of the country. This led to the ‘hands up don’t shoot” slogan that was used so widely during the Ferguson riots, suggesting that Brown was unlawfully killed by an armed police officer. Significantly, this misinformed account had become a rallying cry across America against state sanctioned violence. It even made its way to the House of Representatives, when the Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jefferies argued: “Hands up, don’t shoot. It’s a rallying cry of people all across America who are fed up with police violence.” . With the important job of media outlets across the country, deciding to run stories that can either be taken out of context or manipulated entirely, poses a strong predicament for how objective journalism into such tragedies can take place. Not addressing this issue may only add to the spread of politically charged rhetoric within racial discourse in the United States.
What does the future hold for police abolition?
So what does it mean to defund the police? On the face of it, it is the redirection of funds away from the police force, and towards other community-based resources, particularly for marginalised communities. Activists and Progressive Politicians feel that it will heal urban communities and help improve race relations. Liberal and Conservative supporters feel that it will jeopardise the commendable progress made for and by minority groups since the Civil Rights Movement. It is clear that there is much more to be said from all sides of the political aisle. It would also appear that putting it into practice is another matter. Whilst their intentions are to be commended, abolishing the police may cost more lives than it seeks to save.
A YouGov poll taken in May 2020 shows that most Americans don’t support abolishing the police, at 65% opposing cutting funds to the police force. It also concluded that only 15% of Democrats and 16% of Republicans support the idea. And in a poll taken in June 2020, only 22% of African Americans support police abolition. Therefore, the lower level of support, combined with the movement’s vague plans for replacing law enforcement, suggests that the movement will come to pass, and that America will not abolish its police force. Of course, American policing isn’t perfect. What happened in Minneapolis was an inexcusable act of police brutality, and when such acts present themselves, the community should unite to stamp it out. But it’s apparent that defunding or abolishing the police is simply not the answer.
A list of sources used can be found here
