A Great Reform For Years to Come

On May 25, 2020, a 46-year-old black male named Geroge Floyd was killed by a police officer by suffocation because his knee was pressed on his neck for 7 minutes. The death was viewed by 3 other police officers who watched this tragedy first hand and did nothing to stop it. Although this is just one incident in a very prevalent issue of law enforcement killing citizens in our country for poor reasons. According to The Guardian newspaper “US killings by police and other law enforcement agencies including from gunshots, tasers, car accidents and custody deaths. In 2015 they counted 1,146 deaths and 1,093 deaths for 2016 and 1,004 killings in 2019.”(Ray). This has caused protests and a spark of the “Black lives matter,” movement across the country but also a major reform of “defund the police.” So what does this actually mean? To defund the police simply means altering funding to police departments and giving it to other government agencies. In this year alone major cities in our country have already decided to practice this reform. Los Angeles has already decided to redirect 100 million dollars from the LAPD and move it into programs centered around helping minority groups and lesser income communities. Also, cities like Baltimore and San Francisco city councils have decided to relocate over 20 million dollars in funding in 2021 from their police departments. This money would have been used for things like new training facilities and security at public school institutions. Instead, they now plan to put that money toward things like supporting locally black-owned businesses and rehab centers. (Naylor). It seems that society is moving in a direction where they feel like police departments are overpaid and those millions of dollars toward other aspects of life. So the question becomes if this does, in fact, make sense, and will this show positive outcomes in the near future.

To answer this question I will strongly say yes, I believe defunding police departments will result in more pros than cons over time. Lets first paint a picture of how much funding law enforcement truly receives. For the fiscal year, 2020 police departments around the country will receive around 400 million dollars in funding. Although this is only to train what they estimated to be around 2800 new officers in close to 600 different agencies. (Naylor). There are also grant programs like the “Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program that provided 264 million dollars in 2019 to states, territories, tribes, and local governments for law enforcement and corrections programs.”(Ray). Despite the massive amounts of backing for law enforcement branches many accredited individuals have come out and been skeptical of the overall financing. Barry Friedman, director of the Policing Project at NYU Law has stated “Federal grant and equipment programs for policing are often designed in ways that incentivize harmful policing, far more often focus on effective policing than ensuring that policing is fair, minimally harmful, or consistent with the law. They have a strong law enforcement perspective, rather than a community safety perspective.” (Rakich). This is coming from a man who has served in a leading role for the NYPD to strengthen policing through democratic governance and he himself has doubts. From 2017 to 2019 it was reported that each year on average our federal government spends 115 billion dollars on the police and 79 billion on corrections. This adds up to around 8 percent of state and local direct general expenditures. Only 19 percent of this money goes to elementary and secondary education and 10 percent to higher education. (urban.org).

So lets put this in perspective. In total there are reported to be around 800 thousand police officers in the United States. Although in 2019 it was reported that there are close to 56.6 million students attending elementary and secondary school and 50 million of those kids are in public schools. There are 15 million in public high schools and 14 million enrolled in public universities. (educationdata.org). So the federal government is putting just as much money toward law enforcement then higher education even when the total number of students is almost 20 times the number of police officers. Also, they are putting almost half the money toward law enforcement they do toward younger children’s education when they outnumber them by almost 65 times more. Studies out of the NYPD stop and frisk program have found a lot of information supporting why police should not be backed as much as they are. Over 90 percent of people stopped by their officers were not committing a crime. Over 60 percent of those people were of Balck and Latino background and half the time brutal physical force was used. They also found that “Approximately 38% of murders, 66% of rapes, 70% of robberies, and 47% of aggravated assaults go uncleared every year.” (Ray). Also, police officers when going through their training that cost millions of dollars a year are absorbed with the mindset that they need to practice tactics in which they induce violence to reduce harm. Although this study showed that 90 percent of the time when “911” is called it is for confrontations that are not violent. (Rakich). On the flip side, around 1.2 million students drop out of high school each year, which is almost 7 thousand a day. Almost 2,000 high schools across the U.S. graduate less than 60% of their students and a fourth of high school freshmen fail to graduate from high school on time. From 1990 to 2020 the dropout rate has only fallen by 2 percent, meaning in 30 years there has not been much of a difference at all. Another fact is that 36% of these dropouts have learning disabilities and 75% of them said it was because there was no alternative learning program in their school. Also more than half of the students who dropped out did it during 10th and 11th grade because they either “did not have a reason to stay in school or were not being shown enough attention or support.” (educationdata.org). In the reading “Press Urban Schools,” the authors examine an interview conducted with a high school Spanish teacher in an urban school. She says that only after months of teaching she wanted to stop because “Teaching these types of kids is too time-consuming and energy-draining. None of the teachers here can be a successful urban teacher without extraordinary perhaps unsustainable commitment to their work.” (Clemmit).

So what do all these numbers mean? It should show that there is a bigger issue within our own educational systems then a lack of justice being served for a crime. Law enforcement departments receive almost the same amount of funding as public higher education departments but they lack reporting crimes and 9 out of 10 “911” phone calls have proven to be nonviolent circumstances. (Ray). Although with these nonviolent circumstances our country spends millions to have police officers practice force when there is no immediate danger or threat. Meanwhile, you have thousands of students dropping out of school a day. All children should be respected and listened to no matter their age, race, or anything else that distinguishes them. With citizenship comes a child’s right to have their own voice and engage for themselves in the democratic realm. We need to put more funding into school systems for programs that will achieve some of these objectives. For teachers who will not give up and for more programs for students who learn differently than others. I am not saying stopping crime is not important but imagine the endless possibilities of funding these things for our nation’s future rather than training future officers how to act if they feel threatened.

Almost 95 percent of last year’s arrests had to do with minor crimes like traffic violations or possession of marijuana. In 2019 there were 10.6 million arrests and only 5 percent had to do with things like assault and rape. Los Angeles every year gives the police department almost 30 percent of their 10 billion dollar budget, and for what so they can catch people for minor crimes that don’t propose danger. (Naylor). Cities like Los Angeles and New York City that are always trying to show things like decreasing the homeless population are their first priority and spend more money on policing than most things. More than community, health, housing, and homeless development combined. Defunding the police will do things like cut down on security guards in schools which already promotes unequal opportunities for minorities because they are constantly being searched and live in fear. It would cut down on things like road stops where police stop less than one percent of those who they actually need to. It would give the chance to put more money into things like education, housing projects for the homeless, and services for disabled people or people with mental health issues. Those in charge of our country need to sit back and reevaluate policing altogether. They need to come up with a more sustainable way to serve and protect without having to pour as much money as they do into law enforcement. It is just a shame we as a society realize this after a horrific incident like the death of Geroge Floyd but I am glad we are starting somewhere.

Work Cited -

1. Clemmit, Marcia. Fixing Urban Schools. CQ Press, 2011.
2. “K-12 Enrollment Statistics [2020]: Totals by Grade Level + More.” EducationData, Jan. 2020, educationdata.org/k12-enrollment-statistics/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20approximately%2056.6%20million,school%20in%20the%20United%20States.&text=Among%20the%2050.8%20million%20students,3.7%20million%20were%20in%20kindergarten.
3. Naylor, Brian. “How Federal Dollars Fund Local Police.” NPR, NPR, 9 June 2020, www.npr.org/2020/06/09/872387351/how-federal-dollars-fund-local-police.
4. “Police and Corrections Expenditures.” Urban Institute, 10 June 2020, www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/police-and-corrections-expenditures#:~:text=In%202017%2C%20state%20and%20local,on%20corrections%20(3%20percent).
5. Rakich, Nathan. “How Americans Feel About ‘Defunding The Police’.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, 19 June 2020, fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-like-the-ideas-behind-defunding-the-police-more-than-the-slogan-itself/.
6. Ray, Rashawn. “What Does ‘Defund the Police’ Mean and Does It Have Merit?” Brookings, Brookings, 19 June 2020, www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/19/what-does-defund-the-police-mean-and-does-it-have-merit/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CDefund%20the%20police%E2%80%9D%20means%20reallocating,funded%20by%20the%20local%20municipality.