On June 5th, the Washington DC mayor unveiled
a statement, painted down the street leading
to the White House,
“Black Lives Matter.”
Within 24 hours, Black Lives Matter activists
responded with their own message:
“Defund the Police.”
This slogan caught on rapidly among tens of
thousands of people protesting police brutality
in the United States.
But what does it really mean to defund
the police? And what if it’s not as radical
as it sounds?
A city budget, a county budget, a state budget,
a national budget are all markers of what
our societies are prioritizing.
The US spends $100 billion every year
on policing. Most of which comes from local
municipalities.
New York City, for example, appropriated $5.9
billion last year to the police department.
For comparison, here’s what the city allocated
for homeless services, health, housing, youth
and community development, and jobs programs.
The disparities are huge, and they echo in
cities across the country.
Like in Chicago, where the policing budget
is $1.7 billion. Nearly twice the
budget of the Fire Department, Department
of Transportation, Public Library, and Public
Health combined.
If you look at these budgets in the United States
What you'll see is that we have deeply de-prioritized
providing people their basic needs. And instead,
we over prioritize punishing human beings.
The emphasis on policing in the US has led
to over-policing and underpolicing all at
once.
The police arrests over 10 million people
in a year. And the vast majority of those
arrests, especially in black and poor neighborhoods,
are for minor offenses, like drug possession
or drinking in public. That heavy-handed approach
is over-policing.
But when it comes to violent crime, the rate
of police arrests is incredibly low. And
that’s under-policing, which leaves communities
of color underserved.
People believe that the police are deterring violence.
Clearly they're enacting violence, but are they also deterring violence.
And that's highly questionable.
A lot of research suggests they are having no influence whatsoever
So if they're having no influence whatsoever
on the phenomena that they're supposed to
be influencing and they're doing violence, what purpose are they supposed to serve?
The repercussions of prioritizing the police
over other services can also be seen at schools
in the US.
1.7 million students are in schools
with police, but no counselors. And 3 million
have police in schools, but no nurses.
And when it comes to 911 calls, in many
cases, police officers are the first responders
to mental health related emergencies.
That’s important because one in every four
deaths from police shootings are people with
mental health problems.
I can literally imagine you just replace someone
with a weapon, with someone who will actually
sit down on the ground with them and talk.
Not throw them on the ground and sit on top
of them or lay on top of them. But someone
who will take them wherever they are, listen to their situations and
then try to figure out, diagnose their problem.
Police are doing the jobs of what other groups
of people and workers can be doing.
Being tasked with jobs they're not trained
to do, is an idea some police officers acknowledge
too.
The need to rethink police budgets has become
even more glaring in the middle of the coronavirus
pandemic.
Many have called attention to the fact that
hospital workers struggle to get personal
protective equipment. While thousands of
police officers have riot gear at the ready
for protests.
Even in response to the pandemic, while many
agencies grapple with coronavirus budget cuts,
police budgets have largely remained intact.
New York City’s proposal for the coming
fiscal year cuts only 5 percent of the NYPD
budget.
But that same proposal, calls for a 12 percent
cut to the Department of Health.
This is where the movement to defund the police
comes in. It’s a push to take the billions
of dollars cities spend on police, and move
that funding to other services, like education,
housing, jobs or mental healthcare.
At its core, the idea is to rethink public
safety because the current form of policing
isn’t built to serve everyone equally.
We live in an economy of punishment. We as
in black people, as poor people, as in marginal
people, police are not used to keep us safe.
What we've seen over the last seven years
is black people being killed, humiliated,
violated, sexually assaulted, maimed by law
enforcement. We haven't seen it get any better.
Reimagining public safety in this moment is
a matter of life or death.
For years, reforms like introducing police
body cameras, have been proposed across
the country as a response to police brutality.
But these reforms have only added more money
to police budgets, even when, as studies
like this one in DC show, they have “no
detectable effect on police use of force”.
We absolutely need to try and hold law enforcement
accountable. But what we've recognized is
all of our accountability measures, up until
now have not worked.
In  the case of Minneapolis, since 2016 their
police officers have received body cameras, bias training
and have a duty-to-intervene policy where other police officers
must step in if they see force applied inappropriately.
Yet, a Minneapolis police officer killed
George Floyd as three officers looked on.
So this idea that we could reform an institution
that has a blue
code of silence, that we can reform an institution
that is one of the most powerful unions, that
is no longer the conversation.
But the calls to defund the police have been polarizing and have led
to some fears about how it might affect personal
and public safety.
How do you defund or dismantle and keep people safe?
When we all dial 911, we need to know there's someone coming.
If you defund the police or diminish their ability to police their communities,
you're gonna have a warzone.
I think we often hear issues of safety for
mostly white, affluent people. And I have
to remind those folks that their safety is
predicated on the unsafety of black people.
Opponents of defunding the police have cautioned
that after cities
like Memphis had to downsize their police
force,
there was an increase in violent crime.
But proponents point to a major difference
between defunding the police then, and now.
Today, it’s not just about cutting police
budgets. A key part of defunding is to
redistribute those resources and create better
responses to crime.
That redistribution would still fund first
responders, but could force cities to rethink
what kinds of responders would make communities
safer for everyone.
Whether it's investing in a new crisis intervention
team.
A mental health team.
Or social workers.
In some cities, like Eugene, Oregon and Austin,
Texas, alternative models for safety
have already been put in place to dispatch
mental health professionals to certain 911
calls, instead of the police.
And putting money into other agencies like
housing and jobs to help people meet their
basic needs could also end up making communities
safer.
So rather than have this, um, `I'm fearful
of someone coming to take my stuff. Hey, can
I have a number that I can call, so somebody
with some weapons can protect my stuff?` It's
more like if everyone had some stuff and if
everyone had a reasonable existence, they
wouldn't be looking for anybody else's stuff
and you wouldn't need to call anybody.
Black Lives Matter activists and local organizers
across the country have been working to defund
the police for years.
But for many, the calls to “defund the police” don't
stop at scaling down the scope of what the
police do.
It could also be a first step towards eventually
abolishing the police as we know it.
You could think that the defund movement is
the gateway to a broader discussion of reprioritization
One position of which is, abolition.
The details of a plan like this differ from
city to city, but there is a shared purpose
of altering what public safety looks like
in the US.
Defunding the police, even at its most
basic, will still be a difficult battle
for activists on a national scale.
One poll conducted in early June, found
that only about a quarter of Americans favored
cutting funding for police departments.
But in parts of the country, it’s already
happening.
In Denver, the school district has broken
their contract with the police department.
In Oakland, the school board pledged to do
the same.
And in Minneapolis, the City Council voted
to completely disband its police department,
and create a new model.
All of these moves can be traced to continued
public pressure and protests against police
brutality.
Protests which, in a matter of weeks, brought
the slogan to ‘defund the police’ into
the mainstream.
This has been the most tragic three weeks
and also the most inspiring three weeks. We
have seen death after death of black people.
What are we going to do to be in defense
of black lives? That is the conversation we're
asking. It's not just about black lives mattering.
That's not enough to claim that.
You have to step into a new role in protecting black people
and ensuring their lives are safe.
