Last summer, I wanted to “defund the police.” The more I've learned about the realities of policing and murder in America, the more I've come to regret it.
1) Excellent post, thank you. I am aware of my own ignorance on many of these topics and appreciate the research (and agree with your conclusions, "Community leaders and criminal justice professionals can partner together to implement programs that continue to build on decades of progress, if we can just stop pitting them against each other.")
2) FWIW, I consider myself fairly far out on the "liberal" end of American politics but I was never inclined to advocate for de-funding the police. I did speak at one of the local public forums on, "race and policing" to advocate for a Civilian Review Board -- which is unlikely to be a major change but seemed like a good idea.
I do appreciate that I never felt like that position put me in conflict with people that I think of as ideological allies. There is a group of local activists who were inclined towards the, "all cops are bastards" position, but I wasn't in the same circles as them, and I didn't feel any pressure to sign on to that viewpoint.
3) I am, by nature, an incrementalist. I think the right solution to most social problems is to figure out ways to chip away at the problem, make small improvements, and build on them. But the moment, last summer, when I was most sympathetic to the viewpoint of, "incremental change isn't enough; there needs to be a major reckoning with the degree of harm that the is being caused under the status quo" was watching Amber Ruffin (who is charming and just about the least threatening person in the world) talking about her experience with the police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o6OEyfuJU8
4) I remember a very simple point from Mark Kleiman's book on criminology _When Brute Force Fails_ that reducing crime as an (extremely large) social good, prisons, and courts are a cost. Much of our political discourse talks about imprisoning people ("getting dangerous criminals off the street") as a benefit in itself. But Kleiman emphasizes that the benefit is the reduction in crime and that punishment is expensive and we should think about how to most efficiently direct carceral resources to get a reduction in crime at lower cost (both financial and human costs).
The same is true of police -- I think that the police do an extremely valuable job, but having police (and particularly armed police officers) is a cost. Without wanting to insult the many people doing the job well, I think it's reasonable to have a conversation about, "how can we best reduce crime while minimizing the ancillary costs?" (and, again, I'm personally much more concerned about reducing the human costs imposed by policing than the financial costs, but I don't begrudge somebody looking at the $10B budget for the NYPD, for example, and wanting to have some reassurance that the money is being spent well).
Thanks for an excellent post. I'm left at the end thinking what I always think when I look at the violence in our country- the every day killings, the mass shootings- why don't other countries (advanced, industrialized Western democracies) have this problem? Of course, that's a simplistic question, and an easy answer is to state the obvious: America is a much different country influenced by a different history (racism, Jim Crow, etc.), commitment (overcommitment??) to individual liberties including the 2nd amendment, vast socioeconomic differences, and on and on. But on some level, I am weary of the "explanations" (excuses?) for our violence. I am even more weary of the responses and often lack of responses to it. All too often it comes down to some version of, "well, we can't do X- assault weapons ban, red flag laws, defund the police, etc.- because X won't solve the problem. As if any difficult problem were ever solved through one measure alone.
Sadly, at the end of it all, it seems to me that while we appear to be drawn to observing the violence and commenting on it, we lack the actual commitment needed to come together as a nation and work to solve it.
I'm deeply encouraged by your thorough look at this. I'll be looking into the books/posts you mentioned, and I'm also thinking of Tangled Up in Blue by Rosa Brooks (who became a cop but also is a law professor and the daughter of Barbara and John Ehrenreich).
What I find interesting and upsetting in all of this, though, is there's very little effort to find people from within the police community who have differing voices and, to use a popular phrase, amplify those voices. It's always this-or-that journalist embedded with the police and surprise! It's more complicated than we thought!
I, for example, am a stay-at-home mom in semi-suburban NC. But plot twist: I grew up in Los Angeles and Chicago. My husband and I are on the liberal end of the spectrum and I'm college-educated. My husband was a police officer for 5 years and still works as a civilian with the police, and I don't think anyone has ever sought my perspective. This is particularly interesting since during the first year of his work with the police, I was an editor AT THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER (not in the newsroom). The only time a reporter ever asked me anything was when a sergeant was shot and killed while my husband was in the academy, and it was a "so how do you feel?" question. I guess it's my problem for not wishing to play the contemporary journalism game.
I keep championing the idea that liberals need to quit treating the police as a monolith, because doing so is alienating and radicalizing in the wrong direction those officers who may have a different political and personal perspective than the Conservative Bastards caricature. Our mid-size department is gender, sexual-orientation and racially diverse. Two of our last three chiefs are Black women. Very few officers match the profiles of the worst of the bad actors who gain national attention. *Some do. But not all, not even a majority.*
I'm not putting forth the bad apples defense. I'm saying it's BOTH. Systemic problems, which are reinforced by bad or outdated policies, shape the culture of a department. Some people, when given an amount of power, are going to act badly. Having major blind spots in policy and internal policy enforcement paves the way for the worst outcomes.
There is nothing easy about American policing or crime. But I know for sure that villainizing all police is pushing those who are within the system who also want change into impossibly tight corners, with no way out.
There are a couple of other metrics we can take a look at. How many officers are employed now versus in the past?
One of the victims of the CP5 managed to escape his attackers and run out of the park. He found a police officer on a moped, who promptly drove off without attempting to render aid or take a report. If the protests are significant then police disengagement is probably something worth taking a look at. One set of possible proxies would be number of traffic stops, number of arrests, etc.
Marie, This is stellar work. I am crying, as the mom of a cop, and an historical liberal, who has learned so much in the past year.
A train of thought . . . .
1) Excellent post, thank you. I am aware of my own ignorance on many of these topics and appreciate the research (and agree with your conclusions, "Community leaders and criminal justice professionals can partner together to implement programs that continue to build on decades of progress, if we can just stop pitting them against each other.")
2) FWIW, I consider myself fairly far out on the "liberal" end of American politics but I was never inclined to advocate for de-funding the police. I did speak at one of the local public forums on, "race and policing" to advocate for a Civilian Review Board -- which is unlikely to be a major change but seemed like a good idea.
I do appreciate that I never felt like that position put me in conflict with people that I think of as ideological allies. There is a group of local activists who were inclined towards the, "all cops are bastards" position, but I wasn't in the same circles as them, and I didn't feel any pressure to sign on to that viewpoint.
3) I am, by nature, an incrementalist. I think the right solution to most social problems is to figure out ways to chip away at the problem, make small improvements, and build on them. But the moment, last summer, when I was most sympathetic to the viewpoint of, "incremental change isn't enough; there needs to be a major reckoning with the degree of harm that the is being caused under the status quo" was watching Amber Ruffin (who is charming and just about the least threatening person in the world) talking about her experience with the police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o6OEyfuJU8
4) I remember a very simple point from Mark Kleiman's book on criminology _When Brute Force Fails_ that reducing crime as an (extremely large) social good, prisons, and courts are a cost. Much of our political discourse talks about imprisoning people ("getting dangerous criminals off the street") as a benefit in itself. But Kleiman emphasizes that the benefit is the reduction in crime and that punishment is expensive and we should think about how to most efficiently direct carceral resources to get a reduction in crime at lower cost (both financial and human costs).
The same is true of police -- I think that the police do an extremely valuable job, but having police (and particularly armed police officers) is a cost. Without wanting to insult the many people doing the job well, I think it's reasonable to have a conversation about, "how can we best reduce crime while minimizing the ancillary costs?" (and, again, I'm personally much more concerned about reducing the human costs imposed by policing than the financial costs, but I don't begrudge somebody looking at the $10B budget for the NYPD, for example, and wanting to have some reassurance that the money is being spent well).
Thanks for an excellent post. I'm left at the end thinking what I always think when I look at the violence in our country- the every day killings, the mass shootings- why don't other countries (advanced, industrialized Western democracies) have this problem? Of course, that's a simplistic question, and an easy answer is to state the obvious: America is a much different country influenced by a different history (racism, Jim Crow, etc.), commitment (overcommitment??) to individual liberties including the 2nd amendment, vast socioeconomic differences, and on and on. But on some level, I am weary of the "explanations" (excuses?) for our violence. I am even more weary of the responses and often lack of responses to it. All too often it comes down to some version of, "well, we can't do X- assault weapons ban, red flag laws, defund the police, etc.- because X won't solve the problem. As if any difficult problem were ever solved through one measure alone.
Sadly, at the end of it all, it seems to me that while we appear to be drawn to observing the violence and commenting on it, we lack the actual commitment needed to come together as a nation and work to solve it.
I'm deeply encouraged by your thorough look at this. I'll be looking into the books/posts you mentioned, and I'm also thinking of Tangled Up in Blue by Rosa Brooks (who became a cop but also is a law professor and the daughter of Barbara and John Ehrenreich).
What I find interesting and upsetting in all of this, though, is there's very little effort to find people from within the police community who have differing voices and, to use a popular phrase, amplify those voices. It's always this-or-that journalist embedded with the police and surprise! It's more complicated than we thought!
I, for example, am a stay-at-home mom in semi-suburban NC. But plot twist: I grew up in Los Angeles and Chicago. My husband and I are on the liberal end of the spectrum and I'm college-educated. My husband was a police officer for 5 years and still works as a civilian with the police, and I don't think anyone has ever sought my perspective. This is particularly interesting since during the first year of his work with the police, I was an editor AT THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER (not in the newsroom). The only time a reporter ever asked me anything was when a sergeant was shot and killed while my husband was in the academy, and it was a "so how do you feel?" question. I guess it's my problem for not wishing to play the contemporary journalism game.
I keep championing the idea that liberals need to quit treating the police as a monolith, because doing so is alienating and radicalizing in the wrong direction those officers who may have a different political and personal perspective than the Conservative Bastards caricature. Our mid-size department is gender, sexual-orientation and racially diverse. Two of our last three chiefs are Black women. Very few officers match the profiles of the worst of the bad actors who gain national attention. *Some do. But not all, not even a majority.*
I'm not putting forth the bad apples defense. I'm saying it's BOTH. Systemic problems, which are reinforced by bad or outdated policies, shape the culture of a department. Some people, when given an amount of power, are going to act badly. Having major blind spots in policy and internal policy enforcement paves the way for the worst outcomes.
There is nothing easy about American policing or crime. But I know for sure that villainizing all police is pushing those who are within the system who also want change into impossibly tight corners, with no way out.
There are a couple of other metrics we can take a look at. How many officers are employed now versus in the past?
One of the victims of the CP5 managed to escape his attackers and run out of the park. He found a police officer on a moped, who promptly drove off without attempting to render aid or take a report. If the protests are significant then police disengagement is probably something worth taking a look at. One set of possible proxies would be number of traffic stops, number of arrests, etc.
Great post