Defund the Police?

Following the murder of George Floyd and other young black men, there have been persistent calls to “defund the police.”  I initially interpreted this to mean: “Abolish all police departments” and found it difficult to take seriously.  I fully understand the need to change the interaction between police and the (especially black) public.  The number of police murders of black men is stunning.  But how would it be possible to abolish the police?  What does that even mean?

The calls to defund the police continue, however, many from serious observers, so I feel the need to take them seriously.

Let’s differentiate between the police and the services they provide.  Regardless of what happens to police departments and their current employees, jurisdictions must continue to fund most of the services that police departments have traditionally provided.

What is it that the police actually do?

Services that do not require weapons

• Monitor traffic and issue citations
• Investigate traffic accidents
• Intervene in cases of domestic violence
• Respond to emergencies that involve the mentally ill
• Respond to complaints regarding those who are drunk or high
• Respond to other threats in public spaces
• Provide safety for schools
• Investigate minor crimes such as jaywalking, minor shoplifting, trespassing and so on
• Respond to alarms
• Interact with homeless

Police spend only 4% of their time handling violent crime.  So the question becomes: Why do we need armed police for the other 96%?

Many of these services could be better handled by professionals.  Social workers, mental health workers, addiction counselors, and other professionals are far better trained to intervene and, when required, de-escalate the situation.  Other needed services — such as monitoring traffic, issuing citations, investigating traffic accidents, providing safety for schools, investigating minor crimes and interacting with the homeless — could be provided by people with special training as we already do with parking enforcement.  Most of those people, of course, would require significant extra training in recognizing potentially dangerous situations.

It’s important to point out that paying for the higher salaries of these professionals and experts is going to be more expensive than paying for policing as we now know it.  “Defunding the police” will not save money.

While it is certainly true that much more money needs to be poured into social services, that money will need to come from elsewhere.

Services that do require a gun

What about those situations of violence and violent crimes?  How do we respond to those?  Comparisons with policing in European countries can be instructive.

Training is one key issue.  In the United States, police are trained as “warriors,” with far more training in weapons than in conflict resolution.  In contrast, in Scandinavian countries, police undergo three years of training in a special academy.  Much of that education is concentrated on de-escalation and non-violent methods of response.  Paul Hirschfield reports that US police academies, on the other hand, provide an average total of 19 weeks of classroom instruction.

Under such constraints, the average recruit in the US spends almost 20 times as many hours of training in using force than in conflict de-escalation. Most states require fewer than eight hours of crisis intervention training. …

[The EU only permits] deadly force that is “absolutely necessary” to achieve a lawful purpose. Killings excused under America’s “reasonable belief” standards often violate Europe’s “absolute necessity” standards. …

In the US, only eight states require verbal warnings (when possible), while warning and leg shots are typically prohibited. In stark contrast, Finland and Norway require that police obtain permission from a superior officer, whenever possible, before shooting anyone.

Comparison with Europe is misleading, however.  At least two major factors differentiate us:

1. The availability of guns:  When anyone can carry a concealed weapon, a violent response to any kind of peace officer — even handing out parking tickets — is much more likely.  Furthermore, those who intervene do not know how likely it is that a gun will be used.  The issue is magnified when people are visibly carrying assault weapons. 
2. Racism: Even disregarding explicit racism, almost every white person has some level of implicit bias. In one study subjects in a computer game were told to shoot pop-up figures that held a gun and not shoot figures holding a cell phone.  Black pop-up figures were much more likely to be shot than white pop-up figures.  (The results were the same regardless of whether the shooter was white or black.

Where does that leave us?

Assessing the need for armed interveners in a United States full of guns and racism will take some study and careful deliberation.  We can learn a lot from the European examples about decreasing the likelihood of violence, but comparisons only go so far.  What level of armed response is necessary in our country where there are so many weapons and so much racism?  We don’t know, and it will require a great deal of study and experimentation to find out.  The groups who study this must be chosen from relevant professionals, government, police, and, most importantly, the affected communities.  And it must begin now.

It does seem to me that most police departments, as they currently exist, will need to be shut down, but only after other institutions are created and personnel hired to take over the required services.  A much smaller number of armed interveners will need to be carefully chosen for their abilities (especially in multi-cultural settings), paid enough to stay, given several years of adequate training (especially in nonviolent techniques and conflict resolution) and then monitored carefully for their use of violence.  Just reducing the number of armed first-responders to situations in which they are absolutely necessary will dramatically cut the rate of police violence. 

One possibility would be to have a small standing fleet of armed officers on the road patrolling and available for efficient dispatching to situations requiring their expertise.

“Defund the police” is a provocative title, and it may scare some otherwise sympathetic people off.  On the other hand, it may be necessary in order to remind us how desperate the situation is, shake things up, and mobilize energy to transform peacemaking in the United States.