Defund the Police. Refund Social Services.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
The outrage this nation has experienced in recent months has been pent up for decades, if not centuries. It is not the result of any individual instance of police brutality, it is the result of centuries of systemic oppression of poor and working-class Americans, predominantly Black Americans, at the hands of the state.
Leading up to the death of George Floyd the federal Government proved its illegitimacy in its response to the Coronavirus Pandemic and the ensuing economic disaster. Rather than bailing out poor & working-class Americans by funding a universal basic income, instituting universal healthcare, funding housing programs, and stopping evictions, rent, and other basic monthly living expenses until the pandemic was dealt with, our corporate-controlled government chose to bail out Wall St. to the tune of about $4 Trillion while giving a meager $1,200 pittance check and temporary improvements to unemployment benefits to some Americans. This clearly didn’t do the trick for the American public, and the continuous killing of Black people by law enforcement with impunity has only compounded the tension on a nation that was already about to tear apart at the seams.
Law enforcement must understand that they are not above the law. A badge is not a license to kill or harass with impunity, and if anyone should be held to the highest standards of the law it’s those who are tasked with enforcing it.
The number of people killed by cops is staggering, last year there were only 27 days where a police officer did not kill somebody, and in far too many cases the officer involved in the harassing or killing is never prosecuted, in fact, they get to stay on the job.
The main officer involved in the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd had a long track-record of police brutality. He was never held accountable and was allowed to continue abusing people on the job.
According to the group Communities United Against Police Brutality, Officer Chauvin was involved in causing the deaths of three people in a car chase in 2005, he was also one of the officers involved in the murder of Wayne Reyes who was shot 16 times. In 2008 Chauvin also shot Ira Latrell Toles, an unarmed 21-year-old black man, and he was put on administrative leave in 2011 for his part in the killing of Alaskan Native American Leroy Martinez. In total, there were already twelve police brutality complaints against Officer Chauvin before he murdered George Floyd. They were all listed as “closed”, “non-public” or “no discipline”.
Thanks to the outrage and the resulting wave of non-stop nationwide protests that erupted following the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department, Officer Chauvin has since been charged with second-degree murder. The three other officers involved in the killing have also been charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. Unfortunately, Thomas Lane, one of the other cops with his knee on George Floyd, was released from jail on $750,000 bail on Wednesday, June 10th.
Although some of the officers were actually held accountable due to the nationwide outrage this case unleashed, this is hardly ever how these situations unfold. For example, from 2013 to 2019 a staggering 99% of killings by police have resulted in no officers being charged with a crime. Justice not only needs to be done in the name of George Floyd, but justice also needs to be done in the names of:
KEITH SCOTT was Sitting in a car reading when he was shot by a police officer who was not charged.
JONATHAN FERRELL was asking for help after an auto accident when he was shot 12 times by police. That case ended in a mistrial.
STEPHON CLARK was holding a cell phone when he was shot eight times, six in the back. The officers involved were not charged.
AMADOU DIALLO who was shot while taking out his wallet, four officers fired 41 times, all were acquitted.
TAMIR RICE who was playing with a toy gun, shot by a police officer arriving on the scene. The Officer was not charged.
SEAN BELL who was hosting a bachelor party, when he was killed by 50 rounds fired by police officers who were found not guilty of charges.
TRAYVON MARTIN was walking home with nothing but iced tea and Skittles when he was shot by George Zimmerman, who was found not guilty.
PHILANDO CASTILE was pulled over & shot after telling the officer he had a legally registered weapon in the car. The Officer was acquitted of all charges.
AIYANA JONES who while sleeping was accidentally shot by an officer in a raid at the wrong apartment. The Officer was cleared of all charges.
SANDRA BLAND who was pulled over for a non-existent traffic violation and was found three days later hanging in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas
These are just a few examples, there are many more. There is an epidemic of unaccountability within law enforcement in the United States and it needs to be addressed.
The answer to resolving this crisis is not more policing, the answer involves defunding and dismantling our current systems of law enforcement to make them accountable to the people they are supposed to be serving. That means creating a holistic community-based approach to law enforcement that treats the underlying causes of crime, such as poverty, mental health issues, addiction, etc… rather than just punishing those who break the law after the fact.
The Rashard Brooks case shows precisely why we need to defund and dismantle the current form of policing we have in the United States and replace it with a holistic community-based approach.
In the case of Rashard Brooks, who was shot three times in the back and killed by an Atlanta Police Officer after they were called because Brooks was sleeping off a few drinks in his car in a Wendy’s parking lot, an unarmed social worker should have been sent to the scene to make sure that Brooks was able to get home safely since body-camera video evidence proves he was not trying to break the law until police unnecessarily attempted to arrest him.
Brooks was recently released from jail due to the safety regulations that have been implemented in some states due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, he knew that if he was placed under arrest again he would not be able to afford bail, and because trials are moving even slower than usual during this pandemic, it’s likely that he would sit in jail potentially for years just because he was sleeping off a few drinks in his car in a parking lot. As a result, Brooks resisted the officers attempt at arresting him and the officers attempted to wrestle him to the ground, but Brooks managed to get ahold of the officer’s taser in the process, Brooks then shot the taser as he was running away, and one of the officers shot Brooks three times in the back as he was running away.
This did not need to happen. If you say that Rashard Brooks shouldn’t have resisted arrest, then you’re not acknowledging the fact that armed agents of the state shouldn’t be relied upon to solve this situation in the first place.
Due to the way our criminal justice system is set up, as a result of the War on Drugs and the popular theory of broken windows policing, police officers are incentivized to make arrests for low-level non-violent and drug related crimes. For example:
“Over 50% of inmates currently in federal prison are there for drug offenses. This is up significantly from 1970, when that number was only 16%. In 1988, the government started the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program to reward police departments throughout the country that actively participated in the War on Drugs...Through this program, local and state police departments receive federal funding based on how many people were arrested, rather than an overall reduction in crime.”
As a result of grant programs and policing theories like these that encourage law enforcement to make arrests for low-level non-violent crimes, more than 663,000 people were arrested for simple marijuana possession in 2011, which is 100,000 more than arrests for all violent crimes combined that year.
When most people think about crime, they tend to focus on violent crimes like murder, burglary, rape, and assault. Since violent crime dominates the narrative around crime, people tend to assume that law enforcement is most concerned with violent crime, but this is not always the case. For example,
“...when police work to reduce crime, their primary focus is on the number of arrests they make rather than the type of crime they’re helping get off the streets. This is not a conscious decision made by individual police officers; this is the result of a system put in place during the War on Drugs, which incentivized police departments to make easy arrests and more of them.”
Knowing these facts, defunding and dismantling our current forms of law enforcement, and replacing them with community-based systems that address the root causes of crime to prevent them in the first place doesn’t seem so radical, it just seems like common sense.
Imagine instead of calling the police to resolve the situation of people sleeping in parking lots or on benches in a park by most likely placing them under arrest, thereby needlessly criminalizing poverty, we can call a social worker in to check on them to see why they’re sleeping in the park, and offer them housing, food, water or healthcare.
Imagine instead of calling the police, who routinely needlessly escalate situations to make arrests, to resolve the situation if you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, you can text a number and a specially trained trauma-informed crisis intervention specialist can arrive on the scene. Rather than further escalating the situation, you can work together with your crisis intervention specialist to make a plan to ensure your safety long-term.
Imagine instead of calling the police to respond to a mental health crisis, we could call a first responder with specific training in mental health directly to your door within minutes.
That was what real public safety looks like. Unfortunately, our government tends to favor militarized solutions to problems that can easily be solved by funding basic social services.
We must also acknowledge that many law enforcement officers are working-class people who are also living paycheck to paycheck. Unfortunately, in far too many circumstances law enforcement has been used to put down revolutionary movements to protect the interests of the corporate ruling class.
This can be seen throughout American History. You can look back at history and see police used to squash strikes for basic worker’s rights in the early 1900s when the policies being advocated for would have benefited them in the end. You can see police used to squash protests basic human rights during the civil rights movement, and before that, you could look back at history as see police enforce racist Jim Crow laws in the reconstruction era south. Just a decade ago you could see police used to squash the Occupy movement that erupted in response to the 2008 corporate bailout. And today you can see cops across the nation brutalizing protesters, arresting people of color at higher rates for the same crimes as white people, and you can see our racist criminal justice system giving harsher sentences to people of color for committing the same offenses as white people.
This long chain of oppression must be broken. Holding those who are tasked with enforcing the law to the highest extent of the law will restore credibility to an institution that has damaged its reputation with large segments of our population on a nationwide scale, and it will only benefit law enforcement and the communities they serve in the end, but accountability for individual officers is only the beginning. For real justice to be served, we must defund and dismantle the current criminal justice system and replace it with a holistic community-based approach that treats the underlying causes of crime, such as poverty, mental health issues, and addiction rather than just punishing those who break the law after the fact by using them for cheap labor for the state.