"Defund the police" doesn't work, because people do not grok the intended meaning. There is however a very serious, widely disseminated movement, based on substantial research, to stop sending armed police officers in response to problems they are not trained or equipped to address. These are mental health crises, people who are intoxicated, domestic or neighborhood quarrels, and other non-criminal emergencies. There have been many reports of tragedies in which police, called because of a mental health crisis, end up killing the person instead of providing help. As the linked Health Affairs blog post explains:
[C]onversations must actively conceptualize behavioral health crisis response as aid and treatment, not coercion and control. Bringing these programs into the institutional structure of law enforcement risks imposing preexisting modes of operation, such as law enforcement’s fundamental concern with scene safety. Just as paramedic work is not inherently unsafe and paramedics are not employed by police departments, behavioral health crisis response is not inherently unsafe and should not be established within the purview of the police. The CAHOOTS program [a model program in Oregon] requires police back up at about 150 (0.6 percent) of their approximately 24,000 annual calls.
The police don't need to answer these calls, and if we had a more appropriate response team, we would a) need fewer police which means we could be more selective in hiring and invest more in training; b) there would be fewer incidents which compromise community trust for the police; c) the police could concentrate on problems which they are properly equipped to address and do a better job; and d) people who have behavioral health needs would get appropriate help.
A problem is that there is not yet an adequate workforce of properly qualified and trained people to do this work. And yes, the money would have to be transferred from the police department budget to this new and separate service, and some police officers would be laid off, or at least their ranks would be reduced by attrition. That is politically challenging. But it's the right thing to do.
2 comments:
So how do we get the ball rolling? Is this a matter of having to get people into office who will propose and champion such programs, because we don’t have people in office who understand the problem in the first place? That is, just like a lot of other problems we have that they don’t seem to understand, or won’t do anything about, even though they’re the most important problems facing us …
That's literally what we mean by "defund the police" - transfer funds to alternate municipal services that can address social problems productively (and without killing anyone). The basic problem is that all slogans are simplistic and, therefore, subject to disinformation campaigns.
The GOP is literally a psyop device, so it will always have the advantage in reformulating any sound bite or slogan of the left. The Dems strategy has been to run away from the offending slogan and adopt GOP positions (welfare reform, anyone?) in self defense. How's that working out?
Maybe, just maybe, that's not the right strategy...
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