At Vox.com Roge Karma reviews four ideas for “replacing traditional police officers”. The ideas are:
- Create a distinct unarmed unit for enforcing traffic laws.
- Use community mediators rather than the police to handle minor disputes.
- Create a mobile crisis response unit (rather than ordinary police officers—a “Sweeney”).
- Experiment with community self-policing.
concluding:
There’s no guarantee that any of these suggestions will succeed across the board. When it comes to policing alternatives, even the best existing models haven’t been attempted at scale, and there’s no telling how different communities will respond to them. To implement any idea on this list would mean venturing into relatively uncharted territory.
That means there will be failures. Things will go wrong. Systems will break down. Programs will fall apart. Violence may temporarily increase in some places. Occasionally, a violence interrupter or mobile crisis worker will be seriously injured or killed.
But our current system already represents a kind of profound failure. We live in a country that has built the largest system of human incarceration on earth, where agents of the state kill unarmed members of the communities they are supposed to protect and terrorize those who are still alive. Where peaceful protesters are beaten in the streets.
The question, then, isn’t whether we are willing to live with failure; communities across the country already live with failure every single day. That failure, at least in part, stems from the fact that police officers in the United States are tasked with responsibilities — from traffic patrol to mediation to crisis response — that amplify the risk of unnecessary violence.
I’ve expressed my own views of the deficiencies of modern policing on a number of occasions in the past. For example, active policing does not seem to have a deterrent effect on crime. Chicago, for example, has the largest number of police officers relative to the population of any major city and also the highest rate of violent crime. Whether cause or effect you cannot reasonably conclude that more police means less crime.
I have only two additional observations. We are the largest country in the world with an ethnically, racially, and confessionally diverse population. As such we are bound to have special problems.
I’m also curious about something. If disarming or disbanding the police is such a good idea, why are the bodies that are doing it hiring armed private security guards?
We dont have any concrete models yet for new policing models, but I highly doubt that any wont have some armed component. It does seem kind of odd that we seem to prize innovation in some areas, but suggest that there might be some changes in how the police function and OMG we cant possible change a thing.
Steve
Another factor I didn’t mention. Contrary to what you might have concluded from those demonstrating in the streets a recent Pew Research poll found that a majority of black people think their neighborhoods need a greater police presence (of the conventional sort) rather than less.
As should be obvious from the many proposals I have made for reforming policing in the past, I have no opposition to reforming the police. I’m just skeptical about those who sentimentally want the U. S. to be more like the UK, France, or Sweden. I think we’re more like Mexico or Brazil and are becoming more so with each passing year.
“Contrary to what you might have concluded from those demonstrating in the streets a recent Pew Research poll found that a majority of black people think their neighborhoods need a greater police presence (of the conventional sort) rather than less.”
I strongly suspect if you asked those in the streets if they wanted more police if the police stopped unnecessarily beating and shooting them that would have also been strongly positive.
Steve
At first I thought the Minneapolis’ council’s vote to de-fund the police and replace them with “Peace Officers” was spurious and politically motivated but then….. I wondered if putting this on the ballot might be the first practical step toward de-fanging the police unions whom it is rumored make it impossible to dismiss problem officers. Am I right?
Could be but there are troublesome issues, the contract between the union and the city, then the status of the employees as civil service. Expect long drawn out court battles over those issues.
Re: reform, rebuilding trust will take years, will cost lots of money and require a long hard look at current law and current practices. Should we use our courts as revenue agents or are they for justice? Are are jails to hold people till trial or psychiatric centers for the indigent? What laws do we really need and which ones we don’t. How should we screen officer candidates and weed out bad actors?
Finally, agree in many places, the situation is becoming like Mexico and or Brazil, those with clout and wealth get protected while many are left to their own devices
All good questions.
Ran across this and for those who have the time , it appears the whole story has been edited for us mainly by the NYT.
https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911