Defund the Police - Black Lives Matter

In response to the systemic racism and structural deficiencies of the nation’s police force, the Black Lives Matter Movement has been allied with a parallel movement called “Defund the Police”. Definitions of this slogan have alternatively suggested a range of outcomes from modest adjustments to procedures and training out to the elimination of the police as an agency, without any apparent consensus depending on the constituency.

First and foremost, any tag line that elicits so much confusion, and is applied to such a broad range of outcomes, is essentially useless. Worse still, it precludes adoption or action, since within the confines of its potential meanings are opposing factions and efforts.

What is most troubling of all, is that at its core the ideas that it entails are extraordinarily important and valuable… ideas that, rather than being divisive, have the opportunity to at least begin on common ground.

For many years there has been a clear understanding that we task our police with massive amounts of responsibilities that they neither want nor that they are trained effectively to handle. From domestic disputes to mental health issues, from homelessness to addictions, we have taken advantage of the police department’s omnipresent nature and asked them to be the public presence of the government in all regards. A remnant of the days when the cop on the beat had daily exposure to a very limited group of residents, the evolution of those responsibilities is years overdue for review and adjustment.

In the middle of the extremes for the “Defund the Police” movement is a reasonable and logical starting point: the movement of social responsibilities away from police enforcement (along with the attendant funding), and into the more proficient hands of their related agencies. Reducing the focus of policing to the necessary function of public safety and crime resolution would greatly reduce the number of times that social ills result in criminal charges, a substantial problem particularly in minority neighborhoods and in economically disadvantaged areas where there tends to be a heavy concentration of officers and a chronic underrepresentation of needed services.

The movement of funding from police budgets to social services funding would result in a broad set of benefits and reduce the sometimes oppressive and concentrated presence of force in struggling neighborhoods. It would eliminate a substantial percentage of incarceration that is often the result of police having no alternative response or contribution to the issues that are thrust in front of them. The vast increase in the availability of preventative and supportive measures would in turn reduce the incidences of those social crises and would improve the quality of life in those areas exponentially.

The primary objective should always be to reduce the need for law enforcement as aggressively and creatively as possible. It is impossible for the police force, as presently constituted, to mix that objective with the tools and mandates that they are given.

Coming from that base, one where social services tend to social ills, and law enforcement to the protection of citizens from violence and predation, there would be a clearer path to deeper reforms. The criminalization of social ills and the response to such in the same manner by the same group as predatory criminal activities have failed societies most vulnerable and oppressed, leading to our national epidemic of incarceration and the resultant stigmas, deprivation of opportunity, family deconstruction, and recidivism.

The cycle of systemic racism is inherent within the structure and fiber of the present law enforcement organization and dramatically expanded by a deeply developed lack of trust. As a result of the miscasting of police as social workers and dispute resolution, particularly in minority neighborhoods, that mistrust has been both forced onto the relationship and hardened from both sides over time and with experience. Stripping away the latter from the equation should be helpful in isolating and addressing the substantial and real remaining problems, and offer the possibility of a fresh start to a relationship between law enforcement and the citizenry that has deteriorated beyond redemption.