It’s not rocket science. Successful crime prevention is directly related to citizen cooperation and involvement.Defunding ????
Different from abolishing and starting anew, defunding police highlights fiscal responsibility, advocates for a market-driven approach to taxpayer money, and has some potential benefits that will reduce police violence and crime. Below, I outline some of the main arguments for defunding the police.
CALLS FOR SERVICE
Data show that 9 out of 10 calls for service are for nonviolent encounters. Now, this does not mean that an incident will not turn violent, but police at times contribute to the escalation of violent force. Police officers’ skillset and training are often out of sync with the social interactions that they have. Police officers are mostly trained in use-of-force tactics and worst-case scenarios to reduce potential threats. However, most of their interactions with civilians start with a conversation.
Advocates for the defund movement like Phillip McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris argue that shifting funding to social services that can improve things such as mental health, addiction, and homelessness is a better use of taxpayer money. This approach further enhances the push to decriminalize and destigmatize people with mental health conditions and addiction problems. Ever since the overcriminalization of people addicted to crack cocaine in the 1990s, some scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have said that this shift is long overdue.
Additionally, the research I have conducted with hundreds of police officers show that they respond to everything from potholes in the street to cats stuck up a tree. Police officers are also increasingly asked to complete paperwork and online forms. Obviously, documentation is important and desperately needed. The overwhelmingly blank report in the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville that listed her injuries as “none” highlights the importance of documentation. It could be argued, however, that reducing officer workload would increase the likelihood of solving violent crimes. Police officers are overworked and overstressed. Focusing on menial tasks throughout the day is inefficient and a waste of taxpayer money. Other government actors should be responsible for these and receive adequate funding for doing them.
HOMICIDE CLEARANCE RATE
Police officers are not as successful as people think at solving violent crime. My Brookings colleagues Andre Perry, David Harshbarger, Carl Romer, and Kristian Thymianos argue that “the failure to prosecute murderous police typifies a bad overall track record with solving violent crimes: Approximately 38% of murders, 66% of rapes, 70% of robberies, and 47% of aggravated assaults go uncleared every year.” Maybe in baseball or basketball these rates make a player an all-star, but the public expects police officers to be more successful at solving violent crime.
More importantly, police stops relative to charges and convictions are relatively low. To show how egregious this is, a study of the NYPD stop-and-frisk program found that well over 90% of people stopped by the police were not committing any crime and did not have any contraband or weapons on them. Overwhelmingly, the people stopped were Black and Latino, and physical force was used half the time. Interestingly, police were more successful at identifying criminality for whites versus Blacks. This is because officers use suspicious behavior when interacting with whites and use skin tone as the metric of suspicion when interacting with Black people. More police on the streets may be used to control the movement of Black bodies rather than solving crime. This is why the New York State Supreme Court ruled stop-and-frisk as unconstitutional. No-knock warrants and chokeholds should follow this pattern.
EDUCATION AND WORK INFRASTRUCTURE
One consistent finding in t
In other words, stop the rioting by those "peaceful" protestors. By law enforcement.
Shot yourself in the foot again.