From Keith Preston at Attack The System.
“A form of union-busting I can get behind. If only Ted Bundy had been a cop, he would have had the police unions behind him.”
“I am immediately withdrawing from the contract negotiations with the Minneapolis Police Federation.”
Recently, Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender was interviewed regarding the Council’s latest political move towards abolition of the local police department. The interview left me underwhelmed. She gave no indication that she was familiar with the technical details of what abolishing the police could look like. I am not surprised by this though. The speed with which the City Council acted to signal willingness to change gave them no time to thoroughly think through the implications of, or a set of reasonable steps to take towards, abolishing the police.
The first point to consider is that, much to my dismay, nobody is talking about getting rid of all publicly funded law enforcement in Minneapolis. As it stands, there are a series of overlapping jurisdictions, of which the local police are only one. Park police, transit police, the County Sheriff’s department, State patrol, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and any number of federal law enforcement agencies will still operate as they always have. Many investigations, arrests, and incarcerations will be handled by essentially the same people handling them now.
Don’t worry Minneapolis City Council, we have you covered! Here are a list of steps you should be seriously considering:
It is plausible that traffic patrol is necessary to keep reckless drivers off the street. I remain unconvinced, but even if we assume this as a premise, there is still absolutely no reason these people need to be armed, or even to be cops. There are various towns and cities across the country which employ non-police parking enforcement, and even major cities such as NYC have special divisions of traffic “cops” that are functionally distinct from their beat and detective counterparts.
There is no evidence that going around looking for people breaking the law does any good. More likely, it is the mechanism by which the racial disparity in criminal justice is manifest. In the transition period, any publicly funded police functionality should be strictly limited to response, not to patrol.
The vast majority of no-knock raids are used to execute search warrants and result in the confiscation of zero contraband. Instead, they often lead to innocent people being killed or maimed. Getting rid of the police means that society will have to fundamentally rethink the way it approaches non-violent crime, and drug crime in particular. Thank goodness in 2020, that proposition is not as far fetched as it once was.
This step may on the surface appear to be anti-libertarian. But much the way Dr. Joe Salerno suggested we meet the left halfway regarding the Fed, this is a step where in a case of alternatives, one is clearly the more libertarian choice. Mental health is a crisis in the US. one in ten calls to police concern mentally ill people who generally pose little harm to anybody. Society has thoroughly neglected these folks, dumping them in the laps of emergency rooms and county jails, neither of which are remotely equipped to deal with them. Coming up with an infrastructure, either public or non-governmental, is a moral obligation, regardless of the role you think the police ought to play
Once you’ve eliminated proactive non-violent crime policing, such infractions as vagrancy, public drunkenness, sexwork, loitering, and on and on remain as the type of non-violent crimes our interim police department will have to deal with. These types of calls do not require an armed response whatsoever. We also need to rethink the role incarceration, in county or city jail for instance, plays in our society. Maybe the answer is in fact, leaving people alone and simply not enforcing these “crimes”. If you can’t do that, however, perhaps not immediately escalating the situation with an armed officer is the best course of action.
Please don’t tell me “we a need militarized capacity in case of complete social breakdown”. We literally just watched their response to that. They have proven themselves to be completely powerless, and more often than not they actually increase the chances of social breakdown. I am not really interested in making a well thought-out, nuanced case as to why local police shouldn’t have submarines. These tools of war, designed to be used against enemy combatants, have no place in a municipality used by those sworn to protect the people, even would-be criminals.
That leaves armed police as first responders to violent crime calls. Private and community security will begin to develop a city wide infrastructure to create stability for businesses. Case law will develop to determine what is reasonable and what crosses the line when it comes to policing. Neighborhood watches and private police patrols (such as can be found in San Francisco and Atlanta) will organically form depending on the needs of the communities and property owners.
Otherwise, there is to schedule dates for turning over investigations of violent/non-violent crime calls to private enterprise and NGOs. In the meantime, acquaint yourself with the literature. Luckily, academics have been preparing for this for some many decades, and have developed sophisticated treatments for what a world without publicly funded police would look like.
How could anyone still believe that after all this? asks J. D. Tuccille.
NYT: Not so fast:
Advocates for police reform are making the case that the phrase “defund the police” doesn’t mean what many people think it means. “Be not afraid,” Christy E. Lopez, a Georgetown University law professor, wrote in The Washington Post. “‘Defunding the police’ is not as scary (or even as radical) as it sounds.”
What it actually means, these advocates say, is reducing police budgets and no longer asking officers to do many jobs that they often don’t even want to do: resolving family and school disputes, moving homeless people into shelters and so on. Instead, funding for education, health care and other social services would increase. (For more detail on the movement’s agenda, you can read this Times explainer.)
The challenge for advocates is that many people equate “defunding” with a major reduction in policing — and they don’t like that idea. Reducing police budgets is arguably the only high-profile reform idea that’s not popular.
I exclaim in Cairo slum dialect Arabic to Steve…
WOW. Saying efforts at “incremental reform have failed,” a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council announce their commitment to “disbanding” the city’s Police Department and relying much more on social workers/non-police first responders. https://t.co/N2dvFncDNS
— David Menschel (@davidminpdx) June 7, 2020
In spite of the Mayor’s opposition, the Minneapolis City Counsel will vote to disband the Minneapolis Police Department and develop a new community based model for the city. The Minneapolis Appeal is reporting that it will be a veto-proof majority.
From The Appeal:
On Sunday afternoon, a veto-proof majority of Minneapolis City Council members will announce their commitment to disbanding the city’s embattled police department, which has endured relentless criticism in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on May 25.
Steve Fletcher, a Third Ward City Counsel member explained why the City Counsel is taking this step in an Op-ed for Time Magazine:
My assessment of what is now necessary is shaped by the failure of the reforms we’ve attempted, in the face of opposition from the department and the Police Federation. We have a talented, thoughtful police chief who has attempted some important steps. He has fired officers for significant abuses only to have his decisions overturned and those officers reinstated by arbitrators. Mayor Frey has met fierce resistance from the Federation to implement even minor policy changes.
There is another reason reform can be daunting, even scary. My reform advocacy, incremental though it has been, has prompted intense political attacks from police and their allies, who up to now have been confident that their support for police expansion was a mainstream point of view. And they do not limit their attacks to politics. Politicians who oppose the department’s wishes find slowdowns in their wards. After we cut money from the proposed police budget, I heard from constituents whose 9-1-1 calls took forever to get a response, and I heard about officers telling business owners to call their councilman about why it took so long. Since I’ve started talking publicly about this, elected officials from several cities and towns around the country have contacted me to tell me I am not alone in this experience.
Libertarians have been writing about the state of modern policing and calling for change for years and as James Reilly wrote “We should all agree, as we once had, Defund, Disband, Abolish.” and I would add, help create something better.
Police and fireman are a powerful force in city politics. They show up and vote. Union members are active in door-to-door politics. The politicians need them to raise revenue and protect them from the wrath of the masses. Now they are threatening their paychecks.
Video posted of LAPD officers outraged over proposed cuts following protests addressing LA City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. “Now you’re cutting from their families and they put everything on the line? We are going to fight… At the ballot box.” @CBSLA @CBSNews pic.twitter.com/9YXcMCd3Hd
— JASMINE VIEL (@jasmineviel) June 5, 2020
https://twitter.com/Kim7KONIC/status/1268862457423986691
Either this officer could control this dog but chose not to, or the officer cannot control the dog and neither of them belongs on the street. #PoliceReform #PoliceViolence #PoliceBrutalityPandemic pic.twitter.com/xdRi52BHtj
— A Pox on Both Their Houses (@PoxOnBothHouses) June 5, 2020
Unarmed, disabled, homeless man: *exists*
LAPD: Shoot that motherfucker in the head.#PoliceBrutalityPandemic pic.twitter.com/vfdEZn9Wa2— Aaron (@Terminal_Redux) June 5, 2020
