Defending defund, part 4: Recentering.

< part 3

If we’re really going to look clearly at the bigger picture and address the role that police should play in our society, one thing is imperative:

Police shouldn’t be at the center of the conversation at all. 

Efforts to “fix” the police start from the premise that policing in some version of its current form is good; it’s only the way policing is implemented that’s bad. 

Which may or may not be true. 

The only way to know for sure is to step back and realize that this ultimately is not about the police. It’s about what kind of communities we want to live in. What needs we want to meet. What lines we want to draw. Which daily activities should be supported and which should be curtailed. How we value people in relation to property. What we think government is for. 

Big, abstract questions. How do we make this tangible? 

We have to stop centering white people, for one. We have to acknowledge that our understanding of how society works is at odds with the reality of Blacks and people of color.

And then we have to stop centering the police. Society does not exist because of them; they exist because of society. 

It can be hard to see that when our entire media environment has been saturated for decades with heroic representations of cops, with stories that make police officers our surrogates, our guides to scary, thrilling, hyperviolent worlds full of unredeemable sociopaths and murderers and bad actors (most with darker skin tones). They’ve been put on a pedestal – sometimes because they make an easy story hook for a 22-episode season of must-see TV, sometimes for more explicitly partisan, “patriotic” purposes.

Cops have a hard job. They can be called on to do dangerous things. But they’re not a special class. The way popular culture has warped our understanding of the police – and their understanding of themselves – has in turn warped our ability to separate what they do from what we need them for. Making heroes of individuals blinds us to the reality of the institution.

We have to change the entire frame of the conversation, and focus on the needs of communities. On what people require to live and thrive. Focus on physical and mental health, social services, basic living standards, recreation, infrastructure. What does meeting those needs look like?

Then, and only then, can we begin to figure out where, when and how law enforcement fits in. Only then should we decide: What police services are essential? Who needs a gun? How should crime be investigated? How do we balance personal rights against property rights? What constitutes a crime? 

Pie in the sky? We’re already seeing conversations in cities across the country around this issue – about how we can find better ways to meet people’s needs and address social issues outside of the framework of the police. 

It’s a start. But “reimagining” is not enough.

We need to keep pushing this further, and make sure these conversations don’t remain boxed into the traditional framework, and aren’t limited to finding police-centric answers. Meaning: what’s important is not preserving police budgets, or police jobs, or police resources. We shouldn’t reinforce or repair a structure that is at worst inherently broken and at best plays a hugely disproportionate role in too many aspects of too many lives. A militarized force should not be the answer to every issue. But when it’s the only one you have, it’s the only one you use.

Easy? No. Pushback will be huge. Vested interests will be pissed. Inertia will be hard to overcome. But we’re not starting from scratch.

Defund the police. Refocus on communities. Build something better. 

Defending defund, part 3: Rotten to the core.

< part 2

Is this really all because of just a few bad apples?

You’d think that if the police were truly able to police themselves, something would have changed. The retraining, the reports, the reexamination would have made a meaningful difference. And yet.

The focus on individual officers is a distraction. 

As is the grotesque efforts to dig through the lives of the victims in search of something, anything, one good reason that explains it all away and proves they actually did deserve to die. 

“If only they hadn’t….”

Good cop, bad cop, good apple, bad apple – yes, weed them out. Yes, stop the bleeding. If police departments want to help with that, fine. Or not.

But don’t stop there. 

The question we have to face is why this keeps happening, in spite of the retraining. 

Why have we created a system where so many police officers feel it’s their right or responsibility to be judge, jury and executioner? Why do so many police officers have an us-versus-them mentality? Why have we allowed police departments to turn into militarized strongholds? Why does the police presence in my neighborhood look completely different from what people see in predominately Black or Latinx communities? Why is there such a disconnect between rhetoric and reality? 

There are bad apples, no doubt. What we tend to forget is that, despite what The Osmonds told us, the original truism was that one bad apple does spoil the whole bunch. So when we look at our police departments and we see violent, racist cops, we have to ask: why have so many been allowed to exist so freely for so long?

The answer is that the whole analogy is wrong. It’s not bad cops infecting the good ones; it’s not even that the good ones are willing to turn a blind eye. 

It’s that we’ve allowed the institution of the police to develop in such a way that bad apples have found a natural home. Or maybe it’s deeper than that – maybe it’s inherent in any system of control and enforcement. Exacerbated by an overemphasis on property rights. And turbocharged by centuries of racist laws and policies. Maybe we have a structure that works exactly as intended.

We have to look at the whole damn apple farm.

This is not about cops policing themselves. This is a systemic issue. It’s a racial issue. It’s an issue of power, of privilege, of class, of haves versus have-nots, of those of us who can view the current iteration of police as protectors versus those who experience them as predators. It requires addressing broad societal, structural, complicated realities. 

Which gets to my second reason for supporting efforts to defund the police.

part 4: Recentering. > 

Defending defund, part 2: Stop the killing.

< part 1

Why did I go from WMWP trepidation to vocal support for defunding the police? Two reasons.

First: Black. People. Are. Being. Killed. Every. Damn. Day.

We have to stop the murder of Black men and women, straight and gay, cis and trans, young and old, innocent bystander, angel, scofflaw, suspect, smoker, homeowner, reprobate. 

Because none of those are reasons to be killed. 

We have to stop the murder of people from marginalized and minority communities, people of color, indigenous people, people who live in the “wrong” neighborhoods, dress in the “wrong” style, act the “wrong” way.

Because none of those are reasons to be killed. 

So first: Stop the bleeding. Stop the dying. 

That’s where #8CantWait comes in – it’s a campaign “to bring immediate change to police departments” with a set of specific short-term solutions to limit the use of deadly force by people legally sanctioned to act with violence. 

Wrap it up in whatever WMWP-approved slogan you want: Deescalate the police. Police the police. Train the police. Reform the police. Report on the police. De-bad-apple the police. Just stop the killing, stop the bleeding. Now. 

But that’s only a beginning. And at best only a stopgap answer. Even Campaign Zero, the group behind #8CantWait, understand this (as witnessed by the note they added to their home page this week). 

The most obvious limitation to this “reform the system” approach is that it’s already been tried. There are police departments all over the country that have banned chokeholds, mandated  deescalation training, created rules around how and when and where it’s appropriate to use one kind of potentially deadly force or another. 

And people are still dying. 

Black people are being killed by cops on a regular basis. The protests that erupted after the death of Breonna Taylor didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Atatiana Jefferson didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Botham Jean didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Stephon Clark didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Jordan Edwards didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Alton Sterling didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Philando Castile didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of John Crawford didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Tamir Rice didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Eric Garner didn’t stop it. The protests that erupted after the death of Amadou Diallo didn’t stop it.

The protests that erupted after the death of George Floyd haven’t stopped it. The protests that erupted after the death of Rayshard Brooks won’t stop it.

The protests go on. The killing doesn’t stop.

part 3: Rotten to the core. >

Defending defund, part 1: What's in a name.

I’ve been watching/reading/participating in conversations about how appropriate and effective “defund the police” is as a rallying cry. Ad and marketing people have a thousand different tweaks and critiques and alternatives. Political pros see how naive it is, and know it’s going to do more harm than good – Republicans will have a field day with this! Well-meaning white people (WMWP) are confused and nervous (you can’t really *say* that, can you?).

A lot of it boils down to: But nobody knows what it really means. 

To which I say, as much to myself (member of groups 1 and 3 above) as anyone: Shut up and listen. 

“Defund the police” became part of the national conversation amazingly quickly. Not because it was a brand-new idea that suddenly appeared out of the ether. Because going back decades, people have committed themselves to this cause, which grew out of the prison abolition movement – thinking about it, writing about it, advocating for it, explaining what it means and how it can be achieved. 

“Defund the police” became a lightning rod almost immediately. Not because it was a dumb idea (though yeah, many people think it is). Because it’s a provocative idea that pushes people out of intellectual ruts and societal comfort zones and forces them – us – to face issues that the WMWP of the world have long had the luxury of ignoring. 

“Defund the police” became a success the moment it went viral. Not because everybody agrees on it, or agrees on what it means – even the people who espouse it. Not because it became policy throughout the land and led directly to zeroed-out municipal budgets overnight. Because it changed the terms of the debate. It moved the Overton Window. All of the sudden, it’s the idea that every other police reform proposal has to address – even if to say it’s not practical, or it’s political suicide, or it’s just plain wrong.

And again, that movement was only possible because the idea was already out there. When its tragic moment came, after the decades of work that went into shaping that idea, creating variants of it, arguing about it, pushing it forward, fighting obstacles and indifference, the idea was there for the rest of us to discover.  

So shut the fuck up. Listen to the people who put in the work. Wrestle with their plans. Do the homework. Agree with them or not. Think of something better. But absolutely take them seriously. Accept this as a valid and valuable position. 

Yes, Republicans have pounced on it (as they pounce on anything and everything, no matter how seemingly “safe” or middle of the road, as luridly and tendentiously as possible). Yes, even for many who might consider the cause, it lacks nuance (as pretty much any bumper sticker does). Yes, people will continue to argue – and write definitive, contradictory essays – about “what it really means” (as is inevitable with any paradigm-shifting concept). 

Yes, just listen. In the past two weeks dozens of ideas have been presented, which run the spectrum from “abolition yes we mean it” to “defund, then…” to “repeal and replace” to “repair what’s wrong” to “what I really mean is reform.” That’s not a sign that it’s a stupid idea. It’s also not a sign that we – all of us who are new to this – should immediately start watering down proposals that have been years in the making, and sanding the sharp edges off of carefully chosen vocabulary. (There’s plenty of time, and plenty of politicians, for that.)

It’s a sign that the old advertising truism applies here: before you can convince someone of something, you have to get their attention. They got mine.

part 2: Stop the killing. >