What if… your city could double the resources dedicated towards transportation, parks, education, economic development, homelessness solutions, environmental services, public health, and mental health? Right now, with so many people unable to pay rent, what if your city passed rent relief to prevent evictions? What if the way to do this also addressed the injustices that your Black neighbors face?
This is the case for defunding police. It’s hard to nuance this discussion too much in a short caption, but I try to say more in my stories. Check out what percentage of city budgets go to police departments: In San Diego, it’s 37% of the budget. In Columbus, it’s 68%. Dallas, 60%. Milwaukee, 45%.
I’m somebody who naturally wants to believe the best in people, but also… I’ve been bothered by the recent failings of police brutality in nearly every major city during the protests. The elderly man in Buffalo. The recent grad in Columbus who was killed. The child teargassed in Seattle. The students in Atlanta dragged out of their car, and so on. I believe people who are sincerely committed to doing things the right way embrace accountability.
This is what accountability looks like:
1) Reallocating funding. Imagine the positive impact it would have to distribute those funds among all those other needs.
2) Understanding the way policing has been used to perpetuate injustice. The problem isn’t (always) with the individual officers, but with the way the whole system was built.
3) Reassign certain functions of police departments to other agencies. Narrow the focus of a police department so it can be more effective in that area.
In Camden, once one of the most dangerous towns in the country, reimagining policing into a community based model resulted in a mass dropoff in crime. Robbery was down 62%. Murder was down 32%. All crimes were down 41%.
This is the harder part of racial justice. But a necessary one. It goes beyond saying “we stand with our black community members” and actually reassembles a system that’s been stacked against them.