Defund or don’t, but police must be held accountable somehow
By: Spotlight Staff
Tags: Los Angeles, Defundthepolice, Protest, BlackLivesMatter

By Kent Pham

Caitlin Hernandez/Spotlight. Demonstrators surround a police car at a Black Lives Matter Protest in Los Angeles in May, 2020.

Defund the police. It’s a three-word and five-syllable slogan that became popularized during the George Floyd protests. It’s a simple concept, yet produces such polarizing effects where transparency becomes muddled and the dominant debates are often merely about what is the true definition of the movement. Pushing to defund the police, means pushing to reallocate or divert funding, especially any superfluous sources of funding, from police departments towards other government agencies funded by the local municipality. This does not intend to disband law enforcement agencies all together nor abolish the practice of it as some would claim it to be.

“Defunding means to pull out some of the money used on the police for fancy new riot toys and put it towards community improvement instead,” retired political scientist from Caltech Micah Alvarez said.

A handful of cities with infamous records of police brutalities have already begun their initiative in fulfilling the movement.

“I’ve seen cops decked out in tactical military gear, riding vans which are basically friggin tanks, and using riot shields that look like something out of Alien.”

In California, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti proposed the extraction of $100 — $150 million from the LAPD billionaire budget, and called to funnel those funds towards investment in job programs, health initiatives, and services aimed to support minority communities. This was approved by the LA City Council on July 1, with a 12–2 vote in favor of the defunding initiative, cutting $150 million from the LAPD’s proposed budget of $1.86 billion to be reallocated elsewhere.

“I’ve seen cops decked out in tactical military gear, riding vans which are basically friggin tanks, and using riot shields that look like something out of Alien,” Pasadena resident Ryan Odom said. “I always think the same thing, how the hell do they get the money to pay for all that gear and upkeep.”

San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a $120 million slash to the police and sheriff’s department. Breed stated during the announcement at the July 31 press conference, that the funds would be redirected towards efforts in addressing any disparities within the Black community.

New York’s City Council announced a slashing of $1 billion from the NYPD’s spending budget totaling $88.19 billion which was negotiated with a primary concern of achieving equity, targeting “particularly low-income communities of color.” The council declared that $354 million of that cut will be reallocated towards mental health, homelessness, and education services.

Baltimore City Council decided to cut out $22 million from the police department’s fiscal budget in 2021 which normally experiences a budget of over $500 million. The funding is planned to be diverted towards opening Sunday recreational centers, enhancing trauma centers, and notably forgivable loans towards black-owned businesses.

The Austin City Council also reached a unanimous vote to cut $150 million, essentially a third of the police department’s budget, with the intention of funneling the money towards social programs improving food access, abortion services, and violence prevention.

Of course the emerging slogan has met its fair share of criticisms concerning its intentions versus what it will actually achieve. The broad nature of the movement leads citizens questioning whether or not siphoning funds away from police departments will effectively motivate reform and combat the rate of targeted shootings and brutality. Some believe that just purely extracting funds out of police departments will only be detrimental to all parties involved.

“On average a probie is trained for 4 months, at most 6. That’s nowhere near enough time to fully prepare an officer for a good chunk of the crazy stuff that could happen out there,” retired Pasadena PD officer Daniel Norton said. “If they really just want to take away money from the department, that’ll just shorten the budget they have for training and damage the quality of officers coming out of the academy.”

Michael Watkins/Spotlight. LAPD holds back a crowd during a protest over the death of George Floyd in the Fairfax area of LA on May 30, 2020.

Defunding is an approach more suitable for debate and discussion when addressing the problems of systemic racism and brutality particularly in law enforcement. Multiple versions of a budget reallocation are thrown around, with city councils voting on an agreed budget cut. As a result, compromises become a more common theme.

Contrastly, the idea of entirely abolishing law enforcement agencies is considerably more difficult to experiment with due to its nature of being exclusionary of any kind of middle-ground approach. While not advocating for such extreme measures themselves, some citizens fear the possibility that the current defunding movement may transform into a more extreme version of itself, if caution is not heeded.

“Eventually it’s gonna get to a point where we just decide to get rid of the police altogether and that just sends a message about Americans that ‘since we can’t fix it, we’ll just throw it away.’”

“The more flack we keep throwing at the police, the more flack they’re gonna throw back. Cut their budget, they’ll just stop training more officers. Take away their toys, they’ll just shoot another minority,” Pasadena resident Meghan Lam said. “Eventually it’s gonna get to a point where we just decide to get rid of the police altogether and that just sends a message about Americans that ‘since we can’t fix it, we’ll just throw it away.’”

Another criticism towards the calls for abolishing the police is that the movement doesn’t offer any concrete plan for replacing the now dissipated law enforcement. The movement pushing to abolish the police implies refusal to consider reforms to be enacted into the police and a desire to build an entirely new system.

“Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police,” Mariame Kaba wrote in the New York Times. “But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.”

There does exist a sister alternative to abolishing and/or defunding the police: pushing the reset button on police departments by disbanding them from local control and reinstating them under the authority of the county. This is what the city of Camden, New Jersey did back in 2012 in effort to combat their high rates of violent crime and rampant deterioration of the police’s performance. The county implemented de-escalation training, classified choke holds as deadly force, and mandated that if an officer’s colleague began using excessive force, present officers must intervene. They were also tasked with on-foot patrols, establishing close relations to the residents through personal introductions, and hosting community barbecues.

“Camden already got over 40 percent drops in violent crime since they started over in their police departments,” Alvarez said. “If other cities, hell if all the other states are willing enough and able enough put forth the required strength and effort to reproduce the same results, then we’d be able to get some semblance of real change, of real reform.”

Defunding the police is generally viewed by advocates as the first step in true reform both in a monetary and symbolic manner. Accountability is the primary demand and since the legal route is perpetually met with a cascade of roadblocks leading to a crash of disappointment, activists divert their focus on an alternative route.

“We’re not saying take away all of the money in the police budget, but funnel out any cash that they’re using for resources that are totally not necessary for enforcing law or protecting citizens,” Black Lives Matter activist Jessie Bergusia said. “By starting there and continuing to work on more ideas like defunding it will show Americans and victims of police brutality that accountability doesn’t exclude anyone and that the police are susceptible to punishment just like everyone else.”

Law enforcement historically has one of the worst public images and reputations. The earliest iterations of policing institutions date back as far as the early 1700’s, primarily in the form of formal slave patrols charged with capturing runaways and smothering any signs of slave revolts. The earliest modern investigation into deep-seated police corruption and brutal misconduct dates back to 1894 with New York’s Lexow Committee.

As history ran its course, the police’s relations with the minority community only worsened from the vulgar era of Jim Crow, to the 1967 Detroit Riots and the barbaric beating of Rodney King that sparked the LA riots in 1992.

The investigation found 100 officers being collectively convicted of 56 charges of third-degree assault, 45 charges of second-degree assault, in addition a plethora of other charges listing misconduct such as criminal neglect, oppression, and attempted rape. Only four of the officers were officially dismissed by the end of the ordeal, three of whom were only let go because they’d assaulted other officers. As history ran its course, the police’s relations with the minority community only worsened from the vulgar era of Jim Crow, to the 1967 Detroit Riots and the barbaric beating of Rodney King that sparked the LA riots in 1992.

Cutting funds, holding them accountable, serving out punishment, complete abolishment, and even pressing a giant red reset button. There are multiple proposals in overhauling the police and repairing its infamous reputation. The general consensus from citizens seems to be that police departments have lost the trust and confidence from the people they supposedly pledged their service to. Movements have risen believing that the police deserve to have a good chunk of their allowance be ripped away along with a backlog of overdue punishments and reforms.

“Right now the police is America’s troubled child with an atrocious record, but a child we haven’t given up on yet.”

“I don’t understand how if the police have such a shitty history with African Americans or honestly with every minority, they just refuse to admit what they did or even just offer any kind of transparency to the shootings that have happened,” prosecutor attorney Sherry Nolley said. “Right now the police is America’s troubled child with an atrocious record, but a child we haven’t given up on yet, but is about to erupt out of volcanic frustration because the child just won’t f****** listen.”