The United States Needs to Defund the Police
By: Sydney Manningham
Tags: Eng 110, Black Lives Mater, Defundthepolice, Police Brutality, Public Safety

via Defund the Police and Invest in Our Communities

By: Sydney Manningham / November 17, 2020

The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, by local polcie, sparked a call to rethink policing and systemic racism in America, led by the Black Lives Matter movement. The term “defund the police” has been painted on signs held in protests, in news headlines, and shouted by activists all over the country. The concept and slogan has been misunderstood by millions around the country. A lack of education is present when trying to understand what defunding the police actually means. It must be understood so the initiative can move forward and lives can be saved, especially Black lives. Policing and public safety needs to be rethought and a new approach needs to be made.

Before understanding why the United State’s needs to defend the police, it needs to be understood what the concept means. A better way to think about defund the police is reallocating the police’s budget. The goal is not to take away money from public safety, but rather to understand and reminagine what public safety is and what it can be. The police budget would be reduced, but the money would not just disappear, it would be moved to other sectors of public safety.

Sectors of public safety would include mental health facilities and programs, community development programs, schools, social work, and more. An example of what this could look like is calling 911 and telling them your problem, and them connecting you to an appropriate person for your problem, as seen when cities replaced cops with social workers, medics, and people without guns. When calling 911 with a concern that a homeless person is overdosing, someone who understands drugs and people’s actions on them would arrive at the scene, instead of a police officer who is trained to respond with the law. When calling 911 with a domestic abuse issue, a social worker would arrive on scene with a police

officer to help with de-escalating the situation, instead of entering with force.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been a key leader in the call to defund the police because police brutality along with racial profiling and racist actions is disproportionately affecting Black Americans. The United States suffers from structural racism and that is reflected in the country’s approach to policing. When mapping police violence, the police have killed 897 people in 2020, 28% of the victims being Black, despite Black people only making up 13% of the population. There have only been 14 days in 2020, where someone wasn’t killed by a police officer. These statistics should be extremely alarming to everyone, but are especially telling of the racism of police brutality. According to the NAACP’s Criminal Justice Fact Sheet, a Black person is 5 times more likely than a white person to be stopped by a police officer without just cause or clear intent.

Violation of human rights by the police weakens the trust between the police force and the public. The continued human rights violations by the police such as the death of hundreds of people, racial profiling, and unjust treatment, is what shows a clear need for reeducating the police force. It takes approximately five months to become a police officer, this is too short. For comparison, it takes five years to become a cosmetologist. Restrictions need to be put in place as to who can become a police officer. Psychological tests need to be passed, mental health training needs to be incorporated, and understanding the importance of human rights needs to be strengthened.

The lack of training needed to become a police officer, the amount of people killed by police, and the fact that people of color are disportionately affected due to the inherent racism of policing, are all reasons why public safety must be reconstructed. Reallocating the police budget to more areas of public safety is what is needed to decrease the unjust, inhumane, and racist police brutality. Instead of money going towards police station’s owning tanks or an abundance of guns, it will go towards police training and social services, to better support the safety of the country. Police should not be expected to be mediators, social workers, medics, counselors, and soldiers. They are unsuccessful at being everything a community needs from them.

Resources

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By: NAACP

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“These Cities Replaced Cops With Social Workers, Medics, and People Without Guns.”

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