When we Defund the Police, What Should We Make Instead?
Defund the Police is an emerging movement to take funds from the police and place them in education or health services and let communities take care of their safety. I don’t think we should do away with peace-keeping bodies entirely; I still think we need a nation-wide organization of people dedicated to community safety.
However, I think we are at an inflection point in the country’s history. Now is the time to radically rethink what peace-keeping can look like, from the tools, incentives, and mindsets that this organization would have. Now is the time we can seriously ask the question: What if we cut America’s police force in half, or three-quarters, and re-trained many of these people to be a part of a new organization called the Community Corps?
A mash-up between health counselors, therapists, and the AmeriCorps, this new organization would have in their ranks people with mental health training to deal with community members who use drugs, and anger management techniques to work with people who have disputes.
Keep a small contingent of police for bank robberies. But let the vast majority of 911 calls be handled by community advocates whose goal is to keep people out of jail. Who are paid to proactively work with communities to get communities access to social services and provide extra support for students in ways that do not entail putting them in jail.
This could be our future if we defund the police and create a new organization called the Community Corps.
New Tools
The tools police have at their disposal have become increasingly militarized since the 1960s. The tools people have at their disposal shape how they address problems. When police have armored police vehicles, sniper rifles, and semi-automatic guns at their disposal, communities become “bad guys” that need to be taken down. Some departments are even required to use military-grade weapons within a year of receiving them. To build positive relationships with communities, it begins with rolling back access to military grade weapons for police.
The Community Corps would take this idea even further. Corps members would not have any sort of gun on them and a mandate to never use lethal force such as chokeholds. This would go a long way in de-escalating the stakes between those who protect communities and communities themselves. It is way easier to have constructive dialogues with community members when their lives are not on the line.
New Incentives
Today’s police have clear incentives to arrest people. Sometimes these incentives come in the form of arrest quotas. It is a quiet secret of the NYPD that officers need to come up with “20 and 1,” or twenty tickets and one arrest each month. By tying officers’ career success to artificial shows of productivity, it generates an antagonistic relationship with communities.
Police officers also can currently see lucrative financial gain from arrests as today’s officers can keep up to 80% of cash taken during civil forfeiture even if there was no evidence of a crime committed. The money officers have seized has gone to buy guns, armored cars, and electronic surveillance equipment. It has also gone to buy luxury vehicles, travel, and a clown named Sparkles. To create good police behavior, there needs to be no monetary or career incentives for police to not act in a community’s best interests.
One of the tenets of the Community Corps would be that no assets seized can be kept for profit. The only quota that matters is: how many people have I helped?
New Mindsets
One police tactic is stop-and-frisk which allows police to stop and question people and search them for suspicious belongings. This policy impacts black and brown NYC residents nine times more than white residents. It creates a continual sense of fear and lack of safety within one’s body as there is the knowledge that these people can always touch and take from you without your permission. There are powerfully bad mindsets at the core of stop-and-frisk, people have something to hide, and, I have the power to search anyone I want. The mindsets these policies instill within police create antagonistic dynamics between police and communities. Even whittling away stop-and-frisk will likely not be enough to dissolve the mentality of the “thin blue line,” this idea of us vs. them, police vs. bad guys.
We need to shift from a “versus” mindset to a “with” mindset, to proactively helping instead of punitively punishing. From seeing individuals as “bad guys” to people who are in contexts where they have done wrong. Where jail is a last resort, not the first option. There will still be killers and robbers; there is still the need for a scaled-back police force. But there is also room for a new organization with new mindsets of humility and empathy.
Looking Forward
The time is now to rethink the current place of the police in American society and implement dramatic reforms to existing institutions. It is also time to step back further and think about the society we want and build the kind of organizations to see this country come to life.
If we want a kind, connected, empathetic country, we need to start investing in organizations that look with kindness on the communities they protect. People who have training in community outreach and advocacy, techniques for dealing with people in mental health distress, training in de-escalation techniques and anger management and racial justice, people who are dedicated to proactive action rather than reactive punishment.
While a world without much of our current police force might seem crazy, now is the time for big, bold, crazy ideas. Now I believe is the time for the creation of the Community Corps.
