Police Reform Is Necessary. But How Do We Do It? - The New York Times - 0 views
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The United States spends more on public safety than almost all its peer countries and much less, relatively speaking, on social services
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Now we’re having a conversation that’s not just about how black communities are policed, and what reforms are required, but also about why we’ve invested exclusively in a criminalization model for public safety, instead of investing in housing, jobs, health care, education for black communities and fighting structural inequality.
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Budgets are moral documents, reflecting priorities and values.
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Garza: In 2018 and 2019, my organization, Black Futures Lab, did what we believe is the largest survey of black communities in America. It’s called the Black Census Project. We asked more than 30,000 black people across America what we experience, what we want to see happen instead and what we long for, for our futures.
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the No.1 issue facing them, and keeping them up at night, is that their wages are too low to support a family.
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Imagine that you have a tool chest for solving social problems. It gives you options. Then you lose the tool of mental-health resources. You lose the tool of public education. They take out the tool of job placement. And then all you’ve got left is this one rusty hammer. That’s policing.
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Simply defunding the police cannot be a legacy of this moment. I want to hear about investing in black communities more than I want to hear about defunding.
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There has been such a massive disinvestment in the social safety net that should exist to give black communities an opportunity to thrive, whether it’s access to health care or housing or education or jobs.
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They cause others to be armed, out of fear, who shouldn’t have to worry about defending themselves
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The dispatcher would route calls that aren’t about crimes or a risk of harm to social workers, mediators and others.
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In many cities, the police spend a lot of time “on traffic and motor-vehicle issues, on false burglar alarms, on noise complaints and on problems with animals,”
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When a police report leads to criminal charges — only a subset of the whole — about 80 percent of them are for misdemeanors. Friedman argues that we should hand off some of what the police do to people who are better trained for it.
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A tiny percentage of people are the ones destabilizing communities
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There are a host of things that the police are currently responding to that they have no business responding to.
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If you have a car accident, why is somebody with a gun coming to the scene?
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Or answering a complaint about someone like George Floyd, who the store clerk said bought a pack of cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill?
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Similarly, if you have a homeless man panhandling at a red light and you say to a cop, “Go fix it,” he’ll arrest the man. And now he has a $250 ticket. And how does he pay that? And what does any of this accomplish?
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domestic disputes. They’re the subject of 15 to more than 50 percent of calls to the police
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But might we get further in the long run if someone with other skills — in social work or mediation — actually handled the incident?
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The women were deeply wary of the police in general, but 33 of them had called them at least once, often for help with a teenager. “Calling the police on family members deepens the reach of penal control,” Bell wrote. But the mothers in her study have scant options.
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hey knew that if they called the police that real harm could come, and they didn’t want that.
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When I did investigations for the Justice Department, I would hear police officers say: “I didn’t sign up to the police force to be a social worker. I don’t have that training.” They know they’re stuck handling things because there is a complete lack of investment in other approaches and responses.
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In Eugene, Ore., some 911 calls are routed to a crisis-intervention service called Cahoots, which responds to things like homelessness, substance abuse and mental illness. Houston routes some mental-health calls to a counselor if they’re not emergencies. New Orleans is hiring people who are not police officers to go to traffic collisions and write reports, as long as there are no injuries or concerns about drunken driving. I’m borrowing these examples from Barry Friedman’s article. The point is that some cities are beginning to reduce the traditional scope of police work.
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One of the most interesting studies about policing is a randomized comparison of different strategies for dealing with areas of Lowell, Mass., that were hot spots for crime. One was aggressive patrols, which included stop-and-frisk encounters and arrests on misdemeanor charges, like drug possession. A second was social-service interventions, like mental-health help or taking homeless people to shelters. A third involved physical upkeep: knocking down vacant buildings, cleaning vacant lots, putting in streetlights and video cameras. The most effective in reducing crime was the third strategy.
