Solving the Problems of Policing in America

So we know policing in America has problems but how could we solve those problems? Many are calling for a divestment in policing and an investment in our communities as the solution so you may have heard the saying “defund the police” but why would we do that and what does that even mean?

“Defund the Police” is not an indictment of individual police but rather a critique of the way the system as a whole currently works.

We give police billion dollar budgets in cities like L.A. and New York. Instead The Movement for Black Lives wants to defund policing and use the money to invest in public services. This is a divest-invest plan where some of the budget for policing would be repurposed to more effective crime prevention services such as public education, health care, housing, employment, as well as community centered restorative justice. But what kind of initiatives could this look like?

As an alternative to policing the poor, The Movement for Black Lives seeks to realize Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of the passing of a Universal Basic Income that prevents poverty and bolsters economies in poor communities. Moreover, instead of criminalizing drugs, public health services would be offered to people who find themselves in need of drug rehabilitation. 

Employment programs would be launched that help people find good paying jobs and cities would invest in increasing job opportunities and in quality public education for our kids. Educational curriculums would include requirements which acknowledge and meet the needs of culturally diverse students while schools would provide quality food, recreational physical activity, free daycare, and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. 

“We have not always had police and we can go back to community centered efforts.”

The Movement for Black Lives is intersectional and also demands the repeal of Clinton’s 1996 Crime and Immigration Bill, an end to deportation, the abolition of ICE as well as detention centers, and a guaranteed right to a lawyer for immigration hearings. The movement seeks to also end the war against gender non-conforming and queer people which places them living on the street and demands we include gender identity into all civil rights protections which prohibit discrimination in housing, education, employment and education. 

The Movement for Black Lives came to get everybody’s rights (take that all lives matter) and this expansion of democratic inclusion means ending the militarized policing of citizens within their own communities so we can spend our money elsewhere. 

We have not always had police and we can go back to community centered efforts. Moreover, the fact is since we have had police they have only protected social order, squashed resistance, and militarized the state against its own citizens while crimes against humanity remain more agitated than reduced by their militarized presence. 

We should discontinue the practice of professional military style policing of our everyday public lives and invest in our community through restorative justice, public health, employment assistance, and education while we turn our attention to violence in our society in a more meaningful way than ever before. That’s what it means to defund the police, if it’s broke we should fix it.