Reimagining Public Safety & Defunding the Police

(Credit Amber Hughson, @conflicttransformation)

What does it mean?

I'm one of many community advocates and organizers here in San Leandro and I put his post together to help address a lot of questions, confusion, and even frustration, fear, or anger that people may have regarding the recent push to reimagine public safety and defund the SLPD.

To start with, let's be clear: SLPD hasn't been defunded. They still have the same $42 million budget, a 60% increase over the last ten years. They still receive 50%+ of the city’s payroll. They still cost approximately 1/3rd of our entire budget. They still account for upwards of 2/3rds of our overtime costs. They still receive the newest equipment, the highest starting salaries, and the most deference from elected officials. But what's been the return on our investment?

Source: SLPD Crime Stats

Crime rates, YTD 2020 to 2021: violent crime down 9%, property crime down 25%, overall crime down 23%.

Crime rates, YOY 2019-20 to 2020-21: violent crime down 10%, property crime down 32%, overall crime down 29%.

Calls for service rate: down 10% since last year. 2020 was down 6% from 2019.

Arrest rate: down 25% since last year. 2020 was down 36% from 2019.

Clearance rates: down to 24% for violent crimes and 4% for property crimes in 2020. 

Now, I shouldn’t have to tell you, but just in case it isn’t clear: those are some pretty bad numbers. Even with crime rates as a whole going down, SLPD continues getting more money, more staff, and more resources.

Notably, the only areas where crime is increasing at all are catalytic converter thefts, gun violence, petty theft, as well as racially-motivated robbery and assaults. None of these are solved solely or even primarily through conventional policing. Catalytic converter thefts require expanding green transportation, modifications to existing cars, and shutting down scrap dealers who buy these stolen materials. Gun violence is a nationwide epidemic and needs a federal response to make it harder to get a gun than it is to get a driver's license. Petty theft, as well as the hate crime robberies and assaults, requires investing in social programs that we know actually reduce these crimes and that San Leandro voters support by a wide margin — youth diversion and intervention programs, jobs that pay living wages, affordable housing and healthcare, DEI initiatives, as well as infrastructure investment.

Now before you start shaking your head, keep in mind that we aren’t going to be waiting for years to see if these services work. We know they work, we know they’re cost-effective, and we know they provide immediate relief.

Notably, even these crimes are (thankfully) very rare for a city of our size in a major metropolitan area. However, they don't feel that way anymore because of how connected we've become through social media and technology. It was during a recent city council meeting last month that this problem was best highlighted: how safe do we feel versus how safe we actually are. If we have the former but not the latter, it still traumatizes our community. Yet, security theater often wastes money without actually stopping threats too.

This is why we need to reimagine public safety, so police can focus on the work we need them to do and that they're trained to do. Currently, we ask them to do too many jobs they're not qualified for or intended to fill, as you’ll read about more. This leads to less time spent solving cases, catching criminals, conducting patrols, walking the beat, and working with the community to keep all of us safe, among other problems. 

That said, I want to address the greater question around the slogan. Defund the police? Most of us have been raised all our lives to respect police officers, follow the law, just do what we’re told, and if we do that then everything will be fine!

But, actually, for a lot of people that has never been true. Black people. Native Americans. Other people of color. They face police brutality and disproportionate rates of incarceration compared to White people, even for the same crimes! They face higher rates of poverty, less quality education, redlining of their neighborhoods, and tossed resumes when they apply for work. They face public and private discrimination, from stereotypes and slurs to outright violent hostility.

They are also murdered, particularly by police, and almost always without repercussions. How can there be peace in our communities without justice? How can there be freedom for all if not everyone is actually free?

***

So, yes, people want to defund the police in order to reimagine public safety. Now, I get that may sound scary to a lot of people, but let's look at what that actually means.

Here's an example of how we are already benefiting from defunding the police right now. Until the 1970s, ambulance services were generally run by local police and fire departments. There was no law requiring medical training beyond basic first-aid and, in many cases, the assignment of ambulance duty was used as a form of punishment. You can probably guess that throwing people with medical emergencies into the back of a paddy wagon produced less than spectacular health outcomes. Now, imagine how much worse it became when disgruntled white police officers were demoted to ambulance duty in Black neighborhoods.

The response was so problematic (or nonexistent) that in 1967, leaders in one of Pittsburgh’s Black communities, the Hill District, created Freedom House Ambulance Services (FHAS) and approached Peter Safar, a doctor at the University of Pittsburgh, who a few years earlier had lost his 12-year-old daughter to an acute asthma crisis. With a shared purpose of improving emergency medical response, Safar trained 25 black men from that neglected community – many of whom did not have a high school diploma – as emergency medical technicians, skilled in this new thing called CPR.

With two donated police vehicles, FHAS began to save lives at such a rate that they became the gold standard for emergency response training in the US and the model for EMTs we now take for granted in every community. Freedom House paramedics were so dynamic in their ability to respond to the critically ill that the Pittsburgh police department often called them for high acuity cases in White neighborhoods.

Despite the success of FHAS, police and fire departments resisted retraining their personnel, so the city reallocated funds to create a separate EMT service. (A new mayor cut funding to Freedom House in 1975 and seized their assets, but that's another story). When people think defunding the police will lead to anarchy, they’re not understanding that change rarely happens from within and that resources reallocated to community-based services can not only improve neglected neighborhoods but create innovations that help us all.

***

So, let’s really dig into the “Defund the Police” slogan. I’m sure some people read it and thought it sounded dumb, scary, crazy, or just did not do a good job at sending a message. Maybe you don’t understand why people support it. Maybe it sounds like something a super far-left radical would say without actually having any idea of what they’re talking about. Maybe you even feel that the police actually do a pretty good job and are being unfairly treated.

Well, let’s break it down. First of all, slogans are meant to be catchy. Yes, we could say something like, “Reduce Funding to the Police and Put it Towards Community Services as well as Stopping the Militarization of Police Departments and Not Letting Police Unions Protect Bad Cops that Murder People.” But that doesn’t really roll off the tongue, you know.

Would it surprise you to know that “Defund the Police” actually means different things to different people? There are some who want to reduce police funding and promote reform. Others want to dismantle police departments and rebuild them better. However, before we get too deep into that, let’s talk more about how effective police are now in a general sense.

We already saw SLPD's horrendous stats and they're not an outlier. Police as a profession are actually shockingly bad at solving crimes. They only solve 53.3% of assaults, 34.5% of rapes, and 13.5% of burglaries. On top of that, there’s a huge racial disparity between the crimes that do get solved. Also, let’s not forget the challenges victims of sexual assault and rape face when dealing with the police, including the huge backlog of untested rape kits.

Next, let’s look at the deaths and assaults that are caused BY the police. Those numbers are a lot higher than you would expect, like sickeningly. There were at least 1,021 fatal police shootings in 2020, and it has been trending up for several years now. And again, as we all know, there’s a huge racial disparity, because those numbers are conservative ones, and they don’t even get into the widespread use of mostly unnecessary non-lethal police violence.

So let’s move now to what do we do with the people that police catch? The answer is that we put a lot of them in jail. We put so many people in jail that we lead the world in incarcerating our own people! There are more than 2.2 million Americans in prisons and jails right now, many of them in privately-owned prisons. To put that in perspective, if they were all housed together and given land, they would be the 37th most populous state. Put another way: there are more people incarcerated than people who live in New Mexico.

And for what? We don’t rehabilitate them. We don’t teach them. We don’t prepare them for release. After they endure brutal conditions from torture and isolation to slave labor and medieval medical care, we just tell them they’re lucky it wasn’t worse and give them a one-way Greyhound ticket upon release.

But, surely, the police at least act as a deterrent right? If we don’t have police, then people will just realize they can go do whatever they want. It’ll be the Wild West. I mean, of course, fewer crimes are being committed when the criminals know they could easily be killed by the police or thrown in jail for a very long time. That just makes sense. Right?

Actually, that would be super wrong. A scientific publication called “The Prison Paradox” from 2017 states that “increased incarceration has a marginal-to-zero impact on crime. In some cases, increased incarceration can even lead to an increase in crime.” Indeed, considering the lack of rehabilitation we offer combined with the overemphasis on punitive solutions, it's not a surprise we have repeat offenders. You should read the article to understand all the reasons why this is, but the facts are really indisputable.

In fact, the overwhelming amount of police time isn't spent preventing crime, let alone serious crimes. No, they spend almost all of their time responding and reacting to incidents after the fact. We saw this with the robberies against our API neighbors and SLUSD students. We saw this with the rioting and looting by groups that co-opted the resurgence of the civil rights movement during the Summer of 2020.

But hey, if you don’t believe me, okay. Would you believe a cop then? Seriously, would you? Read “Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop.” There have been so many whistleblowers on police corruption and this article is one the most compelling. This former police officer talks about the problems with policing and reveals the truth behind an often-used acronym: ACAB.

Actually, there’s a whole list about the dangers that await cops who reveal misconduct and corruption, who stand against brutality by their colleagues, and try to actually uphold their oath to protect and serve. Contrary to popular belief, the “good apples” are usually crushed or tossed out, leaving only the bad ones, rotting the barrels of our law enforcement agencies.

There's another myth you should be aware of that continues to get thrown around: the idea that police departments are understaffed because supposedly we need 1 officer per 1,000 residents. This is false and it was a Hayward police chief (and the first director of the Community Oriented Policing Services office, or COPS) who first helped show us why! "Staffing decisions, particularly in patrol, must be made based on actual workload, and very few police agencies have the capability of conducting that analysis. Once an analysis of the actual workload is made, then a determination can be made as to the amount of discretionary patrol time should exist, consistent with the community’s ability to fund."

So, after looking at all this, what is your biggest takeaway? Because to me, it seems like our current system of law is set up to kill, brutalize, and incarcerate people because, well, apparently we just really like killing, brutalizing, and incarcerating people. Our system doesn’t actually solve anything. It doesn’t decrease crime, it doesn’t curb re-offenders, and it’s really REALLY expensive.

We’ve been conditioned to think that this is what the law looks like, and we’ve just accepted it. We’ve been far too arrogant to learn from literally any other country on why we maybe shouldn’t want to kill someone accused of passing a bad check, or why we shouldn’t need to tackle someone and beat them bloody for forgetting to pay their bus fare, or why we should want a smaller prison population with more focus on rehabilitation. Or maybe we knew all along there was a better way, but we’re hurting so much that we want to see other people hurt, too? Hell, maybe we can even look back to the origins of policing in America, which are incredibly racist when you read about them.

So what does work to decrease crime and increase productivity, then? Luckily, lots of things! There are so many lists and most of them center on a few key points, like mental health program access, free daycare, better early learning, more after-school programs, more community outreach programs, free adult learning, and better access for people in need to receive necessities and help finding jobs. I’m sure you can learn more with just a little bit of searching on the internet as well as combing through the links throughout this post and the articles themselves.

It may seem strange to some, but when you stop treating people as problems and stop viewing their lives as disposable, by helping them at the same time as we protect victims, we actually increase public safety!

Meanwhile, how do we decrease the number of people the police shoot and kill every year? There are tons of ideas for this as well. We need to make sure that cops have significantly more training, and significantly fewer weapons. There needs to be much more accountability, and there has to be an oversight committee made of local people (not other cops), who can make decisions on hiring and firing and imposing fines. The records for each police officer need to be fully public and easily accessible, and there needs to be a zero-tolerance policy for discharging a weapon without absolute cause.

And, lastly… we need to reimagine public safety by defunding the police! Not fully, of course, we need some police. We just don’t need them to be everywhere we’re asking them to be right now. Instead of sending the same person who’s trained to shoot an active gunman from 30 yards to a domestic disturbance, let’s send a social worker, or mediator, or counselor. Let’s save the police for situations that call for someone with tactical gear, not when a man is drunk and passed out in a Wendy’s drive-through. That situation needs an EMT, a professional mental health expert, or an addiction counselor.

The police will then just be a special tactical force used only in specific situations, and all the other everyday issues that the cops get pulled into will be handled by different professionals better trained in other, less aggressive ways, to handle those issues in ways that are not just cost-effective, but rehabilitative.

Hopefully, this information helps clarify things for people, maybe open up a few hearts and minds. I know it can be difficult when we realize how wrong we’ve been about something. It’s a common struggle to change our views when presented with better, newer information. I certainly have had to work against my own preconceptions, biases, and stubbornness. Even if, after all of this, you still wouldn’t change your opinion, at the very least maybe you will consider that the rest of us are not coming from a place of bad faith, bigotry, or ignorance.

Regardless of what you do next, I just want to thank you for reading all of this.

Take note and take care.

***

Credit for original source content to Jamie Ford, Julia Davenport-Drake, and Tasha K.