Defund the Police? Reform the Police? Or Re-imagine Policing?
...there seems to be no societal problem whose solution doesn't involve empowering yet another group of people with badges and guns.
This is a big picture story, not to be confused with the copaganda that passes for news about the performance of law enforcement. The fact is that most stories about policing are framed in a manner that’s unquestionably supportive of the status quo.
I am critical of police for the simple reason that they are the element of governance with the most visibility, and I believe they all-too-often use that fact to serve their own interests over the public. The history of law enforcement is intertwined with a culture steeped in racism and misogyny, and one seeing enabling retribution as the solution to all-too-many challenges..
I don’t hate cops. They’re humans; some good, some bad, most somewhere in between as are all of us. I despise the system that puts them in roles unrelated to what most people think they ought to be doing. And there seems to be no societal problem whose solution doesn't involve empowering yet another group of people with badges and guns.
Policing in the United States involves roughly 18,000 federal, state, local and city departments. They often overlap with the 16 recognized federal intelligence agencies, and offices with similar functions in the various parts of the executive branch, like the Department of Agriculture and the Post Office. The recognized standards for performance often have enough wiggle room so that anything is possible.
Dare to be different in your analysis about police, or challenge the existing culture of Blue Solidarity and you risk getting branded as one of the “defund the police crowd,” a largely mythical entity now in a league with George Soros and Antifa. So be it.
The first thing you need to know is that cops don’t do what we think they do. It doesn’t matter what the statistics say, Americans consistently tell pollsters that crime is increasing.
The police, who citizens believe are defending them from criminal activity, are increasingly tied up on the front lines of mental health, addiction, domestic disputes, and homelessness, even though their training is overwhelmingly focused on firearms skills and self defense..
We’ve been taught to think they “catch the bad guys; they chase the bank robbers; they find the serial killers,” said Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, in an interview with Jacobin. But this is “a big myth,” he said. “The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year. If they make two, they’re cop of the month.”
If the only tool you give a carpenter is a hammer, everything will look like a nail to them. As the chart above illustrates, law enforcement officers are highly trained on how to use guns, but likely to be much less well trained on when to use them.
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According to the media and conservative politicians, there is a crime wave underway, and those darned soft-headed liberals who advocate for reform of law enforcement are to blame.
Things are supposedly so bad in Los Angeles, that the head of the L.A. Police Protective League is on record telling tourists the City of Angels is now like The Purge, a 1993 movie premised on all crime being legal for one day.
Except that things really aren’t that bad.
https://twitter.com/reporterliz/status/1475576333396635651?s=20
Apples are being compared to oranges statistically and individual instances of criminal activity are all-too-often being blown out of proportion. Violent crimes are up in California, and the connection with an explosive increase in gun sales is a more obvious explanation than reducing the population of overcrowded holding pens for society’s “misfits.”
From 2020 Gun Sales Data Press Release via CA Atty General Rob Bonta (which doesn’t include ghost guns):
In 2020, handgun sales in California increased 65.5%, from 414,705 in 2019 to 686,435 in 2020; while the sale of long guns increased 45.9%, from 329,311 in 2019 to 480,401 in 2020. The increase is on track with a national rise in gun sales in 2020. Last year, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System processed a record 39.7 million background checks – up from 28.4 million in 2019. Given the variations in state laws, background checks do not directly represent the number of firearms sold, but they are a key indicator of sales.
Overall crime in every category is lower than it was for most of the past fifty years. Our country holds the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world, according to Pew Research:
The World Prison Brief’s data estimates the U.S. incarceration rate at 639 inmates per 100,000 people as of 2018, or 13% higher than the rate of the next-closest country, El Salvador (564 inmates per 100,000 people). The U.S. rate is also far higher than the rates of other heavily populated nations, including Brazil (357 per 100,000) and Turkey (335 inmates per 100,000 people). Incarceration rates in Western Europe are less than a quarter of the U.S. rate: In England and Wales, there are 131 inmates for every 100,000 people, while France and Germany incarcerate 93 and 69 people, respectively, for every 100,000 residents.
The inflation of claims about crime is, in part, an institutional response to a hodgepodge of calls for reform, which along with attempts at racial reckoning, have left police departments nationwide struggling to keep the officers they have and attract new ones to the force.
There’s a downward spiral going on, whereby law enforcement careers can act as a reputational taint, even as those careerists struggle to keep the authority and respect they believe they deserve.
Discussions about changing the roles police are expected to play are threatening to officers because they (correctly) assume that, without those duties, non-law enforcement people will get hired, with money coming from policing budgets.
Studies show that nearly a quarter of fatal police encounters followed calls about "disruptive behavior" directly tied to a person's mental illness and/or substance abuse disorder.
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Locally, the two big agencies are the city of San Diego’s police department and the county sheriff's office.
The SDPD’s history of scandals and misconduct has consistently been left to agency management to enforce and/or initiate reforms.
Many of the 40 recommendations a the Justice Department inquiry, coming on the heels of accusations of a pattern of sexual misconduct, were adopted resentfully and with little documentation other than the police chief’s testimony before the city council. Court cases have shown those reforms haven’t always worked as planned, and the Council has done little to follow up on them.
Mayor Todd Gloria played both sides of the police reform issue as he ran for office, signaling agreement for changes in the wake of George Floyds death, and then courting financial support from police unions and increasing police spending in his first budget.
https://twitter.com/HomelessnessSD/status/1471993471388958724?s=20
Gloria announced a “police and public safety reform package” last spring, promising that it was built on “sensible and equitable changes to police practices.”
From Voice of San Diego:
His package included 11 items – actions that range from implementing changes approved by voters, exploring ideas that have been hotly debated for years, making changes that have since been changed at the state level, working with county prosecutors on long-sought reforms and changing city structures in ways welcomed by reformers.
It’s been slow going on implementation of many of those reforms, other than the low-hanging fruit including items now mandated by the State of California.
The promise of oversight, via a ballot measure approved by 75% of voters for an oversight mechanism with actual powers, has seen the same sort of institutionally inspired molasses-movement as previous efforts. Backroom maneuvering by the police union is being countered, thanks to the citizen activists at San Diegans for Justice. But the thing voters expected has yet to occur, and the excuses are looking weaker all the time.
Resources of the SDPD in the enforcement realm appear to be increasingly directed at efforts to play whack-a-mole with homeless encampments around the city. The handful of criminal offenses resulting from this cruel effort hardly justify the pain and suffering inflicted on unhoused humans. I’d be willing to bet that much of the overtime built into Mayor Gloria’s police budget is being spent on this effort to keep officers busy…
…Which brings me to another point, namely that budgeting for “security,” whether at the national or local level, are, in fact, social welfare programs as much as they have to do with what’s implied by possession of a deadly weapon.
“Fighting crime” and “keeping the community safe” are much more salable than health and human resources when budgets are written. It’s unfortunate that funding for implementation of community mental health programs isn’t treated the same way. (I have to give kudos to Nathan Fletcher and the County Supes for working to make these sorts of things a priority.)
A common liberal misconception is that reducing the role of armed officers will negate the warrior culture surrounding law enforcement. It’s an ecosystem, one that includes prosecutors and the courts. The SDPD could be run by muppets and officers will still have the courtesies and protections afforded them by the system that protects “bad apples” in lieu of souring working relationships.
Just as re-training and PTSD programs are offered to military veterans, so should they be offered to front line workers, including police. The cycles of resentment and secrecy need to be channeled into things beneficial to the community at large.
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A few words about the San Diego Sheriff's office are in order.
La Presna and the San Diego Union-Tribune have both recently run stories about how the county’s law enforcers are being used as real estate repo men in return for political favors.
Incumbent Sheriff Bill Gore is retiring, and has anointed a successor – Undersheriff Kelly Martinez– who will run for office making a few promises she has no intention of keeping.
The Sheriff's department is a shameful mess of the sort that’s kept San Diego embedded in public perception as a backwater burb full of pathetic leeches.
(For details on just how bad it is, see my story here.)
I suspect we’ll learn that the eviction racket’s winning landlords are connected in some fashion to the wave of endorsements, many from prominent Democrats, Martinez received at the moment she announced her campaign. It’s not that much different than the –everybody knows– game played when it comes to issuing concealed carry permits, except that Republicans are more likely to benefit.
Former Sheriff’s Commander Dave Myers scored big when the County Democratic Party endorsed him for the 2022 contest. He’s unfairly being portrayed in some “polite” circles as being a radical, rather than somebody who’s living outside the copaganda bubble, and unwilling to “otherize” vast parts of the citizenry.
In 2018, I declared the contest for District 4 on the County Board of Supervisors to be the one with the most potential for positive change, and my instincts have been largely affirmed.
Now I’m saying for 2022 that the race for County Sheriff occupies that place in our future. Pay attention, folks; this could be a game changer.
Hey folks! There’s a change coming to Words & Deeds in 2022. I’ll be moving from Wordpress to Substack, which hopefully will mean just a few changes in formatting. Stay tuned for exciting details.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead image credit: Michael McConnell@HomelessnessSD / Twitter