A common initiative that is being shown on everyone's social media or on the news is "defunding the police." However, when you scroll through platforms, it is sometimes hard to understand truly what this means, especially when people take the meaning so differently. For example, some say to abolish the police or some say to stop a large amount of funding under the same concept of defunding the police. Therefore, I decided to explain the three main ideals or options in "defunding the police" to the best of my knowledge and ability to help inform.
When looking into defunding the police, I came across three main ideas which are reform, defunding and dismantling. With these branches, I am going to differentiate the different meanings to the phrase people keep posting or talking about.
Reform
Police reform is the motive to reconstruct the policies already put into place, thus, acquiring the change of the system. Thus, the implementation of policies such as banning chokeholds, requiring warning before shooting, duty to intervene, requiring de-escalation, restricting shooting at moving vehicles, requiring comprehensive reporting, requiring to utilize all other means before shooting and use a force continuum, as stated by 8 Can't Wait. 8 Can't Wait is a website which offers policies and ways your city can bring change to their own police system. Also, on this platform, you are able to see the actions taken in your city and if actions are not being taken, you can reach out to the officials in your area. These eight policies are implemented by each city, however, recently Congress is working on passing a police reform bill (S.3912) to which it is aimed to reform police training and policies among holding police accountable in court and making sure data collection is not transparent. Since there is a new implementation of policies, there will need to be an increase of funding due to more training needed to improve their practices or equipment needed, like body cameras for officers to efficiently collect data of encounters. The funding for the reform may come from two outlets, one being grants from the government and the other from us, the taxpayers.
Defund
Defunding the police is exactly how it sounds, reducing the funds of the departments. However, to fully understand this concept of defunding and funding of the police departments, it is important to understand how budgeting works. First, there are three budgets: federal, state, and city. Federal budgeting differs for every state because, at the beginning of the fiscal year, the state puts in a bid for how much money they will need for the year and needs to provide reasonings to why they may need an "x" amount of dollars. As for a state budget, the state budgets, in the same manner, a city makes a request for a certain amount of money from the state at the beginning of the fiscal year. Moving forward, the city budget is decided by partially the taxpayers and other non-tax revenues like tickets from police, fine, and other fees. Us, the taxpayers, set the foundation for elected officials to decide how much money shall be allocated to each category in the budget through our taxes, fees, and fines, and from intergovernmental transfers (money from the federal and state government). To understand this, I will explain the budgeting for my city, Chicago. For example, the breakdown for Chicago's budgeting is $5,939.2M to General Financing, $2,709M to Public Safety, $1,928.8M to Infrastructure Services, $1,003.5M to Community Services, $635.7M to Finance and Administration, $307.7M to City Development, $83.7M to Regulatory and $45.7 to Legislative and Elections. This aforementioned budgeting is based on what the city council and mayor believe is based on what they believe the city needs to fully run and work well and best benefits the people. Specifically, the Chicago Police Departments receive $1,778,002,408 from the budgeting in order to, "protect the lives, property, and rights of all people, to maintain order, and to enforce the law impartially" as stated by the City of Chicago Police Mission. The budget of the police goes into the funding of salary, police cars, training, and more in order to aid the best possible force/practices. To break down the police department further, since the increase of budgeting to police in Chicago, the number of crimes per 1,000 people has decreased. For example, the increase of funding allows for the increase in officers, so, as of right now there are approximately 13,500 police officers on duty in Chicago with an additional 1,925 employees compared to the metro area population of 8,865,000. As the staff increases, so does the budgeting due to salaries, pensions, and equipment. Not only does the budget increase, but so does the incarceration rate to increase due to the number of police officers. However, defunding would reduce the police budgeting and allocate it to a different category, as seen above. Therefore, people wonder if the big-budget is worth it or the best use when it could go towards public schools or other services. Also, many people disagree with the defunding, because the priority should be public safety in order to maintain law and order, because "safety comes first." Along with defunding the police comes a possible crime increase because of fewer officers to manage the city or lack of paperwork or casework to be done due to fewer administrators.
Dismantling
Since many people believe police reform is not working and that defunding is a touchy subject because of the budgeting, some believe to completely dissolve the system altogether and remake it. When I read through threads and Tweets on Twitter one day, I noticed a common trend of dismantling the police due to history, especially in the south. For example, the police in the south back in the 1700s were based on preserving the slave system, thus preventing them from running away and returning them back to their owners. Thus, that is why it is vital to understand why people of color face racial discrimination when it comes to the police systems that were built upon those premises. Also, apart from dismantling the police system and recreating it means to create sectors and favored fields. For example, police are called to tell homeless people to move along or help with suicide attempts. Thus, by implementing a system with required and designated fields, people believe those can receive specific help and resources for those in need and let the police officers focus on crime specifically. Furthermore, police officers are not always equipped with the right training for such circumstances since they only do receive about 8 hours on mediation and conflict management.
Although I only touched the surface on these subjects, it is important for people to read up and do their own research, especially for their own city. There is a list of pros and cons to each ideal, but in all, it is something to educate yourself on. I will attach some resources I used to help me understand, but I myself, still need to read further on all aspects.
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