Police abolition movement

Joshua Briond states that "the lack of political imagination, beyond the electoral strategy and reformism, and the inability to envision a world, or even country, devoid of police and prisons is rooted in (anti-Black), racialized colonial logics of the biologically determined criminal, slave, and savage."[8] In opposition to the position that police abolition is inconceivable, abolitionists support creating alternatives to policing. Activist Tourmaline references Andrea Ritchie to explain how "people act with abolitionist politics all the time, without actually knowing it." Ritchie presented the following example to illustrate this point: "You and your friend are at a bar. Your friend drove there. Your friend wants to drive home. Are you gonna call the cops or are you going to say 'no, I'll drive you home; I'll call a cab; I will take your keys'?"[26] Tourmaline states that this is an example of "abolition at work," since "people are not constantly calling the cops on their friends to prevent them from drunk driving; people are finding unique and creative ways to get their friends from not driving while they're drunk."[26]

In response, lawyer and activist Dean Spade states that "it seems like a big part of an example like that is the difference between how we feel about somebody we know—like, you're about to commit a crime, you're about to get in a car and drive drunk, but it never occurs to me that I should call the cops on you, because I don't see you as disposable, I know you—versus, [a scenario where] there's strangers on the subway and somebody's doing something that someone doesn't like and instead of figuring out what's going on or [questioning] can this be stopped, can this be less harmful, or can people get taken care of, there's a kind of immediate" response to make it "into a police problem."[26] Spade says that this occurs because of the ways in which "people are alienated from one another in our culture" which has made it socially "not okay" to "connect and try to figure out how to solve the problem" together.[26]

In response, Rachel Herzing suggests that we learn from people who have developed and proposed alternative strategies which rely on community development, networking and negotiation, group self-defense learning, workbooks and other materials which present alternatives for people who are unsure of what alternatives may exist, citing Fumbling Towards Repair by Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan[27] and Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi.[28]

Protests in Raleigh, North Carolina on May 30, 2020

Abolitionists argue that delegitimizing the police as an institution of society and deconstructing the logic of policing are necessary towards actualizing police abolition.[4] Megan McDowell and Luis Fernandez state that "by attacking the police as an institution, by challenging its very right to exist, the contemporary abolitionist movement contains the potential to radically transform society."[4]

Dean Spade states that "clearly US policing has been having a major legitimacy crisis because of the Black Lives Matter movement." However, Spade cites Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore's article "Beyond Bratton" in Policing the Planet in order to express how legitimacy crises historically have often actually resulted in the expansion of policing: "In the U.S., after the crisis in the 1960s and 70s that was provoked by the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and so many different anti-racist and anti-colonial movements calling out the police and more people seeing police violence and seeing the police as racist, the police just did a lot of new PR moves, like they expanded police to have police be homeless outreach workers and to have police go into every classroom in the United States and do a drug abuse education program called D.A.R.E." As a result, Spade concludes that "the idea that just because we provoke a [legitimacy] crisis we'll get a reduction or elimination is something we have to really question."[29]

Abolitionists believe that calls for abolition may be co-opted and drained of their power by reformists who propose reforms which actually function to strengthen police power.[29] Tourmaline argues that this process of expecting the state to reduce harm and violence through increasing policing is embedded within the state's attempts to maintain its own legitimacy and power: "the logic of the state is constantly demanding us to think of ways to increase policing as a way to decrease harm and violence."[30] Megan McDowell and Luis Fernandez state that an abolitionist praxis which "adopts uncompromising positions that resist liberal attempts at co-optation, incorporation, and/or reconciliation" should be adopted and amplified as a result.[4]

The Ferguson unrest reform proposal of body cameras for police has been cited as an example of a reformist approach to policing which worked to strengthen police power and build wealth for the less than lethal weapons industry while failing to provide material relief to those impacted by police violence.[29] Dean Spade argues that "the goal of those kinds of reforms is to demobilize us, to tell us 'your problem has been solved' ... and that is so important for us to deeply resist."[29]

Mariame Kaba argues that reform will always be a failed project when it comes to police, because police have the power to execute state power without any limitations: "How are we going to reform an institution that basically has the ability to decide whether or not to use violence in any conceivable situation and is sanctioned by the state to do so?" Kaba points to examples which illustrate how police are not accountable to the law, but engage in the work of maintaining order rather than in enforcing the law.[31]

A demonstrator at a June 2020 George Floyd protest holds up a sign calling for defunding the police, a step in police abolition.

Defunding the police can be considered as a step towards abolition, by using funds allocated to police to invest in community initiatives intended to reduce crime and therefore the need for policing over time until the institution is fully abolished.[25] Such initiatives could include social workers, mental health therapy, domestic abuse centres, drug counselling, and low cost housing.[32] For instance, in Oakland, California, the police budget is over 40% of the city's discretionary spending.[33][34] In many US cities the police department is the largest single budget item.[33]

Defunding the police frees up funds to invest in community initiatives intended to reduce crime and therefore the need for policing.[35] Activist and advocacy groups like Movement 4 Black Lives call for "divest/invest" programs to divert police budgets into programs that have been proven to reduce crime.[35] According to Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, "We're ready to chip away at the line items inside of a police budget that really are nonsensical. Police should not be in charge of mental health crises. They should not be in charge of dealing with homelessness. They should not be in charge of 'supporting' people with drug dependency and addiction. Those are three line items which we can cut out of the police budget and then put that back into health care."[11]

In Eugene, Oregon, a nonprofit mobile crisis intervention program called CAHOOTS has handled mental health calls since 1989 and is often cited as a model for an alternative to police handling mental health calls.[36] In 2019 CAHOOTS responded to 20% of Eugene's 911 calls on a budget of $2 million.[36] In 2012, Camden, New Jersey—then referred to as "the most dangerous city in the United States"— defunded its police department. The city had numerous problems with police corruption and many instances in which police would plant drugs on citizens. As a result, the city disbanded the police department and created a new one under county control, which allowed for funds to be reallocated to community-building initiatives. The new department had more officers, but their roles were reframed to be community-oriented and focused on de-escalating violence. A seven-year study showed that violent crime dropped 42% and the crime rate dropped from 79 per 1,000 to 44 per 1,000. Camden dropped down the list of most dangerous cities in the U.S. to tenth.[37][38]

On April 12, 2020, following two shootings by the Winnipeg Police Service, James Wilt published an article in Canadian Dimension, arguing that policing was increasing the criminalization of Indigenous Canadians and of the homeless, and that "an institution designed to displace, dispossess, and break apart families and communities in the interests of capital cannot provide 'justice.'" Wilt noted how much budget goes to policing and called for the Winnipeg Police to be disbanded and their budget spent on social services.[44]

Law-enforcement abolition movements in Europe were most notable in the 1970s as the prison abolition movement, but the police abolition movement did not see similar levels of popularity.[45]

During the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, the abolition of the police is one of the request by the Hong Kong protestors. The slogan "Disband the Police Force immediately" (Chinese: 解散警隊，刻不容緩) appears in many areas during the protest.[46][47]

According to Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey, the best scientific evidence available shows that police are effective in reducing violence, while there is also a growing body of evidence that community organizations can play a central role in reducing violence:[18]

Those who argue that the police have no role in maintaining safe streets are arguing against lots of strong evidence. One of the most robust, most uncomfortable findings in criminology is that putting more officers on the street leads to less violent crime. We know this from randomized experiments involving “hot spots policing” and natural experiments in which more officers were brought to the streets because of something other than crime — a shift in the terror alert level or the timing of a federal grant — and violent crime fell. After the unrest around the deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., police officers stepped back from their duty to protect and serve; arrests for all kinds of low-level offenses dropped, and violence rose. This shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that protests against violent policing lead to more violence; rather, it means that when police don’t do their jobs, violence often results....Decades of criminological theory and growing evidence demonstrate that residents and local organizations can indeed “police” their own neighborhoods and control violence — in a way that builds stronger communities. This isn’t about citizen watch groups. When neighborhood organizations engage young people with well-run after-school activities and summer jobs programs, those young people are dramatically less likely to become involved in violent activities. When street outreach workers intervene, they can be extremely effective in interrupting conflicts before they escalate. When local organizations reclaim abandoned lots and turn them into green spaces, violence falls. When community nonprofits proliferate across a city, that city becomes safer.

In an interview with Vox, Sharkey acknowledged the effectiveness of aggressive policing and mass incarceration in reducing violence, but said these methods have "had staggering costs." He went on to say "The next model should be one driven primarily by residents and local organizations as the central actors. Police still certainly have a role to play, but responding to violent crime takes up only a tiny fraction of police officers’ time. So the idea here is that we can rely on residents and local organizations to take over most of the duties that [officers] currently handle and make sure neighborhoods are safe."[48]

Criminologists Justin Nix and Scott Wolfe state in the Washington Post, "We have enough research evidence to be concerned about the immediate impact of drastic budget cuts or wholesale disbanding of police agencies: Crime and victimization will increase....These collateral consequences will disproportionately harm minority communities that need help, not further marginalization." They go on to state that "Cities that have more police officers per capita tend to have lower crime rates. This does not necessarily mean we need to hire more police. Rather, having more officers per capita provides greater ability to dedicate resources to community- and problem-oriented policing approaches that have been shown to reduce crime and improve community satisfaction." They further argue that police departments need to be held more accountable for their use of funds, suggesting more emphasis on evidence-based practices, and say that making the police responsible for so many social ills should be reconsidered, although stating the infrastructure to handle those should be in place before reallocating funds.[19]

Matthew Yglesias, writing in Vox, criticized police abolition activists for lacking a plan for how to deal with violent crime, and for ignoring the substantial literature finding that having more police leads to less violent crime. He stated that their dismissal of police reform ignores that even modest reforms have been shown to reduce police misconduct. He writes that across government as a whole, only a very small portion of spending goes to police, and that while more social spending would probably reduce crime, that does not need to come out of police budgets, noting that the United States actually has 35% fewer police officers per capita than the rest of the world. He also states that abolishing public police services would lead to a surge in the use of private security services by those who can afford them, and that such services would lack accountability.[20]

The contemporary police abolition movement began at least as early as 2014 during the Ferguson riots but gained strength in 2020 during the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and the protests surrounding it.[35][49]

A YouGov poll from May 29–30, 2020, found that "most Americans do not support reducing law enforcement budgets. Close to two-thirds (65%) oppose cutting police force funding. Just 16 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans support that idea."[50] An Economist/YouGov poll from June 14–16, 2020, found that 22 percent of African-Americans favor police abolition.[20] A June 23-July 6 survey by Gallup found that 81% of African-Americans wanted police to spend the same amount of time or more time in their neighborhoods, as did 86% of the sample as a whole.[51]

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden does not support defunding or abolishing the police.[52] Many members of the United States House of Representatives have criticized the movement as a distraction from other efforts, notably Karen Bass, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn warned Democratic leaders against engaging in the movement on a private call, over fears that Republicans could propagandize the controversy during the upcoming US election season.[21] U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders opposed police abolition, stating that all cities in the world have police; instead, he argued that that police departments should be staffed with "well-educated, well-trained, well-paid professionals," stating "we want to redefine what police departments do, give them the support they need to make their jobs better" while ensuring "every police officer in this country [is held] accountable for what he or she does."[53]

President Donald Trump criticized the efforts to defund police departments and said it was important to have "law and order" in the United States.[54] According to Attorney General William P. Barr, there would be an increase in "vigilantism" and "more killings" in major American cities.[55]

"Abolish the police" graffiti in Minneapolis, MN (June 2020)

According to the New York Times, cities across the United States were considering defunding, downsizing, or abolishing their departments in the Floyd aftermath.[36]

In Minneapolis, advocacy group MPD150, which had previously published a report in 2017 recommending the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) be abolished, argued that "the people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises" and that first responders should be social workers and mental health providers.[49] Public schools, parks, multiple private businesses and venues, and the University of Minnesota have severed ties with the police department.[25][56] Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey was booed by a large crowd of protestors after refusing to defund and abolish the police.[57] Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council—a veto-proof majority—pledged on June 7, 2020 to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department, despite opposition from Mayor Frey.[58] Supporters of the pledge included Alondra Cano, Jeremiah Ellison, and council president Lisa Bender.[1][36] U.S. representative Ilhan Omar, whose district includes Minneapolis, stated, "the Minneapolis Police Department has proven themselves beyond reform. It's time to disband them and reimagine public safety in Minneapolis."[59] A few weeks after the pledge, the City Council passed a provision for a public referendum to amend the city's charter to do so, as the charter required the city to “fund a police force of at least 0.0017 employees per resident.”[60][61] The proposed amendment was blocked by the Charter Commission, who said it lacked legal provisions and necessary public input, although it may go before voters in 2021.[61]

In September, the pledge to abolish the department was set aside. Elected officials said there was widespread disagreement about its meaning, even at the time the pledge was taken. Lisa Bender said that different interpretations of the pledge by different council members had created confusion.[61] The New York Times reported that the pledge "has been rejected by the city's mayor, a plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls, and an increasing number of community groups. Taking its place have been the types of incremental reforms that the city’s progressive politicians had denounced."[61]

On June 8, 2020, the police-free Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone was established in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.

The New York Times described the six-block Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle as an example of police abolition put into practice, because police did not respond to calls in the zone and the local precinct was closed. They reported that the zone had its own self-appointed armed guards, and described cases of harassment and intimidation of businesses and customers, as well as vandalism. Business within the zone crashed. There were four shootings in the zone, two of them fatal, before the police retook the zone.[62]