What do you mean when you say ‘Abolish the Police’?

By: Akerah Mackey-Watkins

Calls have been made across America to abolish or defund the police after the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Alijah McClain. Supporters of this movement have made demands to local and state officials and, in some cases, won battles to reduce police budgets. Many outside the movement have met these calls with anger or fear. Opponents of the movement believe that police should be praised for their bravery and heroism and that "a few bad apples" do not speak to police officers' integrity. This debate quickly spilled over into social media channels where many opponents started using hashtags such as #backtheblue and #bluelivesmatter to combat the narrative around police brutality. People across the nation promptly chose sides, refusing to budge from their positions. These polarized stances have kept many from understanding the movement or its goals.

I did not fully understand this knowledge gap until after reading my colleague's blog post for New America in July. Her blog post was an insightful and in-depth analysis of her views on race and class; however I was struck by one line, "...the battle to completely abolish the police is a losing fight." Despite the reduction in budgets in cities such as Baltimore, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, and San Francisco, she had a completely different perspective on its long-term feasibility. I quickly realized that for her and many Americans, the movement was getting lost in translation. More education was needed before we could even look for common ground, and I could explain why this movement was so close to my heart.

After a few conversations, I realized that Meegan and I come from entirely different worlds. While she grew up in a small city in Iowa, I grew up in Compton, California. I grew up in a neighborhood where I couldn't even ride my bike down the street. I had to politely (my mother would add) pass the police every morning to simply enter my elementary school. I knew what a gun looked like long before I could read or write. This was not due to street violence, but due to the police presence at my school and in my community. Even going to the grocery store, I was prompted by my mother to nod at the three policemen who always stood outside. And while they were familiar, I knew we were not friends. I was never afraid of the gang members or the street racers who raced down our street. Sadly, I was more fearful of the police who raided our neighborhoods at night, arrested my friends who were often only ten or eleven years old, and never showed even the most basic human empathy. The police would come and throw men on the fence, then the street, because stop-and-frisk was the law, and they “fit the description”. Usually, the community would gather outside on the road and watch because our gaze was often the only thing that stood in the way of even more brutal treatment. For a long time, I believed the things I witnessed in Los Angeles were unique to our city and its history of police violence. But nothing broke my heart more than realizing my experiences were duplicated in cities around the nation.

Therefore, when the abolition of the police movement was launched, I was ready to fight. No matter how outlandish or ridiculous people felt these calls were, I was prepared to end the institution that terrorized my community. And while I understood the reservations about abolishing the police, the scared girl who grew up in Compton, and the other children who spend their childhoods in juvenile detention centers, and now prisons, needed the nation to at least understand the movement before completely giving up on it the same way society once tried to give up on us.

There is a historical bond between the building of the police institution and racism. This is why the 'Abolish the Police' movement is asking for society to reimagine the structure of policing in America once again. The policing institution was not built from the crime and punishment model many think. This institution was born out of slave catching in the early 18th and 19th century and remained in society even after slavery was abolished. And despite being built on white supremacy, this institution is still being called on to maintain law and order and regulate society. Many of us believe this is why the brutality and racism of this institution has continued for nearly three centuries.

Currently, black people are being murdered by police at three times the rate of white people, and almost a thousand people are murdered by police every year. Of those thousand people, up to fifty percent have disabilities. And these numbers may be higher since only 40% of police departments report and record data on their use of deadly force.

Most policing has little to do with real threats to public safety, as the vast majority of arrests are for low-level offenses. Only 5% of all arrests are for serious violent offenses. Yet, police are still twice as likely to use force on black and brown folks during low-level offense stops. Moreover, police are heavily used in low-income or predominately marginalized communities, leading to heavy surveillance and militarized community governance in those communities. Police departments in many cities are the only agency to respond to problems, even when they are not criminal in nature. Yet, police are outfitted with military-grade weapons such as armored personnel carriers (APCs), assault rifles, submachine guns, flashbang grenades, grenade launchers, and sniper rifles. These weapons are used and carried by police in spaces where our communities live, not in the war zones they were created for.

To end fatal police interactions and still keep law and order, the original institution needs to be abolished. After decades of over-policing in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities where these people have disproportionately been the victims of police violence and overrepresented in prisons, this radical notion is possibly the only way to end the murder of unarmed Black, Brown, and Indigenous folk by police.

Congress and lawmakers around the country have tried curtailing police duties, providing better police surveillance, and retraining entire police departments with no real reduction in lethal force. Sparked by the murders of unarmed Black people such as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Alijah McClain, activists do not believe these approaches will result in tangible change in the future. Activists believe it is time for a better approach—advocates, such as Phillip McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris, argue that shifting funding to social services can improve things such as mental health, addiction, and homelessness. They argue this is a better use of state and local revenue. And while conversations about how to rebuild and create a sustainable community policing model are ongoing, these changes can be made now to save lives. The movement has outlined eight fundamental goals to abolish the police and rebuild communities:

• Defund the Police
• Demilitarize Communities
• Remove Police from Schools
• Free People from Jail and Prisons
• Repeal Laws that Criminalize Survival
• Invest in Community Self-Governance
• Provide Safe Housing for Everyone
• Invest in Care, Not Cops

Proponents of defunding the police argue that rather than reequipping the same officers with lethal weapons and allowing them to take up large portions of city and state budgets that those funds be redirected. The additional capital provided by reducing police budgets should go to social service programs such as public housing, early childhood education, and healthcare. These are proven to lower crime rates, increase median household wealth, and break the cycle of poverty that often causes people to commit low-level offenses. If done appropriately, these advocates believe police need could be dramatically reduced, and community governed policing can replace the existing institution.

Sadly, police are responsible for responding to mental health crises, patrolling public schools and universities’ hallways, responding to violent crimes, and patrolling public streets and highways. When the police touch so many facets of community life, have little training in de-escalating, and are predominately trained for deadly situations, it increases police misconduct or the use of lethal force. The measures proposed, such as healthcare, better education, and community care programs, would allow for gradual police reductions and community solutions for the 95 percent of low-grade offenses police respond to. This would also allow those funds to be used for general reinvestment in communities rather than investment in their surveillance.

If the precautions outlined above were implemented, communities would not need to be so heavily policed with weapons of war; instead, they would transition into community policing. Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies that support the systematic use of community partnerships and problem-solving techniques to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime and social disorder.

In closing, activists argue that by investing in care, not cops, we can decrease the chances of deadly police encounters. A large portion of department budgets should be reallocated to programs that deter crime with less lethal results. Activists advocating for defunding police call for "a society without police or prisons, where communities are equipped to provide for their safety and well-being." Not every situation needs to be answered with an officer weaponized by the state, unaware of the community’s history or systematic oppression. Defunding the police is a movement focused on removing the current police force, which embodies the historical and systemic racism it was created from. While these reforms would take time and serious societal effort, these activists, first and foremost, are simply asking us to at least imagine what that could look like.

Akerah Mackey-Watkins is a graduate assistant at New America Chicago and a second-year graduate student at Harris School of Public Policy. Before starting at the University of Chicago, Akerah worked in both local government and campaign research. She has also worked for the Portland Bureau of Transportation and within Senate campaigns to further their individual goals on equity and inclusion. And after a successful career working on equity and inclusion in both the private and public sectors, Akerah is preparing to use her MPP degree to transition her career into program evaluation and program oversight with a specific focus on equity.