Theoretically, the police should not exist. Let’s turn to renowned thinker, author, and Stanford University professor Mark Greif to flesh this out a bit further.
Greif’s Essays Against Everything devotes an entire section to exploring the functions and the outcomes of a police force. When we think of police, we think of the law. But Greif reminds us that the law has never been a resource for the police. In fact, the police actually lack law. Greif uses an incredible metaphor to simplify this seemingly paradoxical theory. Think of Law & Order episodes. They are consistently split into halves, where the first portion is dedicated to policing and the second is dedicated to courtroom proceedings. We know what the latter represents, because courtroom proceedings were made for practicing law. But, the former was as much a mystery to our founding fathers as it is now. What is the purpose of our police and did we make space for them in the first place? Greif argues that there’s really none and that our founding fathers didn’t really consider the police during the birth of democracy.
Consider Thomas Hobbes’s social contract. In an ideal world, the social contract dictates that a democratic agreement is self-enforcing, as each person upheld their part of the deal. There is no room for an agency “alongside or outside the citizens and their contract.” And, to drive Greif’s point home, social contract does indeed allow for the rectification of error, but this can only be done through the proper agency–criminal court proceedings. This is the representation of penal law that Greif envisions. So what does this mean for police officers? Essentially, this makes our police force as a sort of people “picker-upper,” collecting the “criminals” that the courts will later prosecute. Thus, the judicial branch is the group that actually represents and is responsible for knowing the law, while the police are a “supplementary force or additional locus of authority and violence, for mediation or interruption.”
Our contemporary definition of the police was merely an afterthought to the founding fathers. They did not conceptualize such an agency back then. Though purpose of police lies in our Constitution. Technically, police fulfill their jobs by adhering to the tenets of the Constitution, existing to create and maintain order. Their duties have evolved, making police responsible for preventing and cleaning up “messes,” targeting anything that is out of the ordinary (think anything from parking violations to arson). But, Greif points out that police can’t take stock of the Constitution if our Constitution doesn’t conceive of them.
Greif cites Egon Bittner when he explains the true purpose of the police. Police “are empowered and required to impose, or… coerce a provisional solution upon emergent problems without having to brook or defer to opposition of any kind, and that further, their competence to intervene extends to every kind of emergency, without any exceptions whatsoever.” Recent events have highlighted the disgusting reality that Greif, Bittner, and a mass of others have correctly described.
What is all the talk behind defunding the police?
Now, more than ever, the conversation about defunding the police has made it the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Washington Post has named “police killing black people” as a public health crisis; “a pandemic, too.” In the midst of the peaceful protests and marches honoring the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many others who were unjustly murdered by the police, all eyes are glued to our law enforcement. We keep hearing phrases like ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards) and Fuck12, but these words have no meaning unless we take action.
How does police violence differ from other forms of violence that don’t have a visible presence? The police add violence to any situation, inserting something that Greif calls “testing violence” in a public way. The violence then becomes a way to solve any kind of social deadlock. Every time police default to violence, they are publicly measuring out what our society will tolerate and let slide,”even if it’s to our shame.” Here’s what society has been tolerating throughout the past few years:
- In 2019, police killed 1,098 people.
- 99% of killings by police between 2013 and 2019 have not resulted in officers being charged with a crime.
- Black people are 3x more likely to be killed by police than white people.
- The U.S. is the world’s leading country in incarceration.
- See infographic for imprisonment statistics.
**Most stats taken from mappingpoliceviolence.org
“What happens if we don’t have a police department? Why don’t all lives matter? Why ACAB?”
I’ve been told that an alternative to defunding the police is to target the hiring process. The list of requirements to become a police officer is by no means extensive nor thorough. Some believe that by adding Implicit Association Tests during interviews and conducting more thorough background checks, police brutality will be solved. Implicit Association Tests are scientific mechanisms that detect the potential for racist behaviors and can be used in interviews (I linked the IAT list of tests in case anyone wants to get acquainted in their free time). In response, I would first say that racism is largely unconscious and systemic; the system was built with it. There is no way to “measure” racism in a number or a word. Further, social desirability bias, or the tendency to overreport more socially desirable qualities while underreporting less desirable attitudes, is a key issue to consider with the accuracy of these tests. While there is merit to using these tests in interviews, it is idealistic to consider it a fix.
I urge you to become familiar with the house on fire metaphor in situations where people ask why all lives don’t matter. To briefly explain, it would be as if the fire department got a call for a house that was burning down and a neighbor asked, “What about my house? Doesn’t it matter?” when it wasn’t also burning down. To echo a common statement we’ve been hearing lately, all lives will not matter until black lives matter.
Lastly, I have been faced with the statement that not all cops are bad. The police have become an American symbol, and they represent violence and cruelty. As a cop, you embody this system that is defined by brutality. As a result, “good cops” are complicit, making them just as much a part of the problem as bad cops. This argument almost mirrors how posting a black square on Instagram and calling it a day doesn’t make you an ally.
What does defunding police look like in practice?
First, I want to point out a logical inconsistency. According to the Nashville budget presentation, the combination of COVID-19 and the recent tornado has created a budget gap of $332 million. In order to combat this, mayor John Cooper has decided to increase property tax by 34% and decrease funding for education by 2%. Yet, the city of Nashville will continue to increase spending for the MNPD by $2.6 million in order to hire 48 more recruits, while many other civilians have been denied their promotions and raises due to the same deficit.
When faced with the question of whether we should defund the police, many people jump to envision a world with no law enforcement and anarchy. This is not what I am suggesting. Instead, the funds we allocate to arming police should be redistributed to community-based solutions. For example, rather than directing the funds toward the arrest and incarceration of a drug offender, those funds could instead be focused toward substance-abuse programming. Greif mentions how officers are constantly making the decision of whether they should “lift the person out of the horizontal conflict and into the vertical mechanism of criminal justice.” Should the officer choose to insert the individual into the criminal justice system, the ensuing process is something that the cop will ultimately be removed from. The officer is not responsible for this process, nor will he have to enter it himself. Defunding the police is a start, but the fact that police aren’t even familiar with the singular system that they are associated with, the prison system, is notable.
I’ll leave you with this thought. Police often are observers who manage conflict. More specifically, they are negotiators, entering conflicts which they did not cause themselves. They then purposefully distract and divert the attention from the relevant parties to themselves. This then allows officers to negotiate under a separate set of criteria from the law (Should they be charged? Must this person be temporarily transported or removed? How do I scare them just enough so they’ll be convinced to never commit such a crime again?). The criteria used by police is vastly separate from criteria used by judges and lawyers, as established. I don’t have a perfect solution to racism or the pandemic of police brutality. However, I do believe that in order to create a more streamlined and effective way to combat crime, we must start by amending the criteria used by officers and reallocating funds toward community alternatives.
Some cities that have already been listening to protesters:
- Albuquerque, NM has created a community safety department that will send trained professionals to non-violent 911 calls, for example calls involving mental health, addiction and homelessness.
- Portland, OR has planned to cut $15 million from their police bureau.
- Chattanooga, TN has updated their police department’s policy to hold that any officer must intervene when they see other officers committing acts of brutality or abusing their authority.
- Minneapolis, MN plans on disbanding its police department in order to switch to a new, community-led system of public safety.
- Cities like Albany, NY, Denver, CO, Salt Lake City, UT, Phoenix, AZ, Seattle, WA and many others across the U.S. have banned the use of police chokeholds and tear gas.
I would love to hear what readers think about this topic. Please feel free to email me at annabelle.r.mirhashemi@vanderbilt.edu with thoughts, questions, suggestions or leave them in the comments!
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