Abolish the Police

Did I stutter?

Back in the day before Wonkette moved to SubStack, my commenting nym on Disqus was “Crip Dyke, Abolish the Police.” SubStack does not allow quite enough characters for that, so there is no longer that constant reminder that I oppose policing as practiced in the USA. It came up again today, however, and will certainly come up more times in the future (probably multiple times just in relation to the actions of the police regarding Nex Benedict’s death and likely homicide).

Every once in a while someone asks me what they hell I could possibly mean by that. Some of the inquiries assume that I’m a fuckwitted troll, which I don’t mind since I know the slogan is inflammatory. Others note that I’ve been reasonable and thoughtful about enough things that I’ve probably been reasonable and thoughtful about this, but they still can’t figure out how “abolish the police” could possibly be a reasonable and thoughtful response to the problems we have with law enforcement in the United States. I used to have another post that I could link that explained what Abolish the Police means to me, but there has been a bad faith attack on FreethoughtBlogs.com, the blog network where I used to put my thoughts before joining SubStack. As a result, I think it’s necessary to spell some things out here.

First, I believe that the USA is overpoliced. While only 45th in police per capita and below the average per capita number of police per country according to a 2006 UN study cited on Wikipedia, the US was 4th in total police officers at the time, with approximately 700,000. That’s a lot of people dedicated to policing, especially in a country with a separate national guard (in many countries there is a military and a police force, but no separate force analogous to our US National Guard that can augment civilian responses in times of emergency). Many of these officers are dedicated to traffic or drug enforcement, the first of which can be largely handled by safety personnel who are not sworn law enforcement officers and don’t carry weapons plus automated enforcement cameras. The second needs to be drastically reduced. Note in particular that many states have legalized marijuana without a corresponding drawdown in LEO employment to represent the hours no longer needed for that job.

Next let’s note that speciality and militarized units are overused, leading to problems in many jurisdictions.

Beyond that, there is a long standing problem with “testilying” that was called out dramatically by the conservative New York Times in an important series of articles.

Let’s add the long standing problems with LEO racism, hostility to the Deaf and people with disabilities (some disabilities more than others), and a tendency to insist on respectful obeisance, treating anything less as a violation of the law rather than simply communication of some other emotion (sometimes even rude and disrespectful communications of hostile emotions, true) that is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Lastly (for now) we should call out that accountability systems do not currently work and that efforts at marginal reforms have failed.

For all of these reasons, taken together, it is impossible to make the argument that the problems with law enforcement can be reduced to the inevitable small percentage of bad actors you’ll find in any large population. The solution, then, cannot be to find and root out a dangerous few. Rather it must be to overturn the institutions as they currently exist, thus eliminating institutional inertia as well as cultural problems with existing groups.

This does not mean that society has no legitimate interest in public safety — far from it! It is an acknowledgement that public safety is not best served by the law enforcement agencies that currently exist. The solution then is that the LEAs that currently exist must no longer exist, and something new must come to replace their positive functions without any cultural memory of other functions that the new agencies might wish to arrogate.

To be sure I am not an expert in law enforcement, so take the outline below as merely an outline of how abolishment could be done, not an assertion that I know how best to accomplish that task, or (worse) that I know that this must be the best way.

That said, imagine that society wishes to start over on the topic of public safety. With a current total of more than 700k officers, it would be possible in most jurisdictions to collaborate with those nearby so that one jurisdiction in three to one in five would be shuttered (depending on expert advice as to how much we can safely draw down personnel in the short term). The surrounding agencies would then expand their responsibilities into the jurisdiction that now has no law enforcement agency of its own. In theory, they could slightly expand by hiring laid off officers, though in my preferred scenario we direct the vast majority of those officers to other professions. Appropriate public support must be given to these professionals who lose their jobs. It is not their fault that their agencies do not best serve their communities.

The jurisdiction that closes its local law enforcement can then spend between 3 and 5 years reimagining public safety from the ground up. Everything that previously existed (policies, procedures, even records not legally required to be kept, such as gang task force records) should be jettisoned. Everything from the personality profile most desired in new hires to priority of different functions to policies on who will carry weapons and of what type should be considered. A more appropriate size for the agency must also be considered from first principles, as well as the training needed. Once a new agency is planned, with force size, training, priorities, personalities, structure, accountability, and policies all developed from scratch with expert input, hiring can begin for a brand new agency with no institutional memory of its prior mode of operation. At the state level and also with agencies that serve large populations (like NYPD) there should be room and budget to hire high-ranked personnel with experience in overseas forces such as Scandinavian LEOs to help set a new safety-and-service first tone.

Once the initial wave of jurisdictions has completed the implementation of their own brand new public safety agencies, another wave can begin, again taking 3-5 years, as necessary, for the task. (And again neighbouring jurisdictions will cover public safety & law enforcement tasks during this period.) This long period not only allows for the magnitude of the work of reimagining public safety, but also allows for the lapse of institutional memory even if some prior officers turn out to have the personality and skill set best suited for personnel at the new institution. Nonetheless, as many jurisdictions complete the task of recreating public safety agencies from scratch, subsequent jurisdictions can benefit from the previous work. This means that while the possibility is always open to take 5 years for the task, on average refounding public safety in an area should take less time each cycle.

Done in this way, no location is ever without law enforcement or public safety, and yet in less than a generation the country can literally abolish every existing LEA.

Yes, it’s much less dramatic and insane than imagining that “abolish the police” means every LEO gets fired on the same day and no laws are ever enforced again. Yes, it’s inevitable that people will deride me as stupid for using the attention-getting slogan “Abolish the police.” Even so, when you understand the intent, “abolish the police,” is accurate. And given that I’m not running for office, I don’t particularly care if people think that I’m a radical. In fact, even with this vision of a progressive, slow wave of closures, I still am.