now are nothing new. From many past
demonstrations — including the 2014
Ferguson protests in Missouri that ush-
ered in the Black Lives Matter move-
ment to the 1992 Los Angeles riots to
the 1965 Watts riots — we are reminded
that the stringent acts of racial profil-
ing, oppression and violence enacted by
police officers on the Black community
is a centuries-old problem. As discussed
in a recent editorial, modern policing
agencies in the U.S. originated from slave
patrols and night watches, which were
primarily constituted of white men using
vigilante tactics to further control and
oppress Black individuals. These groups
worked for wealthy white slave owners
to punish, capture and return enslaved
people who escaped or were believed
to have violated plantation rules. These
first police forces were overwhelmingly
focused on responding to, and punishing,
what they considered disorderly, non-
white behavior rather than actual crime.
As American slavery gratingly matured
into a depraved regime that denied Black
people humanity while still criminalizing
their actions, they were considered capa-
ble of engaging in crime but “incapable of
performing civil acts.” Similarly, while the
13th Amendment is credited with end-
ing the concept of slavery we are taught
in grade school, it stopped short of end-
ing slavery for those convicted of crimes.
The laws that once governed slaves were
replaced with Black Codes governing free
Black individuals, soon making the new
criminal justice system of America central
to strategic racial control.
These methods of oppression inten-
sified whenever Black people asserted
their autonomy or achieved any degree
of success. For example, during Recon-
struction, white policymakers and
other white people in positions of power
invented offenses used to target Black
individuals. These included breaking
strict curfews only for Black people, loi-
tering, vagrancy, not carrying proof of
employment from a former slave owner,
etc. Those caught for such actions were
quickly apprehended and American
slavery persisted in the form of convict
leasing, where Southern states could
lease their prisoners to large plantations,
mines and railways — all for profit.
Later, in the second half of the 20th
century, a new political fear would emerge
during protests over harsh inequalities
and civil rights. Black and brown people
are still disproportionately targeted by
these policies that were not as explicitly
racialized as the Black Codes, although
their implementation has been charac-
teristically similar. Former President
Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs,” “broken
windows” policing, mandatory minimum
sentences, three-strike laws, children
tried as adults, etc., were all implemented.
The rhetoric of “law and order” and sub-
sequent focus on suppressing the Civil
Rights Movement was adopted as a cen-
terpiece for Nixon’s platform, which white
authorities heavily utilized to criminalize
Black individuals fighting for equal rights.
As “cracking down on crime” became a
codified tune, no distinction was drawn
between civil rights activists, traditional
petty crimes and rebellions. Within the
past weeks, we’ve seen President Donald
Trump invoke the same racist rhetoric as
he declared himself the “president of law
and order” and also quoted a racist 1960s
Miami police chief by tweeting, “when
the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Unfortunately, many prominent poli-
ticians, including Joe Biden, former vice
president and presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee have not voiced
their support for what Black communities
across the country are calling for and are
instead “opposed to cutting police fund-
ing and believed more spending was nec-
essary to help improve law enforcement
and community policing.” Many activists
advocating against reforms at this time
are calling for politicians to “read the
room” and to listen to the people. Howev-
er, many fear that instead of taking politi-
cal risks to implement the much needed
systematic changes in this country, politi-
cians are more worried about alienating
moderate white voters.
For example, in response to an uproar
of protests against systemic racism and
police brutality in May 2015, former
President Barack Obama and a selected
team crafted “The Final Report of the
President’s Task Force on 21st Century
Policing.” This report consisted of vari-
ous reform approaches, many similar to
those of the #8cantwait campaign cir-
culating recently. These reforms have
made no permanent or effective progress
and local activist groups are continu-
ing to reject broader pushes for more
reform-based training. Johnetta Elzie, a
civil rights activist and organizer, stated,
“People in power — politicians and poli-
cymakers — are still talking about reform.
We’re beyond that. We’re over that. If they
wanted reform, they would have done it
six years ago when we actually had the
chance to. But that’s not what happened.”
Instead, it is time to reimagine the inef-
fective and systemically racist notions of
policing agencies and their superficial pro-
cedural reforms by defunding the police
and investing in specific, community-
focused safety and prevention programs.
Productive steps forward could include the
installation of multiple community depart-
ments and facilities that interactively work
with community residents, to an equitable
degree. This is suggested in the #8toaboli-
tion initiative, which was initially made by
activist group Critical Resistance and was
then reproduced by an ad team that created
a website providing a variety of shareable
graphics for social media.
In Minneapolis specifically, a report
was published in 2018 that outlined all
the reforms the police department has
embraced, including body cameras and
various training sessions that cover
mindfulness, implicit bias and crisis inter-
vention. The Minneapolis Police Depart-
ment also forfeited money to training
programs and better equipment, but
there was little to no decline in Black
fatalities caused by law enforcement.
C
onversations
of
defund-
ing and dismantling police
departments have popped up
all over the country, and many are con-
cerned about what exactly this means.
Past attempts at reform, even in
Minneapolis, have been evidently inef-
fective and do not satisfy community
demands. Instead of trying to change
things from within the system — what
reform sought to do — it is more essen-
tial to defund and dismantle the polic-
ing system that has disproportionately
targeted and harassed Black communi-
ties for centuries. By divesting and fun-
neling financial resources away from
policing agencies, we can instead build
and invest in municipal programs that
work to fix the underlying challenges
in communities — such as poverty, poor
education, inadequate housing, food
insecurity, drug rehabilitation, mental
health problems, etc.
There is reasonable confusion over
the true difference between police
reform and defunding the police, creat-
ing subsequent hesitance over the latter.
When evaluating your own confusion,
it’s essential to listen to the voices that
have been most impacted by the con-
tinuous overabundance of policing and
surveillance. Black Lives Matter co-
founder Alicia Garza stated, “When we
talk about defunding the police, what
we’re saying is invest in the resources
that our communities need. So much
of policing right now is generated and
directed towards quality-of-life issues,
homelessness, drug addiction, domes-
tic violence. … But what we do need
is increased funding for housing, we
need increased funding for education,
we need increased funding for quality
of life of communities who are over-
policed and over-surveilled.”
When trying to disrupt a system that
has been maintained through different
mediums since slavery, we must have a
mutual understanding of what we are
hoping to disrupt and of what our ulti-
mate end goal should look like. Many
activists have advocated for reforming
the police departments; others, for a
defunding model that would strive to
divest large funds from national police
departments and equitably invest
that money into community services.
However, we have seen, with a prime
example being the Minneapolis Police
Department, that reforms are not suc-
cessful. TIME reports that “the same
reforms were recommended time and
again over the past two decades in the
MPD to increase accountability, curb
use-of-force violations and build up
community trust — with seemingly
little implementation.” A recent move-
ment called #8cantwait advocates for
banning unnecessary measures of vio-
lence, for requiring police officers to
exhaust all alternatives before shooting
and intervening and comprehensive
reporting, among other things. Orga-
nizers claim this initiative could reduce
police use of force by 72 percent. How-
ever, many activists are already criticiz-
ing this plan, calling it “copaganda” and
saying it will improve policing’s war on
the Black community, as it does not call
for the removal of funds from police
departments and does not address the
entire issue of systemic racism and bru-
tality within the institution.
Decreasing police budgets is the
first step in addressing the dispropor-
tionate amount of funding that police
departments receive from the federal
government. Calls for defunding do
not mean the removal of efforts for
public safety, but rather a demand to
stop spending millions of dollars on
military-style equipment for poorly
trained police officers.
The protests against police brutality
and the greater system that Americans
are witnessing and participating in right
4
Thursday, June 18, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
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EMMA STEIN
Editor in Chief
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
FROM THE DAILY
Divest to invest — the reality of dismantling the police
O
n Sunday, June 7, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council
acknowledged that the current system of policing is not working and that
they intend to “defund and dismantle” the city police department. Council
President Lisa Bender stated, “(We need) to listen, especially to our Black leaders,
to our communities of color, for whom policing is not working and to really let the
solutions lie in our community.” While still in the process of planning exactly what
these new, transformative and community-based initiatives may look like, the goal
is to implement a model of public safety that actually keeps each community safe.
Read more at MichiganDaily.com