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

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

 tothedaily@michigandaily.com

Edited and managed by students at 

the University of Michigan since 1890.

 BRITTANY BOWMAN

Editorial Page Editor

Alanna Berger
Zack Blumberg
Brittany Bowman
Emily Considine
Elizabeth Cook

Jess D’Agostino
Jenny Gurung
Cheryn Hong
Zoe Phillips
Mary Rolfes

Michael Russo
Gabrijela Skoko
Timothy Spurlin

Joel Weiner
Erin White 

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

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

