Defund the Police
- Thread starter Rembrandt Brown
- Start date
I love it..
finally ON THE OFFENSE...
as long as the people understand.. its going to be a
long way before we can rest at halftime...
the waning powers that be.. are not going out like
real true Leaders, a real leader knows when to step up
and when to step down..
these fake ass, hand me down faggots, are going to go out kickin and screaming....
that must be understood first and foremost.. stay vigilante and understand..
they have a lot of stooges in the streets, those stooges have to be plucked like infected feathers...
In their boldest statement since George Floyd’s killing, nine Minneapolis City Council members told a crowd Sunday that they will “begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department.”
“We recognize that we don’t have all the answers about what a police-free future looks like, but our community does,” they said, reading off a prepared statement. “We’re committed to engaging with every willing community member in the City of Minneapolis over the next year to identify what safety looks like for you.”
Their words — delivered one day after Mayor Jacob Frey told a crowd of protesters he does not support the full abolishment of the MPD — set off what is likely to be a long, complicated debate about the future of the state’s largest police force.
With the world watching, and the city’s leaders up for re-election next year, the stakes are particularly high. While Minneapolis has debated the issue in the past, Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police has added a sense of urgency, and the calls for police departments to be disbanded have echoed in other cities around the country.
Council members have noted repeatedly since Floyd’s death that Minneapolis has the chance to redefine policing. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, nine of them walked onto a stage at Powderhorn Park to support members of advocacy group Black Visions, who were calling for the end of the MPD. On stage were Council President Lisa Bender, Vice President Andrea Jenkins and Council Members Alondra Cano, Phillippe Cunningham, Jeremiah Ellison, Steve Fletcher, Cam Gordon, Andrew Johnson and Jeremy Schroeder.
“Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis Police Department cannot be reformed and will never be accountable for its actions,” they said. “We are here today to begin the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new, transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis.”
While some council members have provided hints of what the changes might mean — sending mental health professionals or social workers to respond to certain emergencies, for example — the group did not present a single, unified vision for how they would replace policing in Minneapolis.
Organizers with Black Visions said they too don’t have all the answers about what would replace the police department, but they said police can’t be reformed through initiatives like training and body cameras. This is the beginning of the process of putting together a “police-free future,” they vowed, by investing in more community initiatives like mental health and having community members respond to public safety issues. ...
Most of Minneapolis City Council pledges to 'begin the process of ending' police department
"Decades of police reform efforts have proved that the Minneapolis police department cannot be reformed, and will never be accountable for its actions," the council members said.
www.startribune.com
Defunding the Minneapolis Police Department would likely require public vote to change charter
...
However, it likely won't be that easy for the council to make a drastic change.
According to the city charter, the council is responsible for the funding of the department -- and is required to maintain a minimum force determined by the city's population -- about 723 officers based on recent population estimates.
The mayor's office is given "complete power" over the department under the charter as well. Currently, the city's budget allows for about 888 sworn officers.
In order to change, the charter, an amendment would require a public vote or full approval of the entire city council along with the mayor.
"We might have to take it to the people to have a vote on it, but I think there are a lot of ways in which the council can move forward with the plan even if the mayor isn’t on board," said Councilmember Jeremiah Ellison, who supports the defunding effort.
Exactly how a police-less Minneapolis would work is not clear. The council said they are still working on a plan. Advocates say they'd like to see the department's funds be used to support community policing efforts, social work, and drug treatment policies.
Defunding the Minneapolis Police Department would likely require public vote to change charter
Sunday, nine Minneapolis City Councilmembers joined a call for the city to defund and dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.
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When protesters cry ‘defund the police,’ what does it mean?
Protesters are pushing to “defund the police” over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans killed by law enforcement. Their chant has become rallying cry — and a stick for President Donald Trump to use on Democrats as he portrays them as soft on crime.
But what does “defund the police” mean? It’s not necessarily about gutting police department budgets.
Supporters say it isn’t about eliminating police departments or stripping agencies of all of their money. They say it is time for the country to address systemic problems in policing in America and spend more on what communities across the U.S. need, like housing and education.
State and local governments spent $115 billion on policing in 2017, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute.
“Why can’t we look at how it is that we reorganize our priorities, so people don’t have to be in the streets during a national pandemic?” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza asked during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Activists acknowledge this is a gradual process.
The group MPD150, which says it is “working towards a police-free Minneapolis,” argues that such action would be more about “strategically reallocating resources, funding, and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety, support, and prevention.”
“The people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises,” the group wrote on its website.
Sen. Cory Booker said he understands the sentiment behind the slogan, but it’s not a slogan he will use.
The New Jersey Democrat told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he shares a feeling with many protesters that Americans are “over-policed” and that “we are investing in police, which is not solving problems, but making them worse when we should be, in a more compassionate country, in a more loving country.”
Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said part of the movement is really about how money is spent.
“Now, I don’t believe that you should disband police departments,” she said in an interview with CNN. “But I do think that, in cities, in states, we need to look at how we are spending the resources and invest more in our communities.
“Maybe this is an opportunity to re-envision public safety,” she said.
President Donald Trump and his campaign view the emergence of the “Defund the Police” slogan as a spark of opportunity during what has been a trying political moment. Trump’s response to the protests has sparked widespread condemnation. But now his supporters say the new mantra may make voters, who may be otherwise sympathetic to the protesters, recoil from a “radical” idea.
Trump seized on the slogan last week as he spoke at an event in Maine.
“They’re saying defund the police,” he said. “Defund. Think of it. When I saw it, I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘We don’t want to have any police,’ they say. You don’t want police?”
Trump’s 2016 campaign was built on a promise of ensuring law and order — often in contrast to protests against his rhetoric that followed him across the country. As he seeks reelection, Trump is preparing to deploy the same argument again — and seems to believe the “defund the police” call has made the campaign applause line all the more real for his supporters.
Yes, or at least to reduce their budgets in some major cities.
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the city would move funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services, while keeping the city safe, but he didn’t give details.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti vowed to cut as much as $150 million that was part of a planned increase in the police department’s budget.
A Minneapolis city councilmember said in a tweet on Thursday that the city would “dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response.”
“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” Jeremiah Ellison wrote. “And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together.” He did not explain what would replace the police department.
A majority of the members of the Minneapolis City Council said Sunday they support disbanding the city’s police department. Nine of the council’s 12 members appeared with activists at a rally in a city park Sunday afternoon and vowed to end policing as the city currently knows it.
“It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” Lisa Bender, the council president, said. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.”
Disbanding an entire department has happened before. In 2012, with crime rampant in Camden, New Jersey, the city disbanded its police department and replaced it with a new force that covered Camden County. Compton, California, took the same step in 2000, shifting its policing to Los Angeles County.
Generally, police and union officials have long resisted cuts to police budgets, arguing that it would make cities less safe.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union for the city’s rank-and-file officers, said budget cuts would be the “quickest way to make our neighborhoods more dangerous.”
“Cutting the LAPD budget means longer responses to 911 emergency calls, officers calling for back-up won’t get it, and rape, murder and assault investigations won’t occur or will take forever to initiate, let alone complete,” the union’s board said in a statement last week.
“At this time, with violent crime increasing, a global pandemic and nearly a week’s worth of violence, arson, and looting, ‘defunding’ the LAPD is the most irresponsible thing anyone can propose.”
apnews.com
Protesters are pushing to “defund the police” over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans killed by law enforcement. Their chant has become rallying cry — and a stick for President Donald Trump to use on Democrats as he portrays them as soft on crime.
But what does “defund the police” mean? It’s not necessarily about gutting police department budgets.
WHAT IS THE ‘DEFUND THE POLICE’ MOVEMENT?
Supporters say it isn’t about eliminating police departments or stripping agencies of all of their money. They say it is time for the country to address systemic problems in policing in America and spend more on what communities across the U.S. need, like housing and education.
State and local governments spent $115 billion on policing in 2017, according to data compiled by the Urban Institute.
“Why can’t we look at how it is that we reorganize our priorities, so people don’t have to be in the streets during a national pandemic?” Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza asked during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Activists acknowledge this is a gradual process.
The group MPD150, which says it is “working towards a police-free Minneapolis,” argues that such action would be more about “strategically reallocating resources, funding, and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety, support, and prevention.”
“The people who respond to crises in our community should be the people who are best-equipped to deal with those crises,” the group wrote on its website.
WHAT ARE LAWMAKERS SAYING?
Sen. Cory Booker said he understands the sentiment behind the slogan, but it’s not a slogan he will use.
The New Jersey Democrat told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he shares a feeling with many protesters that Americans are “over-policed” and that “we are investing in police, which is not solving problems, but making them worse when we should be, in a more compassionate country, in a more loving country.”
Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said part of the movement is really about how money is spent.
“Now, I don’t believe that you should disband police departments,” she said in an interview with CNN. “But I do think that, in cities, in states, we need to look at how we are spending the resources and invest more in our communities.
“Maybe this is an opportunity to re-envision public safety,” she said.
President Donald Trump and his campaign view the emergence of the “Defund the Police” slogan as a spark of opportunity during what has been a trying political moment. Trump’s response to the protests has sparked widespread condemnation. But now his supporters say the new mantra may make voters, who may be otherwise sympathetic to the protesters, recoil from a “radical” idea.
Trump seized on the slogan last week as he spoke at an event in Maine.
“They’re saying defund the police,” he said. “Defund. Think of it. When I saw it, I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘We don’t want to have any police,’ they say. You don’t want police?”
Trump’s 2016 campaign was built on a promise of ensuring law and order — often in contrast to protests against his rhetoric that followed him across the country. As he seeks reelection, Trump is preparing to deploy the same argument again — and seems to believe the “defund the police” call has made the campaign applause line all the more real for his supporters.
IS THERE ANY PUSH TO ACTUALLY DEFUND POLICE DEPARTMENTS?
Yes, or at least to reduce their budgets in some major cities.
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the city would move funding from the NYPD to youth initiatives and social services, while keeping the city safe, but he didn’t give details.
In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti vowed to cut as much as $150 million that was part of a planned increase in the police department’s budget.
A Minneapolis city councilmember said in a tweet on Thursday that the city would “dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response.”
“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” Jeremiah Ellison wrote. “And when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together.” He did not explain what would replace the police department.
A majority of the members of the Minneapolis City Council said Sunday they support disbanding the city’s police department. Nine of the council’s 12 members appeared with activists at a rally in a city park Sunday afternoon and vowed to end policing as the city currently knows it.
“It is clear that our system of policing is not keeping our communities safe,” Lisa Bender, the council president, said. “Our efforts at incremental reform have failed, period.”
Disbanding an entire department has happened before. In 2012, with crime rampant in Camden, New Jersey, the city disbanded its police department and replaced it with a new force that covered Camden County. Compton, California, took the same step in 2000, shifting its policing to Los Angeles County.
HOW HAVE POLICE OFFICIALS AND UNIONS RESPONDED?
Generally, police and union officials have long resisted cuts to police budgets, arguing that it would make cities less safe.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union for the city’s rank-and-file officers, said budget cuts would be the “quickest way to make our neighborhoods more dangerous.”
“Cutting the LAPD budget means longer responses to 911 emergency calls, officers calling for back-up won’t get it, and rape, murder and assault investigations won’t occur or will take forever to initiate, let alone complete,” the union’s board said in a statement last week.
“At this time, with violent crime increasing, a global pandemic and nearly a week’s worth of violence, arson, and looting, ‘defunding’ the LAPD is the most irresponsible thing anyone can propose.”
When protesters cry 'defund the police,' what does it mean?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Protesters are pushing to “defund the police" over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans killed by law enforcement.
apnews.com
2014-2015:
Discrimination in Ferguson: full extent of police bias laid bare in damning report
Wed 4 Mar 2015
The full extent of the racial persecution of black residents in Ferguson, Missouri, by the city’s overwhelmingly white law enforcement authorities was disclosed on Wednesday in a damning report by the US Department of Justice.
Ferguson’s police department and court system “reflect and exacerbate existing racial bias”, the 105-page study found, adding that “discriminatory intent” among city officials – several of whom were found to have sent racist emails – was partly to blame.
Unveiling the report at a press conference in Washington, the US attorney general, Eric Holder, blamed Ferguson police for creating a “toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment” that had been set off “like a powder keg” by a white officer shooting dead an unarmed black 18-year-old.
“It is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action,” said Holder. “Let me be clear: the United States Department of Justice reserves all its rights and abilities to force compliance and implement basic change. Nothing is off the table.”
The investigators concluded: “Over time, Ferguson’s police and municipal court practices have sown deep mistrust between parts of the community and the police department, undermining law enforcement legitimacy among African Americans in particular”. ...
Yet the Justice Department study stopped short of recommending that Ferguson’s police force be disbanded and absorbed by St Louis County, as some campaigners had predicted. Stating that the city “has the capacity to reform its approach to law enforcement”, it suggested keeping a small force. At his Wednesday night press conference, Knowles announced no major reforms or personnel changes.
www.theguardian.com
FEDS: FERGUSON PREYS VICIOUSLY ON BLACK RESIDENTS
March 4 2015
...
For those familiar with law enforcement in St. Louis County, the report reflected a confirmation of longstanding problems. “This report tells us something we already know,” said Montague Simmons, chair of the St. Louis nonprofit Organization for Black Struggle. “The question we should be asking is what do we do with it? Do we dismantle the racist police state, and disband the Ferguson the Police Department? Or do we learn nothing and keep on with the same thing.”
Holder’s DOJ stopped short of calling for the wholesale disbanding of Ferguson’s police department, though he did blame the department for fostering a “toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment.” In the report, however, his office laid out 26 recommendations for Ferguson’s police department and municipal court system. Failure to comply with a “consent decree” could result in the city facing a lawsuit from the federal government.
“It is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action,” Holder said Wednesday, adding that, “the United States Department of Justice reserves all its rights and abilities to force compliance and implement basic change.”
The report found that in nearly nine out of 10 uses of force by the Ferguson police department, the person on the receiving end was black. In one particularly brutal scene described in the report, the police tasered a mentally disabled man who had tried to commit suicide in his cell. It occurred in July 2011 when, “a correctional officer used a [taser] to stun an African-American male inmate three times after he tried to hang himself with material torn from a medical dressing and banged his head on the cell wall.”
Another incident in the report illustrated how Ferguson police frequently violated the First Amendment rights of Ferguson’s black residents. “In July 2012,” the report said, “a police officer arrested a business owner on charges of Interfering in Police Business and Misuse of 911 because she objected to the officer’s detention of her employee. According to FPD records, the owner ‘became verbally involved,’ came out of her shop three times … The officer characterized her protestations as interference and arrested her inside her shop. The arrest violated the First Amendment.”
Such arrests were routine; the report detailed numerous cases of police arresting residents for constitutionally protected activities such as disrespectful language toward police and the recording of citizens’ encounters with police.
The Department of Justice accused Ferguson Police of being too quick to “escalate encounters with subjects they perceive to be disobeying their orders or resisting arrest. They have come to rely on [Electronic Control Weapons], specifically Tasers, where less force — or no force at all — would do.”
The department’s use of force also included the discriminatory use of police canines, even on children: “FPD engages in a pattern of deploying canines to bite individuals when the articulated facts do not justify this significant use of force. The department’s own records demonstrate that, as with other types of force, canine officers use dogs out of proportion to the threat posed by the people they encounter, leaving serious puncture wounds to nonviolent offenders, some of them children.” The report documented 14 bites by police dogs in which racial information was available — every person was black.
www.theguardian.com
Discrimination in Ferguson: full extent of police bias laid bare in damning report
Wed 4 Mar 2015
The full extent of the racial persecution of black residents in Ferguson, Missouri, by the city’s overwhelmingly white law enforcement authorities was disclosed on Wednesday in a damning report by the US Department of Justice.
Ferguson’s police department and court system “reflect and exacerbate existing racial bias”, the 105-page study found, adding that “discriminatory intent” among city officials – several of whom were found to have sent racist emails – was partly to blame.
Unveiling the report at a press conference in Washington, the US attorney general, Eric Holder, blamed Ferguson police for creating a “toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment” that had been set off “like a powder keg” by a white officer shooting dead an unarmed black 18-year-old.
“It is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action,” said Holder. “Let me be clear: the United States Department of Justice reserves all its rights and abilities to force compliance and implement basic change. Nothing is off the table.”
The investigators concluded: “Over time, Ferguson’s police and municipal court practices have sown deep mistrust between parts of the community and the police department, undermining law enforcement legitimacy among African Americans in particular”. ...
Yet the Justice Department study stopped short of recommending that Ferguson’s police force be disbanded and absorbed by St Louis County, as some campaigners had predicted. Stating that the city “has the capacity to reform its approach to law enforcement”, it suggested keeping a small force. At his Wednesday night press conference, Knowles announced no major reforms or personnel changes.
Discrimination in Ferguson: full extent of police bias laid bare in damning report
Police department and court system ‘reflect and exacerbate existing racial bias’ as investigators outline 26 recommendations to reform city’s policing
FEDS: FERGUSON PREYS VICIOUSLY ON BLACK RESIDENTS
March 4 2015
...
For those familiar with law enforcement in St. Louis County, the report reflected a confirmation of longstanding problems. “This report tells us something we already know,” said Montague Simmons, chair of the St. Louis nonprofit Organization for Black Struggle. “The question we should be asking is what do we do with it? Do we dismantle the racist police state, and disband the Ferguson the Police Department? Or do we learn nothing and keep on with the same thing.”
Holder’s DOJ stopped short of calling for the wholesale disbanding of Ferguson’s police department, though he did blame the department for fostering a “toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment.” In the report, however, his office laid out 26 recommendations for Ferguson’s police department and municipal court system. Failure to comply with a “consent decree” could result in the city facing a lawsuit from the federal government.
“It is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action,” Holder said Wednesday, adding that, “the United States Department of Justice reserves all its rights and abilities to force compliance and implement basic change.”
The report found that in nearly nine out of 10 uses of force by the Ferguson police department, the person on the receiving end was black. In one particularly brutal scene described in the report, the police tasered a mentally disabled man who had tried to commit suicide in his cell. It occurred in July 2011 when, “a correctional officer used a [taser] to stun an African-American male inmate three times after he tried to hang himself with material torn from a medical dressing and banged his head on the cell wall.”
Another incident in the report illustrated how Ferguson police frequently violated the First Amendment rights of Ferguson’s black residents. “In July 2012,” the report said, “a police officer arrested a business owner on charges of Interfering in Police Business and Misuse of 911 because she objected to the officer’s detention of her employee. According to FPD records, the owner ‘became verbally involved,’ came out of her shop three times … The officer characterized her protestations as interference and arrested her inside her shop. The arrest violated the First Amendment.”
Such arrests were routine; the report detailed numerous cases of police arresting residents for constitutionally protected activities such as disrespectful language toward police and the recording of citizens’ encounters with police.
The Department of Justice accused Ferguson Police of being too quick to “escalate encounters with subjects they perceive to be disobeying their orders or resisting arrest. They have come to rely on [Electronic Control Weapons], specifically Tasers, where less force — or no force at all — would do.”
The department’s use of force also included the discriminatory use of police canines, even on children: “FPD engages in a pattern of deploying canines to bite individuals when the articulated facts do not justify this significant use of force. The department’s own records demonstrate that, as with other types of force, canine officers use dogs out of proportion to the threat posed by the people they encounter, leaving serious puncture wounds to nonviolent offenders, some of them children.” The report documented 14 bites by police dogs in which racial information was available — every person was black.
Discrimination in Ferguson: full extent of police bias laid bare in damning report
Police department and court system ‘reflect and exacerbate existing racial bias’ as investigators outline 26 recommendations to reform city’s policing
Lessons for U.S. police from an unexpected place – Northern Ireland
March 20, 2015
In June 2001, as Northern Ireland sought to heal decades of painful and violent divisions, government officials dissolved the local police force, known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The constabulary was overwhelmingly Protestant in a province almost evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants. It policed the Catholic community, which was then closely associated with the Irish Republican Army’s ferociously violent campaign against British rule in the north.
The day the Ulster constabulary passed into history, it was replaced by a new agency called the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Its new commander, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, spoke of the opportunity to create “a culture where equality for all is offered and where respect for cultural diversity and for individual dignity is the order of the day.”
The new force still included former Royal Ulster Constabulary constables, but heavy recruitment of Catholics began immediately. With new training and a makeover that included changes in everything from attitude to uniforms, Flanagan created a new department that was far more representative of the general local population. The force is now roughly 30 percent Catholic and has won the respect of many of the old regime’s harshest critics.
If this kind of turnaround can happen in Northern Ireland, it can happen in Ferguson, Missouri.
The Justice Department’s highly critical report on Ferguson’s police force has led to calls for disbanding the city’s department or direct federal oversight of it in the form of a consent decree.
There is no shortage of precedent for disbanding the department. Local police departments in the United States have been dissolved for one reason or another since the middle of the 19th century. The successful transition in Northern Ireland, however, offers the most hope for progress. As bad as police-community relations are in Ferguson, they were far worse in war-torn Northern Ireland a generation ago.
The Justice Department report found evidence of institutional racism in Ferguson’s overwhelmingly white police department. African-Americans, who make up nearly 70 percent of the city’s population, were far more likely than whites to be stopped when driving or ticketed for minor offenses. The report also criticized the department for using unreasonable force, with African-Americans victimized in disproportionate numbers.
Just as troubling, the report found that Ferguson’s police force and court system viewed the mostly African-Americans community as a source of revenue. The more summons police handed out, the more the city was able to collect in fines. This picture of racism, brutality and corruption has made it all but inevitable that the federal government will intervene in Ferguson, perhaps disbanding the current department and creating a new one, following the Northern Ireland model.
Ferguson would thus become the latest American city to resolve its policing problems by starting over from scratch.
In the decade before the Civil War, state officials in New York concluded that New York City’s police force was irredeemable. The city’s mayor, Fernando Wood, exerted tremendous control over the department’s hiring practices, leading to charges of patronage and cronyism. It didn’t help that Wood seemed to favor Irish immigrants at a time of rampant nativism.
The state legislature disbanded the city’s Municipal Police in 1857 and replaced it with a new agency, the Metropolitan police force, which was accountable to the governor, not the mayor. But members of the Municipal force refused to disband, and they still had Wood’s support. Both forces patrolled the city’s streets until the state ordered its police force, the Metropolitans, to arrest the mayor.
The result was a civil disturbance without precedent in U.S. history, a police-on-police riot on the steps of City Hall, as the Metropolitans attempted to take the mayor into custody. The Municipals rallied to prevent the arrest, leading to a half-hour of skull cracking that left 50 officers injured.
The violence ended only when National Guard troops arrived. They allowed the Metropolitans to proceed with their arrest warrant for the mayor. The Municipals were dissolved several weeks later.
Other U.S. police departments have been disbanded for reasons ranging from corruption to racism to labor-management strife.
A police strike in Boston in 1919, for example, led to the virtual dismantling of the city police force. With the approval of Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, the city’s police commissioner fired 1,100 striking cops and replaced them with jobless veterans of World War One.
Big-city police departments from Chicago to New York have endured scandals involving corruption, racism and brutality. But reform, not dissolution, has been the preferred method of change.
That was not true in Jennings, Missouri, several years ago, when city officials decided that institutional racism was so bad that they had no choice but to start over. Among the officers fired from that disbanded force was Darren Wilson, who found a new job in Ferguson. He was the officer who fired the shots that killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, last summer.
Other police forces have also been disbanded. Camden, New Jersey, was one of the most crime-ridden U.S. cities as recently as 2012, with a sky-high murder rate. Gang members and drug dealers operated openly. The city’s residents knew that the simple act of venturing outside was a calculated risk. Its police department was plagued by corruption, with several officers charged with fabricating evidence in drug cases.
The city just gave up. In 2012, it announced that the department would be disbanded and its 250 officers fired. A new countywide police department took over in 2013. The result has been a 22 percent drop in violent crime, though Camden remains a dangerous place.
Disbanding an entire police department is a drastic measure, however. Only a small-sized city like Camden (population, 77,000) or Ferguson (population 21,000) can even consider it.
Another remedy could come in the form of federal oversight of reforms. The Los Angeles Police Department entered into a consent decree with the Justice Department in 2001 after many of its officers were implicated in evidence tampering and brutality charges. The department finally emerged from federal supervision in May 2013 after Washington officials were satisfied that the Los Angeles police had implemented safeguards against corruption and police abuse of power.
As New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, who was named police chief in Los Angeles in 2002 and served until 2009, and others have stressed, cops cannot do their jobs properly without the cooperation and the support of the communities they police.
Bratton has frequently cited a principle established by Sir Robert Peel, the 19th-century English statesman who established London’s Metropolitan Police Service. Peel, Bratton has noted, insisted that the “ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.”
Nobody would ever suggest that police officers put popularity ahead of duty. The business of enforcing the law can be, and perhaps ought to be, unpopular at times.
But when the bond between a community and its police force is broken, history shows that authorities often have no choice but to start from scratch. It requires more than a name change or a shakeup in command structure.
In Northern Ireland, officials had to overcome decades of intense suspicion between the province’s Catholics and the police to create an effective and admired police force. That suspicion would have remained intact, with grievous consequences for peace-makers, if only the name of the agency changed.
Restoring public support for the police in Ferguson will likely require similar drastic action. Officials there ought to study the principles of Peel and Flanagan. For they can achieve the public approval Peel spoke of only if, as Flanagan pointed out, they seek to ensure the dignity and respect of the community they serve.
blogs.reuters.com
March 20, 2015
In June 2001, as Northern Ireland sought to heal decades of painful and violent divisions, government officials dissolved the local police force, known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The constabulary was overwhelmingly Protestant in a province almost evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants. It policed the Catholic community, which was then closely associated with the Irish Republican Army’s ferociously violent campaign against British rule in the north.
The day the Ulster constabulary passed into history, it was replaced by a new agency called the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Its new commander, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, spoke of the opportunity to create “a culture where equality for all is offered and where respect for cultural diversity and for individual dignity is the order of the day.”
The new force still included former Royal Ulster Constabulary constables, but heavy recruitment of Catholics began immediately. With new training and a makeover that included changes in everything from attitude to uniforms, Flanagan created a new department that was far more representative of the general local population. The force is now roughly 30 percent Catholic and has won the respect of many of the old regime’s harshest critics.
If this kind of turnaround can happen in Northern Ireland, it can happen in Ferguson, Missouri.
The Justice Department’s highly critical report on Ferguson’s police force has led to calls for disbanding the city’s department or direct federal oversight of it in the form of a consent decree.
There is no shortage of precedent for disbanding the department. Local police departments in the United States have been dissolved for one reason or another since the middle of the 19th century. The successful transition in Northern Ireland, however, offers the most hope for progress. As bad as police-community relations are in Ferguson, they were far worse in war-torn Northern Ireland a generation ago.
The Justice Department report found evidence of institutional racism in Ferguson’s overwhelmingly white police department. African-Americans, who make up nearly 70 percent of the city’s population, were far more likely than whites to be stopped when driving or ticketed for minor offenses. The report also criticized the department for using unreasonable force, with African-Americans victimized in disproportionate numbers.
Just as troubling, the report found that Ferguson’s police force and court system viewed the mostly African-Americans community as a source of revenue. The more summons police handed out, the more the city was able to collect in fines. This picture of racism, brutality and corruption has made it all but inevitable that the federal government will intervene in Ferguson, perhaps disbanding the current department and creating a new one, following the Northern Ireland model.
Ferguson would thus become the latest American city to resolve its policing problems by starting over from scratch.
In the decade before the Civil War, state officials in New York concluded that New York City’s police force was irredeemable. The city’s mayor, Fernando Wood, exerted tremendous control over the department’s hiring practices, leading to charges of patronage and cronyism. It didn’t help that Wood seemed to favor Irish immigrants at a time of rampant nativism.
The state legislature disbanded the city’s Municipal Police in 1857 and replaced it with a new agency, the Metropolitan police force, which was accountable to the governor, not the mayor. But members of the Municipal force refused to disband, and they still had Wood’s support. Both forces patrolled the city’s streets until the state ordered its police force, the Metropolitans, to arrest the mayor.
The result was a civil disturbance without precedent in U.S. history, a police-on-police riot on the steps of City Hall, as the Metropolitans attempted to take the mayor into custody. The Municipals rallied to prevent the arrest, leading to a half-hour of skull cracking that left 50 officers injured.
The violence ended only when National Guard troops arrived. They allowed the Metropolitans to proceed with their arrest warrant for the mayor. The Municipals were dissolved several weeks later.
Other U.S. police departments have been disbanded for reasons ranging from corruption to racism to labor-management strife.
A police strike in Boston in 1919, for example, led to the virtual dismantling of the city police force. With the approval of Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge, the city’s police commissioner fired 1,100 striking cops and replaced them with jobless veterans of World War One.
Big-city police departments from Chicago to New York have endured scandals involving corruption, racism and brutality. But reform, not dissolution, has been the preferred method of change.
That was not true in Jennings, Missouri, several years ago, when city officials decided that institutional racism was so bad that they had no choice but to start over. Among the officers fired from that disbanded force was Darren Wilson, who found a new job in Ferguson. He was the officer who fired the shots that killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, last summer.
Other police forces have also been disbanded. Camden, New Jersey, was one of the most crime-ridden U.S. cities as recently as 2012, with a sky-high murder rate. Gang members and drug dealers operated openly. The city’s residents knew that the simple act of venturing outside was a calculated risk. Its police department was plagued by corruption, with several officers charged with fabricating evidence in drug cases.
The city just gave up. In 2012, it announced that the department would be disbanded and its 250 officers fired. A new countywide police department took over in 2013. The result has been a 22 percent drop in violent crime, though Camden remains a dangerous place.
Disbanding an entire police department is a drastic measure, however. Only a small-sized city like Camden (population, 77,000) or Ferguson (population 21,000) can even consider it.
Another remedy could come in the form of federal oversight of reforms. The Los Angeles Police Department entered into a consent decree with the Justice Department in 2001 after many of its officers were implicated in evidence tampering and brutality charges. The department finally emerged from federal supervision in May 2013 after Washington officials were satisfied that the Los Angeles police had implemented safeguards against corruption and police abuse of power.
As New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, who was named police chief in Los Angeles in 2002 and served until 2009, and others have stressed, cops cannot do their jobs properly without the cooperation and the support of the communities they police.
Bratton has frequently cited a principle established by Sir Robert Peel, the 19th-century English statesman who established London’s Metropolitan Police Service. Peel, Bratton has noted, insisted that the “ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions.”
Nobody would ever suggest that police officers put popularity ahead of duty. The business of enforcing the law can be, and perhaps ought to be, unpopular at times.
But when the bond between a community and its police force is broken, history shows that authorities often have no choice but to start from scratch. It requires more than a name change or a shakeup in command structure.
In Northern Ireland, officials had to overcome decades of intense suspicion between the province’s Catholics and the police to create an effective and admired police force. That suspicion would have remained intact, with grievous consequences for peace-makers, if only the name of the agency changed.
Restoring public support for the police in Ferguson will likely require similar drastic action. Officials there ought to study the principles of Peel and Flanagan. For they can achieve the public approval Peel spoke of only if, as Flanagan pointed out, they seek to ensure the dignity and respect of the community they serve.
Lessons for U.S. police from an unexpected place – Northern Ireland
If an oppressive police force in Northern Ireland can be turned around and reformed, it can happen in Ferguson, Missouri.
There needs to be more emphasis in stating that this is not a push to disband the police. This is an effort to reallocate funding and reimagine public safety.
Agreed. This is a situation where I support thought process and ultimate goal of this movement but think I think the slogan, hashtag or whatever you choose to call it is terrible. In a fight such as this, to implement a major change in this country, you must not make it easy for those who will do anything to stop that change to take control of and/or mischaracterize the message. Unfortunately, "Defund the Police" in my opinion leaves a lot of room for that and forces supporters to have to defend/explain instead of using their energy to transition into real policy development and mobilization at the polls. I'm not saying that both can't be done but the phrase creates an unnecessary distraction. I know that something like "Reimagine Public Safety" is not the rallying cry that some people feel is needed at this time but I'm sure that some folks said "da fuck?" when the decision was made to use " Hope and Change" as a campaign slogans too.
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This is the dumbest shit I have read in a minute. The Russians are busy again this election season.
Bravo!!! Finally some initiative. We should have defunded disbanded disarmed police a long time ago. I don't even want them to be called police anymore so yeah get rid of them. Address community safety in a holistic way and it may actually be effective. Clearly this current law enforcement system is not effective and putting a bandaid on it has not worked in the entire history of America.
I get what you two are saying. They don't literally mean "defund the police." When Republicans say "defund Planned Parenthood" they mean wipe it out completely.
But I do think the phrase is useful in conveying seriousness and urgency. If we start at "reform the police," the conversation begins at tinkering around the edges and gets scaled back from there. I think it would be helpful to think of this as an open negotiation.
It puts Dems in a tough position, sure:
... but...
Even though conservatives have insisted so since the 1950s, every radical pro-black idea does not come from Russia.
... but...
Even though conservatives have insisted so since the 1950s, every radical pro-black idea does not come from Russia.
To be honest, I do not trust my community to "police" itself. Too much dumb ass "no snitching" policies in place.
This is not pro black, it's just dumb. Crime is real.
Tito u be snitching?
I like the idea...buts its a very poor slogan....once you have to go into a long explanation of what you really mean, its a sign the slogan is poor
Do you know who the primary victims of mass incarceration and racist policing are?
Police forces need to be cut in half and police budgets need to be cut by two-thirds. At least. You get there by starting the conversation at zero, not by starting at half and two-thirds. That's how negotiating works.
And if you look at the civil rights movement and U.S. relations with Latin America, almost all "radical" pro-black ideas have been denounced as stemming from outside agitation via Russia or communists generally.
Exactly. You don't get radical, real change by saying we are about to bring about radical change. Some of the most wild, repressive pieces of legislation have names like "freedom act" or "right to work"; They aren't called "the abolishment of civil liberties act" or the "draconian anti-union" law. You could change nothing about this idea but change the label from "defund" to 'reimagine" and you would double the support.
But of course liberals/the left almost always suck ass at getting their message out to the masses in manner that can't be warped by the right.
I disagree with broad statements like this. Every city is different. Some cities/ towns are big budget and some are small. I know a town where there are a total of 4 police officers. Should their budget be cut by 2/3s? Should their numbers be cut in half?
We have to stop making statements like these without fully considering the consequences.
There should be a full evaluation of all police departments across the country. The community and elected officials should make informed and educated decisions regarding restructuring these departments. Policemen with multiple charges/ allegations of misconduct should be dismissed immediately.
Good example. What I meant was nationally, we probably have at least twice as many police as we need. You're right that the excess is likely far less in smaller towns.
I think we need higher standards and the police who remain should actually be paid more. It is far too easy for idiots and scumbags to become police officers.
Good work by Kamala here:
Damn it, Joe.
It’s obvious you have never set foot in a courtroom or a theather of war. Twitter scholars.
It's obviously smarter to ask than to speak ignorantly. You're wrong.
Allocating more resources to “train” racists is reformation as is slapping a pair of tits and a summer dress on Olympian makes him a woman.
Instead of having a slush fund for inept white guys who are so brain dead they can’t even get an associates degree by making them a police officer, how about we just let them skip murdering their ex wife and then themselves and just let them die on heroin right now?
If you don't trust your community and your community represents you then you don't trust yourself. If your community doesn't represent you, you should move.
Fear is not a reason to allow yourself to be subjugated by a police force.
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