- 3,656
- Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA
Since the murder of George Floyd, a growing idea amongst leftists is to defund and decrease the size of police forces across the nation. Some see this as a good start and could help decrease police brutality in the future while also decreasing crimes across the board, while others (mainly those on the right) think this idea is nonsensical and crime would only increase.
After doing my research on this topic, I have concluded that yes, defunding and downsizing police forces is in fact a good idea and absolutely imperative.
First of all, let's talk about how police departments are funded. As we know, our tax dollars pay for them; the US does not have any major privatized police forces. And as the years go on, police departments nationwide have received more and more funding (keeping up with inflation). But this shouldn't be, since both violent and nonviolent crime in the US has continued to go down for the past 25 years and shows no sign of increasing. If crime is decreasing (and the primary goal of a police force is to decrease crime), why should the police force be growing? The LAPD, the second largest police force in the US, has a budget of nearly eleven billion dollars a year (6.5 billion is discretionary spending, the rest goes to healthcare/pensions). And what is all this money being spent on? Unfortunately, it does not go to actual solutions to decrease the crime rate. The two largest sectors this money goes to are officer pay, and weaponry. It is frequent for LAPD officers to make over $100,000 a year, sometimes as much as $135,000 a year. Here in NJ, where the COL is significantly lower than Los Angeles, both urban and suburban cops still make in excess of $100,000 annually. Many cops are simply overpaid. A job which requires just a high school diploma and six months of training is not worthy of a six-figure salary. As a progressive, I'm all for higher wages for working and middle class jobs, but cops are the rare exception. Secondly, a great deal of the discretionary spending is spent on military-grade weapons, bought directly from the US military (these weapons are either obsolete or just not used enough for the military to keep). But the cops are civilians, not military, so why should they be armed with military-grade firearms, which they were never even trained to use? Furthermore, the sheer amount of cops that urban police departments have has been increasing, which again seems wrong since crime is on the decrease.
So, what's the solution? LAPD and other urban police departments (most of which have budgets in the multi-billions) should have massive budget cuts (in the billions) and mass layoffs (in the thousands). Obviously, having a police force is necessary for the safety of a municipality, but having this many is unnecessary. In my opinion, many cops deal with situations that would be handled better without a cop. Of course, murders, rapes, and the most heinous of crimes need police, as well as roadways to prevent dangerous drivers. But most situations would be better dealt with by a social worker or other mental health professional who actually has training on how deal with people acting out. First of all, drugs should be decriminalized. Yeah, how about we stop locking people up for possession, shall we? If people don't get punished over drugs, one of the most common "crimes", it's self-evident that less cops are needed. There should be zero crime for possession of marijuana in all 50 states. And for schedule 1 and 2 substances like heroin, meth, crack, suboxone, etc, those found in possession would not go to jail, but instead straight to detox and then rehab. Some of the millions and billions of dollars saved from defunding police departments and prisons would instead go to programmes which actually help get people off drugs. Not only is the entire concept of jailing people for drugs a fallacy (since its a victimless crime), the 80% and above recidivism rate for drug crimes goes to show jailing people over possession is fundamentally not working. Other scenarios, for example, a homeless schizophrenic lashes out at people on the street, or a couple has a domestic quarrel, or a person is high or drunk in public beyond coherence, would be dealt with these mental health workers and they would use de-escalation techniques and if necessary, transport these people to treatment, rather than punishment. Let's face it, it's frequent that cops escalate tensions, not de-escalate them. People with actual degrees in healthcare/psychology would know how to take a more calming approach. And again, these are "crimes" which have high recidivism rates, and jails simply are not effective systems for dissuading petty crimes. And furthermore, I've not found one statistic which highlights an increase in crimes as a result of a downsized police force. So this worry that less cops would only increase crime is not backed up by anything empirical.
So yeah, it's time we defund and downsize the police in this country. And I say this as someone who has many cops in their family. We need to focus on a more compassionate solution, one which actually does decrease crime.
After doing my research on this topic, I have concluded that yes, defunding and downsizing police forces is in fact a good idea and absolutely imperative.
First of all, let's talk about how police departments are funded. As we know, our tax dollars pay for them; the US does not have any major privatized police forces. And as the years go on, police departments nationwide have received more and more funding (keeping up with inflation). But this shouldn't be, since both violent and nonviolent crime in the US has continued to go down for the past 25 years and shows no sign of increasing. If crime is decreasing (and the primary goal of a police force is to decrease crime), why should the police force be growing? The LAPD, the second largest police force in the US, has a budget of nearly eleven billion dollars a year (6.5 billion is discretionary spending, the rest goes to healthcare/pensions). And what is all this money being spent on? Unfortunately, it does not go to actual solutions to decrease the crime rate. The two largest sectors this money goes to are officer pay, and weaponry. It is frequent for LAPD officers to make over $100,000 a year, sometimes as much as $135,000 a year. Here in NJ, where the COL is significantly lower than Los Angeles, both urban and suburban cops still make in excess of $100,000 annually. Many cops are simply overpaid. A job which requires just a high school diploma and six months of training is not worthy of a six-figure salary. As a progressive, I'm all for higher wages for working and middle class jobs, but cops are the rare exception. Secondly, a great deal of the discretionary spending is spent on military-grade weapons, bought directly from the US military (these weapons are either obsolete or just not used enough for the military to keep). But the cops are civilians, not military, so why should they be armed with military-grade firearms, which they were never even trained to use? Furthermore, the sheer amount of cops that urban police departments have has been increasing, which again seems wrong since crime is on the decrease.
So, what's the solution? LAPD and other urban police departments (most of which have budgets in the multi-billions) should have massive budget cuts (in the billions) and mass layoffs (in the thousands). Obviously, having a police force is necessary for the safety of a municipality, but having this many is unnecessary. In my opinion, many cops deal with situations that would be handled better without a cop. Of course, murders, rapes, and the most heinous of crimes need police, as well as roadways to prevent dangerous drivers. But most situations would be better dealt with by a social worker or other mental health professional who actually has training on how deal with people acting out. First of all, drugs should be decriminalized. Yeah, how about we stop locking people up for possession, shall we? If people don't get punished over drugs, one of the most common "crimes", it's self-evident that less cops are needed. There should be zero crime for possession of marijuana in all 50 states. And for schedule 1 and 2 substances like heroin, meth, crack, suboxone, etc, those found in possession would not go to jail, but instead straight to detox and then rehab. Some of the millions and billions of dollars saved from defunding police departments and prisons would instead go to programmes which actually help get people off drugs. Not only is the entire concept of jailing people for drugs a fallacy (since its a victimless crime), the 80% and above recidivism rate for drug crimes goes to show jailing people over possession is fundamentally not working. Other scenarios, for example, a homeless schizophrenic lashes out at people on the street, or a couple has a domestic quarrel, or a person is high or drunk in public beyond coherence, would be dealt with these mental health workers and they would use de-escalation techniques and if necessary, transport these people to treatment, rather than punishment. Let's face it, it's frequent that cops escalate tensions, not de-escalate them. People with actual degrees in healthcare/psychology would know how to take a more calming approach. And again, these are "crimes" which have high recidivism rates, and jails simply are not effective systems for dissuading petty crimes. And furthermore, I've not found one statistic which highlights an increase in crimes as a result of a downsized police force. So this worry that less cops would only increase crime is not backed up by anything empirical.
So yeah, it's time we defund and downsize the police in this country. And I say this as someone who has many cops in their family. We need to focus on a more compassionate solution, one which actually does decrease crime.