‘Defund the police’ vs. Fortress America

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An offshoot of the Black Lives Matter protests that have swelled across the country over the past two weeks is a new three-word mantra for protesters squaring off against authorities in riot gear: “Defund the Police.”

Here’s what that means, from CNN’s Scottie Andrews: Some supporters of divestment want to reallocate some, but not all, funds away from police departments to social services. Some want to strip all police funding and dissolve departments.

And certainly there is momentum for change in the wake of George Floyd’s death after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. (The now-former officer, Derek Chauvin, was initially charged with third-degree murder. Last week, prosecutors added a second-degree murder charge. His bail was set Monday at $1.25 million.) A veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council has pledged to disband their city’s police and re-think the whole idea of safety.

There are two things on this subject from over the weekend you should watch:

1. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey being booed out of a protest when he would not pledge unequivocally to defund his city’s police department. It was half profile in courage because he didn’t buckle, and half walk of shame because he’s a progressive mayor being booed in his own city. There is clearly a hot desire for reform.

2. Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender, who does want to eliminate the current police department, explaining the idea to CNN’s Josh Campbell. It is not, to say the least, a fully formed plan.

What I took away from these two pieces of video is, first, that there is a clear desire for something different to emerge out of this. And, second, that there is not yet a clear pathway to achieving it.

“Defund the Police” sounds great as a rallying cry. It’s short and easy to understand and plays extremely well for the marginalized population of Americans who feel the brunt of police brutality.

And it could certainly lead to real changes in local policing, like ending certain tactics.

The other thing that seems clear is that “Defund the Police” probably does not, at the end of the day, mean taking all money that is currently spent on policing and doing something completely different with it. Bender, in her interview with Campbell, is talking about reforms to the way 911 calls are dispatched and changing the priorities of city funding.

While I cannot see the future and I do not live in Minneapolis, I can almost 100% guarantee you that whatever plan Bender and her colleagues ultimately flesh out will not in future years take all of the money Minneapolis spends on its police and put it somewhere else.

You can read the full Minneapolis budget proposal requested by its mayor for 2020 here. The entire budget for the city in his vision was a little over $1.62 billion. The mayor wanted about 12% of that.

One defund petition suggests reallocating $45 million in police funding, about a quarter of the mayor’s suggested 2020 budget of $193 million, although it seems like every city nationwide is going to have their budget scrambled by the Covid-19 shutdown.

CNN commentator Bakari Sellers has a list of 5 ways to reform policing.

Fortress America

American states and cities don’t actually spend much more, as a percentage of their budgets, on policing than they did 40 years ago (read the Urban Institute’s assessment here).

But the images of how police responded to some protesters was jarring to the say the least. President Donald Trump didn’t need to call in the 101st Airborne Division for it to appear that soldiers were on American streets. (President Dwight Eisenhower did in fact do that in 1957, to protect black schoolchildren in Little Rock, Arkansas. Read what they make of the current situation here.)

Here’s the image of a US soldier in Kabul, Afghanistan alongside an image of a policeman in riot gear in Hollywood, Florida:

On left, a US army soldier stands on duty at the K1 airbase in northern Iraq in March 2020. On right, police in riot gear look on during a protest in June 2020 in Hollywood, Florida.

Much has been written on the militarization of American police, in particular in the years since 9/11 and also as a result of the war on drugs. The ACLU wrote a report on this in 2014, after a previous series of protests and calls for change to policing. It’s worth reading.

One large reason for the military feel of police forces is that the Pentagon, since the 1990s but more so after the Iraq War, started giving or lending its weapons of war to police departments – more than $7 billion since the program started and $293 million worth of equipment in 2019.

Look up what your local police have gotten from the Pentagon right here.

How much do we spend on cops? The overall spending on police and corrections in 2017 by state and local governments was $115 billion – or about 4% of their budgets, according to that Urban Institute report. Combined with the 3% spent at the state and local level on corrections, that’s more than state and local governments spent on roads, but less than they spent on health care or higher education, according to the report.

Trump vs. Biden

Much like the effort to defund immigration enforcement, this one does not seem likely to become a rallying cry of the mainstream left in the very near future.

The national politics of the movement are easy to see: Trump, a self-styled “law and order” politician, has seized upon the idea that protesters and Democrats want to take cops off the street. “LAW & ORDER, NOT DEFUND AND ABOLISH THE POLICE,” Trump tweeted. “The Radical Left Democrats have gone Crazy!”

And if you don’t think that’s a compelling idea at the national idea, look at how quickly Joe Biden distanced himself from calls to “defund the police.” He did it very quickly in a statement Monday. CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote about this today.

Trump and others will nevertheless continue to try to paint Biden and Democrats with this “soft on crime” brush that Republicans used in the ’80s and ‘90s – until Bill Clinton, really.

But here’s one very big important thing to remember. Donald Trump doesn’t set police policy. And neither would Joe Biden. Policing is largely local.

Bottom up vs. top down reform

Because policing is mostly local, there are some limits on the proposals you’ll see at the national level. That didn’t stop congressional Democrats from moving ahead with a proposal today to restructure policing in the US.

Here’s some of what’s in the bill, which is sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus: