I feel like you are glossing over the differences between police departments. Living in DC, I have never had a bad interaction with an MPD officer, but I have been threatened with arrest by the Park Police simply for running in a part of Rock Creek Park that was apparently closed. (I was also tear gassed by the Park Police at Lafayette Square, but I mostly blame Donald Trump and Bill Bar for that). Talking to other people in DC, this theme of the Park Police being super aggressive while MPD is more normal keeps coming up.
For another example of contrasts, everything I see and hear about the NYPD indicate that it is unusually corrupt and violent even by the standards of American policing. Meanwhile, the notorious Baltimore PD has apparently improved somewhat under a federal consent decree, at least from why I hear from several friends who live there.
All of which is to say, I don't think we can really prescribe generalist solutions given how balkanized things are in US policing. In some places, the police may legitimately not need more funding. In others, they may need loads more. Ultimately, city councils will have to make their own judgements.
Also, the Baltimore example reminds me that the Justice Department does have tools at its disposal to crack down on rogue police departments. Hopefully now that Biden is in office, they will start getting used more often.
In Seattle, officers seem to come in at $84K and within 4 years on the job they are making 6 figures, plus probably some very healthy overtime pay. Yes it's expensive to live here, but that seems like a good salary. I seem to remember some other surprisingly high numbers when living in the bay area. Is it really part of the problem?
These articles with facts and figures and research feel like they are just completely missing the point of Defund the Police. Advocates of defunding the police think that the police will never allow these reforms to succeed and that the police and their supporters will successfully stymie all of these reforms. Articles arguing for different ways the police could be reformed misses this crucial part of their argument in my opinion.
The only way to prove defunding the police is a bad idea is just for the elected officials who think defunding the police is a bad idea to prove that it is a bad idea by passing and implementing reforms to fix the police. They are seemingly unable or unwilling to do so and their decades-long failure is the best argument for defunding the police to me.
We get these cases where an officer uses lethal force, and then we all get to see, in hindsight, that the force was not necessary, and the officer is maybe tried but acquitted, because the standard is based on what the officer could have known, not what we know after the fact.
When that happens, I sometimes think to myself: this whole process seems poorly designed. We have a population with lots of guns (and I think as a matter of pragmatism, the chances of disarming America are zero) and we have police officers with guns. It creates a situation with high stakes and zero margin for error - the officer can err on the side of shooting someone innocent, or err on the side of being shot, but either way it's a narrow path with horrible consequences on either side.
Why do we police the way we do? Are the kinds of tactical police actions in which we see these shootings serving as deterrents for crime?
To pick on something specific, naively it seems to me like there are a ton of shootings relating to traffic stops. What's the upside for the officers here? What are we getting from the traffic stops?
Isn't it possible that behavior is much more context-driven than you suggest here, though? For example, many young men have violent enough tempers that they would be capable of murder in the wrong situation if they're having the wrong sort of bad day. Surely most people like that don't deserve to die.
That's not to say that I don't support traffic stops to prevent DUI; but if it could be done without stops, that would probably be a better option, and I definitely think speeding should be enforced by camera where possible.
Right. except: we have cases where (1) the officer thought the person had a gun and shot him and (2) it turned out he didn't have a gun. So was that the kind of person we want the officer pulling over? Clearly not!
Could the officer have known? I'm more sympathetic than most...how is the officer supposed to make that decision correctly and quickly and accurately? I don't think the problem is that the court standard is too lenient on cops - I think the problem is too hard for humans given our cognitive limits and how lethal guns can be.
Right, but that's a trade-off if we have reached the end of improvements in police technique.
50 people isn't a huge number, but frequency and severity are not the same. I can't go shoot my boss and then plead with the judge that, because what I've done is such a small thing compared to heart disease, he should let me walk.
Right. I think it's sad that the discussion hasn't been more pragmatic. Like, "let's change X so that we get better outcomes". It looked like "eight can't wait" was at least trying to be closer to that idea than "defund" in that they were claiming to be "shovel-ready" procedural changes that would, based on real research, positively change outcomes, but I'm in no position to comment on their specific proposals (other than "not shooting at moving cars" seems very sensible :-).
Wow there are lots of comments here and some interesting viewpoints. I appreciate the research provided in this post and a cogent argument about police reform. I'll have to check out the papers you mentioned. For anyone interested, I thought this paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3564469) was a really interesting look at the 'redistribute policing capacity over different professions argument' and I found it really interesting and robustly sourced. I think you could sorta meld the Yglesias agenda with this and do some interesting stuff.
I do not understand how anyone can write about this issue without addressing the problem of the Blue Wall of Silence. They cover for each other. Maybe only a small fraction themselves engage in the problematic behavior, but a large fraction of the rest cover for them.
To put that another way, a large fraction of the cops on in on the coverups. In on the conspiracies. Are, themselves, criminals.
When I was falsely arrested for BS charges of assaulting an officer, most of the other officers at the scene came to me (while I was in a holding cell) to defend their colleague, admitted that I did not touch him or try to touch him -- but to a man they all refused to tell the prosecutors that. They refused to do anything to get the charges dropped.
This unwillingness to live by the law really does move us towards tyranny. They are charged with enforcing the law, and it appears that the majority of officers deeply do not think that the law applies to them.
I know it wasn't mentioned in the post but something that sometimes comes up in these discussions is the idea of deploying unarmed (meaning, not armed with firearms) police in some jurisdiction in the US.
I'm not sure this would a success in the US, but something that people in these cases will point to countries overseas that deploy unarmed police, and I think it's worth noting that what this means in practice is quite different in Great Britain vs in say, New Zealand or Iceland, in terms of training and access to weaponry.
Does effective police reform also require effective law reform?
I have the suspicion that we see racially different outcomes for multiple reasons; one of those reasons is for the majority many laws that are being broken are effectively ignored or the punishment is limited (you get a warning!) while for minorities the laws are aggressively enforced (jaywalking! get 'em!) and punishments are maximized (you get 30 to life!).
So, what can be racist is the judgment calls police make within the boundaries of what is lawbreaking or not. That suggests what is covered by law needs to be altered to reduce the opportunity for race-based judgement to result in inequities.
One of the best arguments for legalizing weed is exactly this - I don't think drug use, even if weed, is a good idea for most, especially young healthily people. I do think a world where a wealthy white college student gets a wink and a frown while a poor brown kid trying to work the local corner store gets arrested is one where you will have inequality... you either need to ramp up enforcement of the law on everybody regardless of skin and context (which seems to be a bad choice) or eliminate the law so nobody gets disparate police outcomes.
A lot of the fighting on this issue stems from the current emphasis on "Sending the right message." As opposed to doing hard, nuanced things to solve problems with no obvious 100% solution. It seems as if activists want to properly channel their exhaustion. But they do it by advocating foolish ideas certain to exacerbate their future exhaustion.
The suggested reforms are going to have a "Only Nixon could go to China" quality to them. If anything good happens, it will be police chiefs a few ticks to the right of the median voter. This is the only way they will have credibility in the highly insular, self-protective group that is a local police force. Serious policy advocates should consider working with chiefs eager to rehabilitate the image of policing. I promise, there is a market for this.
100% agree that they are not going to be on the forefront of this. But I do think they are the audience you have to win if you want reform. I don't think it's easy, but credible leadership isn't only going to come from city hall. You have to break into the leadership culture in the departments.
This was an interesting post but I want to address this part: "Tamir Rice never should have been shot and killed. Nor should Philando Castile. Eric Garner and George Floyd shouldn’t have been suffocated to death. But none of these are cases of cops being called to respond to situations that should have been dealt with by a social worker."
I have to push back on this some. George Floyd was essentially drunk in public and tried to use a counterfeit bill, why would you send cops to deal with that situation? Seems to me we'd be better off if we had some people specialized in dealing with intoxicated people? Eric Garner was selling cigarettes, why would you send cops to deal with that situation? Seems to me we'd be better off if we (1) didn't bother dealing with a crime like that or (2) had people whose job it was to write tickets rather than who are armed and trained to arrest people.
But more importantly, these are cherry-picked examples. Rayshard Brooks died because armed officers responded rather than social workers. Terrance Coleman in Boston died because armed officers responded rather than an ambulance. Samuel DuBose died because an armed officer conducted traffic stops rather than unarmed people whose job it is to just write tickets. And obviously I could go on and on. Just because there are some cases where a social worker responding doesn't make sense, there are plenty of times where it does. And this goes well beyond shootings. This is also a good idea because it stands to reason that, for example, people trained to handle intoxicated people will do a better job than armed officers without that training.
On quick reading I found nothing to disagree with (very unusual for me). :)
It does not count a disagreement to observe that Matt's arguments are directed at (I think very few) people who might take "Defund the Police" literally.
The real difficulty with police reform will be in persuading taxpayers to pay for it. For that you need additional arguments.
It’s the same issue with bad teachers.
What number is this suppose to be? 2,500 or 25,000?
"Nearly 2,5000 have been investigated on 10 or more charges."
I feel like you are glossing over the differences between police departments. Living in DC, I have never had a bad interaction with an MPD officer, but I have been threatened with arrest by the Park Police simply for running in a part of Rock Creek Park that was apparently closed. (I was also tear gassed by the Park Police at Lafayette Square, but I mostly blame Donald Trump and Bill Bar for that). Talking to other people in DC, this theme of the Park Police being super aggressive while MPD is more normal keeps coming up.
For another example of contrasts, everything I see and hear about the NYPD indicate that it is unusually corrupt and violent even by the standards of American policing. Meanwhile, the notorious Baltimore PD has apparently improved somewhat under a federal consent decree, at least from why I hear from several friends who live there.
All of which is to say, I don't think we can really prescribe generalist solutions given how balkanized things are in US policing. In some places, the police may legitimately not need more funding. In others, they may need loads more. Ultimately, city councils will have to make their own judgements.
Also, the Baltimore example reminds me that the Justice Department does have tools at its disposal to crack down on rogue police departments. Hopefully now that Biden is in office, they will start getting used more often.
This seems like the epitome of Slow Boring and I'm happy to have paid for it. Thanks!
In Seattle, officers seem to come in at $84K and within 4 years on the job they are making 6 figures, plus probably some very healthy overtime pay. Yes it's expensive to live here, but that seems like a good salary. I seem to remember some other surprisingly high numbers when living in the bay area. Is it really part of the problem?
Curious why you brought up the fact that Black Visions has "deep ties to queer, immigrant and transgender communities.”
These articles with facts and figures and research feel like they are just completely missing the point of Defund the Police. Advocates of defunding the police think that the police will never allow these reforms to succeed and that the police and their supporters will successfully stymie all of these reforms. Articles arguing for different ways the police could be reformed misses this crucial part of their argument in my opinion.
The only way to prove defunding the police is a bad idea is just for the elected officials who think defunding the police is a bad idea to prove that it is a bad idea by passing and implementing reforms to fix the police. They are seemingly unable or unwilling to do so and their decades-long failure is the best argument for defunding the police to me.
We get these cases where an officer uses lethal force, and then we all get to see, in hindsight, that the force was not necessary, and the officer is maybe tried but acquitted, because the standard is based on what the officer could have known, not what we know after the fact.
When that happens, I sometimes think to myself: this whole process seems poorly designed. We have a population with lots of guns (and I think as a matter of pragmatism, the chances of disarming America are zero) and we have police officers with guns. It creates a situation with high stakes and zero margin for error - the officer can err on the side of shooting someone innocent, or err on the side of being shot, but either way it's a narrow path with horrible consequences on either side.
Why do we police the way we do? Are the kinds of tactical police actions in which we see these shootings serving as deterrents for crime?
To pick on something specific, naively it seems to me like there are a ton of shootings relating to traffic stops. What's the upside for the officers here? What are we getting from the traffic stops?
Isn't it possible that behavior is much more context-driven than you suggest here, though? For example, many young men have violent enough tempers that they would be capable of murder in the wrong situation if they're having the wrong sort of bad day. Surely most people like that don't deserve to die.
That's not to say that I don't support traffic stops to prevent DUI; but if it could be done without stops, that would probably be a better option, and I definitely think speeding should be enforced by camera where possible.
Right. except: we have cases where (1) the officer thought the person had a gun and shot him and (2) it turned out he didn't have a gun. So was that the kind of person we want the officer pulling over? Clearly not!
Could the officer have known? I'm more sympathetic than most...how is the officer supposed to make that decision correctly and quickly and accurately? I don't think the problem is that the court standard is too lenient on cops - I think the problem is too hard for humans given our cognitive limits and how lethal guns can be.
Right, but that's a trade-off if we have reached the end of improvements in police technique.
50 people isn't a huge number, but frequency and severity are not the same. I can't go shoot my boss and then plead with the judge that, because what I've done is such a small thing compared to heart disease, he should let me walk.
Right. I think it's sad that the discussion hasn't been more pragmatic. Like, "let's change X so that we get better outcomes". It looked like "eight can't wait" was at least trying to be closer to that idea than "defund" in that they were claiming to be "shovel-ready" procedural changes that would, based on real research, positively change outcomes, but I'm in no position to comment on their specific proposals (other than "not shooting at moving cars" seems very sensible :-).
Do state highway patrols have this problem? If not, what's different about them?
Wow there are lots of comments here and some interesting viewpoints. I appreciate the research provided in this post and a cogent argument about police reform. I'll have to check out the papers you mentioned. For anyone interested, I thought this paper (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3564469) was a really interesting look at the 'redistribute policing capacity over different professions argument' and I found it really interesting and robustly sourced. I think you could sorta meld the Yglesias agenda with this and do some interesting stuff.
Also, I thought Jennifer Doleach had some really interesting, very moderate reform proposals (https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-to-fix-policing/).
I do not understand how anyone can write about this issue without addressing the problem of the Blue Wall of Silence. They cover for each other. Maybe only a small fraction themselves engage in the problematic behavior, but a large fraction of the rest cover for them.
To put that another way, a large fraction of the cops on in on the coverups. In on the conspiracies. Are, themselves, criminals.
When I was falsely arrested for BS charges of assaulting an officer, most of the other officers at the scene came to me (while I was in a holding cell) to defend their colleague, admitted that I did not touch him or try to touch him -- but to a man they all refused to tell the prosecutors that. They refused to do anything to get the charges dropped.
This unwillingness to live by the law really does move us towards tyranny. They are charged with enforcing the law, and it appears that the majority of officers deeply do not think that the law applies to them.
How does any what you've written address that?
I know it wasn't mentioned in the post but something that sometimes comes up in these discussions is the idea of deploying unarmed (meaning, not armed with firearms) police in some jurisdiction in the US.
I'm not sure this would a success in the US, but something that people in these cases will point to countries overseas that deploy unarmed police, and I think it's worth noting that what this means in practice is quite different in Great Britain vs in say, New Zealand or Iceland, in terms of training and access to weaponry.
Does effective police reform also require effective law reform?
I have the suspicion that we see racially different outcomes for multiple reasons; one of those reasons is for the majority many laws that are being broken are effectively ignored or the punishment is limited (you get a warning!) while for minorities the laws are aggressively enforced (jaywalking! get 'em!) and punishments are maximized (you get 30 to life!).
So, what can be racist is the judgment calls police make within the boundaries of what is lawbreaking or not. That suggests what is covered by law needs to be altered to reduce the opportunity for race-based judgement to result in inequities.
One of the best arguments for legalizing weed is exactly this - I don't think drug use, even if weed, is a good idea for most, especially young healthily people. I do think a world where a wealthy white college student gets a wink and a frown while a poor brown kid trying to work the local corner store gets arrested is one where you will have inequality... you either need to ramp up enforcement of the law on everybody regardless of skin and context (which seems to be a bad choice) or eliminate the law so nobody gets disparate police outcomes.
A lot of the fighting on this issue stems from the current emphasis on "Sending the right message." As opposed to doing hard, nuanced things to solve problems with no obvious 100% solution. It seems as if activists want to properly channel their exhaustion. But they do it by advocating foolish ideas certain to exacerbate their future exhaustion.
The suggested reforms are going to have a "Only Nixon could go to China" quality to them. If anything good happens, it will be police chiefs a few ticks to the right of the median voter. This is the only way they will have credibility in the highly insular, self-protective group that is a local police force. Serious policy advocates should consider working with chiefs eager to rehabilitate the image of policing. I promise, there is a market for this.
100% agree that they are not going to be on the forefront of this. But I do think they are the audience you have to win if you want reform. I don't think it's easy, but credible leadership isn't only going to come from city hall. You have to break into the leadership culture in the departments.
This was an interesting post but I want to address this part: "Tamir Rice never should have been shot and killed. Nor should Philando Castile. Eric Garner and George Floyd shouldn’t have been suffocated to death. But none of these are cases of cops being called to respond to situations that should have been dealt with by a social worker."
I have to push back on this some. George Floyd was essentially drunk in public and tried to use a counterfeit bill, why would you send cops to deal with that situation? Seems to me we'd be better off if we had some people specialized in dealing with intoxicated people? Eric Garner was selling cigarettes, why would you send cops to deal with that situation? Seems to me we'd be better off if we (1) didn't bother dealing with a crime like that or (2) had people whose job it was to write tickets rather than who are armed and trained to arrest people.
But more importantly, these are cherry-picked examples. Rayshard Brooks died because armed officers responded rather than social workers. Terrance Coleman in Boston died because armed officers responded rather than an ambulance. Samuel DuBose died because an armed officer conducted traffic stops rather than unarmed people whose job it is to just write tickets. And obviously I could go on and on. Just because there are some cases where a social worker responding doesn't make sense, there are plenty of times where it does. And this goes well beyond shootings. This is also a good idea because it stands to reason that, for example, people trained to handle intoxicated people will do a better job than armed officers without that training.
On quick reading I found nothing to disagree with (very unusual for me). :)
It does not count a disagreement to observe that Matt's arguments are directed at (I think very few) people who might take "Defund the Police" literally.
The real difficulty with police reform will be in persuading taxpayers to pay for it. For that you need additional arguments.