Abolish the Police... And Then???

A Post-Abolition Vision

If what’s happening in Portland isn’t scaring the shit out of you then you’re not paying attention.

Nothing Trump has done has terrified me more than sending armed military soldiers into American streets to operate lawlessly. They are federalized police who are tear-gassing and kidnapping citizens, many of whom have done nothing wrong. These soldiers are without identification, driving unmarked vehicles, and taking people they detain to who knows where. This is real fascist dictator shit. And if they can get away with doing it to white women then you know they can get away with doing it to any Black or brown person.

Photo by Doug Brown

Here’s a great tick tock of what has happened in Portland between protesters and police. I can’t believe I’m writing about American soldiers policing American citizens but then again, given everything Trump has done, I can. This scares me out of my mind. These soldiers are ostensibly in Portland to suppress Black Lives Matter protests that have been going on for two straight months (go Portland!) but really, this is Trump’s way of campaigning. As Jamelle Bouie wrote in the New York Times, this is, “an election year gambit by the Trump administration to create images of disorder and chaos on which the president can then campaign.” The Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown (D), said, “Trump is looking for a confrontation in Oregon in the hopes of winning political points in Ohio or Iowa.”

He wants to create street battles that make it look and feel like the country is out of control and in need of a strong man to foment peace. This is for all those white people who are sick of Black Lives Matter or scared of their marches—for all the Karens who wish they’d shut up and all the Kens who fantasize about shooting protesters and putting them in their place. Trump is campaigning via soldier, as if crushing protesters will win him votes. Other Presidents in peril have sent military abroad in an effort to gin up support at home. Trump, who’s losing by a lot with less than 100 days to go, has chosen to send soldiers into our cities. And lest you think this is about one remote place, Trump has announced that he’ll soon be sending his stormtroopers into Chicago, Detroit, New York, Oakland, Seattle, Philadelphia, and more. You could be the next one under their boot. Trump would have you believe these cities are out of control because their Mayors are Democrats but that cockamamie logic only works in the Fox bubble. The truth is Trump is out of control and desperate to seem tough.

Photo by Doug Brown

         Once again we see the police are the pawns of white supremacy. It should be clear to you by now that there are not “good cops and bad cops.” That’s a child’s vision of things. There is a system of policing that comes down from the top that guides how officers do their jobs. The system is the problem, not individual officers who have a grudge. For example, a 2000 Supreme Court decision, Illinois vs Wardlow, allows officers in a high-crime area the right to stop anyone for almost anything while officers in a low-crime area have a much higher bar for stopping someone. So it’s the law that officers can stop Black people at will and cannot stop white people without a solid reason. This, in a system where officers are all but required to make as many arrests as possible, leads to more confrontations with Black people, leading to more Black deaths.

         Portland is just another example of how police in America have too much power, too much discretion, and far too little accountability. The police are making a powerful argument for why they should be abolished. Generally when we argue that the police should be abolished (some) people clutch their symbolic pearls and shriek “B-B-BUT WHAT WOULD REPLACE THEM???” They seem to think that the police are all that’s preventing us from The Purge. Oh please. Before having that conversation, I insist that we admit that the current situation is unacceptable. We are in a world where I, like most Black people, live in abject fear of the police every day . A world where Black people are constantly in a state of trauma from one recent police killing and a not-so recent police killing. Where we can easily remember at least 20 videos of police killings and call them up in our short-term memory at any time. I do not feel like the police protect Black people. I do not feel comfortable calling them. I feel like whenever they arrive they generally make things worse. I fear that they could attack me at any time for no reason. The government entity that we interact with most often is not creating safety, it’s creating fear, and, far too often, death. And unless they are very unlucky, there’s almost no such thing as police accountability. And they’re not very good at preventing crime. And we’re paying massive amounts of our tax dollars for this. What are we doing? The cops have shown us that they’re totally uninterested in reform—they responded to protests against police violence with violence.  Policing in its current state is a descendent of slave patrols and it exists as a capitalist entity within our capitalist system. That means that the police are about making money for the city or the department through for-profit policing, civil asset forfeiture, or contracts with private entities. That’s fundamentally incompatible with creating public safety. The history of policing—growing out of slave patrols—also means that policing is inherently racist and overfocused on how to arrest and detain and imprison Black bodies for as long as possible. It’s almost as if they view Black bodies as a commodity. Which sounds frighteningly like another peculiar American institution.

We need an entirely new approach to public safety. We must do something different. I have a vision. The changes I envision are twofold which does not mean that the problem lies in both the police and the community, it means that there are systemic reasons why people end up committing crime and if we can make life easier for poor people, we will see less crime and less of a need for police.

MY PLAN FOR A POST-ABOLITION WORLD

• Reduce the number of officers who carry guns to a bare minimum—a small fraction of the force. Most of those who respond to 911 calls and community needs will be trained social workers who are specialists in the specific situations that police deal with most often—domestic violence, drug usage, mental health problems, public drunkenness, basic disturbances and the like. These social workers are focused on defusing situations and establishing peace and helping people without threatening violence. They are there to handle situations with care and sensitivity, rather than to make arrests. They are there to help people’s lives, not to scare them into compliance.

• Give society new law enforcement community peopled by unarmed detectives who can do the intelligence work of figuring out what happened after a murder or a rape has occurred. We do not need people with guns going out to investigate a crime that happened hours ago. We do not need armed people doing most of what cops do. We don’t need cops at all dealing with situations like parking enforcement and minor traffic infractions. In what way does parking violations intersect with protecting and serving? They don’t, they’re about extracting money from citizens to meet the police’s profit potential. Most traffic situations and even parking infractions can be handled by drones, cameras, and computers that send tickets right to you via your phone moments after you’ve violated, allowing officers to focus on things you need people for.

• Remove the option of sending people to prison for nothing but significantly violent crimes. We send far too many people to prison. Currently, we do not put people in prison because it creates public safety. We do this because it helps create fear and it makes money for the state. Prison is the opposite of therapeutic, it’s criminogenic—it helps people become criminals by cutting them off from their families, humiliating them, traumatizing them, making it harder for them to get jobs in the traditional economy, and making it easier for them to get work in the criminal economy. We see this in the recidivism rate—if prison were effective, people would do whatever they could to avoid going back (and they would leave with the skills necessary to avoid going back). But the National Institute of Justice finds 44% return to prison before their first year out is over. 68% are re-arrested within three years, 77% within five years, and 83% within nine years. Prison is a failure at keeping people from re-offending. Instead of a deterrent, criminologists say that a trip to prison often teaches people that they can survive it, thus removing the fear of prison. In a world where most who go to prison end up going back, prison is completely failing society while making money for a sliver of society. Even though most of us who have never been to prison think of it as a huge deterrent to crime, in reality, the more serious and consistent deterrents are job opportunities and a sense that the law is just and having a network of friends filled with people who are not involved in crime. Prison makes it hard for released people to find work, it leaves them traumatized, it makes many people lose their sense that the law is just, and it often leaves them cut off from many of their law-abiding friends because they can’t interact with them while in prison and gives them a network of people who are open to crime. This is all a total failure. Yes there is a rare class of people who are extremely dangerous and commit heinous crimes and deserve to be kept away from society but this is not who the vast majority of inmates are. We must shrink the number of people who go to prison to a minimum. We must eliminate juvenile prison entirely. The fewer people who we send to prison, the better our society will be because prison creates criminals and damaged people, most of whom will return to society.

• As long as guns are rampant in society and organized crime exists there will be a need for the state to have some weapons, so a police department would have a small, armed unit that can be dispatched if there’s a violent situation happening right then or if there’s an ongoing armed criminal enterprise. They should never dress in camouflage or some other ridiculous military cosplay gear, nor should they have access to weapons of war. They don’t need tanks and giant guns meant to frighten citizens. The original vision of police, as created by Sir Robert Peele, was to differentiate them from the military for the good of the citizens. In no way do cops need offensive weapons. This armed unit should be used as a defensive force for the city to protect citizens from violent crime.

• Policing power must be significantly reduced—there cannot be qualified immunity, officers must be willing to be responsible for their actions. There must be a much higher bar for why cops can stop a citizen. Officers who have civilian complaints against them should be judged by a civilian review board. Departments should have a civilian chief just as the American military is purposely headed by non-military Commander. This was put in place intentionally to minimize the likelihood of war. The same logic can work in the police department which should be serving the needs of the community.

BUT THERE’S MORE…

            This is merely half of what needs to change—it’s not merely enough to change the cops, we must also change the lives of poor people and give them fewer reasons to commit crime thus giving the state fewer excuses to arrest them.

• Raise the minimum wage and aggressively expand job programs as if they are the key to keeping people become criminals and creating public safety. Because they are. Improve education in poor neighborhoods because this is also critical to building people who are widely employable and see themselves as having a bright future, people who will be less interested in crime.

• Legalize drugs (thus killing the underground market and the violence that goes along with it). Penalize people for illegal things they do while on drugs but don’t punish for possession. If you think it’s crazy to let people take whatever drug they want, consider this—what’s truly insane is to have a multi-billion dollar drug industry operating inside America that’s completely unregulated and uncontrolled by the American government and run by foreign citizens who are some of the most dangerous people in the world. That’s crazy. Accept the idea that some people will always want to do drugs and let them acquire drugs safely. It’s far easier to keep drugs away from children if they have to be acquired in a professionalized store rather than being bought from a sketchy guy with no responsibilities. Let the government regulate and tax the drug industry. The only way to eliminate the underground market is to create a legal market. Once there’s a legal drug market, the illegal drug trade no longer makes economic sense for the traffickers.  

• Reduce the number of guns in civilian possession. Especially in urban and suburban areas. This is controversial but it should be fairly obvious—if you want to reduce crime, reduce the number of guns.

There are surely more systemic reforms that you can think of that would improve the lives of poor people, and I would love to hear them, but I think you understand: we need to both reduce the power and the militarization of policing and also improve the lives of poor people. As Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said recently, “Crime is a symptom of a diseased society that neglects its most marginalized people, and we do not solve that problem with police." My plan is surely not perfect and would not end crime on day one but it eliminates the criminogenic nature of police and prison, it gives people help to get through the toughest moments of their lives rather than making those moments worse, and it aims to reduce the sources of crime by improving the lives and economic opportunities of poor people and eliminating some major sources of crime, especially the illegal drug industry. 

The last few months has been a primal scream from many people about changing society. Now Trump and folks on the right—and some white liberals—are saying the protests are too much, the revolt must be quashed, it’s time to go back to normal. But if you want the revolt to end without ending the conditions that created the revolt then you’re just looking for the injustice to continue in peace. You’re looking for the continuation of quiet oppression. That’s not acceptable. Just as the people of Portland have responded to gestapo federal police with even more peaceful protesters flooding the streets so will we all respond to Trump’s army of hate with unrelenting protest that’s rooted in a love of country and a love of our community and an unwavering hope that we can make America into a better country.