Interesting article on what happened when Camden, N.J. abolished its corrupt police department and established a new one with much different priorities: This New Jersey city disbanded its police department 7 years ago. Here's what happened next | CNN
In order to disband the MPD, Mayor Frey would have to sign on with the city council, and so far he has stated it is not going to happen. Also, in the past whenever MPD needed assistance they would call on Hennepin County and Anoka County Sheriff’s Departments. Anoka County has said nope. Hennepin County has not said much.
The MPD has been failing for decades. Around 5-6 years ago, I think it was, a decision was made basically to stop pursuing what could be considered low-level crimes (there is a specific phrase they used, but I cannot remember it). Not pulling people over for tinted windows, expired tabs, broken lights. House broken into? We’ll get to you. Domestics? Hope you’re not dead before we get there. If we get there. Now, in some ways it was understandable. Minneapolis has a large gang and drug problem and the MPD had just gone through a major retirement wave. We didn’t get the nickname Murderapolis for no reason. That was also when the city pushed for diversifying the PD, which has led to increased racism within the department. You had old school white cops, living well in the suburbs, now being partnered with non-white young cops who live if not IN the city, at least in an inner ring suburb. It created a lot of division within the PD, as the old school cops tend to be of the “Take down the bad guys” mindset, and many (not all) of the new guys were there to “Serve and Protect”.
Changes need to be made. They are looking at Camden and other cities that have started all over again. When the U of M, the Minneapolis School District, the Minneapolis Park Board, and countless businesses have severed ties with the MPD, all who have utilized them daily for public events or off-duty security, that’s huge. And, FWIW, every single public sector union has strongly denounced the police union and Kroll. The only people I know that support the MPD staying as is are either cops / ex-cops / people who view the city as a zoo, happy to live on the outside, wagging their fingers at “those people” who live there.
Now. Saying all that. Some on the city council are living their best rose-coloured glasses lives. When asked about what would happen in a DV situation without a police department, the response was entirely about supporting the victim. Nothing about the offender. What about the drug problems? Talks about treatment only. It’s all feel good talk. There still needs to be enforcement of laws, and they don’t really have a concrete solution.
Sure, great question. Part of the issue is it’s case-by-case. You can’t give a uniform solution to every potential situation. There is absolutely a ton of work related to this and I can share some.
The reason all the talk is about the victims is, firstly, that victims have always been de-emphasized in criminal justice proceedings, other than as a prop for convicting a perpetrator. People are centering victim-first language because they want the public safety system to take their needs into account, because they’re the one who was wronged. Sure, the court system may award them “damages” but in general you’re on your own to find your own resources for therapy, your own housing with family, etc if you need to heal or get away from a situation.
One of the things these new models reject is the perpetrator/survivor dichotomy, and recognizes that perpetrators can be survivors who need to heal from bad patterns they learned from abusive childhoods or previous relationships as well. Generally speaking, these processes try to meet the needs of three people at once, focusing primarily on the victim: victim, community, and perpetrator.
That said, community accountability processes absolutely have things in place for perpetrators, and makes a big part of “transformative justice” which is dedicated to transforming people who do bad things so they get the help they need to not re-offend, and this includes recognizing things like that prison systems and felony records stand in the way of accountability and change by marking a person forever. The idea is that it’s the community’s collective responsibility to foster the personal growth of all the people living in it, and that includes helping them recover if they’ve fallen into bad patterns and hurt someone.
In general CA/TJ is focused on a “consequences instead of punishment” model, and tries to give people the resources they need to move on and heal, while taking the victim’s needs into account (e.g. not seeing them again).
I’d like to quote that book I cited above again, which is a workbook for CA/TJ facilitator training:
So the consequences for a perpetrator for domestic violence may be:
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Giving them temporary housing of some form while they move away from the partner they abused.
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Requiring them to get therapy to deal with the issues that caused them to be abusive.
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Making them show some sort of progress in tackling these issues before they can see their children again.
And so on. Again, not all of these consequences may be appropriate for every situation. For instance, there are chances the one regarding children may not be necessary. Or sometimes the abused partner may not need or want them to move away, and only therapy would be needed (subject to revising this decision if they reoffend too much).
Do note that not every single thing fits a CA process, and people recognize that. Some things are bad, but don’t require a process to resolve themselves, and some power dynamics don’t play with it well (e.g. executive director and staff has too much of a power imbalance unless the executive director is willing to step down during the process).
So this doesn’t cover every potential crime, but it works for a lot of them, particularly interpersonal violence (physical, emotional, or sexual). Which is why the process is also focused on other preventative measures e.g. providing housing and basic necessities, and funding needle sharing and drug rehabilitation programs.
There are obviously other crimes that don’t fit in this, and given specific examples I could probably explain how they would fit under a police abolition model, but it’s too open of a question otherwise. And like I said, it’s possible that in very, very rare and extreme cases, such as serial killers, there may still be some limited notion of a detective and other related systems to deal with those that are police, but severely, severely downsized from what they are now.
Ok, basic question. Someone breaks into your house. They steal something. Do I have a right to stop them with even deadly force? If I have the person outside and I’m holding them down, should I call the police?
I suppose it’s dependent on how much your tv set is worth to you.
If they’re inside, every state gives you the right to defend yourself. if they’re outside breaking into your car, some states give you the right to go outside and kill them. Which is fucked up.
If all they’ve done is steal something, it’s foolish to put yourself within reach.
In Arkansas, if they are in your house, “your back is to the wall” and you may shoot them if you are in fear of your life. I would hold them and call the cops.
Respectfully, I think this is wrongheaded. To take your first example, people steal all of the time even when their basic needs are met. Look at Wall Street. Look at how stores lock up small expensive electronic items. People won’t die if they don’t have their Garmin GPS, it’s just that they want it.
And from being in the criminal justice system, we devote massive amounts of resources to restorative justice and sadly it is an abysmal failure. Anytime I have a client who sold drugs, stole things, forged checks or anything non-violent, if I can convince a judge it was because of a drug problem or youthful immaturity, that client doesn’t go to prison, he or she gets probation and a myriad of impressive services that the state offers.
However the success rate is vanishingly small. That client that I worked my ass off to keep out of prison will invariable commit more crimes, fail to take advantage of services and after again and again and again failing, ends up going to prison. Even people who aren’t addicted to drugs were never taught proper values. They were never taught that on a weekday, you get your ass out of bed early and find something productive to do. You can’t teach these people because they don’t understand what in the hell you are trying to teach them.
So, we already do what you are proposing, except you propose replacing it with an insanely complicated system. Sure, it’s a great thing for the community to help crime victims, but you need to remove people from the community who are committing crimes to reduce the number of those victims. Sure, a lot of sexual assault victims do not report the crime, but you want to take away the option of reporting for those who wish to do so? Should a violent serial rapist just get counseling?
All of these and other suggestions are a solution in search of a problem. We have people who are trained to investigate and enforce these laws and they are called police officers. The issue is not having police in the first place, it is taking care that they do not abuse their power. Mandatory body cams are a no brainer and enact strict rules that if the cam is not functioning, that officer does not go on a call. There should be no way to disable the cam. I would even favor an exclusionary rule that any evidence found while not wearing a body cam cannot be introduced at a criminal trial, and the officer disciplined for not having it on. I would create a private right of action for any citizen who is approached by the police when the police are not recording. All cam footage should be public property and posted on the internet.
I too have seen how the “battery ran out” so many times that I even joke with the police that I want to know the company that makes their body cams and batteries because I will never buy anything from those companies because they make such shoddy products.
That was just classic Union and contract busting. Most officers were rehired- at lower pay.
Camden, New Jersey actually went forward with disbanding its police department — in theory. In practice, what Camden did is just old-fashioned union-busting: disband the department to get rid of the union, then hire the same cops back at lower salaries and benefits.
And altho it is true that "Minneapolis lawmakers vow to disband police department in historic move." it is not true so far that "Minneapolis to Disband Police Dept."
Defunding police is also wildly impractical. The Minneapolis City Council grabbed headlines by voting to defund and disband the city’s police department, but they don’t actually have the legal authority to do that; defunding would require a revision to the city charter, which the voters would have to approve. Until then, the cops report to the city’s mayor, not the city council.
So, it’s really just a PR move.
Mind you, the “Defund the Police” movement will ensure that trump gets re-elected. Of course we all know that what the backers of the movement MEAN is “Reform” or “cut bloated budgets”, but that people will think is "Abolish the Police- and who can blame them, since “Defund the Police” does literally mean that.
Good idea- really crappy name.
Yep, they are already jumping on it. With some justifcation.
I bet they dont.
The rehiring the same people boggles my mind. If the idea is (and I don’t agree with it) that the organization is just so corrupt and infiltrated with evil people who are brutal and drunk on their own power, then what is the point of just having those exact same people, top to bottom, in an organization that does exactly the same thing but is just called something else?
If the idea is that we need new leadership and do things a different way, then just fire the leadership and hire a new leader that will implement the different way policy. Why the need to “defund” or “abolish” The Minneapolis Police Department and create a new organization with a different name?
I think they can now be fired now they no longer have union representation.
Well, if that is the goal, then again, let’s pass a law saying it is against public policy for police to unionize instead of hiding it in an unrelated absolute fiction of “defunding” or “abolishing” police.
I mean, we can debate unions in a different thread, but I think that given the enormous power individual police officers have, the government should keep a tight rein on that and not allow that power to be abused under the guise of civil service rules.
Unions negotiate disciplinary procedures. In most big cities a cop who has been accused of brutality can not be interviewed before they examine the files and have to wait a day before the interview can take place. Most police departments have arbitration clauses that say a fired cop can appeal, and if the arbitrator finds that the punishment was more than what happened in the past the cop gets reinstated. That creates a cycle where cops can only be fired if they would have been fired in the past.
Because of all these protections it is very difficult to get rid of bad cops. A good cop knows that if they complain about a bad cop nothing is likely to happen to them, and they will still be on the job resenting the complainer.
They do, they have a Police union, and cops can be fired even if there is a Union, note they fired all four Floyd cops.
This was simply a move to cut costs. They even ended up with 100 MORE cops. It had nothing whatsoever to do with a “corrupt” PD. Sure, maybe a couple of the worst werent re-hired. But this was just cost cutting. It’s a really bad example.
Sure, so now they fire cops because they campaign for the wrong candidate, they fire every cop with a “Biden For Pres.” sign on their front lawn. Or they fire all the cops who DONT belong to the white supremacist group. Or they fire any cop with X number of complaints, which takes the bad guys about a day to figure out, so within a week every cop who is busting crooks and not on the take is gone.
Think about what reportedly happens to a cop who complains about a bad cop - the other cops won’t work with him, ostracize him , don’t have his back and so on. I’m not a cop, but I have no doubt those things happen because although I’m not a police officer, I’ve seen them happen at my jobs. The union is a small part of the problem - it only reflects the culture of its members, where it’s more important to protect your fellow officer than to hold those fellow officers to a higher standard of behavior. We wouldn’t have so many problems if it was the brutal cops who were ostracized and the good cops expected the union to ensure that bad cops got due process and nothing more.
Do you know if violent crime or other unlawful offenses went down after they did that?
Not always. Look, cops hate crooked cops, cops on the take, etc.
BUT- They are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a fellow cop who they think just make a mistake. It is a very stressful job.
So- a actual dirty cop? He is hated, loathed and shunned.
But cop who steps over the line a few times, maybe hits a few more times that is right- well, they dont like to see that, but they figure “but for the grace of god, there go I”.
I dont know a single cop that thinks Chauvin was right- in fact they hate the guy. Some of them arent so sure about the other three guys, I admit.