Imave by EV.
It seems the public has forgotten the clarion call to defund the police. Ever since the deeply tragic 2020 murder of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed, a radical reimagining of public safety has swept through society. Rooted in critiques of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence, the demand to defund the police has stood as a challenge to the foundations of policing as an established institution. But the demand has faltered, and it is time to reawaken the masses before they become complacent and fall for President Trump’s antics.
A country with trigger-happy law enforcement officials must look elsewhere for lessons on policing. As it exists today, policing is inherently tied to enforcing biased racial and economic hierarchies. Europe offers an alternative model that, while imperfect obviously, provides lessons for how America can re-envision a law enforcement system that is community-led and fair. Defunding a police force that perpetuates capitalist and racial oppression is not just about cutting budgets. Instead, the entire system must be rooted, cleaned out, and replaced with transformative policies that invest in the community – not kill it.
What America needs is the radical overhaul and restructuring of public safety to prioritize the welfare of citizens over state (and federal) control.
Conservatives in America believe the police exist to protect private property and capitalist interests. This results in police disproportionately targeting marginalized communities – mostly Black, indigenous, and low-income groups. Over policing in these communities has led to the widely-known skewed incarceration rate of Black Americans – nearly five times the rate of whites. For this reason, many activists have called for reallocating police budgets toward social services including housing, healthcare, and education.
Indeed, Minneapolis did try to launch a pilot after Floyd’s murder by redirecting $8 million from the police budget to community programs. However, the experiment failed due to budget issues and political pushback, highlighting the challenges of implementing radical change within a decades-old framework.
Yet without radical change, nothing will change. Incremental reforms such as training or bodycams simply do not address the core issue: policing as we know it today is a tool of state repression. Instead, community organizations should have the power to hold public education classes and train mediators to deescalate conflicts. This type of soft policing will almost certainly demonstrate success in reducing gun violence.
Still, the defund movement faces fierce opposition from moderate Democrats and conservative groups who argue that reducing police budgets risks public safety. This pushback stands in contrast to a 2020 Gallup poll which showed that 58% of Americans said they believed policing needs major changes.
Those in opposition to change are fearful of alternatives and cannot bring themselves to imagine a better future for the country’s citizens. How are they able to justify the bloated budgets of police departments? In 2021, state and local governments spent $135 billion on police (4 percent of state and local direct general expenditures), $87 billion on corrections (2 percent), and $52 billion on courts (1 percent). Do these numbers not indicate misplaced priorities in a country with 580,000 homeless people and 32 million without health insurance?
For this reason, we need to turn to Europe for inspiration on how to implement better policing in our communities. Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands for instance emphasize de-escalation and focus on community integration rather than militarization, guns, and violence. Norwegian police undergo three years of training, including social work and conflict resolution, and officers often patrol unarmed.
This is just one example but overall Europe’s focus on the importance of social welfare should serve as a starting point for the United States. Just as Denmark invests heavily in universal healthcare, education, and housing, so should individual states in the U.S.
The idea of defunding is to reject capitalism’s reliance on bullying institutions, and instead transition to grassroots alternatives that focus on mental health and aid networks.
A reallocation of police budgets to instead fund universal basic income, affordable housing, and better mental health care will reduce the conditions that lead to violent crime and bring down the crime rate. Violence is a symptom of neglect – not an excuse to use more force and police aggression. Policing, as it exists today, more often than not, exacerbates harm rather than prevents it.
It is time to reimagine public safety by dismantling these decaying systems and replacing them with better alternatives that serve the people with equality, fairness, and a hope for the future.
