On Police and Police Reform
The death of George Floyd has galvanized people into action throughout North America and Europe. In Canada, widely reported incidents that have been cited alongside Floyd’s death as evidence of a comparable problem of institutional racism are the deaths of two minority women, Regis Korchinski-Paquet and Chantal Moore. This has been followed with other stories that showcase a pattern of police malfeasance and unaccountability.
What’s more, images of the police responding to the protests and riots have done more to paint a negative picture of them than redeem them. Given the political passions that these scenarios inflame, it can avert people from grasping the nuance in recognizing the problems in policing and fully appreciating the pressures police have to work under. It also further stimulates a hatred of the institution that sways people from acknowledging the role the police play in a functional society. Nonetheless, there are some long-standing institutional problems within law enforcement that need to be rectified, if a crisis of trust between the citizens and their police is to be avoided again in the future.
Jihyun Kwon, a Ph.D student in criminology researching police accountability at the University of Toronto, says that failures of mechanisms put in place after past infractions hasn’t worked so people are overwhelmingly fed up and their patience has run out. Out of this discontent has come a chorus of calls to finally “defund the police” or abolish them outright because of a ruthless prejudice said to be endemic to the institution.
The polarized environment is a fertile ground for ideas that are clearly not thought through to gain traction as people pressure politicians into acting immediately without scruple.
The advocates contend that defunding the police would make for more funds to go towards social services related to mental health and education to better enrich communities. Which is an arguable point and the debate around a more prudent allocation of resources is needed to determine ways police can focus more on their most urgent duties, as political scientist Christian Leuprecht has argued at length. However, the back and forth semantics games that have been played by the ‘defunders’ regarding what they really mean have derailed a more sophisticated conversation that is needed and only escalates an already volatile culture war.
When elaborating on what might follow the divestment of funds some activists have waxed lyrical about an undefined idea of a “new way of policing,” with reference to some vague community-based alternatives. In this there is some jarring absence of thought about details, as none of these alternatives and their structures are laid out, while governments have recently acted in haste to move towards ‘defunding’ or disbanding their police force.
It’d simply be delusional to say that frustration in minority communities is unreasonable, or reject that there’s something to the idea that homelessness and mental illness need more investment as police simply don’t have all the tools to address certain aspects of them. And that the police have been too militarized in recent decades. But, for one, methods that could help avoid abuse could be refined during training, which, at least in the case of some police departments, is an area that could be first deprived by any impulsive cuts.
As to the point that wellness checks and drug addiction should be handled primarily by an unarmed and friendlier social service worker since they are “better trained” in de-escalation, point taken, to an extent. This, however, fails to consider the unpredictability of a distressed individual who might get violent regardless, which is a reality that many social workers have had to face in less dangerous situations let alone the ones they’d be stepping into in this context. What if the worst came to pass and the workers didn’t have the means to protect themselves in the absence of an already trained officer? Is it inconceivable that police and social workers are both useful here?
There is a more rigorous way to go about this that moves beyond rhetoric and creating policy at the whims of a mob without any care for the contingencies. Improving the condition of marginalized communities and sustaining a robust police force are objectives that needn’t be in conflict with each other or construed as a binary choice.
Robert Peel, the British founder of modern policing, declared in his famous principles that the police’s ability to perform their duties relies on “public approval of police action.” Moreover, police should approach their relationship with the public as one between equals, for the sake of maintaining legitimacy and confidence in the rule of law. There being the injustice there has been with no adequate mechanism for redressing grievances stands in opposition to this.
The deliberations on reform should, very naturally, be rooted in renewing respect for Peelian principles and adapting them to contemporary reality, whether they revolve around new ways to strengthen the civilian’s ability to provide oversight over police action, enforcing certain requirements for police while on duty, curtailing the power of the police unions, or the relationship between the government and the police as it regards the former restraining the latter’s excesses. Maintaining the reputation and integrity of this institution, as well as our liberties that rely on a proper practice of law and order, depends on taking the necessary actions to remedy the unaccountability and mitigate the forces that facilitate it. And taking it seriously this time.
