Monday, July 13, 2020
Defunding Police
Defunding the police has been a debatable option for American cities to take after the unjust death of George Floyd and many other African Americans caused by police brutality. To defund the police does not mean to completely erase all police funding, it means to relocate some funding from the police department to other public resources, like schools and social services. But even this choice seems questionable, with there being police that think irrationally and make horrible choices I would argue that the police of America need more funding to better train them. In California, it usually take 6 months of training to become a police officer, but after that it's only 6 times a year police get to train with their firearms. Police should not only have to go through 6 months of training, because then you have a wider range of people who do not have the mental fortitude to handle pressure situations. Police should be training at least 20% of their time at the job continuously, like navy seals. Navy seals initially train for 12 months, but train 20 hours a day after that. Of course I am not asking for police training to be in the same regime as the navy seals, since they still have to do their job, but 20% is reasonable. This amount of training will weed out all police officers like the ones who killed George Floyd because of the rigorous training and de escalation drills that would help officers control tense environments. Although I truly think this is the only way to solve police brutality, I know that this is not easy to establish. The policing system in this country may be corrupt in some areas, and further funding them will not mean they will use that money for good training. So in reality, I believe it would be best to first defund the police in order to filter out all the corruption and bad cops, then use that money for public resources to better the community, then finally switch funding for police and more training.
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I totally agree with your stance, Fabian. To put it simply, defunding the police would lead to less money spent on training (arguably one of the most important things to do to becoming a police officer).
ReplyDeleteI do see the side of defunding the police to better help the communities with lower incomes. Simply put, the poorer a community is the more crime is prevalent and putting more money into these marginalized communities would get them better education, stimulate their economy, etc. This could lead to a crime-reduced community which would lead to less policing. It sounds good on paper, but there are flaws.
Being a police officer is an extremely stressful and demanding job. They are always trying to stop crime (not always in the best way I'll admit) while also always being cautious for their own life. I believe the problem is that police funding needs to allocated more towards better training and less towards equipment. Greater training would ensure more police officers knowing how to handle situations better opposed to how the officer who killed George Floyd did. Maybe there should also be branches of police similar to the military. For example in a case of domestic dispute or suicide different police officers trained for those specific situations.
To sum it up, defunding the police sounds good in theory, but better training for police officers would result in them handling situations more preferably.
I agree with both, Fabian and Caleb, about how defunding the police department will only make the situation worse in the long run. Additionally, corruption cannot be easily ignored in the police department. If anyone wants to make progress between the police and the community corruption needs to be handled, and training needs to be intensified. Training in the police department needs to be more consistent and reshaped to deal with the obvious issues arising in our society. We need to improve the training of an organization that is supposed to protect the public and have their trust. I believe that change is needed in the police department, a reform that will create a better police department that will prevent the abuse suffered by people of color. Discipline and self-correction is needed to have well-trained cool headed police officers that protect the people.
ReplyDeleteAlso, better financial management from the leaders of communities as a whole would benefit everyone. Such as how in April, Mayor Garcetti was going to propose the increase of the police department budget by 7% and cut the budgets of many other departments. While other organizations or departments could greatly benefit from the extra funding. Such as mental health officials, or homeless aid organizations who would be more beneficial than police officers to respond to call in those certain situation, as Caleb also suggested.
I completely agree with the idea of more police funding but not for the same reasons. The problem isn't that the police need learn how to use their fire arm more effectively it's the problem that it is the only tool they can use. Poorer funded police departments only have a side arm to use when engaging a potential threat so they already train vigorously with that tool in order to better use it. Forcing police officers to train more with their fire arm makes them more reliant on it than a nonlethal method of restraint, that's why the military trains it's troops and especially it's special forces vigorously so that when they are meet with a threat out in the field they do not hesitate to kill and eliminate the threat. The funding would be better located in things such as bean bag shot guns and not lethal fighting styles so that they have a wide variety of tools to use and can determine what is necessary in certain situations.
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