There is a growing national debate concerning police officers and the use of deadly violence.
As a response to recent videos of arrests and shootings perpetrated by police, two sides have emerged. One side wants to divert money from police departments to other social services, while the other defends the police by arguing more funding is needed for training and hiring.
Due to a perceived increase in police brutality, many ideas have been put forth to prevent deaths at the hands of the authorities.
One of those ideas is defunding the police.
The idea of defunding police departments and putting a portion of that money elsewhere to help out communities is an interesting theory, but the more you look at it, the more it falls apart.
First, many police departments have already suffered budget cuts. The departments are down a significant amount of manpower while funds are being stripped away. People expect the police to be ready and able to respond to any and all situations, yet departments don’t even have enough people in the field.
In Baltimore City for example, the unit is already facing a shortage of manpower.
According to The Baltimore Sun’s Jessica Anderson, “a consultant hired under terms of the decree recently released a report concluding that the department needs to hire 300 more sworn officers and 100 civilians to adequately staff patrol, and other critical areas, such as internal affairs.”
Not only do departments need more in terms of staffing, but they also need money for effective training.
Due to these constraints, only 5% of the budgets are actually going to police training. This is about $6 million alone, along with the 1.5 million for the police academy, according to Alena Maschke of Long Beach Business Journal .
Cities should give their police departments more money to go towards police training. I would say an average of two years similar to other countries like Sweden.
Sweden has a very similar police training system to American except they have a longer period of time to hone new skills such as de-escalation tactics. Sweden also provides new officers the additional opportunity to work as a social worker or judicial official.
After the death of George Floyd, Minneapolis passed legislation that removed more than $1 million, from the Minneapolis Police department budget. As a result, violent crimes in Minneapolis have increased. These crimes have increased so much that the city council is thinking of refunding the police.
“What I am sort of flabbergasted by right now is colleagues, who a very short time ago were calling for abolition, are now suggesting we should be putting more resources and funding into MPD,” said Councilmember Phillipe Cunningham to The Hill.
The Defund the Police movement is irrational. It is a quick and easy solution for a very complicated issue, and it will take more than simple “defunding the police” slogans to fix it.
MOOSE PRINTS 