By Isaiah Ruby
Reporter
Police departments should not be defunded. In a perfect world, there would be no need for police, but our world is far from perfect.
The American Civil Liberties Union stated, “Defunding the police will actually make us safer,” in the headline of a recent article. However, is this statement true?
A 2020 article titled, “Police cuts contributed to rise in murders in Britain…” from Independent.co.uk states that, “In England and Wales, 2010 police budgets were cut, resulting in 20,592 (14%) fewer officers in 2017, and 20% more gun, knife, and serious violent crimes. The homicide rate also rose 39% from Mar. 2015 and 2019.” They later solved this problem by committing to hire 20,000 more police officers.
George Fachner, principal investigator, and Steven Carter, senior law enforcement consultant, studied police departments in Philadelphia and came to the conclusion that, “White officers were least likely to shoot an unarmed black person, with a threat perception failure (TPF) rate of 5.2% with black suspects. Black officers had an 11.4% rate, and Hispanic officers a 16.7% rate.” Threat perception failure is a term referring to injuring someone who was mistakenly taken as a threat to the officer.
I do not believe that this is an issue of race, or power dynamics; rather, it is an issue of accountability. Previous police reforms have seemingly been useless, because they are not focusing on the main issue. Police need strict, swift accountability for all of their actions.
Much of the desperately needed accountability is being thrown out the door under the tense of “Stressful situations and poorly judged situations.” Granted, under those conditions, I could not perform any better than officers currently do. Police officers need more training, specifically focused on these fast-paced, stressful situations that tend to end in the ill loss of life.
We need to implement standardized, nationally recognized training and laws to better prepare for these tough situations, and to hold our officers accountable. These laws should comply with human rights laws, with the main goal being preservation of life and community.
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