#27 - Investing in Public Safety

If you viewed the mass demonstrations of 2020, you might have the impression that the majority of the country supports police reform.

If you thought so, you may want to think again.

Polls from the Pew Research Center indicate that, while approval for police has declined slightly over the past five years, Overall support for police still remains high

But despite this support, ....most people polled regardless of race – about 90% – agreed that police should be better trained in nonviolent alternatives to deadly force.

This leads us to the political slogan “Defund the police” ... a slogan that has been intensely debated over the past year. But how many people really know what it means?

Will defunding the police lead to chaos and disorder as some voters fear? And Is this fear being used by certain politicians to prevent serious reform?

On the other hand .... Does the slogan mean that funds should be diverted away from police departments and, instead, reallocated to non-policing forms of public safety?

Activists use the phrase with various intentions: some want modest reductions in police funding; others want a full divestment away from police – a full abolition. But what they all demand .... Is change.

As I think deeper on this topic, I’ve realized that Police reform extends beyond forcing officers to wear body cameras and preventing them from using chokeholds.

Reform requires that we examine societal ills at large and determine who exactly should resolve them.

From economic inequality to homelessness

from healthcare to mental health,

from education to public safety.

Whose responsibility is it to resolve these growing public needs?

Is it the police? Is it Government? Is it private business? Or a combination of all.

And as a former public defender with first-hand knowledge, I can say with confidence that along with an overhaul of our criminal legal system ....police across America desperately need top-to-bottom changes – changes to their internal cultures, their training and hiring practices, their unions, and how they are governed.

In this episode, we take a deeper dive into the movement for police reform.

In doing so, we explore some of the issues you may not have considered, .... that indeed may have a direct correlation to police reform and public safety.

Today I have the wonderful opportunity to speak to professor Alex Vitale again. We were fortunate to have Professor Vitale interviewed for our first episode when we launched the podcast 2 years ago. He’s a sociology professor and coordinator of the policing and social justice project at Brooklyn College.

He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. He’s the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and also the author of the book The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times and the Washington Post. He’s also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.