\n\n“while there is a strong research base for believing that having police on the beat reduces crime, these same studies find that the aggressive \u201csuspicious behavior\u201d stops and stop-and-frisk tactics that have poisoned police-community relations have no real crime-fighting value.”
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“there\u2019s a substantial literature in economics and sociology arguing that more police on the beat equals less violent crime<\/a>. One effort to quantify this precisely is a 2018 Review of Economics and Statistics article by Aaron Chalfin and Justin McCrary. It estimates, based on a big set of police and crime data from large and midsize cities between 1960 and 2010, that every $1 spent on extra police generates about $1.63 in social benefits, primarily by reducing murders. One needn\u2019t take this literature as gospel truth, but one of the go-to scholars on the abolitionist position should be able to \u2014 and want to \u2014 counter the prevailing academic claim that investments in policing pay off in reduced violent crime.” Per what records are available, a relatively small\u00a0number of officers are committing most of the misconduct<\/a>, but studies show that bad behavior can\u00a0spread like a virus to peer officers<\/a>. Getting rid of the worst 5 percent of officers could eliminate an enormous share of the misconduct, halt the spread of bad norms throughout departments, and open up new hiring opportunities to create more diverse forces.”\u00a0…
…
“American policing needs to change. And there\u2019s at least some reason to think that reducing the scope of policing<\/a> can and should be a big part of that change. Fairly mild policy changes undertaken over the past few years have delivered results<\/a> in terms of fewer police killings of unarmed people, and there\u2019s reason to believe that plenty of opportunity exists for further reform.
But policing is important. There\u2019s evidence that the number of police has an effect on crime, especially violent crime<\/a>. And when crime soars, not only do the direct victims suffer but we run the risk that economically diverse cities will unravel as people with means flee to the suburbs.”
…
“Patrick Sharkey, a Princeton sociologist who is clearly sympathetic to the goals of the defunding movement, writes in a Washington Post piece<\/a> arguing for a greater role for local leaders and communities in containing violence that \u201cthose who argue that the police have no role in maintaining safe streets are arguing against lots of strong evidence. One of the most robust, most uncomfortable findings in criminology is that putting more officers on the street leads to less violent crime.\u201d”
…
“the importance and efficacy of what police officers do doesn\u2019t hinge on believing they\u2019re angels. The number of officers patrolling the street has an effect on the murder rate.”
…
“European countries have higher rates of problematic teen drinking<\/a>, as well as a higher rate of cirrhosis deaths. What\u2019s true is that drunkenness is less problematic in Europe because there is more mass transit and fewer guns, so the range of possible alcohol-related harms is narrower.”
…
“laxer pot rules mean more pot consumption. Laxer alcohol rules mean more alcohol consumption. And laxer heroin rules would likely mean more heroin consumption. One can certainly make a case for this (criminalization has not been a rousing success story), but it requires some real argument.”
…
“Many faddish implicit bias trainings don\u2019t really seem to work<\/a>. But there are promising results from several<\/a>different<\/a> procedural justice trainings. More to the point, Vitale himself says that \u201cin some ways training is actually part of the problem\u201d because \u201cin recent decades, the emphasis has shifted heavily toward officer safety training.\u201d Instead of receiving training that creates an exaggerated sense of threat (police work is dangerous, but officers\u2019 death rates are lower than for fishers or roofers), police should be provided with deescalation training (which has been found to be at least somewhat effective<\/a>) and, more importantly, required to use it<\/a> with real consequences for officers who don\u2019t.”
…
“collective bargaining agreements make it extremely difficult to fire police with records of misconduct<\/a>. Those who are dismissed are often ordered to be rehired<\/a>. And police officers who are<\/em> permanently fired \u2014 which, to be clear, means they have passed a high bar for badness \u2014 often get hired at other jurisdictions<\/a>. Meanwhile, the \u201cqualified immunity\u201d doctrine<\/a> immunizes police for civil penalties for misconduct. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“As the defund debate has played out in the public sphere, an idea has taken hold that not only should America spend more on social services but that the police are the reason we can\u2019t or won\u2019t do that.”
…
“police spending is a relative\u00a0drop in the bucket<\/a>\u00a0of state and local government budgets; at the federal level, it\u2019s even smaller.”
…
“It\u2019s true that the government should be spending more on housing and mental health programs and that doing so would probably reduce crime. But it would probably reduce crime by freeing up officers to do more police work. And there\u2019s no particular reason the money for it has to come out of police departments. If you compare the United States to Europe, the reason Europe has a more generous welfare state is a much higher overall level of spending \u2014 not that the US has overfunded the police.”
…
“The problem with America\u2019s police officers is that they\u2019re too unaccountable and lawless, operating with too much job security and a sense of impunity, not that there are too many of them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n