INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SCIENCE-POLS 103

The Call to “Defund the Police”

George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Philando Castile are some of the noteworthy individuals, among the innumerable black people who have had a fatal encounter with the police. Several cases of the people of color being murdered by the police have led most individuals to feel that policing in the US serves to terrorize the blacks and not to protect them (Walker, 2020). Moreover, the several deadly encounters between the people of color and the police are sufficient evidence to support the activists and the people of color’s allegations that the US criminal legal system was created to foster profound structural racism (Waldron, 2020). Hence, their protests that demand “Black Lives Matter” and their call to defund the police. Defunding the police means to strip funds from the police departments and to reallocate the funds to other non-police governmental bodies associated with public safety (Waldron, 2020). Notably, the activists calling for the police’s defunding have varied intentions as some advocate for the full defunding of the police while others call for a partial defunding.

The people countering the call to defund the police claim that the police’s misconduct is overstated (Jean, 2020). The opponents of the call to defund the police propose that instead of defunding the police, the criminal legal system should instead be held to standardized national regulations since defunding the police will cause them to turn to other ways of raising money such as “taxation by citation (Amendolara & Badre, 2020).” However, despite the arguments put across by the opponents of the call to defund the police, this paper will support the activists’ call to defund the police. Some of the arguments that the paper will put across to persuade its audience that the activists’ call to defund the police is the best move include: first, most police were not trained to do their jobs; hence, their use of unnecessary force (Hawkins, Mettler & Stein, 2020). Secondly, the paper will claim that the reforms created for police officers and the police departments have not worked so far. Thus, there is no guarantee that any police reforms to be initiated will be adequately implemented in the future. Lastly, the paper will argue that the police have always been violent and oppressive, and therefore, defunding them will significantly reduce the violence (Amendolara & Badre, 2020). The paper will gather data and information from credible sources such as books and journals published within the past five years, research articles written by reputable authors, government and educational institutions’ websites, and academic sources.

References

Amendolara, B., & Badre, N. (2020). ‘Defund the police’: An important moment for society and psychiatry. https://www.mdedge.com/psychiatry/article/225698/schizophrenia-other-psychotic-disorders/defund-police-important-moment

Hawkins, D., Mettler, K., & Stein, P. (2020). „Defund the Police‟ Gains Traction as Cities Seek to Respond to Demands for a Major Law Enforcement Shift. The Washington Post.

Jean, T. (2020). Black lives matter: Police brutality in the era of COVID-19. Lerner Center for Health Promotion, Syracuse University. https://lernercenter. Syr. edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Jean. pdf.

Walker, G. (2020). Emergentology: What Does ‘Defund the Police’Mean to the ED?. Emergency Medicine News, 42(9), 9. https://journals.lww.com/em-news/Fulltext/2020/09000/Emergentology__What_Does__Defund_the_Police__Mean.5.aspx?context=LatestArticles

Waldron, I. R. (2020). The wounds that do not heal: Black expendability and the traumatizing aftereffects of anti-Black police violence. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EDI-06-2020-0175/full/html