Crises and Competence

In 1986 , Ronald Reagan cheerfully gibed : “ The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘ I ’ m from the government , and I ’ m here to help.
’ ” Then it seemed amusing .
But thirty-four years later , the convergence of COVID-19 and a racial conflagration makes Reagan ’ s quip sound myopic .
No doubt the responsibilities , size , and authority of government are subject to legitimate debate .
In one case , the ministrations of government can be salutary ; in another , suffocating .
Few would argue that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ succeeded anywhere .
But undifferentiated loathing of government is irrational and anti-historical .
Only government can safeguard national security and conduct vital diplomacy—that ’ s why defense spending rose considerably on Reagan ’ s watch , and why his latter-day admirers ’ efforts to cast him as a tribune of small government are oversimplified .
Only government can ensure the safety of our food and drugs and protect our natural environment .
And government can help navigate our racial fissures , and provide the economic and public health interventions indispensable to combating a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most need an effective and responsive federal government , our president has eviscerated it .
But Donald Trump is hardly sui generis .
As Max Boot notes : “ Trump .
.
.
is himself the product of decades of right-wing revolt against government and increasingly against reason itself.
” What was once a philosophical preference for limited government has degenerated into phobia .
“ Long before Trump , ” GOP strategist Stuart Stevens observes , “ the Republican Party adopted as a key article of faith that more government was bad .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ became ‘ all government is bad.
’ Now we are in a crisis that can be solved only by massive government intervention .
That ’ s awkward.
” This intellectual devolution owes much to political calculation .
As Norman Ornstein told Dana Milbank : “ Newt Gingrich gave [ Republicans ] the theme that the best thing they can do is discredit government and blow up all of government.
” The GOP ’ s increasingly reflexive demonization of “ big government ” melded neatly with the demand of its donor class for lower @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Grover Norquist , who famously proposed to shrink government “ to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
” Echoing Norquist ’ s evocation of infanticide by tax cuts , Milton Friedman analogized the federal government to an unruly child : Wrong .
Instead , we saddled our kids with tax cuts for the rich which exploded the national debt .
But this unmediated contempt for government spawned the election of a monumentally unqualified ignoramus : if government was hateful , all we needed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Writes David Corn : But COVID-19 turned these snickers into a death rattle .
Continues Corn : There were honorable exceptions—including John McCain and Mitt Romney , the party ’ s two prior nominees .
But the GOP writ large enabled Trump to turn our government into a Potemkin village—with malign consequences that far transcend the coronavirus .
The damage is staggering and comprehensive .
In The Fifth Risk , Michael Lewis details the Trump transition team ’ s woeful lack of preparation , and the administration ’ s neglect , mismanagement , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s mercurial behaviors only deepen this dysfunction : According to the Brookings Institution , turnover at the upper levels at the White House was 83 percent during the first year and a half of the administration .
Our government , Boot concludes , now mirrors Trump ’ s incapacities : “ Given that Trump is incompetent , ignorant and often irrational , his failure to surround himself with a strong , stable team exacerbates his own deficiencies and makes it nearly impossible coordinate a sensible national response to the worst pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ merely the apotheosis of Trump ’ s misrule .
In a recent New Yorker article , Susan Glasser details “ an administration that in some ways barely exists relative to its predecessors , especially when it comes to crucial areas of domestic , economic , and international security—or even straightforward crisis management.
” As one example , Glasser cites the Department of Homeland Security , where Trump forced out Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and , a year later , has yet to appoint a successor—or a permanent deputy secretary , chief of staff , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the TSA , where 20 of 75 top positions are either vacant or filled by acting officials .
At the Defense Department , MSNBC reports , more than one-third of Senate-confirmed positions are vacant or filled by temporary officials .
Of 60 senior positions , 21 lack permanent appointees .
Trump ’ s priority is subservience : As Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer relate in Foreign Policy , Trump has dispatched an enforcer to vet DOD officials for loyalty .
The same pathology rots the State Department .
Of 28 assistant secretaries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ service , and many of these positions have acting officials or are empty .
Loyalty tests abound ; respected career professionals like William Taylor and Marie Yovanovich are cashiered ; Trump sycophant Mike Pompeo treats the department like a satrapy .
Former deputy secretary William Burns wrote of Trump ’ s mismanagement that “ not since Joe McCarthy has the State Department suffered such a devastating blow.
” Equally damaging is Trump ’ s ongoing dismissal of top intelligence officials .
In the Washington Post , nine former leaders of intelligence agencies protested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deadly disease , the intelligence institutions that help protect us all from current and future threats are also under attack from an insidious enemy : domestic politics .
We can not let the covid-19 pandemic be a cover for the deeply destructive path being pursued by the Trump administration.
” At Justice , Attorney General William Barr is taking a wrecking ball to his own department , relentlessly dismantling any barrier to presidential abuses .
As Donald Ayer , a Republican deputy attorney general under George W. Bush , wrote in the Atlantic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contempt for governance , disdain for expertise , and hostility toward oversight breeds rampant demoralization .
Throughout the government , career professionals are leaving in droves .
This degrades the civil service .
No doubt bureaucrats make an easy target for Trump ’ s tropes about the “ deep state.
” But as Daron Acemoglu explains in Foreign Affairs : Determined to avoid accountability , Trump has extended his ruinous jihad by firing or replacing inspectors general charged with independent oversight of federal operations .
The list is impressive : • Michael Atkinson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ general .
His sin ?
Sending the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to Congress .
Said Trump : “ Not a big Trump fan , that I can tell you.
” This is a blatant warning to other inspectors general : Oversight of Trump means career suicide .
• Glenn Fine , chairman of a new panel to oversee $ 2 trillion in pandemic stimulus spending .
His sin ?
Existing .
The job remains vacant .
• Christi Grimm , the principal deputy inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ documented the severe shortage of testing , kits and masks hospitals needed to fight COVID-19 .
This painfully accurate account was derided by Trump as a “ typical fake news deal.
” • Steve Linick , inspector general at the State Department .
His sin ?
Multiple offenses recounted by the Washington Post : issuing a report that top officials had harassed staffers and accused them of disloyalty to Trump ; giving documents to the house impeachment before he ; and investigating alleged abuses by Pompeo .
Reviewing the wreckage , Mitt Romney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Inspectors General is unprecedented ; doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose .
It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power.
” That is precisely Trump ’ s aim .
His end game is to destroy any governmental constraints on his behavior—at once arrogating autocratic powers while eroding the efficacy of government itself—for which his threats to militarize a racial crisis serves as but one example .
Writes Acemoglu : And deadly .
It is now widely known that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health security unit of the NSC—whose expertise , former Obama officials insist , would have enabled the government to combat the pandemic more quickly .
Instead , we foundered .
As Lisa Monaco , a national security advisor to Obama , told the Atlantic : Apparently , no one .
As Dr. Asish Jha , director of the Harvard Global Health Institute , lamented in March , “ This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad , and losing a couple weeks is terrible .
Losing two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s what we did.
” Indeed .
Disease modelers at Columbia estimated last month that we would have incurred roughly 36,000 fewer deaths had Trump initiated social distancing one week earlier , and avoided about 83 percent of all deaths had he commenced two weeks earlier .
Instead , as the death toll mounted , Trump fired Rick Bright , a respected federal epidemiologist who in January tried and failed to alert the top administrators of HHS that we were desperately short of respirator masks .
Bright ’ s sin ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s quack cures , hydroxychloroquine .
Meanwhile , the callous leader of an incompetent federal government subcontracted out the pandemic to state governors .
In a conference call , Trump told them : “ Respirators , ventilators , all of the equipment—try getting it yourselves.
” Implored to invoke the Defense Production Act to speed the production of viral supplies , he refused .
The result was Trump ’ s own real-life version of The Hunger Games .
In late March the Washington Post reported that “ a mad scramble for masks , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each other and driving up prices .
Some hard-hit parts of the country are receiving fresh supplies of N95 masks , but others are still out of stock .
Hospitals are requesting donations of masks and gloves from construction companies , nail salons and tattoo parlors , and considering using ventilators designed for large animals because they can not find the kind made for people.
” Confronted with a public health crisis of the first order , Trump gave America third-world governance .
“ When you go to war , ” Andrew Cuomo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t say to the states , every state has to buy its own tanks , every state has to buy its own guns.
” Having failed to provide sufficient tests , Trump assigned to governors the responsibility for establishing a robust testing program .
Concurrently , he attacked blue-state governors for not reopening an economy devastated by his failures to address the pandemic .
Eschewing his basic responsibility to unite us , he cynically deepened our political and social fissures by embracing the protests of a small minority whose demented libertarianism includes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Meanwhile , Trump used COVID-19 as a cover for dismantling federal environmental protections—including fuel-efficiency standards .
While insisting that financial relief for the states he has burdened so irresponsibly would further balloon the deficit , Trump has floated another budget-busting gift to wealthy donors : a holiday from capital gains taxes .
And now , as protests over George Floyd ’ s killing continue across the country , Trump has resorted to abusing his office to inflame racial hatred and violence—another deadly distraction from his already lethal derelictions .
Nothing , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pyromania from incinerating any semblance of presidential responsibility .
As Naomi Oreskes told the New Yorker about COVID-19 : “ It ’ s completely predictable that this Administration did exactly what it did .
They didn ’ t want to acknowledge the severity of the [ pandemic ] because this is a textbook example of why we need a federal government.
” Better , it seems , that thousands of Americans needlessly die .
This carnage not only discredits Trump , but the mindless pseudo-philosophy he represents : the comprehensive abdication of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responsibilities .
Writes Stephen Walt : Witnessing so much death and disturbance , one can not but ponder how poorly Reagan ’ s casual nostrum has aged .
Farhad Manjoo nails it : “ The most comforting words I can think of now , amid so much uncertainty , chaos and confusion , are these : ‘ I ’ m from the government , and I ’ m here to help .
’ ”

In 1986, Ronald Reagan cheerfully gibed: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Then it seemed amusing. But 34 years later, the convergence of COVID-19 and a racial conflagration makes Reagan’s quip sound myopic.
No doubt the responsibilities, size, and authority of government are subject to legitimate debate. In one case, the ministrations of government can be salutary; in another, suffocating. Few would argue that centralized control of the economy has truly succeeded anywhere.
But undifferentiated loathing of government is irrational and anti-historical. Only government can safeguard national security and conduct vital diplomacy—that’s why defense spending rose considerably on Reagan’s watch, and why his latter-day admirers’ efforts to cast him as a tribune of small government are oversimplified. Only government can ensure the safety of our food and drugs and protect our natural environment. And government can help navigate our racial fissures, and provide the economic and public health interventions indispensable to combating a deadly pandemic.
Now, when we most need an effective and responsive federal government, our president has eviscerated it. But Donald Trump is hardly sui generis. As Max Boot notes: “Trump . . . is himself the product of decades of right-wing revolt against government and increasingly against reason itself.”
What was once a philosophical preference for limited government has degenerated into phobia. “Long before Trump,” GOP strategist Stuart Stevens observes, “the Republican Party adopted as a key article of faith that more government was bad. But somewhere along the way, it became ‘all government is bad.’ Now we are in a crisis that can be solved only by massive government intervention. That’s awkward.”
This intellectual devolution owes much to political calculation. As Norman Ornstein told Dana Milbank: “Newt Gingrich gave [Republicans] the theme that the best thing they can do is discredit government and blow up all of government.”
The GOP’s increasingly reflexive demonization of “big government” melded neatly with the demand of its donor class for lower taxes. Hence the anti-tax rhetoric of Grover Norquist, who famously proposed to shrink government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Echoing Norquist’s evocation of infanticide by tax cuts, Milton Friedman analogized the federal government to an unruly child:
How can we ever cut government down to size? I believe there is one and only one way: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance. For governments, this means cutting taxes. Resulting deficits will be an effective—I would go so far as to say, the only effective—restraint on the spending propensities of the executive branch and the legislature. The public reaction will make that restraint effective.
Wrong. Instead, we saddled our kids with tax cuts for the rich which exploded the national debt. But this unmediated contempt for government spawned the election of a monumentally unqualified ignoramus: if government was hateful, all we needed was a president who hated it. Writes David Corn:
Trump could only be acceptable to voters who had long been told that government was the problem. He was the antithesis of government experience and expertise. And he made that a selling point and convinced 63 million people to vote for him, as if they were picking a winner on a reality television show. After all, he was amusing and a kick in the ass of the libs who thought credentials and seriousness actually mattered.
But COVID-19 turned these snickers into a death rattle. Continues Corn:
Trump’s inaction and actions will likely lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans who might otherwise have survived this plague. That is quite a judgment to hang on one man. But Trump deserves it. And the Republican establishment and conservative movement share the blame. They devoted decades to spreading the anti-government virus. . . . And ever since Trump gained the White House, they have accepted and even championed his brand of know-nothingism and turned a blind eye to his dishonesty, incompetence, bigotry, and troubling behavior. They acted as if it did not matter that the man in the White House was not capable of doing the job.
There were honorable exceptions—including John McCain and Mitt Romney, the party’s two prior nominees. But the GOP writ large enabled Trump to turn our government into a Potemkin village—with malign consequences that far transcend the coronavirus.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
The damage is staggering and comprehensive. In The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis details the Trump transition team’s woeful lack of preparation, and the administration’s neglect, mismanagement, or gutting of key government agencies. Trump’s mercurial behaviors only deepen this dysfunction: According to the Brookings Institution, turnover at the upper levels at the White House was 83 percent during the first year and a half of the administration.
Our government, Boot concludes, now mirrors Trump’s incapacities: “Given that Trump is incompetent, ignorant and often irrational, his failure to surround himself with a strong, stable team exacerbates his own deficiencies and makes it nearly impossible coordinate a sensible national response to the worst pandemic in a century.”
But COVID-19 is merely the apotheosis of Trump’s misrule. In a recent New Yorker article, Susan Glasser details “an administration that in some ways barely exists relative to its predecessors, especially when it comes to crucial areas of domestic, economic, and international security—or even straightforward crisis management.”
As one example, Glasser cites the Department of Homeland Security, where Trump forced out Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and, a year later, has yet to appoint a successor—or a permanent deputy secretary, chief of staff, or undersecretary for management. Another is the TSA, where 20 of 75 top positions are either vacant or filled by acting officials.
At the Defense Department, more than one-quarter of Senate-confirmed positions are vacant or filled by temporary officials, according to the Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service. Trump’s priority is subservience: As Jack Detsch and Robbie Gramer relate in Foreign Policy, Trump has dispatched an enforcer to vet DOD officials for loyalty.
The same pathology rots the State Department. Of 20 confirmed or acting assistant secretaries, only five were selected from the foreign service. Some of these positions are still empty. Loyalty tests abound; respected career professionals like William Taylor and Marie Yovanovich are cashiered; Trump sycophant Mike Pompeo treats the department like a satrapy. Former deputy secretary William Burns wrote of Trump’s mismanagement that “not since Joe McCarthy has the State Department suffered such a devastating blow.”
Equally damaging is Trump’s ongoing dismissal of top intelligence officials. In the Washington Post, nine former leaders of intelligence agencies protested: “As we collectively fight this deadly disease, the intelligence institutions that help protect us all from current and future threats are also under attack from an insidious enemy: domestic politics. We cannot let the covid-19 pandemic be a cover for the deeply destructive path being pursued by the Trump administration.”
At Justice, Attorney General William Barr is taking a wrecking ball to his own department, relentlessly dismantling any barrier to presidential abuses. As Donald Ayer, a Republican deputy attorney general under George W. Bush, wrote in the Atlantic:
In just over a year, Barr has repeatedly undermined the Justice Department’s strong tradition of independent, unprejudiced fact-finding, where conclusions are protected against political interference. . . . He has disrespected the integrity and authority of the department’s experienced career attorneys by repeatedly putting political cronies into special oversight roles to review the work of others and engineer changes in the government’s advocacy positions for transparently political reasons.
Inevitably, Trump’s universal contempt for governance, disdain for expertise, and hostility toward oversight breeds rampant demoralization. Throughout the government, career professionals are leaving in droves.
This degrades the civil service. No doubt bureaucrats make an easy target for Trump’s tropes about the “deep state.” But as Daron Acemoglu explains in Foreign Affairs:
By upholding nonpartisan rules and procedures and relying on technocratic expertise, professional bureaucrats . . . function as a kind of guardrail for administrations, preventing their more extreme or nakedly partisan policies from being implemented. A professional civil service has also been the last, most powerful defense against natural disasters and health emergencies. . . . The president’s hostility to impartial expertise has forced many of the most capable and experienced federal employees to quit, only to be replaced by Trump loyalists. His persistent attacks against those who contradict his untruths or point out problems with his administration’s policies have created an atmosphere of fear that impedes bureaucrats from speaking up. This reticence partly explains the slow, muted, and ineffective initial response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Determined to avoid accountability, Trump has extended his ruinous jihad by firing or replacing inspectors general charged with independent oversight of federal operations. The list is impressive:
Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general. His sin? Sending the Ukraine whistleblower complaint to Congress. Said Trump: “Not a big Trump fan, that I can tell you.” This is a blatant warning to other inspectors general: Oversight of Trump means career suicide.
Glenn Fine, chairman of a new panel to oversee $2 trillion in pandemic stimulus spending. His sin? Existing. The job remains vacant.
Christi Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. Her sin? Issuing a report that documented the severe shortage of testing, kits, and masks hospitals needed to fight COVID-19. This painfully accurate account was derided by Trump as a “typical fake news deal.”
Steve Linick, inspector general at the State Department. His sin? Multiple offenses recounted by the Washington Post: issuing a report that top officials had harassed staffers and accused them of disloyalty to Trump; giving documents to the House impeachment probe; and investigating alleged abuses by Pompeo.
Reviewing the wreckage, Mitt Romney protested: “The firings of multiple Inspectors General is unprecedented; doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose. It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power.”
That is precisely Trump’s aim. His end game is to destroy any governmental constraints on his behavior—at once arrogating autocratic powers while eroding the efficacy of government itself—for which his threats to militarize a racial crisis serves as but one example. Writes Acemoglu:
The playbook often starts with a would-be autocrat filling state institutions with loyalists who will parrot what the leader wants to hear. Then come the inevitable policy mistakes, as ideology and sycophancy overwhelm sound advice. But without independence and commitment to expertise, politicians, top bureaucrats, and judges double down on their mistakes, sidelining anyone who speaks out against them. As public trust in state institutions dwindles and civil servants lose their sense of accountability to the public at large, the transformation to Paper Leviathan can be swift.
And deadly. It is now widely known that, in 2018, Trump disbanded the global health security unit of the NSC—whose expertise, former Obama officials insist, would have enabled the government to combat the pandemic more quickly.
Instead, we foundered. As Lisa Monaco, a national security advisor to Obama, told the Atlantic:
Back in December, when we first saw [the coronavirus emerge], who was asking, “Do we have sufficient tests?” Who was asking, “Do we have sufficient personal protective equipment if this gets here and gets here at scale?” Who was asking, “What is our public-health capacity, and let’s model this out. If this really spreads, how many ICU beds are we going to need?” Who’s developing that list of questions and getting them answered?
Apparently, no one. As Dr. Asish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, lamented in March, “This is such a rapidly moving infection that losing a few days is bad, and losing a couple weeks is terrible. Losing two months is close to disastrous, and that’s what we did.”
Indeed. Disease modelers at Columbia estimated last month that we would have incurred roughly 36,000 fewer deaths had Trump initiated social distancing one week earlier, and avoided about 83 percent of all deaths had he commenced two weeks earlier.
Instead, as the death toll mounted, Trump fired Rick Bright, a respected federal epidemiologist who in January tried and failed to alert the top administrators of HHS that we were desperately short of respirator masks. Bright’s sin? Casting doubt on one of Trump’s quack cures, hydroxychloroquine.
Meanwhile, the callous leader of an incompetent federal government subcontracted out the pandemic to state governors. In a conference call, Trump told them: “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment—try getting it yourselves.” Implored to invoke the Defense Production Act to speed the production of viral supplies, he refused.
The result was Trump’s own real-life version of The Hunger Games. In late March the Washington Post reported that “a mad scramble for masks, gowns and ventilators is pitting states against each other and driving up prices. Some hard-hit parts of the country are receiving fresh supplies of N95 masks, but others are still out of stock. Hospitals are requesting donations of masks and gloves from construction companies, nail salons and tattoo parlors, and considering using ventilators designed for large animals because they cannot find the kind made for people.”
Confronted with a public health crisis of the first order, Trump gave America third-world governance. “When you go to war,” Andrew Cuomo told CNN, “you don’t say to the states, every state has to buy its own tanks, every state has to buy its own guns.”
Having failed to provide sufficient tests, Trump assigned to governors the responsibility for establishing a robust testing program. Concurrently, he attacked blue-state governors for not reopening an economy devastated by his failures to address the pandemic. Eschewing his basic responsibility to unite us, he cynically deepened our political and social fissures by embracing the protests of a small minority whose demented libertarianism includes the right to endanger the lives of others.
Meanwhile, Trump used COVID-19 as a cover for dismantling federal environmental protections—including fuel-efficiency standards. While insisting that financial relief for the states he has burdened so irresponsibly would further balloon the deficit, Trump has floated another budget-busting gift to wealthy donors: a holiday from capital gains taxes.
And now, as protests over George Floyd’s killing continue across the country, Trump has resorted to abusing his office to inflame racial hatred and violence—another deadly distraction from his already lethal derelictions.
Nothing, it seems, can keep Trump’s pyromania from incinerating any semblance of presidential responsibility. As Naomi Oreskes told the New Yorker about COVID-19: “It’s completely predictable that this Administration did exactly what it did. They didn’t want to acknowledge the severity of the [pandemic] because this is a textbook example of why we need a federal government.”
Better, it seems, that thousands of Americans needlessly die. This carnage not only discredits Trump, but the mindless pseudo-philosophy he represents: the comprehensive abdication of the federal government’s practical and moral responsibilities. Writes Stephen Walt:
One may hope that the present crisis will remind enough Americans that having competent and reliable people in key leadership positions really matters, and that holding people more accountable for corruption, cronyism, or sheer incompetence is essential to effective public policies. Whether you favor a big welfare state or a small libertarian one, you should above all want it to be competently led and staffed with knowledgeable and dedicated experts.
Witnessing so much death and disturbance, one cannot but ponder how poorly Reagan’s casual nostrum has aged. Farhad Manjoo nails it: “The most comforting words I can think of now, amid so much uncertainty, chaos and confusion, are these: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”


thebulwark--2020-06-09--Al Sharpton Should Not Become the Public Face of the Protests

Last last week it was announced that a big march on Washington is scheduled for August to commemorate the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. ’ s historic march and help further the cause of addressing police brutality and injustice in law enforcement .
All of which sounds like a very good idea .
The march is being organized by Al Shaprton .
Which sounds like a very , very bad idea .
It is never wise to speculate about the condition of another man ’ s soul , so I ’ m happy to stipulate that the Reverend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a good man .
My friend Matt Labash thinks so and if you ’ re only ever going to read one profile of Sharpton , it should be his .
( Among other glories , it reveals that Sharpton ’ s entourage had their own catchphrase for the boss : “ Rev got ta eat.
” Which functioned nicely in all circumstances . )
Sharpton is in his autumnal years now and perhaps he ’ s no longer the hotheaded agitator and hustler he was in his youth .
People change .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to put together a list of public figures most likely to transform the George Floyd protests from a nonpartisan , broad-based movement to another front in the culture war , Sharpton would have to be near the very top .
Conversely , it would be easy to identify inspiring black leaders across the political spectrum better suited to expanding the movement : Cory Booker , Colin Powell , Michelle Obama , Van Jones , Oprah , Denzel Washington , John Lewis , Don Cheadle , James Clyburn , Ta-Nehisi Coates , Michael Steele @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cornell West , Shaq .
.
.
we could go on for quite some time before we got to the Rev .
Social movements , like political coalitions , are exercises in addition .
You do not achieve change unless you can add enough people to your cause , who then apply ballot-box pressure at all levels of government over a sustained period of time .
What has made these protests different from all of the protests of the last 20 years—the anti-war protests of the Bush years , the “ Occupy ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of six years ago , the Women ’ s marches since 2017—is that they have attracted a broad array of support : blacks , Hispanics , whites , city-dwellers , suburbanites .
The polling shift over just the last two weeks is shocking .
Here ’ s Tim Alberta explaining the magnitude : An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday found that “ Americans by a 2-to-1 margin are more troubled by the actions of police in the killing of George Floyd than by violence at some protest.
” A survey for USA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ favorable impressions of police declining by double-digits week over the week .
Most notably , a Monmouth poll released June 2—conducted in the days after Floyd ’ s killing—showed , for the first time , that a majority of Americans ( 57 percent ) and a plurality of whites ( 49 percent ) believe police are more likely to use excessive force against African Americans .
This represents a tectonic shift in public opinion : After Eric Garner was killed by New York City police in the summer of 2014 , Monmouth found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ black community was more likely to be abused by police ; among whites , that number was just 26 percent .
“ It ’ s almost a sea change , ” said Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina , one of three black members of the U.S. Senate .
For years , Scott explained , “ the response from so many well-intended people was to overlook the brutality brought to African Americans at the hands of the police .
.
.
.
But I look at the public ’ s response to this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time in my lifetime that I ’ ve heard law enforcement agencies coming out with strong rebukes and condemnation of the officers in Minneapolis.
” The senator added , “ Without question , this is different .
It feels different .
It sounds different .
The protesters are different .
.
.
.
I look out my window in Washington and see 10 protesters .
Seven of them are white , and three of them are black.
” From where we stand right now , the current movement shows a great deal of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the best of circumstances .
Because inertia is a bitch .
Going forward there are two dangers for the movement .
The first is apathy .
If the movement were to peter out , or be moved to the back-burner of peoples ’ minds , then it will be difficult to exert enough democratic power to produce change .
This isn ’ t to say that protesters need to stay in the streets forever .
At some point , everyone goes back to normal—or whatever “ normal ” is these days—with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beachhead on the political priorities of a majority of Americans .
The reason a march in August is a good idea is because it ’ s the perfect moment to re-energize this coalition going into the November elections .
And it ’ s important to note that we ’ re not primarily talking about national politics here : The fate of Donald Trump bears a mostly symbolic relationship to the cause of police reform .
Notwithstanding House Democrats ’ announcement of a reform bill on Monday , the federal government will have a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the protesters are upset about .
The real heavy lifting is going to be done by state and local governments , which would have to adopt specific reforms targeted at correcting the problems within their own law enforcement organs .
The August march might be able to help amplify and channel the present energy .
The second danger for this movement is the possibility that it will be transformed in the public consciousness into something else—something more divisive , something that will cause some people to leave and prevent others from joining .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ another front in the culture war .
Which is why Al Sharpton is unlikely to be helpful .
Just for the sake of argument , let ’ s assume that Sharpton ’ s heart is in the right place and that he wants to lead this march for purely altruistic reasons .
Even so : Every high-level person who agrees to participate will be asked , “ Do you endorse the entire career of Rev .
Sharpton ?
” Of all the people who could plausibly become the face of this movement , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help it grow and the most likely to regress it to the pre-2020 battle lines .
It ’ s enough to make you think , “ Well crap .
Why don ’ t they stop him ?
” And the answer is : There is no “ they.
” The advantage of an unorganized , distributed movement is that it can grow organically , attracting people from all different points on the ideological and socioeconomic spectrums—because there is no central face of it to cause negative polarity .
If you are , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Christian , you are every bit as likely to be drawn to the Floyd protests as you are if you ’ re an African American or a Democrat .
A distributed movement lowers the political and psychological barriers to entry in important ways .
But precisely because it ’ s distributed , the movement is vulnerable to hijacking .
Because if someone steps forward to say “ This is what we ’ re all about , ” there ’ s no organizational authority to push back against it .
You saw that happen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the police ” went from a fringe Twitter slogan to a semi-serious position that was being ascribed to much of the protest movement .
In just a few days , anyone who was supportive of the movement was being asked to answer for it , as if defunding ( or abolishing ) the police was somehow an official position of the protests .
This same dynamic will set in when someone eventually steps up to become the public face of the organized version of the movement .
Which is precisely what Sharpton is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no organization positioned to say , “ No , these protests do not endorse the specific policy of abolishing police forces ” there will be no one who can say , “ These protests are not an endorsement of Al Sharpton and his entire public history.
” If you ’ ve studied Al Sharpton ’ s public history , then his play to take over this movement makes a great deal of sense .
He is a man who has always been looking for angles .
If you ’ d like to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was in it for the greater good .
And yet , it would not be unreasonable to take a less charitable view .
But in this case , the stakes are larger than they have ever been for any movement which Sharpton sought to be a part of .
There is a chance—a very real chance—for Americans to reform law enforcement .
To professionalize a category of government that has often been egregiously unjust and to exercise a proper degree of civilian control over the institutions to which we delegate the legal use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There ’ s no one to tell Al Sharpton that he has to step back and let someone else lead this movement .
But if he really does have his heart in the right place , he ’ ll do it on his own .

Last last week it was announced that a big march on Washington is scheduled for August to commemorate the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic march and help further the cause of addressing police brutality and injustice in law enforcement.
All of which sounds like a very good idea.
The march is being organized by Al Shaprton.
This Al Sharpton.
Which sounds like a very, very bad idea.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
It is never wise to speculate about the condition of another man’s soul, so I’m happy to stipulate that the Reverend Sharpton may be a fine human being and a good man. My friend Matt Labash thinks so and if you’re only ever going to read one profile of Sharpton, it should be his. (Among other glories, it reveals that Sharpton’s entourage had their own catchphrase for the boss: “Rev gotta eat.” Which functioned nicely in all circumstances.)
Sharpton is in his autumnal years now and perhaps he’s no longer the hotheaded agitator and hustler he was in his youth. People change.
Then again, if you were going to put together a list of public figures most likely to transform the George Floyd protests from a nonpartisan, broad-based movement to another front in the culture war, Sharpton would have to be near the very top.
Conversely, it would be easy to identify inspiring black leaders across the political spectrum better suited to expanding the movement: Cory Booker, Colin Powell, Michelle Obama, Van Jones, Oprah, Denzel Washington, John Lewis, Don Cheadle, James Clyburn, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Steele, Skip Gates, Chris Rock, Cornell West, Shaq . . . we could go on for quite some time before we got to the Rev.
Social movements, like political coalitions, are exercises in addition. You do not achieve change unless you can add enough people to your cause, who then apply ballot-box pressure at all levels of government over a sustained period of time.
What has made these protests different from all of the protests of the last 20 years—the anti-war protests of the Bush years, the “Occupy” movement of 2011-12, the Ferguson protests of six years ago, the Women’s marches since 2017—is that they have attracted a broad array of support: blacks, Hispanics, whites, city-dwellers, suburbanites. The polling shift over just the last two weeks is shocking. Here’s Tim Alberta explaining the magnitude:
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday found that “Americans by a 2-to-1 margin are more troubled by the actions of police in the killing of George Floyd than by violence at some protest.” A survey for USA Today last week showed white Americans’ favorable impressions of police declining by double-digits week over the week. Most notably, a Monmouth poll released June 2—conducted in the days after Floyd’s killing—showed, for the first time, that a majority of Americans (57 percent) and a plurality of whites (49 percent) believe police are more likely to use excessive force against African Americans. This represents a tectonic shift in public opinion: After Eric Garner was killed by New York City police in the summer of 2014, Monmouth found that 33 percent of Americans believed the black community was more likely to be abused by police; among whites, that number was just 26 percent. “It’s almost a sea change,” said Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, one of three black members of the U.S. Senate. For years, Scott explained, “the response from so many well-intended people was to overlook the brutality brought to African Americans at the hands of the police. . . . But I look at the public’s response to this situation and it feels like the first time in my lifetime that I’ve heard law enforcement agencies coming out with strong rebukes and condemnation of the officers in Minneapolis.” The senator added, “Without question, this is different. It feels different. It sounds different. The protesters are different. . . . I look out my window in Washington and see 10 protesters. Seven of them are white, and three of them are black.”
From where we stand right now, the current movement shows a great deal of promise. But change is hard even in the best of circumstances. Because inertia is a bitch.
Going forward there are two dangers for the movement. The first is apathy. If the movement were to peter out, or be moved to the back-burner of peoples’ minds, then it will be difficult to exert enough democratic power to produce change.
This isn’t to say that protesters need to stay in the streets forever. At some point, everyone goes back to normal—or whatever “normal” is these days—with the protests having (hopefully) established a beachhead on the political priorities of a majority of Americans.
The reason a march in August is a good idea is because it’s the perfect moment to re-energize this coalition going into the November elections. And it’s important to note that we’re not primarily talking about national politics here: The fate of Donald Trump bears a mostly symbolic relationship to the cause of police reform. Notwithstanding House Democrats’ announcement of a reform bill on Monday, the federal government will have a relatively small role solving the problems that the protesters are upset about. The real heavy lifting is going to be done by state and local governments, which would have to adopt specific reforms targeted at correcting the problems within their own law enforcement organs.
The August march might be able to help amplify and channel the present energy.
The second danger for this movement is the possibility that it will be transformed in the public consciousness into something else—something more divisive, something that will cause some people to leave and prevent others from joining. In short: that it will become another front in the culture war.
Which is why Al Sharpton is unlikely to be helpful.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Sharpton’s heart is in the right place and that he wants to lead this march for purely altruistic reasons. Even so: Every high-level person who agrees to participate will be asked, “Do you endorse the entire career of Rev. Sharpton?”
Of all the people who could plausibly become the face of this movement, Sharpton is one of the least likely to help it grow and the most likely to regress it to the pre-2020 battle lines.
It’s enough to make you think, “Well crap. Why don’t they stop him?”
And the answer is: There is no “they.”
The advantage of an unorganized, distributed movement is that it can grow organically, attracting people from all different points on the ideological and socioeconomic spectrums—because there is no central face of it to cause negative polarity. If you are, say, a libertarian, or a Christian, you are every bit as likely to be drawn to the Floyd protests as you are if you’re an African American or a Democrat.
A distributed movement lowers the political and psychological barriers to entry in important ways.
But precisely because it’s distributed, the movement is vulnerable to hijacking. Because if someone steps forward to say “This is what we’re all about,” there’s no organizational authority to push back against it.
You saw that happen over the last week when “defund the police” went from a fringe Twitter slogan to a semi-serious position that was being ascribed to much of the protest movement. In just a few days, anyone who was supportive of the movement was being asked to answer for it, as if defunding (or abolishing) the police was somehow an official position of the protests.
This same dynamic will set in when someone eventually steps up to become the public face of the organized version of the movement.
Which is precisely what Sharpton is doing.
And just as there was no organization positioned to say, “No, these protests do not endorse the specific policy of abolishing police forces” there will be no one who can say, “These protests are not an endorsement of Al Sharpton and his entire public history.”
If you’ve studied Al Sharpton’s public history, then his play to take over this movement makes a great deal of sense. He is a man who has always been looking for angles.
If you’d like to be charitable, you can say that he was in it for the greater good. And yet, it would not be unreasonable to take a less charitable view.
But in this case, the stakes are larger than they have ever been for any movement which Sharpton sought to be a part of. There is a chance—a very real chance—for Americans to reform law enforcement. To professionalize a category of government that has often been egregiously unjust and to exercise a proper degree of civilian control over the institutions to which we delegate the legal use of force against our neighbors and ourselves.
There’s no one to tell Al Sharpton that he has to step back and let someone else lead this movement.
But if he really does have his heart in the right place, he’ll do it on his own.


thebulwark--2020-06-09--Republican Senators Suffer Sudden Onset of Hysterical Blindness

Marco Rubio doesn ’ t read Twitter , he only writes on it .
This would not be a terrible policy , if one were abiding by it .
But Marco Rubio is not abiding by it .
He is just telling a really dumb and obvious lie because he doesn ’ t have the hands to criticize Donald Trump .
Rubio ’ s latest pathetic Twitter lie was the result of his being asked an inconvenient question about the president of the United States ’ most recent monstrous tweet , in which he accused 75 year old protester Martin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left to bleed like an unwanted rodent—of being secret Antifa .
President Trump sourced this theory from an OAN segment that was—I shit you not—reported by a man in a thick Russian accent who also—by total coincidence—works for the Russian state-owned propaganda network Sputnik .
In a vacuum one would imagine that if you ’ re a Republican senator who secretly loathes Trump but publicly plays nice with him , one of the easiest softballs you could ask for would be whether you condemn a preposterous , Russian-peddled conspiracy theory targeting an American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attack that was caught on video .
It ’ s a layup .
An easy opportunity to say , “ See , I call it like I see it ” without any downside risk at all .
A baby souljah moment .
No reason at all to tell an absurd lie on this one .
Or as @ MarcoRubio might put it : But that is not the world we live in .
In our reality , senators were so flummoxed by the AARP-Antifa conspiracy that it resulted in mass temporary blindness and/or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Rubio .
Just this past Saturday , the senator from Florida was using his tiny thumbs to disagree with a former LSU Football star over whether black people are forgiving enough and also to expand on a point made by an Oregon sheriff about protestors being violent .
The day before that Rubio retweeted .
.
.
who is that there ?
.
.
.
oh yes , President Donald Trump .
The person whose tweets he never reads or sees .
Rubio was , of course , not alone .
Ron @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Rich ” Mitch McConnell , and Rick Scott all suffered from TemporaryTwitterBlindness-19 as well .
John Cornyn may have seen the president ’ s new conspiracy tweet but the issue was too complex for a man of his meager reading comprehension capabilities to comprehend .
Josh Hawley spent the morning crusading about First Amendment rights but had nothing to say about state violence against innocent protestors , nor the president ’ s repeated lies about it .
Apparently he likes the Fifth Amendment , too .
John Thune did see the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curve can be bent .
But then he echoed Lamar Alexander and other senators who said they do not want to be in the business of commenting on what the president of the United States has to say on a day-to-day basis .
This will , I hope , provide a very useful precedent for Joe Biden should he be elected in November .
This charade is one of the stupidest parts of a very stupid presidency .
These senators have ensconced themselves in a bubble where telling absurd lies rather than demonstrating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ survive politically but is an actual moral requirement .
In their minds anyone who tries to burst this bubble is unsophisticated at best and a big old meany at worst .
Okay , that last part ’ s not true .
At worst , anyone asking Republican senators what they think about the Republican president ’ s tweets is in league with Antifa and is asking for a beating from some Albany cops .
To be honest , you might even be Antifa just for reading this .
And so these boneless wonders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things right in front of their eyes .
In claiming that words and tweets don ’ t matter , convincing themselves that feigned ignorance and being false to the truth is the righteous path .
In a way , I suppose we should be thankful to Rubio and Cornyn and RonJon and Loeffler and Dan-O and Rick Scott and Mitch .
Because in refusing to tell us what they think about this obvious injustice , they have told us—yet again—exactly who , and what , they are .

Marco Rubio doesn’t read Twitter, he only writes on it. This would not be a terrible policy, if one were abiding by it. But Marco Rubio is not abiding by it. He is just telling a really dumb and obvious lie because he doesn’t have the hands to criticize Donald Trump.
Rubio’s latest pathetic Twitter lie was the result of his being asked an inconvenient question about the president of the United States’s most recent monstrous tweet, in which he accused 75-year-old protester Martin Gugino—who was pushed down by police and left to bleed like an unwanted rodent—of being secret Antifa.
President Trump sourced this theory from an OAN segment that was—I shit you not—reported by a man in a thick Russian accent who also—by total coincidence—works for the Russian state-owned propaganda network Sputnik.
In a vacuum one would imagine that if you’re a Republican senator who secretly loathes Trump but publicly plays nice with him, one of the easiest softballs you could ask for would be whether you condemn a preposterous, Russian-peddled conspiracy theory targeting an American citizen who was the victim of an attack that was caught on video. It’s a layup. An easy opportunity to say, “See, I call it like I see it” without any downside risk at all. A baby souljah moment. No reason at all to tell an absurd lie on this one.
Or as @MarcoRubio might put it:
James 3:14 – But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth
But that is not the world we live in. In our reality, senators were so flummoxed by the AARP-Antifa conspiracy that it resulted in mass temporary blindness and/or dissembling hysteria.
Which is what happened to Rubio. Just this past Saturday, the senator from Florida was using his tiny thumbs to disagree with a former LSU Football star over whether black people are forgiving enough and also to expand on a point made by an Oregon sheriff about protesters being violent. The day before that Rubio retweeted . . . who is that there? . . . oh yes, President Donald Trump. The person whose tweets he never reads or sees.
That is bizarre!
Rubio was, of course, not alone. Ron Johnson, Kelly Loeffler, Dan Sullivan, “Rich” Mitch McConnell, and Rick Scott all suffered from TemporaryTwitterBlindness-19 as well.
John Cornyn may have seen the president’s new conspiracy tweet but the issue was too complex for a man of his meager reading-comprehension abilities. Josh Hawley spent the morning crusading about First Amendment rights but had nothing to say about state violence against innocent protesters, nor the president’s repeated lies about it. Apparently he likes the Fifth Amendment, too.
John Thune did see the tweet—providing some hope that the Twitter blindness curve can be bent. But then he echoed Lamar Alexander and other senators who said they do not want to be in the business of commenting on what the president of the United States has to say on a day-to-day basis. This will, I hope, provide a very useful precedent for Joe Biden should he be elected in November.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
This charade is one of the stupidest parts of a very stupid presidency.
These senators have ensconced themselves in a bubble where telling absurd lies rather than demonstrating basic decency is not only required to survive politically but is an actual moral requirement.
In their minds anyone who tries to burst this bubble is unsophisticated at best and a big old meany at worst. Okay, that last part’s not true. At worst, anyone asking Republican senators what they think about the Republican president’s tweets is in league with Antifa and is asking for a beating from some Albany cops. To be honest, you might even be Antifa just for reading this.
And so these boneless wonders persist in pretending not to see the things right in front of their eyes. In claiming that words and tweets don’t matter, convincing themselves that feigned ignorance and being false to the truth is the righteous path.
In a way, I suppose we should be thankful to Rubio and Cornyn and RonJon and Loeffler and Dan-O and Rick Scott and Mitch. Because in refusing to tell us what they think about this obvious injustice, they have told us—yet again—exactly who, and what, they are.


thebulwark--2020-06-10--What do “Defund the Police” and “Abolish the Police” Really Mean?

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd , and massive nationwide protests against racism and police brutality , a previously niche idea has suddenly been thrust into the mainstream : Either “ defunding ” the police or abolishing them entirely .
On Sunday , the Minneapolis City Council pledged to eventually dismantle its police department .
It could become the first city not to have a police department .
Council member Jeremiah Ellison tweeted , “ when we ’ re done , we ’ re not simply gon na glue it back together .
We are going to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and emergency response.
” Meanwhile , the New York Times reports that some other cities , including Los Angeles and New York City , are considering shrinking the size and budgets of their police departments .
So what does this all mean , exactly ?
What do activists envision a world of defunded police—or no police at all—would look like ?
What is defunders ’ criticism of policing ?
Advocates of “ defunding ” argue that policing has been over-applied and tasked with dealing with too broad a variety of problems .
Yes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up fights—but they are also tasked with traffic enforcement , school security , drug enforcement , and arrests for petty crimes such as selling individual cigarettes ( the crime of which Eric Garner was suspected ) and using counterfeit bills ( the crime of which George Floyd was suspected ) .
Police are also typically the first responders to calls related to domestic violence and mental illness .
Activists say that by dealing with these problems primarily by dispatching police , they are turned into “ social workers with guns.
” Moreover , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ broken windows ” and stop-and-frisk policing , which activists argue amount to systemic harassment against minorities and low-income neighborhoods .
Does “ defund ” mean remove funding entirely ?
What does it mean ?
Most of the ideas that fall under the label “ defund the police ” would be more accurately described as “ shrink the police.
” Critics often argue that police budgets are simply too large—New York City ’ s annual police budget is $ 6 billion—and that much of that funding is inappropriately spent on military equipment .
Defunders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ money should be directed to other social services .
A frequently offered example is to create a body of mental health workers and social workers who would be better trained for dealing with individual crisis situations , domestic disturbances , and other community problems nonviolently .
A key claim of proponents of defunding is not only that police are too prone to escalate encounters , but that police officers often are not part of the communities they are policing .
This argument claims that many of the problems police are dispatched to deal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ members of the communities affected .
Activists thus want better funding for community services and jobs programs—which , they argue , might reduce crime and the need for police .
An introductory text by MPD150 , an organization that advocates for dismantling the Minneapolis police , argues , “ We ’ re talking about a gradual process of strategically reallocating resources , funding , and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety , support , and prevention.
” Has defunding been done before ?
Some elements of what is now @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done before .
Camden , New Jersey , dissolved its police department in 2013 due to high rates of crime and police misconduct .
The city ’ s police department was replaced with a county-level police force .
Many cities have already put into practice some of the programs activists are asking for , particularly mental health teams who aim to replace the traditional law enforcement paradigm for crisis situations .
Austin , Dallas , and Houston have all launched programs like this in the last few years .
However , these programs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cuts for the police departments .
Defunding on the scale advocated by some activists does not have obvious precedents in the era of modern U.S. policing .
What about “ abolish the police ” ?
Whereas defunders argue that policing should be more focused , tailored mainly to enforcing laws against violent crime , abolitionists argue that the institution as we know it should be dissolved .
“ Abolishing the police is about recognizing that every single effort at police reform has only ever resulted in reinventing the same oppressions all over again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a viral Twitter thread .
“ It ’ s about recognizing that maybe we just need to start over with a clean slate.
” Abolitionists use the term deliberately .
The authors of an essay in Jacobin draw analogies to the movements for the abolition of slavery , women ’ s suffrage , and civil rights .
They write , “ Central to abolitionist work are the many fights for non-reformist reforms—those measures that reduce the power of an oppressive system while illuminating the system ’ s inability to solve the crises it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shrink police budgets and hope that that fixes the problem ?
Yes and no .
Most abolitionists describe the dissolution of police departments as the ultimate goal of social reform rather than the primary means of achieving reform .
However , proponents of abolition are also more likely to describe the police not only as irredeemably dysfunctional , but as a source of the very problems they are supposed to solve .
The MPD150 text argues : Another organization , A World Without Police , argues more strongly that “ Historically , police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of businesses and the wealthy and enforce white supremacy ” and “ No amount of training , legal oversight , or reform can alter the fundamental violence of the police institution.
” It does not seem implausible , therefore , that abolitionists might view shrinking police budgets as a mechanism of reform and not just a desirable outcome .
Under abolition , what would replace the police ?
In part , abolitionists foresee a world in which social reforms have eliminated a great many of the problems that police currently handle .
However @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , sexual assault , and other crime will never disappear entirely , and argue that some sort of community-based organization tasked with occasionally using force will still be necessary .
The Minneapolis City Council ’ s pledge to dismantle its police force is notably lacking on specifics of what will replace it .
Abolitionist works typically argue that the need for such a force will be small , acknowledge that the solution still needs to be developed , and note how new the movement as a whole is .
That remains to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ week found that only 16 percent of Americans support reducing funding for the police , while 65 percent are opposed .
However , the idea is still new and its specifics likely unfamiliar to most Americans , and the Jacobin authors draw a parallel to the early unthinkability of past movements for radical social change : But it ’ s far from clear that the communities most affected by crime and police violence want abolition rather than reform .
Consider Chicago .
From 2005 to 2015 , black people constituted 72 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , while the population is only 32 percent black .
The city has also seen skyrocketing rates of murder and violent crime over the last few years , even as rates remained at historic lows in the rest of the country .
And a Gallup poll last year found that 60 percent of Chicagoans in low-income neighborhoods said people in their communities view the police negatively , compared to just 19 percent of the country as a whole .
Yet the Gallup poll also showed that what these same Chicagoans overwhelmingly want is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their neighborhood , not less—by a margin of 68 percent to 5 percent .
And recent weeks show what may happen when police departments fail to meet demand : After businesses were looted during the Floyd protests , the city , apparently unable to maintain the peace , hired private security forces to help protect businesses from looters .
In practice , as some have argued , police abolition might wind up looking a lot like police privatization .

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, and massive nationwide protests against racism and police brutality, a previously niche idea has suddenly been thrust into the mainstream: Either “defunding” the police or abolishing them entirely.
On Sunday, the Minneapolis City Council pledged to eventually dismantle its police department. It could become the first city not to have a police department.
Council member Jeremiah Ellison tweeted, “when we’re done, we’re not simply gonna glue it back together. We are going to dramatically rethink how we approach public safety and emergency response.” Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that some other cities, including Los Angeles and New York City, are considering shrinking the size and budgets of their police departments.
So what does this all mean, exactly? What do activists envision a world of defunded police—or no police at all—would look like?
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
What is defunders’ criticism of policing?
Advocates of “defunding” argue that policing has been over-applied and tasked with dealing with too broad a variety of problems.
Yes, police arrest violent criminals and break up fights—but they are also tasked with traffic enforcement, school security, drug enforcement, and arrests for petty crimes such as selling individual cigarettes (the crime of which Eric Garner was suspected) and using counterfeit bills (the crime of which George Floyd was suspected). Police are also typically the first responders to calls related to domestic violence and mental illness.
Activists say that by dealing with these problems primarily by dispatching police, they are turned into “social workers with guns.”
Moreover, many police departments have engaged in “broken windows” and stop-and-frisk policing, which activists argue amount to systemic harassment against minorities and low-income neighborhoods.
Does “defund” mean remove funding entirely? What does it mean?
Most of the ideas that fall under the label “defund the police” would be more accurately described as “shrink the police.” Critics often argue that police budgets are simply too large—New York City’s annual police budget is $6 billion—and that much of that funding is inappropriately spent on military equipment.
Defunders argue that a significant amount of this money should be directed to other social services. A frequently offered example is to create a body of mental health workers and social workers who would be better trained for dealing with individual crisis situations, domestic disturbances, and other community problems nonviolently.
A key claim of proponents of defunding is not only that police are too prone to escalate encounters, but that police officers often are not part of the communities they are policing. This argument claims that many of the problems police are dispatched to deal with would be better handled by real members of the communities affected.
Activists thus want better funding for community services and jobs programs—which, they argue, might reduce crime and the need for police. An introductory text by MPD150, an organization that advocates for dismantling the Minneapolis police, argues, “We’re talking about a gradual process of strategically reallocating resources, funding, and responsibility away from police and toward community-based models of safety, support, and prevention.”
Has defunding been done before?
Some elements of what is now being called “defunding” have been done before. Camden, New Jersey, dissolved its police department in 2013 due to high rates of crime and police misconduct. The city’s police department was replaced with a county-level police force. Many cities have already put into practice some of the programs activists are asking for, particularly mental health teams who aim to replace the traditional law enforcement paradigm for crisis situations. Austin, Dallas, and Houston have all launched programs like this in the last few years.
However, these programs have largely not been accompanied by funding cuts for the police departments. Defunding on the scale advocated by some activists does not have obvious precedents in the era of modern U.S. policing.
What about “abolish the police”?
Whereas defunders argue that policing should be more focused, tailored mainly to enforcing laws against violent crime, abolitionists argue that the institution as we know it should be dissolved.
“Abolishing the police is about recognizing that every single effort at police reform has only ever resulted in reinventing the same oppressions all over again,” writes advocate Bridget Eileen in a viral Twitter thread. “It’s about recognizing that maybe we just need to start over with a clean slate.”
Abolitionists use the term deliberately. The authors of an essay in Jacobin draw analogies to the movements for the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and civil rights. They write, “Central to abolitionist work are the many fights for non-reformist reforms—those measures that reduce the power of an oppressive system while illuminating the system’s inability to solve the crises it creates.”
Do activists just want to shrink police budgets and hope that that fixes the problem?
Yes and no. Most abolitionists describe the dissolution of police departments as the ultimate goal of social reform rather than the primary means of achieving reform.
However, proponents of abolition are also more likely to describe the police not only as irredeemably dysfunctional, but as a source of the very problems they are supposed to solve. The MPD150 text argues:
Crime isn’t random. Most of the time, it happens when someone has been unable to meet their basic needs through other means. So to really “fight crime,” we don’t need more cops; we need more jobs, more educational opportunities, more arts programs, more community centers, more mental health resources, and more of a say in how our own communities function.
Another organization, A World Without Police, argues more strongly that “Historically, police forces were created to protect the property of businesses and the wealthy and enforce white supremacy” and “No amount of training, legal oversight, or reform can alter the fundamental violence of the police institution.”
It does not seem implausible, therefore, that abolitionists might view shrinking police budgets as a mechanism of reform and not just a desirable outcome.
Under abolition, what would replace the police?
In part, abolitionists foresee a world in which social reforms have eliminated a great many of the problems that police currently handle. However, most acknowledge that theft, murder, sexual assault, and other crime will never disappear entirely, and argue that some sort of community-based organization tasked with occasionally using force will still be necessary.
The Minneapolis City Council’s pledge to dismantle its police force is notably lacking on specifics of what will replace it. Abolitionist works typically argue that the need for such a force will be small, acknowledge that the solution still needs to be developed, and note how new the movement as a whole is.
Is it politically realistic?
That remains to be seen. A YouGov poll released last week found that only 16 percent of Americans support reducing funding for the police, while 65 percent are opposed.
However, the idea is still new and its specifics likely unfamiliar to most Americans, and the Jacobin authors draw a parallel to the early unthinkability of past movements for radical social change:
Whether in response to private property and nineteenth-century chattel slavery, or the prison industrial complex of the last half century, abolitionist movements have unsettled not only conservative critics but liberals, progressives, and even some radicals. The stubborn immediacy of the demand disturbs those who hope for resolution of intractable social problems within the confines of the existing order. To them, abolition is unworkably utopian and therefore not pragmatic.
But it’s far from clear that the communities most affected by crime and police violence want abolition rather than reform.
Consider Chicago. From 2005 to 2015, black people constituted 72 percent of those against whom city police used force, while the population is only 32 percent black. The city has also seen skyrocketing rates of murder and violent crime over the last few years, even as rates remained at historic lows in the rest of the country. And a Gallup poll last year found that 60 percent of Chicagoans in low-income neighborhoods said people in their communities view the police negatively, compared to just 19 percent of the country as a whole.
Yet the Gallup poll also showed that what these same Chicagoans overwhelmingly want is for police to spend more time in their neighborhood, not less—by a margin of 68 percent to 5 percent. And recent weeks show what may happen when police departments fail to meet demand: After businesses were looted during the Floyd protests, the city, apparently unable to maintain the peace, hired private security forces to help protect businesses from looters.
In practice, as some have argued, police abolition might wind up looking a lot like police privatization.


thebulwark--2020-06-10--How to Change Lethal Force Rules for Police

On Monday , Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 .
The bill contains measures that , if passed into law , would make it easier to prosecute police misconduct and demilitarize police departments around the country .
It also would change the legal standard in such lawsuits so that plaintiffs would only have to show that the police acted “ recklessly ” rather than “ willfully.
” Finally , it would end the qualified immunity that shields officers from lawsuits .
These reforms are important and it would be good if they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ help hold police accountable for their actions .
But another pathway to reform is to start from the beginning and change guidelines under which police are authorized to use lethal force in the first place .
Under current law , police may use lethal force when neither their life nor the lives of others are in danger .
In this way , they are given leeway well beyond what is accorded to private citizens .
The key case in granting them that leeway dates to 1985 when a police officer in Memphis , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Eric Garner who died in 2014 in New York City at the hands of the police ) .
That Garner was an unarmed , black 15-year-old child .
After being told to halt by police , he continued to run from the backyard of a house he was suspected of burglarizing .
He was shot and killed .
Subsequently Eric ’ s father sued , claiming that the police shooting constituted an unreasonable seizure and violated his son ’ s Fourth Amendment rights .
When his suit reached the Supreme Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ common law to understand the origins of the regulation of police use of lethal force .
They determined that the original rationale was antiquated .
It allowed police to kill fleeing felons because , at the time , most felonies were capital crimes .
The Supreme Court held that in order for police use of force to pass constitutional muster it must be “ objectively reasonable.
” It said that such force may not be used to apprehend suspects unless it is “ necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.
” The justices determined that the officer who shot Garner could not reasonably have believed that a young , slight , and unarmed person posed any threat .
And , even if he had such a belief , “ It is not better , ” as Justice White wrote in his majority opinion , “ that all felony suspects die than that they escape.
” Yet the Court gave little guidance about what might constitute a “ reasonable ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only that “ if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm , deadly force may be used.
” Referencing the probable cause standard did little to restrict police .
It simply restated the reasonableness standard using other language , without clarifying how a police officer would determine , in an instant , whether or not a suspect posed a “ significant threat ” of death or injury .
Moreover @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ significant threat ” was a major departure from the legal standards governing the use of lethal force by private citizens in self-defense situations .
For ordinary citizens , the law of self-defense requires that a threat be imminent or immediate .
Four years after Garner , in Graham v. Connor , the Supreme Court extended the reach of the Fourth Amendment to cover all excessive force cases .
Graham , a black man who was diabetic and suffering from the effects of low blood sugar , was beaten by police officers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them .
The Court again relied on the “ objective reasonableness ” standard as the key to defining the conditions under which the police could use force .
But in Graham the Court further opened the door to police violence by saying that the That “ allowance ” has played a key role in exonerating police in criminal prosecutions regarding the use of excessive force and the death of suspects .
The Court relied on this allowance again in 2014 when it determined that it was reasonable for police officers to shoot 15 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 100 miles per hour .
As Justice Alito put it “ In light of the circumstances…it is beyond serious dispute that the flight posed a grave public safety risk , and…the police acted reasonably in using deadly force to end that risk.
” Today , 45 years after Garner , the reasonableness standard and its accompanying allowances are still in place .
But by now Americans should have learned that the police perception of “ significant threats , ” and the allowance that the Court affords them , are filtered through a racial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deal of unreasonable police misconduct .
In light of the Floyd tragedy and countless other killings of unarmed African-Americans , Congress should not only make suing wayward police officers easier .
It also should create incentives for states and localities to severely limit police authority to shoot citizens .
It is also time for the Supreme Court to recognize that the objective reasonableness standard is inadequate .
The Court should revisit Garner , end the allowance it has provided police , and restrict police use of lethal force to situations when their life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imminent or immediate danger .

On Monday, Democrats in the House of Representatives introduced the Justice in Policing Act of 2020.
The bill contains measures that, if passed into law, would make it easier to prosecute police misconduct and demilitarize police departments around the country. It also would change the legal standard in such lawsuits so that plaintiffs would only have to show that the police acted “recklessly” rather than “willfully.” Finally, it would end the qualified immunity that shields officers from lawsuits.
These reforms are important and it would be good if they were signed into law because they would help hold police accountable for their actions. But another pathway to reform is to start from the beginning and change guidelines under which police are authorized to use lethal force in the first place.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Under current law, police may use lethal force when neither their life nor the lives of others are in danger. In this way, they are given leeway well beyond what is accorded to private citizens.
The key case in granting them that leeway dates to 1985 when a police officer in Memphis, Tennessee killed Eric Garner (no relation to the Eric Garner who died in 2014 in New York City at the hands of the police). That Garner was an unarmed, black 15-year-old child. After being told to halt by police, he continued to run from the backyard of a house he was suspected of burglarizing. He was shot and killed.
Subsequently Eric’s father sued, claiming that the police shooting constituted an unreasonable seizure and violated his son’s Fourth Amendment rights.
When his suit reached the Supreme Court, the justices went back to the common law to understand the origins of the regulation of police use of lethal force. They determined that the original rationale was antiquated. It allowed police to kill fleeing felons because, at the time, most felonies were capital crimes.
The Supreme Court held that in order for police use of force to pass constitutional muster it must be “objectively reasonable.” It said that such force may not be used to apprehend suspects unless it is “necessary to prevent the escape and the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”
The justices determined that the officer who shot Garner could not reasonably have believed that a young, slight, and unarmed person posed any threat. And, even if he had such a belief, “It is not better,” as Justice White wrote in his majority opinion, “that all felony suspects die than that they escape.”
Yet the Court gave little guidance about what might constitute a “reasonable” use of lethal force. It said only that “if the suspect threatens the officer with a weapon or there is probable cause to believe that he has committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious physical harm, deadly force may be used.”
Referencing the probable cause standard did little to restrict police. It simply restated the reasonableness standard using other language, without clarifying how a police officer would determine, in an instant, whether or not a suspect posed a “significant threat” of death or injury.
Moreover, the Court’s reference to a “significant threat” was a major departure from the legal standards governing the use of lethal force by private citizens in self-defense situations. For ordinary citizens, the law of self-defense requires that a threat be imminent or immediate.
Four years after Garner, in Graham v. Connor, the Supreme Court extended the reach of the Fourth Amendment to cover all excessive force cases. Graham, a black man who was diabetic and suffering from the effects of low blood sugar, was beaten by police officers who claimed he was drunk and threatening them. The Court again relied on the “objective reasonableness” standard as the key to defining the conditions under which the police could use force.
But in Graham the Court further opened the door to police violence by saying that the
“reasonableness” of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, and its calculus must embody an allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation.
That “allowance” has played a key role in exonerating police in criminal prosecutions regarding the use of excessive force and the death of suspects.
The Court relied on this allowance again in 2014 when it determined that it was reasonable for police officers to shoot 15 rounds during an automobile chase that exceeded 100 miles per hour. As Justice Alito put it “In light of the circumstances…it is beyond serious dispute that the flight posed a grave public safety risk, and…the police acted reasonably in using deadly force to end that risk.”
Today, 35 years after Garner, the reasonableness standard and its accompanying allowances are still in place. But by now Americans should have learned that the police perception of “significant threats,” and the allowance that the Court affords them, are filtered through a racial lens and have resulted in a great deal of unreasonable police misconduct.
In light of the Floyd tragedy and countless other killings of unarmed African-Americans, Congress should not only make suing wayward police officers easier. It also should create incentives for states and localities to severely limit police authority to shoot citizens.
It is also time for the Supreme Court to recognize that the objective reasonableness standard is inadequate.
The Court should revisit Garner, end the allowance it has provided police, and restrict police use of lethal force to situations when their life or the lives of others are in imminent or immediate danger.


thebulwark--2020-06-10--Don’t Abolish the Police. Reform Them.

Don’t Abolish the Police. Reform Them.

But simply reducing budgets without first addressing how police forces are structured and function , is an invitation to even worse outcomes .
So instead of “ defunding ” or “ abolishing ” the police , we ought to look to cities that have successfully recreated their law enforcement structures on principles that genuinely honor the central ideas of protection and service .
A lot of people are talking about Camden , New Jersey , which has the distinction of being ( a ) one of the most corrupt cities in New Jersey and ( b ) a city that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entire police force .
But the most interesting thing isn ’ t how Camden abolished the Camden police .
It ’ s how the city successfully recreated a police force that sees itself as an ally of the community rather than its warden .
For a long time , the Camden police didn ’ t have a great relationship with residents .
Nor were they particularly good at protecting the city .
There was distrust between residents and the officers who mounted heavy military equipment to patrol neighborhoods racked by violence and drugs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kept getting worse .
In 2012 , the city of 77,000 had the fifth most murders per hundred thousand residents nationwide .
Police-community tensions were high as were complaints about excessive use of force—more than 60 annually .
Then , something interesting happened .
In 2012 , Camden dissolved its police department and rebuilt it from the ground up .
The entire force was dismissed and invited to reapply .
The new department was radically different .
First , it was much larger , rising from 250 to 411 officers .
Second , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Each applicant had to fill out a 50-page application , and retake physical and psychological exams to ensure they would be able to appropriately serve their communities .
Candidates who are accepted now undergo implicit bias training , and because there are many more officers on the streets , they have time to meet the communities they are protecting .
Local graduates of the police academy go door-knocking and on footbeats .
They see themselves as guardians and not warriors , a mindset that is set forth and enforced through the city ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s policy , which was updated in 2019 , is highly restrictive , going beyond both Supreme Court case law and the requirements of the New Jersey attorney general .
Running nearly 20 pages and negotiated with the cooperation of the Fraternal Order of Police local ( as well as the American Civil Liberties Union ) , it provides detailed specifications on when force may be used legitimately and ensures it is not available as a matter of convenience .
The objective in crafting this doctrine was to create an environment that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police force .
On balance , these reforms have been successful .
Complaints about excessive force are down 95 percent since 2014—there were a total of three of them in 2019 .
Homicides fell by nearly one-third between 2012 and 2019 and the “ clearance rate ” on murder and violent crime increased .
There have , however , been challenges .
More officers on the street has increased arrests and summonses for petty crime .
Much of the new force is white—which is problematic in a largely African-American community .
This combination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of greater trust between the force and the community .
The left and right can both learn from Camden .
For the right , it shows that radical restructuring need not mean a “ defunding ” that returns communities to a state of nature .
Rather , the restructuring has sought to vindicate the dignity and rights of individuals , families , and neighborhoods by reconstituting law enforcement as a servant rather than a master .
While the force has expanded by 40 percent , the police budget has increased by only about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Officers are getting paid a lot less , with the average annual salary falling from $ 182,168 to $ 99,605 .
Yet while this drop in pay has a leaner force , it ’ s also created a kinder and more professional force .
Which is not a consequence that would have been immediately obvious , market economics being what they are .
For the left , this experiment is showing that a police force can be strong without being either brutal or abusive .
Further , it shows that police who understand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become a more positive force in the community rather than one that is in tension with those who it exists to serve .
In 1968 , vast swaths of many American cities were destroyed by riots in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr. ’ s assassination .
This set off decades of disempowerment and decline in mainly minority communities .
But not all cities suffered this fate .
In Indianapolis , Bobby Kennedy , appealing to his slain brother ’ s memory , prevented an outbreak of violence and destruction .
New @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other minority leaders to protect their city .
These leaders were successful because their relationship with vulnerable communities preceded the crisis .
That ’ s the most important lesson of Camden as well : As former Camden police chief , Scott Thomson , explained : “ What we ’ re experiencing today in Camden is the result of many years of deposits in the relationship bank account.
” That kind of social and relational capital is not cheap—it can ’ t be done by reducing or eliminating police departments en masse—but it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is stronger and more peaceful communities , it will be worth the price .

Our police forces are bloated.
But simply reducing budgets without first addressing how police forces are structured and function is an invitation to even worse outcomes. So instead of “defunding” or “abolishing” the police, we ought to look to cities that have successfully recreated their law enforcement structures on principles that genuinely honor the central ideas of protection and service.
A lot of people are talking about Camden, New Jersey, which has the distinction of being (a) one of the most corrupt cities in New Jersey and (b) a city that took the extraordinary step of disbanding its entire police force.
But the most interesting thing isn’t how Camden abolished the Camden police. It’s how the city successfully recreated a police force that sees itself as an ally of the community rather than its warden.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
For a long time, the Camden police didn’t have a great relationship with residents. Nor were they particularly good at protecting the city. There was distrust between residents and the officers who mounted heavy military equipment to patrol neighborhoods racked by violence and drugs. And Camden’s crime numbers kept getting worse. In 2012, the city of 77,000 had the fifth most murders per hundred thousand residents nationwide. Police-community tensions were high, as were complaints about excessive use of force—more than 60 annually. Then something interesting happened.
In 2012, Camden dissolved its police department and rebuilt it from the ground up. The entire force was dismissed and invited to reapply. The new department was radically different. First, it was much larger, rising from 250 to 411 officers.
Second, the method of hiring officers changed: Each applicant had to fill out a 50-page application, and retake physical and psychological exams to ensure they would be able to appropriately serve their communities.
Candidates who are accepted now undergo implicit bias training, and because there are many more officers on the streets, they have time to meet the communities they are protecting. Local graduates of the police academy go door-knocking and on footbeats. They see themselves as guardians and not warriors, a mindset that is set forth and enforced through the city’s comprehensive use-of-force policy.
Camden’s policy, which was updated in 2019, is highly restrictive, going beyond both Supreme Court case law and the requirements of the New Jersey attorney general. Running nearly 20 pages and negotiated with the cooperation of the Fraternal Order of Police local (as well as the American Civil Liberties Union), it provides detailed specifications on when force may be used legitimately and ensures it is not available as a matter of convenience. The objective in crafting this doctrine was to create an environment that was safer for both the community and the police force.
On balance, these reforms have been successful. Complaints about excessive force are down 95 percent since 2014—there were a total of three of them in 2019. Homicides fell by nearly one-third between 2012 and 2019 and the “clearance rate” on murder and violent crime increased.
There have, however, been challenges. Having more officers on the street has increased arrests and summonses for petty crime. Much of the new force is white—which is problematic in a largely African-American community. This combination of factors has probably inhibited the development of greater trust between the force and the community.
The left and right can both learn from Camden. For the right, it shows that radical restructuring need not mean a “defunding” that returns communities to a state of nature. Rather, the restructuring has sought to vindicate the dignity and rights of individuals, families, and neighborhoods by reconstituting law enforcement as a servant rather than a master. While the force has expanded by 64 percent, the police budget has increased by only about 9 percent during the same period. Officers are getting paid a lot less, with the average annual salary falling from $182,168 to $99,605. Without the pay reduction, the expansion of the force would have been impossible—and that expansion helped make the force kinder and better attuned to the needs of the community. Which is not a consequence that would have been immediately obvious, market economics being what they are.
For the left, this experiment is showing that a police force can be strong without being either brutal or abusive. Further, it shows that police who understand the proper role of law enforcement can become a more positive force in the community rather than one that is in tension with the people whom it exists to serve.
In 1968, vast swaths of many American cities were destroyed by riots in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. This set off decades of disempowerment and decline in mainly minority communities. But not all cities suffered this fate.
In Indianapolis, Bobby Kennedy, appealing to his slain brother’s memory, prevented an outbreak of violence and destruction. New York Mayor John Lindsay collaborated with African-American and other minority leaders to protect their city.
These leaders were successful because their relationship with vulnerable communities preceded the crisis.
That’s the most important lesson of Camden as well: As former Camden police chief, Scott Thomson, explained: “What we’re experiencing today in Camden is the result of many years of deposits in the relationship bank account.”
That kind of social and relational capital is not cheap—it can’t be done by reducing or eliminating police departments en masse—but it pays great dividends. If the result is stronger and more peaceful communities, it will be worth the price.