BLM is Wrong: Defunding & "Community Policing" are NOT the Answer.

if it's a couple more words I got on the
phone with her yeah hey you know you want number one or number two or but she's like we do it which you agree you are you take care of that you're may you figure out what we believe tonight would you agree that you've had too much to drink it's dry we are wont to change them you tell me that it's eeveelution well you know we all wanna change them when you talk about destruction don't you know that you can count me and you know it's gonna be community policing has emerged as the unquestioned solution to the largely unexplored problem of why police services the United States of America are terrible or at least hated and resented by Hughes and the population if not terrible at least he resented by a huge population community policing is presumed to mean fewer police at a lower cost delivering a better results with lower crime miraculously better outcomes and in this strange unexamined sense community suggests that the police are less like a professional service less like a branch of the military you might say and that they're they're your friends and neighbors they're they're people from the community whatever that means and this deep unexamined level people just want to assume members of your own community or wonderful people they're not corrupt they're not bullying they're not violent they're not oppressive people from other communities are corrupt and public and 500 president local community policing that would supposedly be some kind of wonderful improvement the black lives matter organization is calling for a national defunding of the police but the specifics look different in every city for example black lives matter la has proposed a budget that would cut police funding for more than 50% of the total city budget - just under six percent and somehow whatever is wrong with policing in the United States of America it's not that it could be improved by having more professionalism higher standards of professionalism no no the solution proposed by community policing is to have more amateurs to have less professionals to have more volunteerism you might say which is a grand American tradition going back to the revolution no one seems to be cognizant of the irony that what killed ahmud armory was not highly professional police services it was volunteer amateur community policing also known as vigilantism right it was two members of his community who stopped him because they saw him entering and exiting a building that was under construction they suspected he was going to steal something they stopped him to make us citizen's arrest these are members of the community right and they're the type of men who I think in my subjective opinion the two men who shot and killed almond Arbor I think they're not fit to serve I think they're not qualified I don't I think they don't have the intelligence they don't have the education that's just my opinion open the honest with you the first time I saw a photograph of the faces of the two white men who shot and killed amun-re I laughed loud cuz to me from my prejudiced highly-educated perspective they looked like dumb ignorant rednecks and I thought that just looking at a photograph of their faces can we stop and reflect on how unfair that is of me I just don't seem to share the reckless optimism of members of black lives matter that if we take the power away from highly professional police services and hand it over to amateurs and volunteers in the community that somehow that'll mean a wonderful movement I think on the contrary the slayings that have led up to the protests of 2020 really serve to teach us the opposite lesson and paradoxically as I'm about to show in a few clips what happened in the United States of America when one small town in New Jersey Camden New Jersey population seventy-five thousand when they got on this ideological train of defunding the police abolishing the police what actually happened wasn't that they created a new Police Service that had lower costs and was closer to the community had fewer police in the street on the contrary listen for it carefully what we're told is they had three times as many cops in the street and while they changed the name of their Police Department if you just look at the uniforms these guys are wearing the fact that every single one of them has a gun on his or her hip it's obvious that the reality of policing in Camden New Jersey has remained profoundly the same another way a city could execute sweeping overhauls in law enforcement is to disband its police force and rebuild it from scratch the strategy is rare but there are a few examples Camden New Jersey took this approach in 2012 after crime levels hit record highs seven years ago Camden County New Jersey had some of the highest crime rates in the nation and leaders say public trust in police was almost zero so something had a change that's when county director Louis Capelli jr. and others decided to start over to rebuild their Police Department from the ground up with mostly new officers new policies and training and a focus on community we now have three times as many officers on the street three times as many officers on the street let's talk more about a growing support of Minneapolis for dismantling the city's police department following the death of George Floyd this idea is not a new one it's already happened in New Jersey back in 2013 Camden did just that with a renewed focus on community service some Camden residents fear the good press has gotten ahead of itself longtime activist pastor Amir Khan and Kevin Benson say when they disbanded the city police and replaced it with county cops the police force became more like the Kansas City Police Department had what the Camden County Police Department has now it would be just as successful and you wouldn't have had most of the individuals coming from the outside Kansas City police force was a lot of community people it was black and brown it was people who look like me but now what you have is you have a new police force which is majority white there's a lot of resentment about the police being taken over the residents did not want that the only question is will the same system that works for a community of 75,000 people work in Minneapolis nearly a week after nine members of the Minneapolis City Council made a drastic pledge to take apart the police department the council took its first steps on Friday in a slow complicated process that could eventually lead to shifting funds from the city police but that process will last for more than a year and will require voters to actually approve of removing the police department from the city's core departments patrisse cullors co-founder of the black lives matter movement said defunding the police means reallocating those funds to support people and services in marginalized communities defunding law enforcement quote means that we are reducing the ability for law enforcement to have resources that harm our communities close quote keep in mind three times as many police on the streets three times as many officers on the street three times as many police on the streets colors said an interview with WBUR Boston's public radio station quote it's about reinvesting those dollars into black communities communities that have been deeply divested from those dollars can be put back into social services for mental health domestic violence and homelessness among others police are often the first responders to all three she said if we're going to question who is and who is not qualified in our society to be a police officer and we should profound and difficult set of questions that don't lead to some easy one-word answer like community the solution to America's policing problems is not community policing how could it be shouldn't we also be questioning who would be qualified to engage in this kind of research and analysis who would be qualified to really guide a process of reform for how policing is done in the United States America I think that patrisse cullors co-founder of black lives matter is in no way qualified for this tremendously difficult task colors was born in Los Angeles California she grew up in a low-income neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley she became an activist early in life joining the bus riders union as a teenager she later earned a degree in religion and philosophy from UCLA pardon me her degree was in religious studies not philosophy she teaches at Otis College of Art and Design in the public practice program she also teaches the masters arts and social justice community organizing at Prescott College in an interview colors has described herself and Alicia Garza as quote trained Marxists close quote in the 21st century it's very easy to find quite a lot of high-quality information about the university program she has a product of just a few years ago by the way she was mature student shall we say in UCLA getting her bachelor's degree in religious studies you get the full list of courses and you can indeed pause to reflect on how poorly a UCLA degree in religious studies would prepare you to guide the nation in reforming its police services black lives matter la has proposed a budget that would cut police funding for more than 50% of the total city budget to just under six percent finally the most radical plan for police reform involves abolishing the police altogether similar to the defunding approach most of the activists in this camp are in favor of strengthening social and community services in place of law enforcement can you think of other majors you could have studied at university that would prepare you to play this role can you think of other types of research you you might have done could you even think of some processes like having elections or voting on specific propositions and referendums do you think there's a way the public could be led through examining the different options that would be better than this woman emerging as the leader associated with a catch phrase black lives matter ultimately that's all this hits this woman who's emerged because her name is attached to this catch phrase her being treated as the expert on how precisely how now the United States of America should restructure its police services while other cities boiled over here the police chief marched with the protesters our officers are Guardians they're not worriers and Camden County freeholder director Lewis Capelli says the relative harmony between police and community is a result of Camden taking a radical step 7 years ago disbanding its City Police tearing up union contracts and replacing the department with a larger County police force were focused on neighborhood patrol the city laid off its entire staff overhauled training to emphasize community we sang and rehired about 40% of officers I heard two historians talking just a few weeks ago about the history of the Haitian Revolution this was the revolution in Haiti that rose up to abolish slavery and then thereafter had to fight against the armies of Napoleon for their independence and one historian said to the other well isn't it true that while this revolution is described as a success the slaves rose up they murdered the white slave owners they established a new republic in two places isn't it true on the other hand that this story begins with these men and women living in slavery being compelled to labor on farms and it ends with them being compelled to labor on exactly the same farms that before they had a kind of tyrannical tyrannical dictatorial regime and now they just have a different tyrannical dictatorial regime and they're stuck and so isn't there a sense in which really the revolution is much less successful than we pretended to be when viewed in these terms and the other historian replied well no you're presuming that the purpose the revolution is just to change the form of government if you will and know what really matters here is that the particular people who were in charge were eliminated by the revolution to be blunt they were massacred in this case what really matters is not the question of whether or not they work on farms or whether or not there are democratic elections or what-have-you what really matters is that the revolution accomplished the change in a particular people who are in authority these slaves although they were in a condition kind of 80% the same as slavery after the Revolution working on the same farms and the same conditions and in worst poverty because the revolution completely destroyed the economies of poverty got dramatically worse by the way um however they had risen up and they had eliminated the people who formerly literally kept them in Chains literally whipped them branded them tortured them publicly executed them and horrifying and humiliating kind of ceremonies they had eliminated the particular generation of people the particular generation of landowners and slave owners who had been oppressing them before are you just trying to change the particular people who happen to be police or are you trying to fundamentally change policing I think we can look back at the short film clips of your showing you this supposedly transform police force in Camden New Jersey and we can all agree these are still police who very much dress and act like military men it's really a military uniform they're wearing they have a gun on their hips at all times in no sense is the role of the police officer transformed by this process of quote/unquote abolishing the police you know the quote-unquote abolished the police department meaning that on paper the name of the police department was rubbed out and a new name for a new Police Department was written in what they did succeed in changing apparently they fired all of the police and then hired back about 40% of them so maybe 60% of the police lost their jobs and didn't get them back so there were some particular people who were changed the other thing mentioned their ever so briefly they tripled the number of police in the streets if you think policing is oppressive then this new model of community policing is more oppressive contrary to the promise quoted from black lives matter in Los Angeles we're talking about a dramatic decrease in the budgets for policing we're talking about a dramatic increase in the budgets of policing black lives matter representatives who are sometimes just people like myself the internet talking on a camera I weren't particularly appointed but they like to say that mental health professionals should be having many of these encounter - reaching out to people instead of police officers do you think psychiatrists work cheap do you think you'll have a smaller budget to have psychiatrists available 24 hours a day seven days a week do you think that psychiatrists are morally pure people in some sense that police are not in some sense that your fellow community members are not what is the assumption that psychiatrists are good and upstanding people I'll tell you something if I bumped into and all friend from high school someone I hadn't seen for 20 years and he told me that he had become a police officer and he was working as a police officer right now my opinion of him would increase my opinion of the type of person he is ethically I would I would just think oh I would think he was a good person or I think he was a better person than I had assumed previously for my memory of him 20 years earlier if I bump into the same friend from high school who I haven't seen for 20 years and he told me that he's become a psychiatrist he's become a bio psychiatrist he's someone who hands out prescriptions for antidepressants and so on and so forth he's someone who maybe gives people electroshock therapy or talks them through their memories and disorder my opinion of him would be worse I would regard him with more suspicion more hostility more distrust just being honest with you guys I do not think anyone who studied the history of psychiatry just in the last 50 years in many ways it's a terrifying profession full of terrifying people and giving them a gun and a badge and putting them on 24-hour service I can actually imagine a lot of ways in which that would go horribly wrong there's no real reason to assume that psychiatrists are wonderful compassionate people there's no reason to assume that members of your own community are wonderful compassionate people whereas hiring someone from the next town 30 miles away or a hundred miles away would somehow result in a much worse police force there could be wonderful compassionate people in the next town too there were a lot of really strange self-evidently nonsensical assumptions bundled up in this call for police reform and community policing people want something better but they can't even articulate what that is and people like the leaders of black lives matter the BA and religious studies from UCLA they can't even engage in the analysis of precisely what is wrong with the system you've already got tan tan tan [Music]