Body cameras and the push to de-fund the police
I wanted to start this update by letting everyone who's signed know that we have amassed over 50 000 signatures for the cause. My hope is that the unexpected level of support will show the HRM/HRP that the Halifax community is serious about our demand for change.
The conversation around how we can address unjust police behaviour is continually evolving, so while I'm not an expert and it hasn’t been my focus, I want to address the voices that are calling for the defunding of police forces by the government and how it pertains to police accountability. One main motivation for the initial creation of police (particularly, here in Canada, in the case of the RCMP) was to control Indigenous populations and other racial minorities. Previously, governments have tried to address higher crime rates by allocating larger budgets to law enforcement but time and time again, it’s been shown that that does not work. Giving police more resources and increased power has not helped communities – it has criminalized them so something needs to change.
This is part of the reason the idea of defunding the police is growing traction. Police are the first responders for a wide range of situations, including many better suited to other professionals. Social workers, mental health emergency intervention professionals, or other non-violent crisis interventionists are better equipped to approach many of the issues police have traditionally (and questionably) been relied on to address. While there is some support for a total abolition of police (which may not be realistic or at least attainable any time soon under government structure, as is unprecedented), defunding doesn’t generally refer to a total elimination of police services. As such, measures for officer accountability still need to be implemented. Many supporters of the idea to defund police acknowledge that there is still a role for police officers to play in crime control and suggest a divest-invest model for the police budget: A scaling back of the scope of police practice to better reflect the specific skillset of a reduced number of officers, increased monitoring of police where those skills are required by measures such as body cameras, and a diversifying of emergency services to better (and less violently) handle the needs of the communities they serve by reallocation of historically large police budgets.
Our broken system is a complex problem and all proposed solutions are as a result also complex, and I’m not an expert, but the ideas of defunding police and implementing accountability measures are not mutually exclusive. This is not intended as a thorough examination of police defunding, it is simply my take on it, and I want to share it with everyone else who has been calling for police accountability and continuing to self-educate.
A few articles about the movement to defund police forces, generally focused on the idea of divestment/investment rather than abolition:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90511824/is-it-time-to-defund-the-police
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/07/the-price-of-defunding-the-police/533232/