We are approaching four months since the death of George Floyd and the subsequent calls for the defunding of police departments across the country. After Northwest Chicago residents asked for more police presence due to a doubling of shootings over last year, their Alderman (33rd Ward) responded with a resounding no; she wants to push forward with the COHOOTS method instead. Minneapolis has already cut back on policing after the city council voted to shut the entire police department in an effort at a redesign. We are starting to get some data on what defunding the police might look like, and it looks a lot like rising crime rates.
It is nearly impossible to prove causality when there are so many other earth-shaking factors to take into consideration, though. We are in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years and social unrest that rivals that of the Civil Rights era. Still, we can compare the violent crime in Minneapolis – the only city to take any action on defunding their police department – and other cities across the country.
Murder rates may be up in major cities across the country, but violent crime overall (which includes things like burglaries) is sharply lower. Minneapolis is an exception; violent crime rates are up nearly 20% in the city as the number of officers has declined and response times have climbed. As a point of comparison, Chicago’s violent crime rate is down about nine percent from last year.
To be fair to the defunders, a replacement for the current system of policing is yet to be implemented. The CAHOOTS program, as mentioned earlier, is one example of a successful implementation of a supplement to police in Eugene, Oregon. The program costs about three percent as much as the police department, but it takes about a fifth of 911 calls. Dispatchers determine whether to route a call to the police or CAHOOTS (crisis assistance helping out on the streets) and the crisis worker is sent to take care of the situation rather than a police officer. Should the crisis worker determine they are not equipped to handle the situation, they will then call for help from the police. This happened 150 times in 2019 in approximately 24,000 calls.
The program is extremely successful and saves the city millions of dollars (the director estimates approximately $15 million in savings), but it is still only a supplement. Police are absolutely necessary during dangerous situations. The police, in fact, may be UNDERfunded. The US has about 35 fewer police officers per 100,000 residents compared to the rest of the world. The difference is that we spend much more money on our prison system because of uniquely harsh sentencing among all countries in the developed world. We have approximately 155 more corrections officers (prison guards) per 100,000 residents than the average country and more than 300 more prisoners. In fact, spending on police as a ratio to spending on prisons is lower in the US than anywhere else in the world. Laws on policing need to be modified so that we are not protecting police who behave badly, but policing itself should not be discarded. Polling suggests that most people – including black people – want the same or MORE police, not less. Spending money on police is much more effective at keeping us safe than prisons. By taking a hard look at what we want to carry a penalty of prison (and for how long), we might be able to tip the ratio of spending in the direction of police. Funding is tight and police popularity is at a nadir, but we can make police more available for the job of keeping us safe if we spend a bit of money creating positions like crisis workers.