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The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself. Why we need to defund the police and how we get there.
Alex S. Vitale
Summary
This book describes how policing came to be and mostly how it has evolved. Alex Vitale makes the argument that in most use cases where the police is used today, the police are not helping and in many ways actively hurting.
We find out policing is relatively recent phenomenon, having really been created by the British trying to quell uprisings in Ireland in ~1814. This spread to other countries for the same reasons. Vitale attempts to go back to first principles reasoning on what police do and whether they are the best solution for that.
In posing such a fundamental question about what a social order that tries to do ‘policing without the police’ could be, Vitale sets himself a challenge that this book cannot realise, though he does offer pointers to alternatives throughout the text.
Contents
1.The Limits of Police Reform
2.The Police Are Not Here to Protect You
3.The School-to-Prison Pipeline
4.“We Called for Help, and They Killed My Son”
5.Criminalizing Homelessness
6.The Failures of Policing Sex Work
7.The War on Drugs
8.Gang Suppression
9.Border Policing
10.Political Policing
Quotes
1. The Limits of Police Reform
This form of policing is based on a mindset that people of color commit more crime and therefore must be subjected to harsher police tactics. Police argue that residents in high-crime communities often demand police action. What is left out is that these communities also ask for better schools, parks, libraries, and jobs, but these services are rarely provided.
They presented existing behavioral research that showed that when a car is left unattended on a street it is usually left alone , but if just one window of the car is broken , the car is quickly vandalized . The lesson : failure to indicate care and maintenance will unleash people’s latent destructive tendencies .
The broken - windows theory magically reverses the well - understood causal relationship between crime and poverty , arguing that poverty and social disorganization are the result , not the cause , of crime and that the disorderly behavior of the growing “ underclass ” threatens to destroy the very fabric of cities .
There is now a large body of evidence measuring whether the race of individual officers affects their use of force . Most studies show no effect .
In the 1989 case Graham v . Connor , the Supreme Court ruled that officers may use force to make a lawful arrest or if they reasonably believe the person represents a serious physical threat to the officer or others . 43 This means that police can initiate the use of force over any resistance to arrest .
We’re asking cops to do too much in this country . We are . Every societal failure , we put it off on the cops to solve . Not enough mental health funding , let the cops handle it … Here in Dallas we got a loose dog problem ; let’s have the cops chase loose dogs . Schools fail , let’s give it to the cops … That’s too much to ask . Policing was never meant to solve all those problems .
2. The Police Are Not Here to Protect You
Peel was forced to develop a lower - cost and more legitimate form of policing : a “ Peace Preservation Force , ” made up of professional police who attempted to manage crowds by embedding themselves more fully in rebellious localities , then identifying and neutralizing troublemakers and ringleaders through threats and arrests .
This is the origin of policing - British trying to quell Irish uprising in ~1814. Interesting to see thought process of how police are embedded to identify troublemakers
The primary jobs of early detectives were to spy on political radicals and other troublemakers and to replace private thief catchers , who recovered stolen goods for a reward . Interestingly , very few thieves ended up getting caught by the new police . In many instances they worked closely with thieves and pickpockets , taking a cut of their earnings and acting as fences by exchanging stolen merchandise for a reward rather than having to sell the goods on the black market at a heavy discount .
Interesting to see that even early on the police model came with a lot of corruption. I wonder if its because the police are so embedded they cant also be impartial observers?
The most important police leader of the twentieth century , August Vollmer , after serving in the Philippines , became chief of police in Berkeley , California , and wrote the most influential textbook of modern policing . Vollmer went on to pioneer the use of radio patrol cars , fingerprinting , and other techniques now considered standard practice .
Interesting this guy lived in Berkeley
3.The School-to-Prison Pipeline
4.“We Called for Help, and They Killed My Son”
5.Criminalizing Homelessness
Extensive evidence now exists that the ultimate solution to homelessness involves increasing pay for low - wage work and creating more affordable housing , with support services for those who need it . Emergency shelters , transitional housing , life - skills training , and forced savings programs do nothing to reduce the overall amount of homelessness
Easier said than done? Im skeptical this is comprehensive or even accurate
6.The Failures of Policing Sex Work
7.The War on Drugs
Since 1982 , drugs have become cheaper , higher quality , and more widely available than ever before .
Interesting to think about where this is heading. Cheaper and better quality usually means growing customer base. Does drug use spiral out of control in the future?
The modern War on Drugs really began with Richard Nixon , who saw it as a way of inserting the federal government more forcefully into local law enforcement . This was part of his “ Southern Strategy ” to win over historically Democratic Southern whites in the wake of desegregation and the civil rights movement . 8 Rather than refighting a lost battle , Nixon appealed to white Southerners by using the language of law and order to indicate his desire to keep blacks in check through expanded law enforcement powers .
Insane how recent such overt racism was. Also this is how recent republicans and democrats switched? Follow up answer: Not really - it’s been a sort of gradual process. It wasn’t as clearly conservative vs liberal previously, and as there have been new factions within each party they have swung each party in different directions. It is still extremely weird that abraham lincoln is of the republican party and that is clearly the racist party these days
8.Gang Suppression
9.Border Policing
One of the fastest expanding areas of policing in the past twenty years is border policing . Today the Border Patrol is part of the Department of Homeland Security . In 1992 there were just over four thousand Border Patrol agents ; following the attacks of September 11 , 2001 , that number increased to ten thousand ; today it stands at more than twenty thousand , making it larger than the ATF , FBI , and DEA combined .
Crazy its this large
10.Political Policing
My thoughts
There was a lot of correlation based arguments, such as a citation of a 1996 book by the late political scientist David Bayley, that “there is no correlation between the number of police and crime rates”. Correlation does not mean causation, so that made me more skeptical of the data the author is presenting.
My big takeaway though is that policing has gained more responsibilities steadily and has not really been shown to improve anything they take on. Reevaluating things from first principles is important as we have likely gone way too far down the path of policing.
Questions you should be able to answer after reading this book
In America, before the early 1800s there were "slave patrol".
That eventually inspired a knight in London, as a way to quell protests, create a "Peace Preservation Force". Their job was was to manage crowds by embedding themselves and identifying/neutralizing troublemakers and ringleaders via threat and arrests. Eventually this led to a formal police presence - the London Metropolitan Police in 1829.
In 1839 the Boston Police was formed, inspired by the London Police force. Interestingly, in America the police carried guns, because Americans carried guns (to hunt, usually) whereas the British police did not.
In the 1990s there was a "Cops in Schools" program which incentivized schools to have armed police presence. This has led to a massive increase in arrests of students.
- Mental illness - there are many examples of scenarios where police are called to a mental illness incident and it ends up turning violent. "We called for help, and they killed my son"
- Sex work - Policing of sex work has mostly failed in that it has not eradicated it but driven it underground, and there are regular incidents (and far more common in other countries) of police corruption (bribery, protecting illegal activity, etc) related to sex work.
- Drugs - Drugs have only become more widely accessible over time. Most of the major police scandals in the last half century are rooted in the prohibition of drugs (and abuse of authority)
We’re asking cops to do too much in this country. We are. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it … Here in Dallas we got a loose dog problem; let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, let’s give it to the cops … That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems.
The modern War on Drugs really began with Richard Nixon, who saw it as a way of inserting the federal government more forcefully into local law enforcement. This was part of his “Southern Strategy” to win over historically Democratic Southern whites in the wake of desegregation and the civil rights movement.8 Rather than refighting a lost battle, Nixon appealed to white Southerners by using the language of law and order to indicate his desire to keep blacks in check through expanded law enforcement powers.