Riding the wave of sensible Drug Policy as we look at defunding the police

A Decrim Poverty Opinion piece

The time has come to imagine what safety looks like without the police as they have remained purveyors of violence in our communities. The reality is that the police are not equipped to manage — and in fact usually mishandle — substance use concerns, sex worker issues, people having mental health crises, and support for those experiencing homelessness. In these situations, we need to be asking what it would look like to instead bring in harm reduction, crisis intervention teams, or even violence interrupters rather than relying on police to respond to such a diverse, complex array of issues. These types of supportive services could play a meaningful role in quelling community concerns, crises, and/or violence that the police mishandle so often.

Everything about policing is wrong. They are often the largest budget in many cities across the country, even though they have horrible relationships with marginalized community members, and have no clue, capacity for, or actual training on how to prevent crime. In reality, police presence increases violence in many instances. To be clear, catching an offender after harm occurs is not prevention. The police have little to no prevention training. But they are certainly trained to kill. We know that they do this even if the offenders are non-violent, unarmed, or otherwise cooperating.

For these reasons, we must defund the police. The police have acted as literal death squads in Black and Brown communities from their inception, and in more recent years, video evidence backs up what Black and Brown communities have been saying for decades (including video evidence of police brutality from the 50’s and 60’s, which — contrary to popular belief — is recent history). The last straws for many in the United States were the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Law enforcement officers are not — and should not be permitted to be — executioners and assassins in the name of law and order.

Just imagine what could be done if Washington, DC dropped half of its police force and redistributed half of their over $500 million dollar budget. DC could be innovative and progressive in so many ways; we could have wrap-around services that can actually address the root causes of and prevent violent crime. This looks like implementing systems that would bring teams of community members who are trained to resolve conflicts without toting a weapon. In this way, we can begin to address issues as a ‘village,’ with time-honored, harm-reduction-based solutions, and create meaningful spaces where people can come to feel safe. It could mean the end of homelessness and the end of this ridiculous War on Drugs.

Instead of punishing people, we could expand physical and mental health care services, and offer easier access to treatment or alternative methods of harm reduction. These policies are evidence-based, and would provide a systemic response to violence that doesn’t result in more violence for the members of our communities who are most vulnerable.

If we are ever to adequately address this country’s overdose epidemic, we must change now or continue to sit back and watch more lives perish that could have been saved. Punishing adult behavior doesn’t work. The time is now to replace cops with care and criminalization with compassion.