Peter Jamison of The Washington Post reports that in 2008,
approximately an hour northeast of San Francisco
A land of self-policing: who knew anarchy could be dangerous?
Share |
officials in Vallejo, Calif., reluctantly took a step that
activists are now urging in cities across the country: They defunded their
police department.
Unable to pay its bills after the 2008 financial crisis,
Vallejo filed for bankruptcy and cut its police force nearly in half — to fewer
than 80 officers, from a pre-recession high of more than 150. At the time, the
working-class city of 122,000 north of San Francisco struggled with high rates
of violent crime and simmering mistrust of its police department. It didn’t
seem like things could get much worse.
You may remember when in 2016 Donald Trump made his pitch to
the African-American community with "What do you have to lose by trying
something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?"
Things can always get worse. And now that there are 127,000 deaths-disproportionately black- later, it's clear
that African-Americans had quite a lot to lose. The residents of Vallejo,
California thought that things couldn't get worse
And then they did. Far from ushering in a new era of harmony
between police and the people they are sworn to protect, the budget cuts
worsened tensions between the department and the community and were followed by
a dramatic surge in officers’ use of deadly force. Since 2009 the police have
killed 20 people, an extraordinarily high number for such a small city. In 2012
alone, officers fatally shot six suspects. Nearly a third of the city’s
homicides that year were committed by law enforcement....
Beyond the obvious
consequences of fewer officers — such as fewer responses to burglaries, car thefts
and other lower-priority offenses — this city has learned the hard way that a
smaller police force is not necessarily a less deadly one....
It is very likely a more deadly one. When there is a burglary, car theft, or other
offenses, a public employee with a gun is the only option. So before the local
economy declined in 1996 after closure of a naval base
Vallejo offered generous pay and benefits for public
employees, particularly police officers and firefighters. When the economy
crashed, the city’s decimated tax base forced it into bankruptcy. The police
department, which accounted for much of Vallejo’s spending, was put on the
chopping block.
Mayor Bob Sampayan said the cuts were felt immediately.
“We were in triage mode,” said Sampayan, himself a former
police officer who retired in 2006. “We responded only to crimes in progress,
and everything else was put on the back burner.”
Lt. Michael Nichelini, president of the Vallejo Police
Officers’ Association, recalled watching as one division and program after
another — traffic, narcotics, school resource officers, community policing —
was cut so that the department could concentrate its remaining staff on patrol
and investigations. Veteran officers fled, he said, and those who replaced them
were often less-experienced cops willing to accept lower pay and rougher
working conditions.
“It severely impacted our ability to provide not only
top-notch police service but, I would say, even regular police service,”
Nichelini said. In a city with high rates of violent crime, he added, the
smaller number of officers found themselves repeatedly confronting dangerous
situations.
Defunding the police- a big step further than taken by Vallejo- is suicidal. The city partially defunded its force, leading to less- rather than more- accountability. If police departments are
partially defunded, hence are smaller, accountability- a prime goal of the
current movement- will decline, rather than rise: Alert Black Lives Matter, which is (insofar as it is sincere) completely unaware. Jamison continues
“If you have a guy who’s in a shooting, or uses a baton, or
whatever,” Nichelini said, “that same officer is coming right back to work,
because we don’t have anybody else to take their place.”
A virtually inevitable increase in the use of lethal and
non-lethal force by police ahas ensued with the decline in personnel.
Vallejo resident and former city attorney for Santa Rosa (CA) Brien Farrel
who in his old job frequently scrutinized police-misconduct
complaints and defended accused officers, said the extent of police violence
against citizens in Vallejo has become a major financial liability as well as a
moral outrage.
“My estimate is that there are 20 to 30 misconduct suits
pending against Vallejo. That’s an extraordinary number for a city of 120,000,”
Farrell said. “I am an expert at assessing the civil liabilities of police
officers in these incidents. And the city has major exposure.”
Alternatively, we could do away with publicly-funded police
officers and replace them with privately funded employees whose misconduct
(misbehavior being a human condition) would prompt many lawsuits. And then the
business would declare bankruptcy. Black Lives Matter would surely fill the gap in funding.
Admittedly, if we don't defund police, we will never be able to
grasp the utopia, such as when
One teenager, 16, was fatally shot and died after being
taken to hospital. The other victim, 14, is in intensive care.
The zone, initially known as Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
(Chaz) and now called Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (Chop), was set up amid
protests over the killing of George Floyd.
As it is part of a protest against police brutality, it is
self-policing.
In a statement, Seattle hospital Harborview Medical Center
said one of the boys was brought in by a private vehicle at 03:15 local time,
while the other was driven in by the Fire Department's medical team at 03:30 on
Monday.
"The male shooting victim who arrived to Harborview...
at 03:30 from the Chop area on Capitol Hill in Seattle has unfortunately
died," the statement added.
Although the site was initially occupied by hundreds of
peaceful protesters, this is the fourth shooting within the boundaries of Chop
in the last 10 days.
A land of self-policing: who knew anarchy could be dangerous?
Share |
