4 More Jobs We Are Asking the Police to Do (But Really Shouldn’t)
This is the second part of a two-part series discussing areas where there are better alternatives to currently-prevalent police intervention, split for better readability.
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Concept Summary
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Recap: Alex S. Vitale explored areas currently addressed in one way or another by the police, and why those aren’t working, in his book The End of Policing. These are my attempt to summarize them. The first four areas are discussed in Part One here.
Now, continuing our discussion on four more jobs we ask our cops to do…
5. Win the War on Drugs
The rationale
There are for sure immediate costs to drug use. People die from overdose, become unable to work, and suffer from addictions that ruin personal and family lives. Illegal drug use is also a source of crime and violence, and a factor in the spread of diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C.
With the rise of campaigns like ‘Just Say No’, a stigma that drug use can be prevented with sufficient willpower formed, and increasing pressure to criminalize the drug trade, because then, it’s their fault for not having enough willpower, right?
The problem
The story here is very similar to the campaign against sex work: so far, there’s no compelling evidence that police intervention will ever stamp out drug use. A 2018 survey showed more than 50 million Americans said they had used illicit drugs in the past month. While the majority of those were marijuana, almost 10 million misused prescription pain relievers, and if you think about it, 5.5 million people is a lot of people using cocaine.
Criminalizing the drug trade underground forces users to pay high prices at the black market (increasing likelihood of resorting to crime to come up with the money), leaves them with no way to control the strength and impurities in the drugs they take (increasing cases of overdose), and subjects them to unhygienic practices like needle reuse (that perpetuates the spread of diseases like HIV and Hep C). And yep, police corruption is flourishing as well.
“But it’s simple,” you would say, “these people would just have to stop using drugs, right? All it takes is strong willpower/religious faith/family support!”
Nope. Addiction science is a complex thing that scientists are still struggling to understand, and the prohibitionist stance towards even drug research is impeding progress to gain a better grasp of this subject and mitigate harm. While some countries and parts of the U.S. has made some strides, namely with the push to legalize marijuana (which has been evidenced to be effective in some forms of chronic pain management), many parts of the world still group marijuana with other, more dangerous substances.
Even switching the focus to dealers as opposed to users has its problems. Supply-side criminalization has disproportionately impacted the lowest-level people on the chain — those often with no other economic recourse to make a living, driven by a slew of other societal problems including inequality and racial biases. On the enforcers’ side, there are concerns on overreach of state powers through things like no-knock warrants to execute violent raids (in direct opposition of the Fourth Amendment in the U.S.), as well as asset forfeiture laws allowing police to keep the money seized in drug raids and investigations (which you might recognize as a conflict of interest, since now that means their job is to eradicate the source of the department’s money).
The alternatives
Short-term alternatives include harm reduction strategies, such as needle exchanges, supervised injection facilities, and drug treatment on demand. Similar to the sex work issue, legalization may allow for elimination of black markets, enabling tighter controls of substance purity and sale restrictions (e.g. to minors). While there will be concerns familiar with alcohol use like public intoxication and driving under influence, with users not having to hide their drug use, they could be subjected to social pressure from family and friends to use responsibly.
Long term, the easier-said-than-done answer is economic development. As the book puts it,
“Many people involved in the drug industry don’t really have a drug problem, they have a job problem…there is no way to reduce the widespread use of drugs without dealing with profound economic inequality and a growing sense of hopelessness.”
But maybe, just maybe, we can get there faster if we use the $50 billion a year spent on the War on Drugs to stimulate economies instead.
6. Suppress gang activity
The rationale
Gang activity and its intensity has been growing, along with the low-level drug dealing and property crime as well as territory-driven violence (notably, homicides) that come with it.
As a response, police-centered suppression strategies at the local, state, and national level proliferated. These mostly took the form of police gang units (and at the federal level, task forces) concentrating on intelligence gathering and mostly, intensive enforcement.
The problem
The specialized function of these gang units made them isolated and insular. There was a mentality of ‘us vs. everyone else’ and an air of secrecy that cultivated reduced accountability and a strong group loyalty. These led to a culture rife with corruption, brutality, and cover-ups (recognize this is very similar to a trend the U.S. Navy SEALs faced more recently). Heavy-handed tactics including community sweeps for gangs became the preferred method that, at one single weekend in 1988, resulted in almost 1,500 arrests but only 103 resulted in charges. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck himself pointed out that these sweeps “undermined the moral authority of the police.” Oh and also, unlawful police behavior resulted in overturned convictions and millions in damage payment. Whoops.
It is worth noting that even in the most gang-intensive communities, only 10 to 15 percent of young people are in gangs, and research consistently shows that most involvement is short-lived, often terminated by things as simple as a new child or job. However, suppression activity tend to view all youth criminality as gang-related, and as such subjecting people who could have done better for themselves to the “youth control complex” which undermines their chances due to criminality and incarceration.
Lastly, arrests and incarceration don’t break the cycle of violence and criminality. The objective of “taking out the head” fails to consider that there are many more to take their place. Also, most of the violence is perpetrated by younger, hotter-head members of the gang. Remember the ‘us vs. them’ mentality the police had? Well, with police present as a reliable opponent, younger gang members (who, as we older folks might remember from our teenage years, rarely make rational cost-benefit calculations) view fighting the police as a way to prove themselves and gain respect through bravado.
The solution
Hold on…let me check my notes…yep, still addressing the root causes by redirecting funds to community centers and youth jobs. Huh.
Much of the gang problem stems from a sense of insecurity. Constantly at the risk of victimization (of which the police plays a significant part), young people turn to gangs and weapons to get some semblance of protection.
Both components of the solution: jobs, and enabling youth to do good work on the jobs, are inseparable. The latter will prove more challenging as being able to do a good job involves not only education and job training, but also stable and safe housing and environment. This is why community-based wraparound services will better serve the people who need these services the most, even more than programs like the Police Athletic League could.
Many models already exist out there, such as Minneapolis’ Blueprint for Action to Prevent Youth Violence (housed under the Health Department), a multi-agency effort to bring people in the community together and coordinate them with funding prioritization.
7. Patrol borders to keep immigrants out
The rationale
This is mostly a U.S.-focused issue, but anti-immigration sentiments have been growing elsewhere in the world. A lot of these concerns stem from ideas like nativist resentment, cultural superiority, and religious prejudice, sprouting accusations that fly in the face of the facts.
And while it’s true that the complex dynamics of immigration means there will be parts of the native population that suffer, there’s also the potential for the overall economic pie accruing to the natives to grow. It doesn’t help that the U.S. have a history of playing fast and loose with even illegal immigration enforcement, tailoring when to apply the rules based on how badly they needed access to cheap labor.
The problem
The current enforcement practices have had no deterrent effects, while exacting massive costs, financial and otherwise, to run.
A study found that despite the prosecution and incarceration of three-quarters of a million people at the border, there was no deterrent effect, since the things that drove them to try to migrate in the first place pose stronger incentives, including little things like desire to unite families, as well as profound and desperate poverty. And oh, by the way, U.S. policies have in some cases contributed to those poverty, like how NAFTA destroyed Mexican agricultural production.
For the great benefits discussed above, the U.S. spends $4.7 billion on Border Patrol and $7.6 billion on ICE every year. Rampant violence and human rights violations are well-documented, including the questionable practice of detaining 70% of immigration detainees in for-profit prisons. The high volume of defendants poses concerns on the weakening of the courts system to properly adjudicate these cases, some resorting to mass prosecutions.
Even local law enforcement was forced to make a choice between helping federal enforcement to deport illegal immigrants, or maintain their community connections to be able to, you know, do police work.
Apparently, people are less inclined to give you homicide tips if doing so will get them deported.
The alternatives
This is a complex problem with no easy solutions, because even pushing for internationalist stances is not without its problems. However, considering how nationalist sentiments have prevailed in recent years, it is perhaps worth considering moving towards a more balanced posture.
However, at least on the shorter term, the billions spent on ineffective and violent border enforcement methods might be better spent on developing the poorest parts of both the source and destination countries.
8. Manage political unrest
The rationale
Much has been discussed about how the police originated from the needs to control the working class and poor people. In modern times, this has extended to control the subjects of a country’s rulers, under the rationales like maintaining stability against attempts to unseat or destabilize the current political orders (such as long-standing fights against separatist movements or dangerous ideologies like the Red Scare).
From Nigeria’s vaunted and India’s sophisticated political intelligence and riot control units, to British police’s infiltration of labor unions, universities, and peace organizations in the 1970s and 1980s, to U.S. Project Griffin in 2011 culminating in police asking businesses and individuals to report “anarchists” amidst the Occupy Wall Street movement (side by side with Al-Qaeda notices), this pattern is alive and well across various countries.
The problem
Though the totally-illegal arrests, beatings, and torture methods that colored police responses to political movements in the past (again, like during the Red Scare) have largely been discontinued in liberal democracies, they have evolved to massive intelligence and surveillance activities (though legally-questionable interrogations and the occasional intimidation still happens). In some cases, police crosses the line from observation to active manipulation by infiltrating the highest ranks of legal political movements, opening the door to conflict of interest and abuse of police power.
Also, looking at the pattern over the years, seems like any new social movement that tries to change something that’s not currently working, by definition, can be deemed a risk to current order and stability. Police intervention on civil rights movements, peace activists, and worker strikes is well-documented. Demonstrations are often subjected to highly restrictive rules, with minor infractions punished with overwhelming use of force (often what’s referred to as “non-lethal weapon” is more appropriately called “less-lethal weapon.”)
By focusing on subverting such movements as opposed to engaging in constructive conversations, nations risk impeding their own progress and ending up on the wrong side of history.
The alternatives
Rebuilding the trust between government and the governed can be pursued through the many public engagement models out there, placing the emphasis on continued conversations where both sides have the chance to hear and be heard. As the book puts it,
“When normal political channels are closed off, street politics become more common.”
On the shorter-term, though, the police could dial back the posture towards protests. By viewing protests as a legitimate, constitutional right as opposed to threatening and illegitimate, the mindset of officers could also be altered from “find excuses to exert overwhelming force on people” to “always revert to the most peaceful methods possible.” Again another quote from the book puts this issue well:
“Officer protection is an issue, but so are police legitimacy and constitutional rights.”
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We have examined the 8 areas with opportunities for better alternatives to the currently-used police intervention. The primary tools at the disposal of the police — physical coercion, prosecution, and incarceration — are ill-suited to address these problems, many having deeper, systemic root causes behind them.
As the saying from Abraham Maslow goes, “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
Diverting the massive funds currently put at traditional law enforcement methods to programs addressing systemic economic and social issues would not be an easy battle, nor would it be a panacea that cures these issues instantly — social problems don’t get fixed instantly. But moving the needle at the right direction would at least ensure continuous improvement and set us on a path to a better, more inclusive future.
