September 16
GUEST: Isis Benitez, community activist with End the New Jim Crow, member of the Healthy Black and Latinx Coalition, and former Liberty Partnership scholarship recipient, talks about why local policing must to be changed and how the community's needs can better be served.
6 reasons why it’s time to defund the police
What works and what doesn't. That would seem to be a simple question when applied to almost any community need. But whose community are we talking about?
Are we are talking about a poor, inner city community with many Black and Latinx residents? Or are we describing the needs of the surrounding white suburbs that are much more affluent and well represented in local government? Which community gets to define what their needs are, and to decide how monies are spent? If one community has too much power, will their needs supersede the needs of the less affluent and influential?
When it comes to policing, this difference in power has tremendous consequences. The city of Poughkeepsie has very few minority police officers, and an even fewer number who live in the inner city. How does a police force like that take minority views into account? Moreover, white police officers are much more apt to use force when dealing with people of color. Even when policing the city's public schools, white officers arrest more Black kids than they do white students in the suburbs. White officers do more stop and frisk in the inner city than in the surrounding small towns. Perhaps white police officers are following the priorities of the white suburbs even when patrolling Black neighborhoods in Poughkeepsie.
So defunding the police is about Black communities getting to plan and implement policing that fits their needs. It is not so much "defunding" as changing where the money gets spent. Maybe the schools could use more social workers, rather than armed police officers whose only response is arresting Black students. Maybe the police should be Black themselves, and live in the communities that they serve.
Why wouldn't everyone who lives in Dutchess County be for this more equitable structure of community policing? Well, because having an all white police force is a form of white privilege. It is more comforting to be stopped by someone your own race who lives in your own white community. Someone you can trust isn't prejudiced towards you. Someone who won't fear you for the color of your skin, and shoot you when things don't go according to their sense of white entitlement.
Defunding police is all about removing white privilege when it comes to law enforcement. It is about treating communities equally. It is about making Black lives matter when it comes to our criminal justice system.
