Defunding the Police Isn't the Answer, No Matter How One Defines It

"But we invest $100 billion annually in policing across the nation, and the system just isn’t working. It’s often racist and neither effective nor equitable, disproportionately failing black Americans but also letting down white Americans."

That is a quote from Nicholas Kristof in today's New York Times. I think he is wrong and I think this entire "Defund" thing is a fraudulent idea in terms of an effective public policy to improve public safety. Kristof is right about the disproportion hit on Black America. No doubt and we know that. Pick any statistic and it clearly shows how that audience is in disproportion to American society at large. But to suggest that policing "just isn't working" is an incredulous stretch. I would argue that policing works to an impressive degree. But it isn't perfect and police officers do not always do the right thing. They do almost all of the time. So let us stop talking about how bad some of them are when only a small minority of them are bad eggs. We can work on this issue.

I haven't heard anyone put this in perspective to date. In the United States, there are 17,985 police agencies and over 680,000 full-time law enforcement officers and over 800,000 "sworn in" officers. If one officer out of a hundred was a "bad cop," that would amount of 6,800 officers that need to be identified and removed. And that number sounds good. And if it was half a percent, it would still be 3,400 across the country. But it also means that of the 680,000, over 670,000 of them are "good cops" doing the right things. BTW, in recent years, the number of police officers has fallen about 50,000 across the country. That is a problem, too.

Back to the idea of defunding the police, I think the argument is akin to having a bad president in office with a bad group of West Wingers with him. But suggesting that we defund Congress and replace not just all the people, but eliminating Congress as we know it doesn't make any sense. Or consider the small percentage of "rogue" teachers in public K12 classrooms and making the decision to defund all of public education in the United States. All because of a few. These are non-starters.

Policing with regard to Black America has been a problem for decades and arguably centuries. But it hasn't just been policing. The rest of society is complicit. I was impressed and surprised by NASCAR's announcement yesterday that they would remove any Confederate Flag from their races (and I want to see how they enforce that). That, to me, was a real sign given the audience at NASCAR races. And finally having grossly overpaid ($74M/year) NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell "admit" that they were wrong with Colin Kaepernick in 2016 is a move, albeit so late they that they should be more than embarrassed (and he should be fired). Of course, in Goodell's corner for all those years sat EVERY NFL owner in the league. So he wasn't alone. He was just the ring leader.

I don't care how people are awkwardly trying to define and redefine "defunding" in recent days; it is an imprudent suggestion moving forward. Policing, like everything else in civil society, can be improved through training and rethinking policies and practices. That is the solution.