Policing Works when It Is Done Right
The COVID pandemic and the police murder of George Floyd polarized views on policing. Rather than abolishing policing or maintaining its status quo, we need to make it better and more focused
Decades of research show that—when done strategically and fairly—policing reduces crime. That means we need evidence-based policing, not simply more or less policing. The best way to reduce violent crime requires focusing policing efforts on specific problems, places and people who commit repeat offenses.
Efforts to defund or abolish the police gained serious momentum in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. According to a recent national survey, police chiefs in roughly one in eight jurisdictions say they have seen attempts to defund their department. In Denver, for example, a city council member motivated by a desire to end police violence against people of color proposed an amendment to replace the local police department with an unarmed Department of Peacekeeping Services. In Austin, citing similar concerns, city leaders raced to slash their police budget. And in Seattle, facing pressure to halve police spending, city leaders reached an “uneasy truce” with protesters by reallocating 20 percent of the police budget to “community alternatives” and the “Equitable Communities Initiative,” among other things.
On the ground, policing has changed. In 2020 in Denver, the site of our recent study, police made 50 percent fewer pedestrian stops, 40 percent fewer vehicle stops, 60 percent fewer drug arrests and 25 percent fewer disorder arrests than they had been making on average during the four years prior.
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