Above photo: Washington D.C. / U.S.A. – Aug 28th 2020: The Commitment March (March on Washington 2020) by the Lincoln Memorial. Shutterstock.
America watched in horror this spring as armed phalanxes of police assaulted peaceful pro-Palestine protesters on campuses across the nation. The raids on student encampments ranged from dubious arrests to snipers on campus rooftops. This most recent episode of widespread police aggression only reinforced Americans’ belief that law enforcement is quick to violent escalation.
Last year, a nationwide ABC News-Washington Post survey of 1,003 adults found that only 39% of Americans polled were confident police were adequately trained to avoid excessive force, and only 41% believed they treated Black and white people equally. These were drastic decreases from 2014 (responses polled at 54% and 52%, respectively), illustrating that the public’s confidence in policing is plummeting year over year.
While there’s a great appetite for altering the U.S.’ public safety systems, Americans are unsure how to do it. Even staunch supporters of police reform can be turned off by abolition, which envisions a world without policing or prisons. The movement to defund the police was a valiant effort, but it quickly withered after 2020. To make the changes Americans want and advocates know to be necessary, there must be a clear path toward a better method of public safety that answers Americans’ questions and assuages their concerns.
Fortunately, there is a successful example of what it looks like to eliminate broken, abusive policing systems.
The Georgian model
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, its former member states fell into disrepair. Former state-owned industries were sold to the highest bidder, enabling criminal organizations to obtain key economic assets. This created the network of Russian and former Soviet oligarchs we know today. During this chaos, newly independent Georgia became one of the most corrupt countries on Earth—and the most egregious offenders were the police. Comprised of two offices—the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA)—the cops shook down citizens, demanded bribes, dealt drugs and weapons, and acted as mercenaries for the oligarchical elite. A 2003 poll found that just 2.3% of Georgiansheld a positive view of the police.
Things changed in 2004 when the grassroots “Rose Revolution” ousted the corrupt, Soviet-era leadership and elected Mikheil Saakashvili to the presidency with 96.4% of the vote. Once in office, Saakashvili quickly dissolved the MSS and traffic police, firing more than 16,000 cops. The most high-profile officials were prosecuted for previous offenses, hotlines were set up for the public to report illicit police activity, and the state even produced a “Cops”-style TV show named “Patrol” featuring the arrests of corrupt officers and politicians. As part of its rebuilding process, Georgia was effectively without police in July 2004. Despite their absence, the community was “largely unaffected.”
An entirely new police force was hired using a community safety model, which recruited officers to patrol their own neighborhoods. The results speak for themselves. By 2012, polling found the police were the third-most popular Georgian institution, behind the Orthodox Church and the army. But as of 2018, police approval fell to 50%, and it’s likely lower today as the contemporary government uses the police to quash protests against its ties with the Kremlin.
Given that the oligarchical system was one of the leading factors in police corruption in the early 2000s, it’s no wonder modern Georgians are reluctant to reconnect with Putin and Russian oligarchs.
While the rebuilding was not without missteps, such as the low training requirements for new recruits, Georgia’s efforts should encourage and serve as a model for American activists to point to. Better public safety is possible under the right leadership and with enough political will.
Decreasing the police footprint
While Georgia’s story provides a helpful view of how we can overcome the paralysis that plagues police reform, it must be tailored to fit America’s unique policing problems.
In Georgia, the primary problems were corruption and bribery. While corruption exists in the U.S., Americans’ paramount concerns are improper training, aggressive officers, and systemic racism that is baked into policing. Activists in the U.S. don’t see these traits as unfortunate side effects but rather as the intention of American policing: an overly militarized force that incarcerates marginalized groups at highly disproportionate rates.
Additionally, the cops in our communities are largely employed by states and cities, not the federal government. While a president could withhold federal grants from police to incentive reform, individual cities and states would be responsible for a majority of the alterations to public safety. Still, the Georgian model is a useful reference point, given the size of the country. In 2002, the country of Georgia’s population was about 4.4 million, which is comparable to the size of Los Angeles alone. By looking at existing non-police public safety programs, we can envision how alternative forms could be built to decrease police footprint.
“[Our organization is instituting] a multi-strategy approach that seeks to work with local community and neighborhood associations,” said Dr. Robert Davis, the project manager of the Denver Task Force to Reimagine Policing and Public Safety.
Created in the wake of the police murders of George Floyd and Elijah McClain, the Denver Task Force aims to find ways to increase public safety while decreasing law enforcement’s footprint. This includes programs such as the Transforming Our Communities Alliance (TOCA).
“You go in, working with neighborhoods, and say, ‘What are your public safety challenges? And here are ways you can address them that do not include involving law enforcement. Here are the resources,’” Davis explained, noting that many community members aren’t aware of the resources available to them.
Another primary function of the task force is to introduce communities to what Davis calls “violence interrupters”: government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations that can provide support. The group also trains communities on organizational strategies to pressure the city for resources in a more timely fashion. Davis hopes to build the program to replicate the success seen in other cities that have shifted away from policing.
“When you look across the nation, you see various programs coming out of local offices of neighborhood safety and offices of violence prevention. We’ve seen a drastic reduction of crime in Newark, New Jersey, and Richmond, California—not because of law enforcement, but because of communities finding alternatives to address their various public safety challenges,” Davis said.
As Davis suggests, the drivers of a change to non-police public safety will have to be mayors, city councils, and governors. Fortunately, a local-first approach aids the abolitionist cause.
Local and state politicians don’t have to build the kind of big-tent coalitions with pro-police voters necessary to win a presidential election. For example, local officials could temporarily dissolve police agencies, just as Saakashvili did with the MSS. A rolling replacement could quell the inevitable concerns regarding the period of no police. For instance, a city could aim to replace its department over a six-month period, with a third of the force being let go every two months.
“I do believe so,” Davis said when asked if the Georgian model of firing police en masse could succeed in the U.S. “The reason we’re abolitionists … is because we’re looking at the model of abolishing slavery. The system of slavery was considerably larger and considerably more important to every aspect of American life than policing is … We’ve abolished pretty significant structural systems in America. We can do this. We have the know-how if we come together. The question is, do we have the willpower? It’s not the intellectual power, it’s the willpower. So yes, Denver can do it. And I think America can, too.”
If the U.S. were able to replicate the Georgian model, it would be beneficial to shift resources from the armed agents who define modern police forces to other forms of public safety. Most of these efforts would be novel concepts to most cities, but these alternative forms of public safety are more than enough to keep communities safe.
Mothers and Men Against Senseless Killing (MASK), a Chicago anti-violence group, recently fundraised to install private security cameras in their neighborhoods to deter drive-by shootings. MASK founder Tamar Manasseh believes speed bumps, which would force would-be shooters to slow in front of the cameras, will successfully deter violence without police intervention. But not every public safety program needs to focus on stopping violent crime.
According to a 2020 study from the Vera Institute of Justice, in six of nine cities analyzed, fewer than 3% of 911 calls were for violent crimes. This means that, more often than not, everyday issues that trigger police brutality could be handled by an alternative form of support that doesn’t carry the same risk of violence or abuse of power.
In Denver, the Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program deploys mental health professionals to 9/11 calls about people experiencing mental health and substance abuse issues. Over the last four years, the program has performed exceptionally well.
“We hear feedback from the community on success stories, and STAR continues to connect people to follow-up care to create a pathway for long-term success, growth, and stability,” said Evan Thompkins, the STAR specialist for the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. “The number of calls for STAR and STAR responses are consistently increasing. STAR has interest and support from city council, governments, partners, and community while growing its partnerships with different organizations like shelters, nonprofits, health care centers, and others.”
Right now, STAR is not at full capacity. According to Thompkins, the program currently only responds to about 50% of STAR-eligible calls. To meet 100% of eligible calls, the program will need more staff and longer operating hours. The current program goal is 24/7 operations.
The success of programs such as MASK, STAR, and TOCA should serve as a reminder that, in its current form, policing doesn’t satisfy public safety needs. Moving resources from the police to local programs like these would diminish police violence while giving communities the tools they need to stay safe.
While “defund” has become a vague catch-all term for various levels of police reform, emulating the Georgian model by spending recouped costs elsewhere has the potential to reframe and reenergize the movement and address the public’s misconceptions.
As Prism previously reported, “The defund movement isn’t just about reallocating funds, it’s also about reallocating power away from the police and breaking the hold of that myth.”