Thread by @timjacobwise

THREAD

For those white folks in particular who get nervous at the idea of de-policing, and putting aside the mechanics of how we go from point a, to point b, I'd like for you to consider a few things.

2/ If you are scared by the thought of far fewer police, drastically reduced law enforcement budgets, and perhaps the eventual abolition of "policing" as we know it (in favor of other mechanisms for ensuring public safety), have you asked why that is?

3/ Especially considering the relatively low arrest rates in most of the places where you live (which signal that you/we aren't having to turn to cops for "protection" all that regularly anyway)?

4/ Probably bc of fear that something COULD happen if we didn't have enough cops. But most people who commit a criminal offense don't run thru a checklist in their minds before doing so, sizing up the actual risk of apprehension. So de-policing wouldn't likely increase risk...

5/ If the offense someone is going to commit is impulsive or heat-of-the-moment, it's not deterrable, and if it's premeditated the person is convinced they won't get caught anyway, with or w/o cops. So de-policing doesn't actually relate to risk all that much in and of itself...

6/ Granted, this still leaves the potential value of having an entity capable of investigating and responding to serious offenses that happen--and so such an entity would likely remain even under most all de-policing plans--but I'm just addressing the fear/risk piece here...

7/ So what we fear, if we're honest, is what we've been taught to fear since the beginning of the country AND policing--"those people" coming to hurt us, steal from us, etc. Bc our own people are already around us, committing impulse or premeditated offenses already...

8/ ...and not likely to increase their propensity to do that based on # or presence of cops for the reasons mentioned above. The only change, I suspect, in most white folks minds, is that this group we've been taught to see as protecting us from "them" would be gone or smaller...

9/ Putting aside the racism embedded in that fear and the stereotypes that undergird it, and putting aside that using such fear to maintain policing, even at real risk to black life, means you think those lives are less important than your sense (however false) of security...

10/ The larger point is that whatever fear you have of black "predation" can only even begin to make sense to you BECAUSE of the profound inequalities that we have allowed and furthered and accepted and even deepened in this country....

11/ But for those, there wouldn't even BEGIN to be any rationality to such fear because the deprivation and inequity that research makes clear are the impetus for criminal offending would be drastically reduced...

12/ And I'm not saying that fear is rational. I'm just saying that even under the assumptions of those who fear such things, those fears could only make sense because of the structural conditions that have produced the possible danger in the first place...

13/ Because yes, those conditions are highly correlated with both property and violent offending. No doubt. But here is the important--no, critical--point...

14/...if the reason we think we need cops is because we're afraid, and the reason we're afraid is because of the reality of crime, and the reality of crime is driven by inequalities, then why do we think the solution is cops, rather than addressing inequality?

15/ Obviously addressing inequality is an ongoing project and won't be done quickly. Which is why de-policing has to be done in concert with other transformative changes in economy, schooling, public health, housing, etc. But the point is, if we really want public safety...

16/ We should stop trying to fix a problem on the back end w/punishment, when that problem was itself generated by dysfunction and broken systems on the front end. That is the only way for everyone to be safe. Not just us, but everyone. So ya know that "all lives matter" shit?..

17/ Yeah, well, for that to be more than an empty slogan (or frankly racist deflection to ignore the importance of affirming black life in a society that devalues it), we will need comprehensive and fundamental change. Not piecemeal reform.

18/ When it comes to what that needs to look like, there is great work being done on this matter. Check out the proposals at #8toAbolition. You don't have to agree w/everything. And again, how we go from a to b is a process (as the abolitionist groups know full well)...

19/ But this is the conversation we need to be having. It's about envisioning something entirely different than what we have now, and figuring out how to get there, not accepting where we are and trying to tinker with it
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