National overview
The deadly consequences of ‘Defund the Police’
The role of policing in the United States is hotly debated, with many liberal activists calling for reductions in police funding. Although police reimbursement advocates have failed to win over the general public, the political climate in some Democratic cities, coupled with the budget constraints imposed by COVID-19, has already succeeded in rallying police departments in some parts of the country. In Minneapolis, the center of protests and riots last year, more than 100 officers left the city police ranks, “more than double the number in a typical year.” In Seattle, another hub of protests last year, the level of police slaughter is ‘unprecedented’. The long-term impact of the police reductions in these particular cities is unclear at this stage. However, a study published in the Justice Evaluation Journal in December provides evidence that the exhaustion of the ranks of a police force can have fatal consequences in some cases. Eric Piza, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY, and Vijay Chillar, of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, looked at police dismissals against the background of the Great Recession of 2008–09. “There is a large amount of research that has studied the relationship between police force size and crime, but most of it has analyzed the effect of increasing changes in the number of officers,” Piza told me why he followed this research. ‘Major changes, such as those taking place with redundancies, have not been analyzed before. Therefore, we were of the opinion that research on the effect of large, sudden reduction of a police force in the field is necessary. During the period, the two largest cities in New Jersey, Newark and Jersey City, had severe budgetary stress due to the downturn in the economy. Both cities have considered large-scale dismissals of the police in response. In Jersey City, local police union and city officials were able to reach an agreement that repels layoffs; in Newark, the negotiations on labor management were not as successful, resulting in the dismissal of 167 newly hired officers, a total of 13 percent of the force. Piza and Chillar used the examples of Jersey City and Newark as a natural experiment. They examined their crime rates between 2006 and 2015 and examined the impact of Newark’s layoffs on crime levels. Although no natural experiment is perfect, the similarities between the two cities made it comparable for purposes of the study. The researchers noted in their article that ‘Newark and Jersey City, the two largest cities in New Jersey, are more similar than any other municipality in the state in terms of the size of the police, the resources before the dismissal and the dismissal. . crime levels. They noted that property crime and violent crime rates continued to decline during the period they studied in Jersey City. In Newark, however, crime rates increased after the layoffs. Using statistical models, Piza and Chillar estimate that there were about 108. . . additional violent crime incidents per month as a result of the dismissals, ”while there were also 103 incidents of property crime each month. One possible culprit for the increase in crime after the layoffs was the decision of the Newark Police Department (NPD) to restrict the use of hotspots policing, which involved officers being instructed to proactively police the city’s crime hotspots during the most of their shifts. . From 2006 to 2009, policing of hotspots was an important feature of the department’s activities, but budgetary constraints and redundancies forced the NPD to discontinue this form of policing, as staff were needed elsewhere. It is also possible that the sudden and dramatic decline in police officers harmed the morale of the force, and contributed to the decline in policing quality. Piza and Chillar point to a 2018 study that found that teachers’ layoffs in Washington state led to less teacher productivity. Whatever the reason, the study clearly shows a link between layoffs and an increase in crime in Newark, which did not occur in Jersey City. Piza advises caution in drawing larger lessons from the study and suggests that layoffs may not necessarily lead to higher crime levels if done in a more strategic way to enable departments to continue working crime control practices. “The dismissals were not part of any major efforts to re-introduce the public safety that is currently taking place,” he told me. With that said, I do not think that the reduction of police force should automatically result in more crime, as long as the police cuts are supplemented with resources that can help maintain evidence-based practices for crime control. But it is unclear whether the cuts we are seeing nationwide are taking place in a judicious environment and whether it is a crippling response to the political moment taking place across the country. We know, for example, that Austin, Texas, has cut a third of the police budget, and that the city of New York has disbanded a unit against clothing against crime. These cuts come at a time when many U.S. cities are experiencing a huge increase in homicides and shootings. Some locals, such as Wilmington, Del., Had a record number of murders last year. Louis, Mo., long one of America’s most violent places, has seen its highest murder rate in 50 years. Since the rise of smartphones and social media, we are all well aware of acts of unfair police violence and cruelty. But we need to contextualize the policy responses we take and carefully weigh the costs and benefits. The Piza and Chillar study shows that a sharp and sudden reduction in police personnel can have disastrous consequences for a community, leading to an unnecessary death.