Disarming The Police

 I think we are fortunate, living in Concord, NC. So far as I am aware, we have had relatively few shootings of people of color by our police force, probably none of the ilk of Breanna Taylor, or Mr. Blake.  I understand that we live in a city that is multicultural, with white, colored, Asian, and Hispanic citizens living together.  I understand too that, being white and living pretty much anywhere in America, we are relatively safe from errant police shootings.  White citizens do not have to counsel their children on how to react in any event involving the police, so as to avoid being killed.  Now that, all by itself, is a tragic statement of fact.  We are told, all the time, by parents of colored children about their fears of any interactions between themselves or their children and police forces.  And that alone seems wrong on its face.

Now it is simply not the case that all police are racists. But I am aware that, within the United States, a troubling percentage of the population appears to hold racist views. In a recent article, Steven O. Roberts begins, “American racism is alive and well.” Roberts, a Stanford psychologist, published his article during a time of heightened attention to racial injustice in the United States.

In the paper, which is available online and will appear in an upcoming issue of American Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association, the scholars contend that racism is a deeply American problem and identify, based on a review of prior research published on the topic, the factors contributing to racism in the U.S. today.

“People often define racism as disliking or mistreating others on the basis of race. That definition is wrong,” said Roberts, who directs the Social Concepts Lab, part of the psychology department, in the School of Humanities and Sciences. “Racism is a system of advantage based on race. It is a hierarchy. It is a pandemic. Racism is so deeply embedded within U.S. minds and U.S. society that it is virtually impossible to escape.”

Roberts, an assistant professor and co-author, Michael Rizzo, a postdoctoral fellow at New York University and the Beyond Conflict Innovation Lab, write that “just as citizens of capitalistic societies reinforce capitalism, whether they identify as capitalist or not, and whether they want to or not, citizens of racist societies reinforce racism, whether they identify as racist or not, and whether they want to or not.”

Given that definition of systemic racism in America, we could argue that it seems unlikely that police departments would be immune to this issue. Given that likelihood, I would argue that we might well need to reduce the probability of violent interactions between citizens, especially citizens of color, and our police forces.  Surely, one way to effect such a change is to reduce the weaponry involved in any interactions.  Britain’s experience certainly suggests that unarmed police can function effectively, as is illustrated in the following BBC article:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19641398

 And Britain is not alone in deploying unarmed police. In another article, by Time, the authors state:

“While the 19 nations in the world that do not arm officers vary greatly in their approach to policing, they share a common thread. “What we can identify in these countries is that people have a tradition—and an expectation—that officers will police by consent rather than with the threat of force,” says Guðmundur Ævar Oddsson, associate professor of sociology at Iceland’s University of Akureyri who specializes in class inequality and forms of social control such as policing.

Countries with a philosophy of policing by consent, such as the United Kingdom, believe that police should not gain their power by instilling fear in the population but rather, should gain legitimacy and authority by maintaining the respect and approval of the public. This model of policing maintains that uses of force should be restrained and success is measured not in how many arrests officers have made but rather, by the absence of crime itself.” (https://time.com/5854986/police-reform-defund-unarmed-guns/).

The statistics alone suggest stark differences in results, using armed or unarmed police.  In the US, deaths associated with police shootings exceed 1,000 per year, while in countries that deploy largely unarmed police experience fewer than 100.  Partly the difference is simply the absence of guns, but in the main, police in countries that do not arm their police also train their police to respond differently. Better training produces better outcomes.  Now, it is also the case that the population at large in the US is heavily armed, compared with other countries.  So, more guns per capita logically produces a relatively higher threat level to the police, when responding to potential violence. 

Still, the level of deadly force within the US, arguably associated with armed police, is remarkable, and should have long ago caused us to at least question this tactic.  It causes me to wonder whether we might engage in an experiment regarding police armaments. Suppose, for example, that we carried out a literal experiment, in which we engaged sets of similar cities, and we maintained the current armament level in some cities and disarmed police in another set.  It would be useful of course to compare cities of comparable size. Perhaps one could envision cities basing armament level depending on the function being carried out. Routine traffic duty, for example, might be assigned no guns, whereas units responding to higher threat levels—robberies in process, for example, would be armed.  The police themselves would need to be involved in constructing the terms of the experiment, so that its ultimate results would be deemed credible by police forces.  It might well be needed also, to carry out more training of officers in those forces that would be disarmed. It is my understanding that police forces in Britain, and other countries that do not routinely arm their police, provide greater training of their officers, especially in reducing threat levels.  Again, police operate by consent rather than by force or the threat of force.

Data on fatalities per 100,000 are interesting. Data for the period 2000 – 2018 reveal vastly different levels of fatalities by city size, and, of course, by race. An article cited here, reveals the following patterns:

https://www.yourlawyer.com/library/fatal-police-shootings-in-us-cities/

 By City:

St. Louis – 36.3/100,000

Orlando – 28.1/100,000

Chicago – 10.1/100,000

Washington, DC – 10/100,000

Portland – 8.2/100,000

Charlotte – 4.19/100,000

New York City – 0.2/100,000

And by race, of course, the differences paint the picture that give rise to the protests around the country;

African-American – 96/100,000

LatinX – 53/100,000

White – 39/100,000

Asian – 16/100,000

So, maybe we really do need to at least consider an experiment in which we explore the possibility that having fewer armed police might lead to less overall violence and fewer deaths in America.