Reform or Defund? Actually, the best of both.

By Ben Calica
Reform the police or rethink and start over? In a moment when enough seem to finally be saying enough, the two factions are ripping at each other over how to best stop violence. But if we look at them from a few steps back, maybe the right answer is the best parts of both.

Now vs. Starting conversations: It is clear that every day this goes unfixed is beyond unacceptable. But I want something done, not to start yet another conversation while other parents who share 99% of my DNA live in rational fear that their kids might be killed by the very people who we hire to keep us all safe. So what I’m talking about here are very specific suggestions that can be implemented by my local Alameda city government as a way to be one of the examples of how to do both immediate and long term reform change so not another person needs to move through our town in fear of those who are tasked with keeping us safe. Unfortunately, we’ve had it made extremely clear that the problems shown all over the country live right here, so I’m doing everything I can to try and lend my shoulder to the wheel to get things done. I’m doing this out of order with a quick summary of what I’m recommending, and then go into how I got there.

Exec summary:

1. Reform vs Defund? Best of both: Don’t choose between police reforms and defunding/reallocating funding. Do the best of both in parallel.
2. Police reform: Bodycams when on duty. Unfortunately, the department has shown it is willing to misreport what happens when things go wrong. At this point what ever needs to be done to insure that no officer is ever on duty without a bodycam on at all times and in a way that they can not get access to the contents. “Calls will be monitored for quality assurance.” This needs to be enforced and investments made in the technology to insure 100% coverage, even if it means duplicate cams. Side by side with this is an explicit code of conduct as well as a spirit of conduct statement that officers must uphold or face discipline and potential removal from the force.
3. Police reform: Bodycam footage access. A system needs to be put in place that insures that body cam footage is escrowed by a mutual oversight party and that anyone involved in an incident can request and receive copies of the footage with timely dealing with privacy issues.
4. Police Reform: Remove most unnecessary opportunities for interactions that can go wrong. This includes minimizing/changing the nature of traffic stops, and ultimately more appropriate routing of 911 calls to appropriate authorities.
5. Police reform: Traffic stops are no longer for anything but the traffic incident. Unless there is obvious danger (drunk driver weaving, or someone in a car that is struggling or clearly in need of help), traffic stops will not be used to assess for suspicious circumstances. Stops for things like taillights out and equivalent will be treated as a public service, even to the point of the city creating a small fund to create vouchers that police can give out at their discretion to those who don’t seem to have the means to get that repaired.
6. Invest more in automated traffic cam/ticking hardware: Red light cams and speeding automated systems that can be moved from problem area to problem area not only free up police officers from making potentially problematic traffic stops, but are inherently not racist. Similarly, dash cam and body cam footage should be reviewed to check for patterns of ignoring or going after particular races for stops.
7. First Response Changes: Create a new first responder organization that consists of experts in mental health crisis management, social work, mediation, and non-lethal deescolation specialists (think people trained in restraint and non aggressive physical responses. The person you would want taking down a drunk or providing back up to someone who was trying to talk down someone who was having an out of control mental health or drug episode. Armed with nothing stronger then a taser.) These teams would handle the majority of the non crime calls, and if they come into a situation that they assess needs a higher level of physical or potentially lethal back up, would work with the police to be able to call them in just as a fire fighter might.
8. Restorative Police Reform: Families who have been affected by police racism can volunteer to basically adopt a police officer. The officers would come to virtual dinner with the family for a number of weeks, to the point where both sides are able to get to know and see each other as people.

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Fighting over how to end violence: The reform vs. defund argument are both convinced that the other is gonna be the reason this fails, and that their approach is the only one that will work. The are both right, and both completely wrong. The defund cry comes most powerfully from people with a lifetime of horrific treatment at the hands of far too many police officers. They see a rot so deep that starts from the beginnings of policing, and see an indisputable pattern of minimizing or hiding the problems that they can’t believe that yet another call for reform will do anything but get a head nodding deflection and nothing can really change. And at it’s heart, defunding is really about taking a smarter look at first response. We don’t send mailmen to handle fires, so does it really make sense to send criminal specialists out to deal with a report of someone with mental illness, or to settle a fencing dispute between neighbors?

The reform side recognizes the places where things have gone wrong, but believe that this moment in time could be powerful enough that if you can get the police unions from stopping the reforms and the weight of society behind it, that there are good cops that can become the core of what we want the force to be. But the biggest truth is they worry that the calls for defunding hands a real weapon to those whose reelection would cement the worst of us changes that have come out of the shadows to become normalized over the last number of years. And I do think it is true that the language of Defunding feels very much like jumping into unknown chaos, rather then being seen as a smarter evolution in first response that is at the core of most of it. And just from my standpoint, I would rather create the pathway to change, then just dump thousands of bitter ex cops out on the street without trying to change some of them first.

Shamefully late to the 99% party: Like many of my skin tone, I’m shamefully late to the party in moving this issue from the “overwhelming world is going to end” pile to the, “I can’t stand by another day where a fellow parent has to live in fear that their kid will come home safely because of the frigging color of their skin.” But my little town of Alameda, that has been pretty forward in the way they move in some ways, and where I’ve had direct experience with what I know to be good cops, hid a black man being hassled and arrested for dancing on his street to exercise in the morning. I watched all the first hand materials, from the external cameras to the body cams, and listened to the complaint call. It was so clearly, objectively wrong, and the first false report from the police about what had happened and the 10 days after it happened before the police chief actually made a statement, has made me sick to my stomach in a way that will clearly not go anywhere until a fellow parent who shares over 99% of their DNA with me doesn’t have to have their heart catch at the thought of their kid being potentially pulled over by the cops.

A short discussion on Now actions: When I hear about opening a dialog, it is both a good thing and really pisses me off. It is not hard, as human beings to see what is wrong here and every day it goes on is hundreds of years too long. So lets take a look at what can change things RIGHT NOW and what can change the system permanently, lets take a look at what is most important in both reform and rebuild and see what we can pull from both that can work, maybe even side by side.

Let’s start with a couple of assumptions.

1. Reduce or remove the opportunity for unnecessary encounters that might lead to escalation
2. Change both in the attitude that causes it to happen on a racial basis
3. Trust is gone for now: If video is all that shows both sides, it needs to be universal and accessible to any party involved, without getting a chance to be suppressed.
4. Ultimately, don’t send a boxer to handle a heart attack. Don’t keep using the police to answer non-crime calls.

Ironically, on both sides, this comes down to something as simple as using the right tool for the right job. Why bring someone who is trained and armed for potentially deadly conflict to handle a situation where someone has a potential mental health issue, or to be a mediator between parents? Why does a traffic stop end up needing to be approached as a potentially deadly situation?

It’s becoming publicly clear that the vast majority of calls that police get dispatched to are things that are not things that they are trained to handle, handle particularly well, or even want to handle.

When we look at what to do in terms of police reform, we can do a number of things right away.

1. Reduce the opportunity for problematic stops: Look at the places where most of the problems happen and change or reduce them. For example, and the easiest to change right away, stop using traffic stops for anything but traffic, and have footage to show that there is no racial preference in how that is happening. Most importantly, stop the practice of using traffic stops to look for or even to deter other crime. Ultimately, these should be handled automatically via traffic cams, or by upgrading parking officers to handle traffic stops, without guns etc. If a criminal is stopped by a traffic cop and is worried about being found out, let them drive off and have their licence reported and then bring in more weaponized police.
2. Bodycams, to protect and serve: It is humiliating and invasive, but from now on, Bodycams have to be always on whenever a policeman is on duty. Both to reduce the number of incidents and to protect and support those who are doing the right thing in the right way. Whatever needs to be done from a tech stand point to make sure that a cop has no way to turn off or remove evidence when they do something wrong. At this point, the assumption has to be that if someone claims racial mistreatment, it needs to be proven otherwise by the bodycam footage.
3. Body Cam footage is kept by civilian oversight commission. Anyone can request that footage from an incident be reviewed by them. They will also release copies of footage to involved people who request it, blurring those who want their privacy kept if required. I’m not getting into the details on how to do this, just the guiding principle that anyone involved in an incident can get access to the related footage and that by the agreement of being on duty, that the officers involved acknowledge their actions working for the public as being publically viewable.
4. Code of conduct/ethics. This needs to be explicitly laid out with an over arching “conduct unbecoming” giving the police chief or the civilian oversight committed to suspend or terminate an officer for acting against it. Right is right and wrong is wrong and the notion of hiding behind loose interpretations needs to end, and the police union needs to agree. If that is not possible, then I think that we need to look seriously at really completely defunding the police and replace them with a different organization entirely.

In the longer term, the most important part of the defund movement is about using the police for what they’ve been trained for, to deal with serious crime, both while it is happening, and solving it afterwords. We wouldn’t send a cop to put out a fire, so we shouldn’t send in people trained to deal with deadly threats to handle mental illness, or domestic issues, or neighbor conflicts or any of the 90% of what police get sent out to deal with that they aren’t specialists in and frankly don’t want to deal with anyway.

Instead work on the creation of a new agency that is focused on being the primary first community responders for the majority of situations that do not involve active swat level support. These would be the people that respond to mental health calls, disturbances, domestic violence, neighborhood disputes etc.

Peace Officer Service (I know..the officer name is problematic...use it as a placeholder for the moment) that consists of teams of community based responders that have a blend of mental health workers, social workers, mediators, and physical de-escalators (think people trained in primarily restraining martial arts like Aikido, and armed the most with whatever version of a taser that can be used to restrain someone who is in a mental or chemical state where they are a danger to themselves or those around them.)

In this situation, what we now consider the police, those who are trained to deal with higher levels of potential crime and threat would be called in when the assessment was made by the Peace officers that there was a situation that was at a higher level of danger then could be dealt with by unarmed responders.

What is currently the police would be refocused on being those who deal with real time dangerous criminal activity (an armed, trained response), or those who are actual detectives to solve existing crimes. There would be no preemptive scaring off of “suspicious people”. Instead, the police reputation that would keep a city safe would be that they will actually do the work to catch anyone who commits a crime.

And in the meantime, while the model of what this needs to look like evolves, start right away by contacting in people to handle these services, so by the time you are ready to create the new group, you have real experience, not years of studies and debates of what will work. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of not making sure that this new service is built on a core of service and guardianship that makes them welcomed parts of the community care, not our protectors who always feel like they are operating on enemy ground and treating those around them as enemies, not individuals.

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