Leading police organizations aggressively denounced calls to defund the country’s 18,000 police departments and insisted doing so would lead to more crime and the closure of businesses.
“Defunding the police is one of the most ludicrous things I’ve heard in 44 years of law enforcement,” said Steve Casstevens, first vice president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the world’s largest professional organization of police leaders.
“For years, people have been saying police need more training on use of force, more training on de-escalation, more training on dealing with the LGBT community, more training dealing with mental health issues — all true comments,” Casstevens told the Washington Examiner. “If we need more training, how is that going to happen if we defund those budgets? We’re going to be in even worse scenarios.”
Nationwide, left-wing leaders and activists are leading a charge to strip away money, employees, and power from law enforcement departments in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the custody of Minnesota police officers.
The Los Angeles City Council introduced plans to cut $150 million from the city’s police department. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, called for the Minneapolis Police Department to close up shop. The mayor of San Francisco, California, announced an effort to divert police funding to local black communities.
[Read more: Majority of Minneapolis City Council signs pledge to disband police department]
Police organizations, unions, and officials told the Washington Examiner that this sharp backlash is not a viable solution and could lead to an economic downturn in communities for small and large businesses, as well as for residents.
Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said calls to cut police budgets or dismantle entire departments are “dangerously misguided at best and a cynical attempt to create a power vacuum to be exploited at worst.”
“Police officers know as well as anyone else, and better than most, the urgent need for better housing, healthcare, jobs creation, and social services in marginalized communities,” emailed Johnson, whose lobbying group represents officers, unions, and local police associations. “But that does not mean that the vital services for protection of life and property that police departments provide should be cut. It’s a false choice.”
The Major Cities Chiefs Association, led by Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, said the move would not solve larger racial discrimination problems present in society.
“The call to defund the police in order to address the social and economic ills of our nation, prior to actually addressing our social disparities, is largely a false equivalence,” the MCCA, a grouping of police leaders from the 78 largest cities in the United States and Canada, wrote in an open letter Sunday.
In one city that MCCA used as an example, police responded to an average of 1.2 million calls for help in a year, and the calls “disproportionately originate from communities of color who are already grappling with the socioeconomic challenges plaguing many American communities.”
To “simply defund the police without a concerted effort to address the root causes behind emergency calls for service is wrought with strategic missteps that could ultimately increase the need for police service in the poorest of communities,” said the MCCA. “Social psychologists have noted, calls to defund the police without making strides to improve causal factors would strip away a critical resource.”
The major city chiefs want funding for body-worn cameras, the recruitment of unbiased, service-minded professionals, and training of officers in cultural competency, implicit bias, and de-escalation.
Acevedo separately warned last week that removing officers from the street could lead to a “backlash as you see crime go up.” The National Police Association said the potential is something Minneapolis officials may not be planning for.
“Most local governments, such as city councils, are funded by sales and property taxes,” NPA President Ed Hutchinson wrote in an email. “Sales taxes come from commerce. Commercial property taxes are paid by businesses. The value of residential property, which sets its tax rate, is in large part a result of demand for that property from employed families able to pay mortgages. Without employers at the base, the economic pyramid collapses.”
“How many businesses can realistically be expected to stay in a community that has no police service?” Hutchinson continued. “Even if such a business were willing to pay for private security to protect their staff and property, what insurance company would sell a business with no police service liability insurance? In the end, a city that does away with its police department would, after losing its tax base and employable citizens, ends up at best in Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy under the control of a court or, at worst, de-incorporated.”
The NPA reached out to the city’s chamber of commerce on Friday to ask if it would vow to continue living within city limits if police were outlawed but has not heard back.
