In the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, there have been calls to take over police stations and even defund police departments as solutions to perceived systemic racial inequality in law enforcement. Even if systemic racism is a real and serious problem, defunding the police is not in any way a fix. The key reason for this is: any systemic inequality and other systemic bias has been created by the very people who are now demonstrating, because they are responsible for putting in the people who created this problem into office.
Some people are protesting against policing that sends black people disproportionately to jail, claiming police are in more black communities to make arrests. Yet of course many of the 911 calls for police help come from within black communities. To a certain extent, there’s frustration against racism, but the protestors are not advocating for solutions, because they know there’s no simple fix; the liberal democrats and a large number of black leaders have been responsible for the entire political environment of every major city for the last several decades in which there have been protests. So here’s what they should advocate for:
Reform in the areas of qualified immunity, public service union protections, taxpayer funded lawsuit settlements, removing police from non-police activity, such as routine traffic violations and mental health issues, decriminalizing some behaviors and demilitarizing police will go a lot farther to solving issues instead of removing law enforcement altogether.