What “abolish the police” means

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Sean Rameswaram: On yesterday's show, we talked about police unions and about how much power they wield and how that power has led to contracts that make it just about impossible to do much about police misconduct. It makes it next to impossible to even know how much misconduct a given officer has been accused of in a lot of cases. And it makes it really hard to challenge how much money police departments get. And they get a lot. But throughout these protests, we're seeing people call for an ultimate fix to this. One we didn't talk about on yesterday's show. One a lot of people would find totally radical. Abolish the police.

Sean Rameswaram: Now don't stop listening and go scroll and find Joe Rogan just yet. If you're like abolish the police, like who am I going to call when someone's chasing me down the street trying to murder me? Consider Philip McHarris. When I was young, there was one incident when I was 17. It was in New York, New Jersey, and there was a credible target on me with a gang that was very well-known and notorious. I received a call while running from almost being jumped. And my friend said, what did you do? And I was like, what do you mean? He said, there's a target on your head. And someone that I knew that was a part of the gang the next day, who I was friends with, told me that it was a green light on me in that area. And, you know, it was a very scary situation. And not one moment did I think of calling the police. because I never have perceived of the police as being in my favor of a black person in America. And so what I did was I called my cousin, who was very well connected in the city and in the neighborhood, who knew a leader in this other group. And he went and talked to them and they said, oh, I didn't know that was your cousin. Tell him he's fine. And that was it.

Sean Rameswaram: But again, And it didn't even cross my mind to call the police. It wasn't even a thought that I had because I never conceived of the police as an apparatus to keep me safe. And so what would it look like if we had someone like my cousin, you know, and they have violence interruption in a lot of cities. But what would it look like if we gave those programs $100 million a year as opposed to giving it to the police? Philip McHarris is a PhD candidate at Yale University who won't call the cops, even when a gang's got a hit out on his head. He's also a police abolitionist. So is Brandon Hasbrook. I'm an assistant professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. I asked Brandon to explain what this radical idea, abolish the police, really means.

Brandon Hasbrook: Just to clarify, I think it sounds radical to certain communities, mostly the white community. I don't think it's a radical idea to communities of color. When I say abolish policing, I mean abolish modern policing that was birthed and nurtured by white supremacy to sustain and perpetuate racial hierarchy blessed by the Constitution itself. That is essentially control of the black body. Walk us through the link between white supremacy, slavery and police.

Brandon Hasbrook: The history of policing, it has racist roots. The policing in the South developed as slave patrols. And essentially these slave patrols had significant and unfettered power within their communities that were derived from slave codes So the slave patrols had the authority under these codes to forcefully enter homes, to look for criminal activity, or just because they could. In the North, there was something similar. In the North, policing developed formerly in the 1830s. And during that time period, policing was created to control free Blacks, even after slavery was formally abolished. Even then, police were the masters of ceremonies of Jim Crow. And essentially, there were these Black codes created then, these criminal laws that applied only to Black people and then were tended to control the Black body. And police were essentially terrorized Blacks during this period to enforce racial subjugation.

Brandon Hasbrook: These Black codes were deliberately crafted to return Blacks to slavery under a different name, convict leasing. During that time period of Jim Crow, police developed coercive techniques to get innocent Blacks to confess the crimes they did not commit. So that's Jim Crow, and that was happening all the way until essentially the Civil Rights Act. This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states in our arms and in our hearts to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice. And the Civil Rights Act of 64, which formally ended Jim Crow, it ushered in a different era, which Michelle Alexander calls the new Jim Crow.

Brandon Hasbrook: America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. Drugs are menacing our society. They're threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. of all the consequences of drug use and abuse, none is more destructive and apparent than its impact on crime. And simultaneously, while this is all going on, right, we see the rise of certain Supreme Court issuing decisions that essentially gave police what some call superpowers, right? The ability to stop and frisk, to conduct pretextual stops, use excessive force, and also it gives police qualified immunity. This is all happening simultaneously and this essentially perpetuates blue on Black violence.

Brandon Hasbrook: So we're hearing lots of calls to abolish the police right now, but how long have people been calling to get rid of police departments, to get rid of this sort of history of white supremacy in law enforcement? It's not new, right? It's not. So abolition democracy, you know, it has its roots. You go from Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Paul Butler. You've heard it for years in hip hop music.

Brandon Hasbrook: The curses are coming in five, four, three, two, one. I'd rather say see ya, cause I would never be ya Be ya officer, ya wicked overseer Ya hot shot, ya wanna get props and be a savior First show a little respect, change your behavior It's 94 and my trunk is raw And my rear view mirror is the motherfucking law Got two choices, y'all, pull over the car Bounce on the devil, put the pedal to the floor Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me

Brandon Hasbrook: When you have these extraordinary events where black bodies are murdered, you hear these conversations. Ferguson was a huge event. And Michael Denzel Smith wrote a piece right after Ferguson highlighting abolishing police. And we just had like three of these extraordinary events in a row. Sure. So I just participated in a peaceful protest yesterday with my family, including my daughters. And you see it on the streets. And this was a small town in southwest Virginia, Lexington, where Washington and Lee is located. And you see signs, abolish the police. And the momentum and all these protests for us to really, truly examine what went wrong with policing, it's at an all-time high. And people want answers. People are demanding answers. People are understanding it's not about, you know, these lone wolves going out and committing this crime. No, it's something more systemic.

Brandon Hasbrook: It's a culmination for many people, right, when you see it, you have eyes on it, when you have the media focused on it, right? That means something that causes a certain reaction. It's not reaction in the black and brown communities. We've already felt that, right? It's now the white community seeing it on TV It the same thing during the marches for civil rights When you see what going on in TV that makes a profound impact with certain communities particularly white communities

Brandon Hasbrook: So what do white communities and any others who aren't in the know need to know about abolishing the police? I think it's a great time for people to listen, to hear the ideas, to understand what that means. It's not that police are not going to exist. I know that that causes some fear, you know, that they may be sexually assaulted and there's no police to help them. Or they may be burglarized or robbed and there's no police. That's not what I'm talking about when I say abolish the police.

Brandon Hasbrook: Brandon explains what exactly he and everyone else means by abolish the police after the break. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained.

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Sean Rameswaram: Okay, Brandon, so what does abolishing the police look like? One, ban discriminatory policing practices, such as stop and frisk. Another would be unqualified immunity. We know when police violate Black people's constitutional rights through excessive force, for an example, they kill a Black person. Oftentimes they're not charged for criminal activity because they raise some sort of specter of, I thought they were reaching for a knife or a gun and they get off and they're never charged for anything for that. let these people be soon sibling and they should face exposure.

Sean Rameswaram: Another would be we should disarm police of military weapons and we should also end armed enforcement of traffic and quality of life violations. We saw this play out a little bit in the HBO series, The Watchmen, and not to spoil anything, so I'm not going to, but essentially during the traffic routine, the gun is locked And the lock on the gun is essentially controlled by a body of overseers. Come on, release my weapon. Probability of drugs and or alcohol in the subject's vehicle. Hi. Probability of firearms and or explosives in the vehicle. Hi. What's your overall perceived threat level from the subject? Hi. Just buzz me, okay? Stand by.

Sean Rameswaram: Another would be something as simple as establish a separate emergency response mechanism from police for mental health incidents. We should be having mental health counselors deal with those incidents, not police who are not trained to do so. We also should be talking about approving reparations for past police terror. Implicit bias, sensitivity and de-escalation training that should be made mandatory. And something I think some folks are talking about now is there should be a development of a data system that accurately tracks race in police contacts, including, for example, traffic stops, citations, searches, warrants, use of force and killings, and arrests. And all of that and tracking all that information, we should also know who are the officers involved. Because oftentimes these officers get fired from one jurisdiction and gets hired in another for these violations of black people rights

Sean Rameswaram: It's interesting you know I think when people hear abolish the police it sort of like they can take the idea seriously because well that just a ridiculous idea But when I hear what you have in mind when you say abolish the police, it sounds more like rethink the police, rethink how we protect people and keep people safe. Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, what is policing and how should policing be used? It's those fundamental first questions that I'm getting at when I say abolish racially discriminatory policing. And I think legislators, both local, state and federal levels, should be thinking about these measures and they have the ability and power to implement them.

Sean Rameswaram: How is abolish the police or rethink, you know, protecting people different from reform or increased accountability? Yeah, sure. So we've seen some of these reforms play out and we're not seeing any changes in terms of police violence against black people. For an example, there has been community policing reforms in which this idea that we should be we should have our police be more representative of the population that they're policing. And we're still seeing evidence to suggest that police violence continues under those reform measures. So there needs to be something else that changes this ongoing racial terror by police. And for the people who are worried about how this might affect the way our society functions, like let's just say it's a Friday night, 4th of July or something like that, like the 4th of July that's coming up real soon. And you're worried about drunk drivers on the road. Who's getting your back on drunk drivers? They're still going to be able to call the police. The police are still going to be out there enforcing traffic violations. Maybe not with weapons, though. Maybe they have some other tools to de-escalate situations. And what about like you're scared that this jilted ex-lover of yours is going to come after you and kill you? Same situation? You know, we can continue to go through these hypotheticals, but I want to be very clear here. Police don't listen to black women as it exists today. Black women will often be victims. of sexual assault, sexual violence, and they are not listened to. They're not deemed credible by police officers. So we got to ask ourselves, is policing working? Maybe it's working for certain communities, white communities in particular. Now, police are going to be there when you call and say, hey, look, there's someone harassing me. They're going to have a better trained police officer come and confuse the situation if the perpetrator is still there. Has anyone tried this? It doesn't sound like an experiment that's been conducted in the United States, but maybe it has. But I mean, when you talk about rethinking how we are feeling safe as a society, I think about like the UK and how, you know, your classic UK police officer in, say, London doesn't even have a gun. They've got a baton and perhaps a whistle and a way to call for backup. Yeah. No, that's right. Police abolition is not going to make us less safe. It's going to make people more safe, especially people of color. And in each country, if you go to other countries, policing developed differently. And America is really unique in a lot of respects. If you really trace policing, it was, it continues to be birthed and nurtured by white supremacy and there needs to be a racial justice intervention.

Sean Rameswaram: What does the city look like in a world where the police have been abolished? What is the vision? It looks more equal. It looks more safe. It looks more just. It looks more hopeful. It looks like parents like mine don't have to give their children to talk. It looks like I could go outside in my own home, my own grass, and not be viewed with suspicion that I'm dangerous. It's a world where I could walk down the street as a black man and police don't follow me or police don't pull me over just to dehumanize me, which has been done. It's a world where we are free.

Sean Rameswaram: Brandon, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you guys so much. Thank you so much. All right.