Police Reform Now
While the nationwide protests have been reignited by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others, they are a response to the systemic racism in our police and criminal justice systems. This racism manifests in horrifying brutality against Black and Brown people in our country and in our state. There is a national crisis of violence against Black people that spans for centuries. Now is the time for visionary and radical change that we can all be a part of.
For many of our marginalized communities, police and law enforcement can represent harm and terror, instead of safety. In order to fix policing, we must first recognize how our society over-relies on law enforcement. We call the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can even make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed, resolve verbal arguments between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that previously would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.
We must also recognize that four people were killed by police in our state last year, making it Vermont’s deadliest year on record. This happened in the last, most deadly decade on record, with 17 people dying at the hands of police. This marked a significant increase from previous decades, even though the overall population has remained stagnant. These are among the 44 state police shootings that have happened since 1977, and none of these instances resulted in charges against the officers involved.
When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, we envision scenes as violent as our current situation just without law enforcement. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that the only way to solve problems is by policing and caging our people. So much so that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and law enforcement as the answers to violence and harm. When we defund police systems, we can invest in Black community-led education, health, and safety programs. This redistribution of funds will improve our schools and youth homelessness services, support solutions to the opioid crisis, enhance mental health response teams, and finance community violence prevention programs.
This change in society isn’t going to happen immediately, but the recent protests show us that many people in our community are ready to embrace a new vision of safety and justice. We should redirect the millions that now go to police departments toward providing accessible healthcare, safe housing, equitable education, and jobs that pay a livable wage. If we do this, we can lean on the evidence-based practices of our social workers, and build more practical and effective ways of responding to harms in our communities. Imagine community workers performing mental health checks when someone needs help, and our towns and cities using restorative justice models to heal our communities rather than throwing people into prison. This can begin by defunding our Vermont State Police by 30%. Let Vermont be a leader of change in improving the collective health and safety of our community.
photo: James Buck (Seven Days)
