Abolition in Practice: Responding to the mobilization of violence talk by police apologists

Policy researchers like David Kennedy, Thomas Abt, and Patrick Sharkey, who know that most policing doesn’t work, continue to insist that we couldn’t possibly “defund the police” and must instead continue to kowtow to the supremacy of policing because it’s the most important part of any effort to respond to violence. While serious crime is at near record lows after over 25 years of decline, the US remains an incredibly violent country and that violence is heavily concentrated among men in the most disadvantaged communities and typically enacted by those who have been the most abandoned by the defunding of communities. There are three ways to respond to this concern about violence: question the framing, point out the failures of policing, and describe specific community-based violence reduction strategies, while we work on longer term social transformations.

Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. Prof. Vitale is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and The End of Policing. His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

http://www.alex-vitale.info/