National Review
The Deadly Consequences of ‘Defund the Police’
The role of police work in the United States is hotly debated, with many liberal activists calling for a reduction in police funding. While advocates of police defundation have failed to win over the general public, the political climate in certain democratically-leaning cities, coupled with the budgetary constraints imposed by COVID-19, has already succeeded the ranks of police. departments in some parts of the country. In Minneapolis, the epicenter of last year’s protests and riots, more than 100 officers left the ranks of city police, “more than double the number in an average year.” In Seattle, another hub of protests last year, the level of police outages is “unprecedented”. The long-term impact of police restrictions in these specific cities is unclear at this point. However, a study published in December in Justice Evaluation Journal provides some evidence that a rapid depletion of a city’s police force can have deadly consequences in some circumstances. Eric Piza, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice at CUNY, and Vijay Chillar, of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, looked at police dismissals against the backdrop of the Great Recession of 2008-2009. “There is a great deal of research that has looked at the relationship between police size and crime, but most of it has analyzed the effect of incremental changes in the number of officers,” Piza told me why he did this research. “Major changes, such as what happens with layoffs, had never been analyzed before. That is why we felt that research was needed in the field into the effect of large, sudden reductions to a police force. During that time, New Jersey’s two largest cities, Newark and Jersey City, faced severe budgetary tensions as a result of the economic downturn. Both cities considered major police layoffs in response. In Jersey City, the local police union and city officials managed to reach an agreement to avoid layoffs; In Newark, labor management negotiations were not as successful, resulting in the dismissal of 167 recently hired officers, a total of 13 percent of the troops. Piza and Chillar used the examples from Jersey City and Newark as a natural experiment, examining their crime rates between 2006 and 2015 and examining the impact of the Newark layoffs on crime levels. While no natural experiment is perfect, the similarities between the two cities made them comparable for the purposes of the study. The researchers note in their paper that “as New Jersey’s two largest cities, Newark and Jersey City are more alike than any other town in the state in terms of police size, pre-discharge and pre-discharge resources. crime levels. They noted that both property crimes and violent crimes continued to decline during their studies in Jersey City. In Newark, however, violent crimes increased after the layoffs. Using statistical modeling, Piza and Chillar estimate that there were “about 108 extra. violent crime incidents per month as a result of the layoffs, ”while there were also 103 additional incidents of property crime each month. A possible culprit for the increase in crime following the layoffs was the Newark Police Department (NPD) decision to use of hotspots police, appointing agents to proactively monitor city hotspots during most of their shifts.From 2006 to 2009, police action was a key feature of the department’s operations, but forced budget constraints and layoffs the NPD to stop this form of police work because personnel were needed elsewhere, it is also possible that the sudden and dramatic decline in the number of police officers has damaged police morale and contributed to a decline in the quality of the police force. Piza and Chillar point to a 2018 study that found that layoffs of teachers in Washington state led to less teacher productivity. Whatever the reason, the research clearly shows a link between layoffs and a spike in crime in Newark, one that didn’t happen in similarly located Jersey City. Piza advised caution in drawing bigger lessons from the research, and suggested that layoffs may not necessarily lead to higher crime levels if done in a more strategic way, allowing departments to continue crime-management practices that work. “The layoffs were not part of greater efforts to reshape public safety that are currently taking place,” he told me. “That said, I don’t think that reducing the size of the police force should automatically lead to more crime, as long as police cuts are complemented by resources that can help enforce evidence-based crime-fighting practices.” But it’s unclear whether the austerity we are seeing across the country is taking place in a judicious environment or whether they are a jerky response to the political moment happening across the country. For example, we know that Austin, Texas, cut a third of its police budget, and that New York City dissolved a plainclothes anti-crime unit. These cuts come at a time when many American cities are experiencing a boom in murders and shootings. In some places, such as Wilmington, Del., Record murders were committed last year. St. Louis, Mo., long one of America’s most violent places, saw the highest death toll in 50 years. Since the rise of smartphones and social media, we are all well aware of acts of unjustified police brutality and brutality. But we must contextualize all the policy responses we take, carefully weighing the costs and benefits. Piza and Chillar’s research shows that a sharp and sudden decline in police force can have disastrous consequences for a community, leading to more unnecessary deaths.