Defund, defend, defuse…?
Vancouver City Council is weighing up options on it’s budget and the hot button topic is funding or defunding the police. I listened in on some of council’s public input on the budget. Wow, that was eye opening! The discussion was dominated by people who either want the police defunded (or more) or defended.
There were some very thoughtful people on both sides of the discussion who spoke with passion and emotion, including one guy who made his points entirely by rap, but it has to be said, also some pretty extreme views, particularly from people who have a serious hate on for anything to do with the police, and advocate not for a budget reduction or redirection of funds, but disbanding the police entirely.
Check out a handy activist defund website for multiple Canadian cities which shares all the talking points and form emails to send to civic politicians. They don’t mince words “What we need in Vancouver is leadership that can initiate reform that aims towards the eventual abolition of police and prisons”
We are not talking here about people who just believe in police reform or curbs or defunding, but total abolition, and while we’re at it, abolish prisons too. These are some of the kind of people speaking to council on policing matters. One woman justified her defund position by saying that policing is solely about protecting property so a service for businesses and the wealthy who, naturally are the only ones with property. Not a position I concur with, but that doesn’t mean that the defund position is entirely without merit. As always, it really depends how this is planned and realized.
Mainly, I wanted to provide some insights into what is going on at council as many may not have heard the lengthy meetings or seen the presentations.
I’m also concerned about some false notions being shared online, such as; “the crime rate in Vancouver is actually falling so why do we need more policing?”. In fact, the stats show that most crime is rising, and some significantly so. There are two measures, one is since 2015 and one is year on year. I think the longer trend is more useful, but in both cases, crime is up in many categories, and not by a little.
Chief Palmer’s presentation to council included the following slides which are also alarming.
If you want to hear Chief Palmer’s full presentation, it’s at the 10:46 mark of this video.
So the data confirms that crime is largely up, but it still doesn’t mean the city should hand over a blank cheque to the police. What I witnessed in the council presentations was a very binary view. Either the police need to be fully defended or they are the actual problem. In fact, I believe there can be a balanced view which would include initiatives to address policing issues by way of more oversight, more training and more relations with community leaders who can provide insights and improve relations. There needs to be work on understanding from both the police and the public to address all the issues because clearly, crime and policing are important issues to residents.
No doubt we also need more community involvement and other means of deescalating situations, which can certainly mean funds allocated to other resources, but two things about that. One is that it presumes no funds are allocated to social service resources right now, but that isn’t actually true. Police work with organizations right now in dealing with issues in the DTES in particular. Could there be more? I don’t doubt it.
The defund.ca website mentions The Urban Native Youth Association and so by association, suggests that this is an org aligned with their views, but the truth is, UNYA has good relations with the police. UNYA actually has programs funded by the City where youth go on a canoe trip with service providers, including the VPD, in order to try and build relationships with native youth. So UNYA sees relations with VPD as valuable, despite what is implied by defund.ca.
Two, it suggests that the first port of call for any social issue is armed police and that if only social workers were there first, we could more effectively respond to certain issues. Fact is, the police are often called right now, by social services after they have attempted to deal with a situation, so the notion that “defund” means providing new services is not as simple as that.
Further, if we do seek to replace specific policing with alternatives, seems we need to understand how that would be implemented to work effectively given the complexity and potential danger of many incidents. Seems to me, while defunding is a valid course to investigate, doing so now, without having those options in place and working might be a case of horse before cart.