BUSINESS The Multi-Billion Dollar Reason for Police Reform By Stacy M. Brown WI Senior Writer @StacyBrownMedia The lack of police reform remains problematic when it comes to health and finances. One report noted that U.S. cities collectively spend $100 billion a year on policing, eating at budgets for education, health care and housing – particularly in poor communities and those of color. The American Friends Service
Committee [AFSC], a Quaker organization that promotes lasting peace with justice, said New York City spends more on policing than on the Department of Health, Homeless Services, Housing Preservation and Development and Youth and Community Development combined. AFSC researchers noted that, since 1990, the federal government has transferred $6 billion of excess military equipment to local law enforcement agencies under a special program.
(Courtesy of Communities United for Police Reform)
For years, police have also undergone “warrior training” that teaches them to see every encounter as potentially life-threatening, especially when they involve people of color, according to researchers at AFSC. “The police are not a neutral body and the institution is inherently biased,” Mary Zerkel, coordinator of AFSC’s Communities Against Islamophobia Project, wrote in a blog post for the organization. “In the U.S., slave patrols and night watches were the beginning of a racially-directed system of law enforcement designed to secure capital
for white settlers,” she wrote. “Over the past 40 years, the expansion of racially-targeted policing and policies such as stop-and-frisk and the ‘war on drugs’ have helped fuel mass incarceration in the U.S., with African Americans incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white people.” “Black and brown people are disproportionately targeted from a young age, with hundreds of thousands of children ages six to 14 arrested, often by police officers stationed in schools as ‘school resource officers,’” Zerkel wrote. In September, the city of Louis-
ville announced a $12 million settlement with the family of Breonna Taylor who was slain by police after officers entered her home to serve a warrant. As part of the deal, Louisville officials agreed to enact police reforms, including using social workers to provide support on specific police runs and requiring commanders to review and approve search warrants before seeking judicial approval. The populated Kentucky city isn’t the first to promise reforms – and, if
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