\u201cI\u2019m seein\u2019 body after body and our Mayor Giuliani<\/span><\/p>\n Ain\u2019t tryin\u2019 to see no black man turn to John Gotti.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n –<\/span> \u00a0 <\/span>Everyday Struggle<\/span><\/i>, The Notorious B.I.G., 1994.<\/span><\/p>\n When Biggie rapped these words in 1994 on his song <\/span>Everyday Struggle<\/span><\/i>, Rudy Giuliani was just entering office as Mayor of New York City.<\/span> Riding a colossal wave of support behind his promises to revolutionize policing, Giuliani exacted revenge on the criminals who had turned the Big Apple into one of the most dangerous cities throughout the 1970s and 80s. Along with Police Commissioner William Bratton, Giuliani authorized the NYPD to use force in dealing with petty crimes such as turnstile-hopping, graffiti, and selling loose cigarettes. He expanded the NYPD\u2019s Street Crime Unit by nearly triple its size, allowing a greater proportion of plainclothes units to patrol high crime areas and perform sting operations. Before it was<\/span> disbanded in June 2020<\/span><\/a>, the Street Crime Unit accounted for 2 percent of the NYPD\u2019s force, and yet committed about a third of fatal police shootings since 2000.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Under their reign, violent crime in New York City dropped by more than 56 percent, and misdemeanor arrests surged by 70 percent, according to the<\/span> National Bureau of Economic Research<\/span><\/a>. In a 2015 report, Bratton wrote that the increase in misdemeanor arrests led to fewer felonies, because the NYPD was preventing crime more effectively. \u201cArresting someone for a misdemeanor frequently prevents him from graduating to committing felonies, for which severe sanctions like prison may result,\u201d wrote Bratton.<\/span><\/p>\n Giuliani and Bratton were disciples of the \u201cbroken windows theory\u201d set forth by James Wilson and George Kelling in a 1982 article published in <\/span>The Atlantic<\/span><\/i>. In it, Wilson and Kelling argued that neighborhoods with a high number of petty crimes were vulnerable to more serious ones. In areas where acts of vandalism were left unchecked, the risk of theft and murder increased.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n According to the article, the solution was to address the small problems when they were still small, in order to prevent any potential escalation of crime. The metaphor Wilson and Kelling utilized to describe this phenomenon was that a building with a bunch of broken, unrepaired windows is more likely to be vandalized than a building that quickly repairs its windows. Here, the windows represent crime, and the building represents a community. Naturally, if a building has a ton of broken windows, one of its landlords should be responsible for patching them up. But what was the most optimal way to protect these communities from any further harm? And who exactly did Wilson and Kelling consider to be the landlords of these proverbial buildings?<\/span><\/p>\n The primary experiment that inspired the \u201cBroken Windows” article was performed by Kelling himself and was published in 1981. Termed the \u201c<\/span>Newark Foot Patrol Experiment<\/span><\/a>,\u201d Kelling walked around Newark, New Jersey, alongside a foot patrol officer named Kelly. The goal of the experiment, according to Kelling, was \u201cto see how they defined \u2018order\u2019 and what they did to maintain it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As Kelling walked alongside Kelly, he noticed that while frequent stops were made to enforce basic street laws such as loitering and public drinking, equal time was spent engaging in conversation with the \u201cregulars,\u201d or familiar local faces. There seemed to be a symbiotic relationship between officers and the community, where someone such as Kelly would show up to patrol the streets, and the \u201cregulars\u201d would show him friendly support. \u201cThe people of Newark, to judge from their behavior and their remarks to interviewers, apparently assign a high value to public order, and feel relieved and reassured when the police help them maintain that order,\u201d wrote Kelling and Wilson in the \u201cBroken Windows\u201d article.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur experience is that most citizens like to talk to a police officer,\u201d wrote Wilson and Kelling. \u201cSuch exchanges give them a sense of importance, provide them with the basis for gossip, and allow them to explain to the authorities what is worrying them.\u201d While Kelly\u2019s primary objective was to take appropriate action and prevent crime, he also acted as a walking public forum for citizens, taking note of their concerns and gaining their trust.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, according to both scientists, a newfound problem had emerged. Due to a national crime wave, originating from the urban riots of the 1960s and 1970s, policemen started to operate as crime solvers, with their priorities being rooted in solving crimes, gathering evidence, and making arrests. From their perspective, many departments were straying from the essence of policing: maintaining order in their communities and preventing crime from occurring.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In the Atlantic article, Wilson and Kelling advocated for police departments to return to their original duty as crime preventers in communities. \u201cThe essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself,\u201d concluded Wilson and Kelling. \u201cThe police cannot, without committing extraordinary resources, provide a substitute for that informal control.\u201d They hoped that police presence would be more concentrated in urban, higher-crime areas, in order to ensure the prevention of crime and disorderliness, rather than the pursuit of criminals.<\/span><\/p>\n But they offered a stark warning: the questions posed in the article had no simple answer. In fact, Wilson and Kelling were upfront about the concerns they had regarding the discrimination their theory could morph into.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe might agree that certain behavior makes one person more undesirable than another but how do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable?\u201d questioned Wilson and Kelling. \u201cHow do we ensure, in short, that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It was just over ten years later where Wilson and Kelling received an answer. Giuliani was elected mayor of New York City in 1993, and he immediately put forth a plan to reduce the overall crime rate in a city reeling from an era defined by misconduct and delinquency.<\/span><\/p>\n During the 1970s and 1980s, New York City experienced a colossal tidal wave of crime related to the crack epidemic. In 1975, the police and fire department unions, under the Council for Public Safety, posted pamphlets in subway cars and construction sites for tourists with instructions on how to avoid being a target of crime. The pamphlets, titled \u201c<\/span>Welcome to Fear City<\/span><\/a>,\u201d featured an image of the Grim Reaper on the cover and a sub header describing the pamphlet as \u201cA Survival Guide for Visitors to the City of New York.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The wave reached its peak in 1990, when the city suffered a record high number of homicides, with<\/span> 2,262<\/span><\/a> according to the NYPD. David Dinkins, the mayor of New York City at the time, was called out by the <\/span>New York Post<\/span><\/i> which chose to plaster Dinkins\u2019 face across the front page of their September 7, 1990 edition with the headline \u201c<\/span>Dave, Do Something!<\/span><\/a>\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Dave did in fact do something. He petitioned for and received enough funding from the State Legislature to expand the number of NYPD policemen by 25 percent through his \u201cSafe Streets, Safe City\u201d plan. In 1991, he founded the Beacon program, consisting of after-school programs at community centers that kept many pre-teen and teenage students out of trouble. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With these initiatives in place, crime began to gradually decrease across the board in New York City. After reaching its all-time high in 1990, the number of violent crimes decreased by ten percent by 1993. Unfortunately for Dinkins, he narrowly lost the 1993 mayoral election to Giuliani by three percentage points.<\/span><\/p>\n Much of the crime reduction in New York City throughout the 1990s was attributed to Giuliani and his \u201cbroken windows\u201d mantra. During his mayoral campaign, Giuliani depicted Dinkins as incapable of controlling the levels of crime, when in fact<\/span> crime was already decreasing<\/span><\/a> under Dinkins.<\/span><\/p>\n Dinkins was the target of a riot in 1992, where thousands of off-duty police officers and their supporters swarmed City Hall in protest of Dinkins’ proposal to create a civilian agency with the purpose of investigating police misconduct. In one of the most infamous riots ever seen in New York City, rioters blocked off traffic to and from the Brooklyn Bridge, stormed into City Hall, and destroyed thousands of dollars in private property. The majority of rioters were NYPD officers who drank alcohol and hurled racial epithets at bystanders. In the middle of it was Giuliani, who, according to the<\/span> New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a>, \u201cled the crowd in chants, using an obscenity to refer to Dinkins\u2019 administration policies,\u201d although the following sentence noted that the crowd had reacted less warmly to Giuliani\u2019s statement that the NYPD needed to fight corruption within the police department. Either way, Giuliani won the mayoral race of 1993, and it was full steam ahead from there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The conventional wisdom was that broken windows had made New York safer. So it wasn\u2019t surprising that Michael Bloomberg, Giuliani\u2019s successor, took the theory a step further in 2002, when he introduced the \u201cstop-and-frisk\u201d policy. This allowed policemen to detain anyone on the street they deemed suspicious and pat them down if they looked to have a weapon. The results of the policy were exactly what Wilson and Kelling predicted in their 1982 Atlantic article. Policemen began to racially profile minorities and detain Black and Latinx people at a disproportionately high rate compared to white people. According to the<\/span> New York Times<\/span><\/i><\/a>, 90 percent of the NYPD\u2019s five million stops made during Mayor Bloomberg\u2019s three terms involved Black and Latinx residents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n On August 12, 2013, Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled that stop-and-frisk violated the constitutional rights of minorities. In<\/span> Floyd v. City of New York<\/span><\/i><\/a>, she argued that New York City and the NYPD \u201cadopted a policy of indirect racial profiling by targeting racially defined groups for stops based on local crime suspect data,\u201d which resulted in widespread racial profiling. She mandated the use of body-worn cameras for some officers and ordered the creation of community meetings by a court-appointed facilitator, giving residents the opportunity to voice their opinions on the police.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Bloomberg accused <\/span>Judge Scheindlin of \u201cdeliberately denying the city \u2018a fair trial.\u2019\u201d He stated that none of the NYPD\u2019s tactics would be changed quickly, and promised to file an appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n Scheindlin\u2019s ruling drastically decreased the number of stops made and derailed the use of stop-and-frisk in New York City. According to the<\/span> New York Civil Liberties Union<\/span><\/a>, NYC went from 685,724 stops in 201l to 12,459 stops in 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n But the damage was already done.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Stop-and-frisk policing was arguably the cause of Amadou Diallo\u2019s death, a Guinean immigrant who in 1999 was shot forty-one times after pulling out his wallet by plainclothes officers who were part of the Street Crime Unit championed by Giuliani. It was certainly the cause of Eric Garner\u2019s death in 2014, seeing that he was murdered by an officer performing a prohibitive chokehold, just for selling individual cigarettes from packs without tax stamps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>During the 2020 presidential debates, then-candidate Michael Bloomberg was pressed for his adherence to the stop-and-frisk policy during his mayorship. While Bloomberg apologized for his past actions, others were quick to suggest that he was currying political favor and had staunchly defended the practice years after he exited office.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>The evolution of broken windows policing into stop-and-frisk tactics is not what George Kelling intended. In his later years, Kelling made sure to differentiate between his broken-windows theory and what it ultimately morphed into. Before his death in 2019, Kelling co-authored a piece with former NYPD Commissioner William Bratton in<\/span> City Journal<\/span><\/i><\/a>, where he defended his legacy, including the benefits of broken-windows policing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>\u201cUnlike SQF (stop, question, and frisk), Broken Windows policing is not a tactical response based on reasonable suspicion of possible criminality,\u201d wrote Kelling and Bratton. \u201cRather, it is a more broadly-based policy mandating that police will address disorderly illegal behavior, such as public drinking and drug use, fights, public urination, and other acts considered to be minor offenses, with responses ranging from warning and referral to summons and arrest.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Kelling further noted that African Americans and Hispanics, the very people who suffered from the unintended consequences of the theory, supported the policy by nearly a three-to-one rate, according to a Quinnipiac University poll about broken-windows policing. He interpreted the results as underlying public support from all races for this kind of enforcement.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>Kelling and Wilson are ultimately held responsible for the over-policing of minority communities. <\/span>What had started as an idealistic vision to decrease crime ended up mutating into an unrecognizable and twisted method of policing, egged on by figures such as Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. For Kelling and Wilson, their legacies are cemented by the broken-windows theory, which is either responsible for exponentially reducing crime in urban areas or enabling the police to discriminate against African American and Latinx communities, depending on who is asked.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Community Policing<\/strong><\/p>\n Dalton Price patrolled the streets of Paterson, NJ for 25 years. The 56-year-old retired officer is now the Interim Security Coordinator of the Paterson Public School District, but he continues to advocate for community policing nationwide.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Within the Paterson Police Department, Price served with the Anti-Crime unit, Street Crime unit, Gang Enforcement Unit, and a myriad of other positions. He supervised the \u201cOperation Impact Unit,\u201d which according to Price, was created to \u201cplace officers in certain <\/span>at-risk <\/span><\/i>communities and find out what their concerns were.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAs basic as I can put it, community policing is you, the community, helping me, the police officer, to help you, the community,\u201d Price explains to me over a Zoom call. He conceives of policing as a two-way process, like opening a door in order to pass information back and forth between people in two adjacent rooms. \u201cNow, we have to find out how to get that door open. You tell me what you need from me, and I give you what you need. However, the communication part is the issue, and if that door\u2019s not open, it\u2019s a huge issue.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 2017, Price authored <\/span>The Guide to Community Policing 3.0<\/span><\/i>, a handbook written for police officers and departments. The book\u2019s subtitle is \u201crejuvenating today\u2019s most fragile and important relationship.\u201d One of the programs he describes is <\/span>Stop, Park, and Talk <\/span><\/i>(SPT), which entails exactly what its name suggests. Officers get out of their cars and engage in open communication with anyone wanting to talk with them. Other programs include youth outreach at camps and schools, and local safety programs.<\/span><\/p>\n To Price, community policing isn\u2019t just walking around talking to citizens; it\u2019s an entire philosophy, one that Price argues needs to be implemented from top to bottom within police departments. The bottom line is that all policing should be community policing. The problem is that officers don\u2019t think community policing applies to them.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard stories where officers are approached by teachers who say, \u2018I\u2019m wondering if someone can come in and talk to the kids at my school,\u2019\u201d says Price, with a hint of frustration. \u201cAnd the officer says, \u2018Here\u2019s a phone number. Call so-and-so in the community policing division, and they\u2019ll come out for you.\u2019”<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAll he has to do is talk to his sergeant, get clearance for the day, or for a couple of hours, and he can go do it. But why doesn\u2019t the officer feel that way? Because there\u2019s a community policing division, and they think they\u2019re separate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Price also notes that officers tend to separate traditional policing duties from community policing, but that they never differentiate between a drug or traffic arrest and traditional policing. Officers consider making arrests to be real policing, not going to career days at local schools. However, even narcotics officers should be willing to engage in community policing when the time is right.<\/span><\/p>\n If an officer is in the midst of tracking down and apprehending a convicted drug dealer, of course they aren\u2019t thinking of community policing. But all of a sudden, the drug dealer is being processed downtown at the local jail. All of a sudden, they start to cry. \u201cA conversation starts, and they\u2019re telling you how they got into this position,\u201d hypothesizes Price. You give them suggestions, give them advice, and if I\u2019m the officer, I\u2019m willing to help them find a person to talk to, help them get in rehab, and that happens. He\u2019s doing this to someone he just arrested, because it\u2019s not personal. Can this situation carry over into community policing? Absolutely.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n A lot of Price\u2019s frustration stems from the chiefs of police who don\u2019t view community policing as a necessary component of their departments. \u201cWhen you have departments where the chiefs understand the effectiveness of community policing and know what they need to get done, it gets done,\u201d says Price. Chiefs who understand its importance will allocate more resources to community policing tactics and officers. Chiefs who don\u2019t are dismissive of the practice.<\/span><\/p>\n Price envisions a world where all police officers engage in community policing in one way or another. If there\u2019s a police department with 800 officers and 25 of them are assigned to the community policing force, all 800 officers should be able to do community policing in accordance with how Price describes it.<\/span><\/p>\n One challenge is that it is harder to quantify the effectiveness of community policing than it is for traditional policing, where arrests are the universal metric. A reduction of crime in a given area can be attributed to a number of causes, from legislation to increased surveillance. But are there any metrics that specifically show how community policing reduces crime?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe benefits are very, very hard to measure,\u201d admits Price. \u201cNo one knows that because of community policing, there were homicides that were getting solved, shootings getting resolved, all because of community policing, and there\u2019s no real way to measure that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Rather, Price emphasizes that the inherent value found in community policing is the creation of a clear line of communication between the community and the police. Once officers open themselves up to dialogue, the rest is up to the people. After all, community policing is a two-way relationship that requires both parties to interact with one another. \u201cMy goal is ultimately to give you, the people, the opportunity to put my message out there and be an open forum for you. Once I do that, my job is done and it\u2019s not in my hands. I hit my points, I\u2019m open to conversation and any kind of dialogue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. Rockford<\/strong><\/p>\n The Rock River starts in Brandon, Wisconsin. It flows south towards the border of Wisconsin and Illinois, eventually crossing the border and continuing on its journey to Rock Island, Illinois. Along the way, it splits in half an Illinoisan city named Rockford, located an hour and a half drive west of Chicago.<\/span><\/p>\n Rockford was settled in 1834, and it developed into an industrial haven for workers due to its proximity to Chicago, as well as its location on the Rock River. For a while, Rockford was one of the largest furniture-manufacturing industries in the United States and produced inventions like electronic garage door openers and airbrushes. In the mid-20<\/span>th<\/span> century, it fell victim to the industrial decline of the Rust Belt in the mid-20<\/span>th<\/span> century despite efforts to revitalize the economy via the financial and healthcare industries.<\/span><\/p>\n One of Rockford\u2019s local nicknames is \u201cGlockford.\u201d In 2019, it was named the 11<\/span>th<\/span> most dangerous city in the country. In 2018,<\/span> USA Today<\/span><\/a> ranked Rockford as the 16<\/span>th<\/span> worst city to live in, based on quality-of-life metrics.<\/span><\/p>\n Andrew Seale, 35, lives on the east side of Rockford, in a neighborhood in dire need of repaving. He is one of two Resident Officers for the Rockford Police Department as part of the ROCK House program, or the Resident Officer Community Keeper Houses. Established in 2017, the program\u2019s aim is to cultivate relationships between police officers and the community. The hope is that residents will develop rapport with the officers, and vice versa. In exchange for living in the neighborhood he patrols, the program provides him with rent-free housing. <\/span>The ROCK House program enables someone like Officer Seale to interact daily with the community and build relationships with his neighbors. It\u2019s on him to make sure that trust stays intact.<\/span><\/p>\n Seale comes off as a personable guy. His presence is easy-going, and he speaks passionately about the work he\u2019s done in the community as an officer. <\/span>Make no mistake, though: Seale has seen things no person should have to bear witness to. In 2017, for example, he testified as an eyewitness to a quadruple homicide, where he found a 24-year-old man and a four-year-old boy on the floor, brutally gunned down. Seale\u2019s still relatively young at 35, but having been on the force for 11 years, he\u2019s already a grizzled veteran of the Rockford Police Department.<\/span><\/p>\n Seale divides his activities between \u201ctraditional\u201d and community duties. He writes tickets, shows up at crime scenes, and apprehends criminals. But he also bases his schedule on the needs of the community and frequently engages with them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What exactly do those exchanges look like? Seale remembers his first day as the newest ROCK House Resident Officer in November 2019. The first thing he did was go door-to-door introducing himself to his neighbors, surveying their experiences in the neighborhood and handing out backpacks to children. There\u2019s a<\/span> news clip<\/span><\/a> online of this exact exchange, and in it, Seale\u2019s neighbor says she feels safer with a police officer living next door, especially with a shooting having occurred down the block a week beforehand. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Seale played high school football in Bolingbrook, Illinois. His coach was a police officer and encouraged him to attend the \u201cExplorers Program,\u201d which gives high school students the chance to explore a career in law enforcement. He loved it so much that while he was attending Governors State University thirty miles south of Chicago, he tested with different local police departments, which is how he ended up in Rockford.<\/span><\/p>\n As a Resident Officer, Seale hopes to help local children the same way his high school coach did. When he moved into the neighborhood, he noticed that the kids loved playing soccer. He started organizing games for them so frequently that he ended up becoming their de facto coach.\u00a0 \u201cYou have kids from different countries and different areas of the city, and they all come together for the love of the game,\u201d says Seale. \u201cAnd some of these kids would never be dealing with each other otherwise.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Seale understands that to the children, he\u2019s still a police officer. But he emphasizes his ability to focus on coaching them rather than letting his job get in the way. \u201cFor those kids, it\u2019s one of those things where they\u2019ll see me, they\u2019ll know me, and they\u2019ll feel positively towards me,\u201d says Seale. \u201cI think when some of them get older, their interactions with me might make them want to become police officers as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Prior to the pandemic, Seale and Officer Patrice Turner, his fellow Resident Officer, hosted multiple events in the span of a couple months. They organized a wellness fair for the homeless, where they made medical experts, housing programs, and even a barber available. Seale planned on partnering with a local elementary school to go from classroom-to-classroom and speak with the children; he even wanted to start a soccer program there. Most of this came to a halt when the pandemic struck, but Seale plans to start where he left off when it ends.<\/span><\/p>\n Part of the program\u2019s purpose is logistical. If you\u2019re going to assign a police officer to both patrol and live in a residential neighborhood, there better be a logistical benefit to it. \u201cThe ultimate goal is to create new partnerships with the community, so that if something happens in the neighborhood, considering the fact that we know people and they know us, they might be willing to come forward with some more information about whatever crimes occur,\u201d says Seale.<\/span><\/p>\n He notes the connections he\u2019s made in the community, especially with children. Prior to being named a Resident Officer, Seale served as a school resource officer, and he enjoys watching the children he serves grow up and mature into high school and college students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Can ROCK Houses be implemented in larger cities such as New York and Detroit? Seale says it should be considered on a case-by-case basis. \u201cFor one, you have to consider the community, and how receptive they will be, because you don\u2019t want to necessarily put an officer in danger,\u201d says Seale. \u201cI\u2019m sure that somewhere in this country there is a community that would be completely against the idea, and so if you put an officer in a house and the whole community was against that idea, then it probably wouldn\u2019t be the smartest or safest thing for the officer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>He echoes the notion that it is quite possible for police officers to be nervous at the prospect of living within the community they police. Then, he proposes a theory.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEven in larger cities, there are people in the community who know police officers, and maybe they have a good relationship with that police officer,\u201d says Seale. \u201cI don\u2019t think you would get a lot of backlash.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Naturally, Seale is biased. He knew he wanted to be a policeman since high school. To others, this idea of a resident vouching for an officer next door might seem outlandish.<\/span><\/p>\n Seale is aware of this, and he understands that there is a movement against the police. \u201cWe dealt with some protests over the summer, and other officers and I were targeted in some Facebook posts,\u201d recalls Seale. \u201cThese people are angry about everything that\u2019s going on, and if they choose for me to be their target, then let it be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4. Defunding the Police\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n To defund or not to defund the police. It is the discussion that has torn the United States in half this past year. In the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor murders in the spring of 2020, \u201cDefund the Police” became a rallying cry in protests across the world, and the movement gained momentum as millions marched to protest police brutality.<\/span><\/p>\n Strictly speaking, defunding the police entails the reallocation of money from police departments to social services, such as youth services, housing, and mental healthcare services, especially in underserved communities. Law enforcement spending ranks as the<\/span> second-largest spending category<\/span><\/a> for local government budgets in the United States, only behind education. The theory is that if money is divested from police departments, the need for police officers decreases. In turn, investing that money into trusted and dependable community organizations more effectively addresses social issues. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Cities and their local governments have begun defunding police departments in accordance with the demands of activists. Last year, New York City agreed to cut nearly $1 billion from the NYPD\u2019s $6 billion budget, with<\/span> Mayor de Blasio<\/span><\/a> promising to reinvest <\/span>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2021\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Protest-300x199.jpg\")
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