Name: 'Defunding the police' hashtag has good intentions — but it's an awful slogan
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'Defunding the police' hashtag has good intentions — but it's an awful slogan

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Detroit Free Press Like the first shots fired&nbsp;at Lexington and Concord, George Floyd's death has precipitated&nbsp;an&nbsp;upheaval whose consequences are hard&nbsp;to forecast.&nbsp;For many&nbsp;white Americans, that upheaval has been as sudden as a solar eclipse. For most black Americans, it's an eruption&nbsp;four centuries in the making.Still, the&nbsp;coalition coalescing around the imperative to end&nbsp;police violence against black people&nbsp;—&nbsp;a coalition that has now swelled to encompass &nbsp;, and from in the country&nbsp;— is teasing us&nbsp;with the possibility of a national consensus that seemed unthinkable just a month ago.Americans who clung to their partisan corners even in the face of an indiscriminate pandemic have acknowledged&nbsp;with remarkable unanimity&nbsp;that something is urgently wrong with the way their communities are policed. Even whites who&nbsp;view&nbsp;their local police officers&nbsp;as benevolent&nbsp;allies understand, as never before, the fear&nbsp;a flashing blue light signifies&nbsp;in millions of rear view mirrors.So the president whose reelection is threatened by that emerging consciousness&nbsp;must have been relieved this week when some Black Lives Matter activists began field-testing an&nbsp;awful slogan&nbsp;— Defund the police!&nbsp;— that seemed calculated&nbsp;to smother America's nascent&nbsp;consensus in its crib."Democrats Abandon Police!" the press secretary for Donald Trump's Michigan campaign trumpeted in an email blast to the state's media as the week began.In an attached statement,&nbsp;the president's Lansing-based propagandist asserted that U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla.,&nbsp;an African-American&nbsp;ex-police chief touted as a possible running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, had "turned her back on her brothers and sisters in law enforcement" by endorsing Minneapolis' plan to rebuild its police department from the ground up."The loudest voices in the Democrat Party have made their new demand clear: Defund the police,"&nbsp;the Trump campaign warned. It's a message Michiganders can expect to see repeated, and amplified, in 30-second spots aired throughout the current election cycle.I know, I know: It's also a deliberate distortion.More:More:The braintrust behind the #defundthepolice hashtag doesn't want police to stop arresting car thieves, protecting retailers from vandalism, or interceding when a spurned lover&nbsp;takes his ex-girlfriend hostage at gunpoint.&nbsp;The vast majority of those protesting George Floyd's execution don't want to abandon the rule of law, or to deprive police of the authority and resources they need to enforce it thoughtfully and equitably.I know this because my email and voicemail boxes are overflowing with detailed treatises elaborating on Defund the Police meme. What those who've embraced this mantra actually seek, they hasten to reassure me, is something far more nuanced:&nbsp;&nbsp;a radical reordering of public spending priorities. Their objectives won't be achieved by putting police officers out of work, but by&nbsp;reimagining the police function. They want to&nbsp; demilitarize urban police departments, overhaul screening and training procedures, and mobilize&nbsp;crisis counselors, educators and community leaders to assume responsibilities for which&nbsp;police officers are manifestly&nbsp;unsuited.But that is not&nbsp;the sort of sophisticated interpretation a&nbsp;stark demand to defund the police encourages. The people who coined that slogan are trying to fit&nbsp;a rounded message into that square hole, and the harder they work, the more futile their task appears. They can append all the footnotes they want to that ill-conceived hashtag, but the enemies of reform have already begun wielding it as a cudgel to divide their movement.It's time to go back to the drawing board.I'm not sure how to distill the myriad&nbsp;experiences and priorities of a diverse movement into a few simple words."Reform the police" reeks of toothless impotence.&nbsp;"Jail bad cops," poses&nbsp;too specific an antidote for a toxic law enforcement culture in which every&nbsp;teenagers of color is presumed&nbsp;a potential enemy combatant.&nbsp;But it shouldn't be so hard to come up with&nbsp;rallying cries less hostile, and less&nbsp;vulnerable to malignant distortion by those eager to sow division, than "Defund the police."Re-imagine the police? Re-invent public safety?(I know:Thanks for coming in,&nbsp;boomer. Close the door on your way out.)&nbsp;Still, younger minds need to work on it.The day before she left office in 2010, I asked then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm what worried her the most about Republicans poised to assume control of all three branches of Michigan government."Their attitude&nbsp;toward teachers," Granholm answered&nbsp;quickly, adding that she found Republican&nbsp;hostility to educators and their unions not just discouraging, but inexplicable."Why," she asked "would you ever want to make enemies of a group of people who have your children for six hours every day?"Strategically speaking, a progressive campaign to vilify&nbsp;police officers and police unions would be every bit as shortsighted and self-defeating as the conservative campaign to demonize teachers in the name of reforming public education.Many of those who harbor no illusions about the pervasiveness&nbsp;of police brutality, or about the layers of law, culture&nbsp;and institutional inertia that perpetuate it, are not interested in making enemies of the people who answer their 911 callsLike teachers, cops don't want to be judged by the indefensible actions of their most irresponsible&nbsp;colleagues. Like teachers (and most other professionals I can think of, for that matter, including journalists), they crave the tools they need to do a difficult job, including the respect of the communities and elected leaders they serve.To chant&nbsp;"Defund the police!" in the faces of officers working mandatory overtime under the scrutiny of protesters&nbsp;and journalists poised&nbsp;to spotlight any lapse of discipline is to risk alienating a critical constituency, many of whose members&nbsp;readily embrace&nbsp;the premises of the Black Lives Matter movement.&nbsp;What most police officers want&nbsp;is to work in communities that appreciate the unique hazards they face and the limited tools they have. And they want back-up, not just in&nbsp;the form of uniformed reinforcement, but also in the form of&nbsp;allied professionals to address&nbsp;challenges -- unemployment, illiteracy, substance abuse, and mental health emergencies -- no police department is equipped to overcome.What those white people who feel more reassured than threatened when a squad car trolls their neighborhood at 2.a.m. want is&nbsp;police departments that inspire the same confidence in every neighborhood, and Americans of every color.When framed carefully, the aspirations&nbsp;of the millions of demonstrators protesting police violence and racial inequity are impossible&nbsp;to mock or dismiss. But words&nbsp;have consequences, and when you have to explain to everyone who hears your slogan that it's not meant to be taken&nbsp;literally, for heaven's sake, it's time to invest in a new one.Brian Dickerson is the Editorial Page Editor of the Free Press. Contact him at bdickerson@freepress.com.

Detroit Free Press Like the first shots fired&nbsp;at Lexington and Concord, George Floyd's death has precipitated&nbsp;an&nbsp;upheaval whose consequences are hard&nbsp;to forecast.&nbsp;For many&nbsp;white Americans, that upheaval has been as sudden as a solar eclipse. For most black Americans, it's an eruption&nbsp;four centuries in the making.Still, the&nbsp;coalition coalescing around the imperative to end&nbsp;police violence against black people&nbsp;—&nbsp;a coalition that has now swelled to encompass &nbsp;, and from in the country&nbsp;— is teasing us&nbsp;with the possibility of...

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Brian Dickerson

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes referred to as the Freep (reflected in the paper's web address, www.freep.com). It primarily serves Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Monroe counties.  The Free Press is also the largest city newspaper owned by Gannett, which also publishes USA Today. The Free Press has received ten Pulitzer Prizes and four Emmy Awards. Its motto is "On Guard for 189 Years".

'Defunding the police' hashtag has good intentions — but it's an awful slogan

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