The End of Policing

“Police argue that residents in high-crime communities often demand police action. What is left out is that these communities also ask for better schools, parks, libraries, and jobs, but these services are rarely provided. They lack the political power to obtain real services and support to make their communities safer and healthier.”

Vitale highlights how government funding of a militarized police over the services and supports that are actually needed in high-crime communities. Over policing of said communities is part of a strategic tactic to prevent minorities from gaining access to power and helps maintain the status quo.

“Any effort to make policing more just must address the problems of excessive force, overpolicing, and disrespect for the public. Much of the public debate has focused on new and enhanced training, diversifying the police, and embracing community policing as strategies for reform, along with enhanced accountability measures. However, most of these reforms fail to deal with the fundamental problems inherent to policing.”

Vitale argues that so long as the foundation of policing remains the same, then institutional racism, racial profiling, and police with a warrior mentality will continue unchallenged. Failure to recognize this has led to all of these initiatives, including diversity hiring, failing. Furthermore, he argues that there is a fundamental difference between what is taught and what is practiced on the streets.

“The broken-windows theory magically reverses the well-understood causal relationship between crime and poverty, arguing that poverty and social disorganization are the result, not the cause, of crime and that the disorderly behavior of the growing ‘underclass’ threatens to destroy the very fabric of cities.”

Vitale argues that western societies continue to blame marginalized groups for their present predicament. This is evidenced by the way which SROs have been introduced in schools and the excess use of arrests, ticketing, and use of physical force in dealing with PMIs, unhoused people, sex workers, and people of color. This theory fails to take into account the effects of slavery, colonization, and white privilege.