As the new Administration begins to find its feet and is working on a broad and ambitious agenda to address the many issues that have become more and more important in recent years, Police Reform is surely high up on that agenda.
The key questions are, what needs to be done and, what can be realistically achieved?
In the months leading up to the election, almost every candidate from across the political spectrum sought to address the issue of Police Reform in one way or another. The concepts and ideas that stuck tend to be those that fit neatly into a news sound bite on TV, and the stickiest of them all was of course the notion of “Defund the Police”.
While it’s a pithy and easy to grasp concept, Defund the Police is simply not the simple solution. Policing finds itself at a crossroads and there is a need for careful and considered debate and discussion of what the best and most appropriate course of action would be in any given city/town and situation.
The excellent article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Police reform is not as simple as ‘Defund The Police’ by Jody Nishman https://www.gazettenet.com/Guest-columnist-Jody-Nishman-38581344 looks at this issue from the perspective of a smaller community like Northampton, Massachusetts and recognizes that thoughtful, nuanced dialogue is essential for any reform to be successful.
At Themis Group we would take this idea a step further and posit that thoughtful and nuanced dialogue should lead to considered and proven solutions being implemented to change the way that policing is conducted by the police,
and experienced by the communities that are under the care and protection of those police officers. These changes can be achieved by working towards a change in policing culture, away from the warrior concept and towards a concept of guardianship based on a relationship of consent between the police and the community.
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