Defunding police a well-meaning but naive goal By: Tom Brodbeck Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Jun. 30, 2020 Last Modified: 9:54 AM CDT Wednesday, Jul. 1, 2020 Updates

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/06/2020 (1643 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s a reason why Winnipeg city council has no intention of “defunding police” or “abolishing police,” as some protesters have been calling for in recent weeks: it’s entirely unrealistic.

Protesters around North America, in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May, are demanding – among other things – that governments stop, or substantially reduce, funding for police agencies.

The argument is that much, or all, of police budgets should be redirected to address the underlying causes of crime, such as mental health, addiction and poverty.

It sounds interesting in theory. But in practical terms, it’s not workable, at least not to the extent many are calling for.

It sounds interesting in theory. But in practical terms, it’s not workable, at least not to the extent many are calling for.

Democratic societies that operate under the rule of law require policing. No matter how much governments try to address the underlying causes of crime, people are going to break the law. There will be murders, assaults, robberies, thefts and property crimes. There’s no getting around it. Communities need well-funded police forces to investigate and solve those crimes and to hold lawbreakers accountable for their actions.

The notion that society could operate without a police force is ludicrous. The idea that most police agencies could respond to emergency calls and investigate crimes with half or less of their budgets is naive.

There is merit in the argument that professionals other than police officers should respond to non-crime calls, such as well-being checks, domestic disputes and missing persons cases.

Police have been calling for that for years. Cops have increasingly been burdened with more responsibilities as governments reduce services in areas such as mental health. No one would be happier than police if government could lessen the load and allow cops to stick to real policing.

Well-being checks are a perfect example. They’re the second most frequent call to police. In 2018, Winnipeg police responded to 16,168 well-being checks, an average of 44 a day. That’s a 61 per cent increase over 2013. Surely social workers or other trained staff could take over that responsibility.

It’s the same with domestic disputes, the most frequent call to police. Police responded to 16,873 domestic disputes in 2018, a 13 per cent increase over 2013. In 87 per cent of cases, no one was charged with a crime. Which means cops were doing more social work than policing.

Even if staff other than police took over the bulk of those cases, there are still crimes and other statutory offences that require investigation. There were 62,640 offences reported to police in 2018 (including 10,453 violent crimes). Could police investigate those offences with a smaller complement of officers? Possibly. But not much smaller. The number of police officers has already shrunk to 181 per 100,000 people in 2018 from 212 in 2013 – a 15 per cent decrease. How much smaller could the complement be before clearance rates start to plummet?

The biggest challenge facing city council is not whether to defund police, but how to better control policing costs. Mayor Brian Bowman and city council have made some progress on that front. But because police salaries have soared for most of the past two decades, per capita policing costs continue to rise above inflation. (Over half of WPS constables are paid over $100,000, including overtime).

If what most protesters really want is police reform, including more effective ways of investigating complaints of police misconduct, then that’s what the city and the province should focus on.

The police budget jumped to $388 per person in 2018 from $348 in 2013 – an 11.5 per cent increase. The problem is salaries and benefits are negotiated through collective bargaining and can’t be changed unilaterally by city council (as they found out recently when they tried to change the pension plan). When the two sides can’t agree on a negotiated settlement, it goes to binding arbitration, where council loses control of its costs.

Which means if the “defund police” crowd got its way and convinced city council to redirect a large chunk of the police budget to social services, the police complement would have to be gutted, leaving very few left to respond to emergency calls and to investigate over 60,000 reported offences a year.

If what most protesters really want is police reform, including more effective ways of investigating complaints of police misconduct, then that’s what the city and the province should focus on. Slashing the police budget would only allow more criminals to get off scot-free and force victims of crime to fend for themselves.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom has been covering Manitoba politics since the early 1990s and joined the Winnipeg Free Press news team in 2019.

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