Define police duties first, then talk defunding
Defund the police.
It’s a mantra, indeed a demand, that has been bandied about — including in Calgary, where nearly 5,000 people have signed an online petition with that aim in mind — since the videotaped police killing of George Floyd more than one month ago.
Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed May 25 when Derek Chauvin, a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minn., knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed face down on the road, saying at least 16 times, “I can’t breathe.” The videos of his public death are agonizing to watch.
Those videos mobilized much of the western world to protest police brutality, racism and the amount of resources taxpayers divert to police budgets.
Friends and family of Floyd might be surprised by just how deep into the minutia of policing his death is reaching, and how far.
During Tuesday’s virtual Calgary police commission meeting, Chief Mark Neufeld not only mentioned Floyd’s name but much of the discussion revolved around how to restructure policing to better serve the community.
“This has been a difficult time since the death of George Floyd, and one of the things we learned very quickly is even though we had very good relationships with the community here in Calgary ... they weren’t as good as perhaps we thought they were,” said Neufeld.
The chief supported a June 29 letter from commission chair Bonita Croft to Alberta Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer, calling for a summit on policing with all imaginable stakeholders to, in part, modernize the Police Act by defining the role of police, improving officer training and accountability structures, as well as looking at the role of other agencies in delivering services.
When it comes to defunding the police, Neufeld says it’s crucial to understand what the other party’s definition of defunding is.
“For some this is about diverting money, for some this is about dismantling police, for others it’s about disarming the police, so it’s important in these discussions to find out where on the continuum individuals are,” he said.
“The deputy chiefs and I had a really good conversation with a community group (Monday) where one of the people said something that I thought was quite profound: ‘We don’t need to defund, we need to define.’
“I thought that was insightful because over the past four decades I think we’ve made the police the social agency of first resort, and particularly after four in the afternoon and on weekends,” said Neufeld, who recently completed a master’s degree in criminology and police management from the University of Cambridge. “What ended up happening for many is the police became all things to all people, and I think what ends up happening is you risk becoming a mile wide and an inch deep.”
Neufeld says when he first worked as a front-line constable in Vancouver in the early 1990s, the deinstitutionalization of those suffering from mental-health issues led to provinces saving a lot of money on programming and facility costs that landed on cities dealing with the fallout of mentally fragile individuals living on the streets. Police ended up becoming de facto social workers, psychologists and mental-health workers, as well as crime fighters and investigators.
Is that how society wants our police services to spend their time? In the past month, several Canadians have been killed after police were called to make a check on their mental health.
An investigation by the CBC found that since 2000, more than 460 people have died in encounters with police across Canada and, of those who were killed, a substantial majority — more than 70 per cent — had mental-health or addictions issues.
For many years now, police across Canada have been advocating for a better balance between the traditional role of police and what they are now asked to do with regard to responding to individuals with complex needs, such as those with mental-health issues, addictions, poverty and homelessness.
“A good deal of this defund conversation, at least of late, promotes diverting funds from the police budget to reasonable places — social programs, housing subsidies ... and the like. But it seems to be lacking serious consideration as to the details of how practically that would occur and what the practical impacts would be on our communities,” said Neufeld.
Neufeld is right. We need to first define what society’s expectations of police should be and then, if necessary, create the social supports to fill in the gaps we’ve been using the police to fill.
“If we look at this from a systems perspective rather than just a police versus the rest of the system perspective, I think we’ll find there’s quite a bit of money — sufficient money and resources in the system already.”
Neufeld mentioned a highly touted program in Oregon, called CAHOOTS — Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets — in which social workers can be summoned by 911 emergency dispatchers. Those social workers collaborate closely with police — and not just from 9 to 5 — to help those with mental-health struggles and to de-escalate volatile situations.
During the meeting, Neufeld said that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the police service has been forced to find contactless ways of doing things that have led to efficiencies that it will maintain even after the pandemic is over.
In other words, crises often lead to opportunities. The crisis caused by George Floyd’s brutal killing is no different.
Defund the police? Not necessarily.
But we do need to define the police — its role and our expectations. Chief Neufeld seems like the right man at the right time to lead that crucial dialogue.