National Review
The deadly consequences of ‘defusing the police’
The role of policing in the United States is being hotly debated, with many liberal activists calling for reductions in police funding. While advocates of police evacuation have failed to win over the general public, the political climate in certain Democratic-oriented cities, combined with the budget restrictions imposed by COVID-19, has already managed to decrease the number of police departments in some parts of the country. In Minneapolis, the epicenter of last year’s protests and unrest, more than 100 police officers left the city’s police ranks, “more than double the number in a normal year.” In Seattle, another protest center last year, the level of police friction is “unprecedented”. The long-term impact of police cuts in these specific cities is not yet clear. However, a study published in December in the Justice Evaluation Journal offers some evidence that the rapid exhaustion of the ranks of a city’s police force can, in some circumstances, have deadly consequences. Eric Piza of CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Vijay Chillar of Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice analyzed police layoffs in the context of the 2008-09 Great Recession. “There are a lot of surveys that have examined the relationship between the size of the police force and crime, but most of them have looked at the effect of the incremental changes in the number of police officers,” Piza told me about why he did this research. “Major changes, as with layoffs, had not been analyzed before. Therefore, we felt that research into the effect of large and sudden reductions in a police force was needed in the countryside. ”During this period, New Jersey’s two largest cities, Newark and Jersey City, faced severe budgetary stress as a result of the economic crisis. Both cities contemplated major police layoffs in response. In Jersey City, the local police union and city officials managed to reach an agreement that prevented layoffs; in Newark, labor negotiations have not been so successful, resulting in the dismissal of 167 recently hired officers, a total of 13% of the force. Piza and Chillar used the examples from Jersey City and Newark as a natural experiment, examining their crime rates between 2006 and 2015 and looking to examine the impact of Newark’s layoffs on their crime levels. Although no natural experiment is perfect, the similarities between the two cities made them comparable for the purposes of the study. The researchers note in their article that “since the two largest cities in New Jersey, Newark and Jersey City are more similar to each other than any other county in the state in terms of the size of the police force, pre-dismissal resources and pre-dismissal levels. of crime. ”They noted that property crime and violent crime rates continued to decline during their time in Jersey City. In Newark, however, rates of violent crime have increased following layoffs. Using statistical models, Piza and Chillar estimate that there were “approximately 108.. . additional violent crime incidents per month resulting from layoffs ”, while 103 property crime incidents per month occurred. A possible culprit for the rise in crime after the layoffs was the decision by the Newark Police Department (NPD) to restrict the use of hot-spot policing, which involved the designation of officers to proactively police the city’s hot spots during most of your shifts. From 2006 to 2009, policing at critical points was an important feature of the department’s activities, but budget constraints and layoffs forced the NPD to stop this form of policing, as staff were needed elsewhere. It is also possible that the sudden and dramatic fall of police officers has damaged the morale of the force, contributing to the reduction in the quality of policing. Piza and Chillar point to a 2018 study that found that teacher layoffs in Washington state resulted in lower teacher productivity. Whatever the reason, the study clearly shows a link between layoffs and an increase in crime in Newark, which did not occur in Jersey City with the same location. Piza advised caution in drawing further lessons from the study and suggested that layoffs need not necessarily lead to higher levels of crime if they are done in a more strategic way that allows departments to continue the crime control practices that work. “The layoffs were not part of any major effort to reimagine public security, which is currently taking place,” he told me. “That said, I don’t think reducing the size of the police force will automatically result in more crimes, as long as police cuts are supplemented with resources that can help maintain evidence-based crime control practices.” But it is not clear whether the cuts we are seeing across the country are being made in a judicious environment or whether they are an automatic response to the political moment that is taking place across the country. We know, for example, that Austin, Texas, cut a third of the police budget and New York City has disbanded an undercover anti-crime unit. These cuts are taking place at a time when many American cities have experienced a huge increase in homicides and shootings. Some locations, such as Wilmington, Del., Recorded a record number of homicides last year. St. Louis, Missouri, has long been one of the most violent places in America, has seen its highest death rate in 50 years. Since the advent of smartphones and social media, we are all intimately aware of acts of violence and unjustified police brutality. But we must put all the policy responses we take into context, carefully weighing the costs and benefits. The study by Piza and Chillar shows that a sudden and sudden reduction in police personnel can have disastrous consequences for a community, leading to more unnecessary deaths.