DEFUND

A Canadian activist ventures a defense for a controversial effort at police reform.

Public policing is relatively recent, and, writes Hudson, its origins are various: In her homeland of Canada, for instance, the North West Mounted Police, the ancestor of today’s Mounties, was founded “to wrest control from Indigenous people and support the colonization of the northwest territories of North America,” a paramilitary counterpart to the Texas Rangers and kindred groups. Meanwhile, as many scholars have noted of late, other police forces owe their origins to groups formed to oversee enslaved populations and chase down runaways. The class and racial elements of modern policing can be traced to these origins, and they shape the way policing works today, by Hudson’s lights: “Heavy police presence in Black communities guarantees Black people will be observed, arrested, and imprisoned at rates far beyond those of other races,” she writes, and this presence further reinforces the notion that “Black people are inherently dangerous.” Through “copaganda,” as she calls it, the police insist on the necessity of their existence through instruments such as a controlled news media (police reports being primary news fodder) and TV series that picture the police as beleaguered heroes. In reality, Hudson argues, the police make few people safe and oppress many, with little accountability, inasmuch as “the legal system is set up to protect police, even if they violate your rights.” Defunding the police to abolish this system is a thought experiment at present, and Hudson persuasively argues that we need not wait until all of the parts are worked out to begin putting that experiment into motion: “An unarmed civilian traffic safety service” could monitor vehicles and help correct violations: “a people-centered approach” and not a “gotcha”—“without needing to carry weaponry that can kill people several times over.”

A lucid argument for defunding—and demilitarizing—the police.