I think what has generally been asked is not a removal and replacement of the institution, but an ending of certain policies. Especially those that dis-proportionally affect minorities. When Hilary Clinton sat with some people in the Black Lives Matter movement and had a rather passionate discussion she had asked what they wanted someone to do ; you can change policy but you can’t legislate people’s hearts. Shortly after that they expressed that they wanted
policies that touched on 10 areas.
- End Broken Windows Policing
- Community Oversight
- Limit Use of Force
- Independently Investigate and Persecute
- Community Representation
- Body Cams/Film the Police
- Training
- End for Profit Policing
- Demilitarization
- Fair Police Union Contracts
The belief expressed is that this will address a number of the issues and may have benefits to more than just minorities. There are also policies that seem to be more specific to certain areas. For example I believe it was NYC in which there had been complaints of police routinely using stop-and-frisk more often on minorities, but that hasn’t necessarily been an issue in other areas.
I live in an area where the people and the police seem to have a positive relationship. The police are part of and interact with the community and are often times conversational. In speaking with an attorney for a judge at one of the local court houses though I’ve been told that there are still policies and scenarios that can have a disproportionate affect on minorities. Minorities tend to be less wealthy. When a fine is required for a non-criminal offense (let’s say a traffic violation) a person can find themselves in jail for being unable to pay. This is more likely to happen to a minority. After the person is released an ambiguous record of their arrest can easily be found by searching for the person’s name. I say ambiguous because it often has a description of a few words and can easily be interpreted as more dubious than it actually is. People don’t necessarily distinguish between jail time and prison time and that arrest record can have impact on employability.
The nation does have a history of policies that have had disproportional affects on minorities and police violence against minorities. The climate under which the Black Panther Party was formed was an environment in which minorities were routinely stopped more and a simple traffic stop could result in violence (the full name of the party was “The Black Panther Party of
Self Defense”). Declarations that force was unequally applied against minorities either from police or from the community can be found in songs that still survive (“Strange Fruit” by Billie Holiday and more than one song by NWA come to mind).