Talk:Police abolition movement/Archive 1

Defunding also means removing Perverse Incentives
There is a lack of discussion of Police defunding by removing Perverse Incentives and property seizures that cause the Police to become a defacto revenue source for some city/county budgets. Recently several smaller cities and counties were told by the courts (after Furguson) to find other ways to raise sizable parts of their revenues rather than using a "Ticket Lottery" given to the poor (and therefore some minority populations). The result would be Police refocusing on their stated primary functions. If there is a suitable link to such an article, I could not find it so please find it and insert it in to this article.

From the Ferguson unrest article: 'Another aspect of this situation might stem from a system that burdens the poor and black in Ferguson. Minor traffic offenses are the starting point, and the costs spiral up rapidly if the offenders do not pay the fines on time or do not appear in court. The income from court fines represented the second-largest source of revenue for Ferguson in 2013. On October 1, 2014, the city of St. Louis canceled 220,000 arrest warrants and gave a three-month delay to the offenders to get a new court date before the warrants would be reissued.'

From the Civil forfeiture in the United States article: 'Revenue for law enforcement. As a byproduct, to produce revenues to enhance forfeitures and strengthen law enforcement.'

From the Police brutality article: 'In a report released concerning the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, the Justice Department admitted to the Ferguson's police department's pattern of racial bias. The department argued that it is typically an effort to ticket as many low-income black residents as possible in an attempt to raise local budget revenue through fines and court fees. The Justice Department explained police encounters could get downright abusive when the person being questioned by the police officers becomes disrespectful or challenges their authority.'

Septagram (talk) 23:45, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

List of United States politicians who support police budget reductions
This table should probably include a recognition of whether the politician in question explicitly supports abolition as a goal of the budget cut or not, as that would be relevant to the subject of the article, which is "Police abolition movement." Any other thoughts on the inclusion of this list in this article would be appreciated. --Xicanx (talk) 22:57, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think this table works as-is because as stated in the article introduction,"In practice, defunding the police may take several forms, from limited modest budget cuts to functioning as a step towards total abolition of police as they exist today."--Jremeika (talk) 02:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * It still needs to be focused on police abolition (the topic and scope of this article), not budget reductions. A politician’s support for budget cuts gives no indication as to whether they support total abolition of police. — MarkH21talk 06:53, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Camden County Police Department
Not sure how/whether to work this in -- Camden NJ dissolved their city department in 2012/2013 for other reasons, replacing it with a county department. Employees of the city department were laid off, then had to re-apply to the new dept. The new department ended up with about 1/3 of the old force, the rest new recruits, and the then-chief basically took the opportunity to hit the reset button on the department culture and policies. —valereee (talk) 19:11, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Article at Defund the police
I'm a little concerned that Police abolition movement and Defund the police are redundant, or at least so heavily overlapped that it may not make sense to have separate articles. Much of abolishing the police relies on divest/invest, and some calls for defunding are assuming complete defunding, which would end up being abolishment. —valereee (talk) 20:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi
 * Thanks for your message, I thought a lot about whether this should be an article or not, I chose to make a separate article because:
 * * Defund the police is a strategy of the police abolition movement and others, many people and groups arguing for reallocation of police funding do not aim to abolish the police. A useful comparison could be fossil fuel divestment, there are several movements with different motivations arguing for it but these movements all have their own articles.
 * * Defund the police is also slogan with a strong cultural meaning in a mainly US context, where as the police abolition movement has a longer history in a wider context.
 * * I agree there is a lot of overlap, I wanted to give people enough content since it is such a contentious topic. I think one of the issues with this is the police abolition movement article isn't super developed and has a lot of focus on the US which doesn't describe the movement or rationale for it in other countries e.g in Northern Ireland (abolition of the Ulster Special Constabulary), South Africa, Colombia. I plan on working on the police abolition movement article in the future.
 * I hope this explains why I've created a separate article, maybe there should be a section or sentence in the Defund the police article that explains the difference further.


 * Thanks


 * John Cummings (talk) 20:47, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , yeah, the explanation in the lead doesn't really explain how they're different. To me Defund the police is a subset. I don't have a strong opinion on which title they should be under, but I do suspect we'll eventually find they overlap too much and will need to be merged. I think the slogan Defund the police could be a separate article, though. —valereee (talk) 21:38, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * As a slogan, wouldn’t it fall under WP:NEO though?As currently written, the contents of Defund the police is already contained here. — MarkH21talk 21:47, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

removing defunding stuff
Please let's discuss whether to remove information about defunding from this article -- my feeling is that it belongs here, as defunding is at minimum a step in abolishing and in practice the likely most common end result. The information may also belong in defund the police, and it's fine to copy-paste it there while we discuss whether we actually need two articles, but in the meantime I believe it does belong here. At some point this article may become too long to navigate, at which point we can also consider simplifying sections or spinning them off, and maybe we'll decide the main article should be at defund the police, but for now let's keep the information intact. —valereee (talk) 11:06, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Defund the police
Nowhere on the page is a reference to the connection of Black Lives Matter (BLM) and #defundthepolice. Per the organization itself, the two movements are not separable as #BLM created #defundthepolice and applied the pressure for responses from political leaders in 2020. (https://blacklivesmatter.com/defundthepolice/ or https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/06/03/black-lives-matter-co-founder). There should be attribution to this and perhaps even merging with wiki.Black Lives Matter site (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter)

96.18.201.232 (talk) 07:49, 7 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi, IP! I'm not sure what you're asking for. —valereee (talk) 10:55, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Added the attribution to the introduction. In general, it seems there needs to be more clarity between when "defund the police" is being used as a statement towards abolition or not. The phrase alone is being used in both a non-abolitionist and abolitionist respects. This probably needs to be addressed. Any thoughts are appreciated. --Xicanx (talk) 23:09, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Xicanx, I am not proficient enough with the Wiki editing format to jump into large scale editing of current events pages, however, review of this page shows it is very selective in its sourcing and somewhat redundant with other wiki pages such as Black Lives Matter and previous 'citizen police' organizations such as the Guardian Angels in NYC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guardian_Angels) and omitting such organizations from non-abolitionist attributions seems extremely biased and intellectually dishonest at best. Would it be more prudent to include a massive amount of already existing wiki information on 'non State' police in the USA or to just remove all the speculative philosophy from the 'EXAMPLES' section which is really just discussion from the Black lives matter reddit back channels? 96.18.201.232 (talk) 03:59, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I recommend that you discuss it in the articles talk page. Trains2050 (talk) 18:00, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

pov tag
what is it you find non-neutral in the History section? —valereee (talk) 19:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)


 * It gives the impression that policing in the United States has started as militarised, anti-foreigner and anti-labor by cherry-picking examples. I suggest focusing on the history of the abolition movement, rather than trying to give an argument for its existence.Keepcalmandchill (talk) 23:25, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , can you suggest edits? —valereee (talk) 02:50, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Glenn Loury podcast.
Per WP:RS/P, Quillette is generally considered unreliable, and isn't a great source even for opinions. Loury doesn't have any relevant expertise when it comes to the police, so citing a podcast for him here, from a low-quality publication, doesn't make any sense. If his opinions here are actually so significant despite his lack of expertise, it should be easy to find secondary coverage of them. --Aquillion (talk) 15:31, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yglesias at Vox said the same thing, so let's just go with that. Crossroads -talk- 15:51, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Critical Resistance sources
I removed chunks of texts as large as 10,000 bytes that were only sourced to Critical Resistance which is an activist group and not a reliable source. Some statements could be attributed to that source, but dedicating most of the article to an activist source gives way too much undue weight to this POV. --Pudeo (talk) 12:35, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. A little bit from them in an WP:ABOUTSELF fashion may be okay, but we shouldn't be going on in loving detail about their claims, but rather showing what WP:Secondary sources believe about this idea. Crossroads -talk- 15:01, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

RfC at A.C.A.B.
More comments are requested at Talk:A.C.A.B.. 71.178.129.13 (talk) 03:41, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

'Support' and 'Criticism' in contemporary responses section
Categorizing these responses as either support or criticism is too black and white for the responses that are actually being included. Many (Sharpey, Nix, Wolfe, Yglesias) do not provide unqualified support for the police abolition movement, but do support portions or aspects of it. It seems WP:UNDUE to classify these sources within a support/criticism dichotomy when the responses cited fall along a wide spectrum. Examples:

Yglesias: "American policing needs to change. And there’s at least some reason to think that reducing the scope of policing can and should be a big part of that change. Fairly mild policy changes undertaken over the past few years have delivered results in terms of fewer police killings of unarmed people, and there’s reason to believe that plenty of opportunity exists for further reform." (https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/6/18/21293784/alex-vitale-end-of-policing-review)

Sharpey: "It’s possible that relying on police isn’t as necessary as we once thought, and that we might even have safer communities without many of them." (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/unbundle-police/612913/) and "The next model should be one driven primarily by residents and local organizations as the central actors. Police still certainly have a role to play, but responding to violent crime takes up only a tiny fraction of police officers’ time. So the idea here is that we can rely on residents and local organizations to take over most of the duties that [officers] currently handle and make sure neighborhoods are safe." (https://www.vox.com/21351442/patrick-sharkey-uneasy-peace-abolish-defund-the-police-violence-cities)

Nix and Wolf: Make no mistake, police reform is needed. We could be witnessing a watershed moment — an opportunity to reimagine the function of police in our society....we need to reconsider making the police responsible for so many societal ills. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2020/06/18/guest-post-defunding-or-disbanding-police-is-dangerous-idea-if-done-hastily/)

To be clear, I'm not trying to represent their full views on the issue with these quotes; rather, I'm picking out quotes that demonstrate why having a support/criticism dichotomy and putting them in 'criticism' oversimplifies their actual views and statements. I would like to remove support/criticize, and let the quotes from each person speak for themselves. Paisarepa (talk) 17:16, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I re-sorted the section in this edit. Crossroads -talk- 02:52, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * This looks great and solves the problem entirely. Thank you! Paisarepa (talk) 03:18, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:01, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Anarchist anti cops.jpg

Conservative point of view on police history
Here is a quote from conservative political analyst Jonah Goldberg, I think it could go somewhere in this article to provide greater neutrality to the content about police history.

"Yes, policing in Southern slave states has some roots in slave patrols.

But policing doesn’t.

Policing—enforcing the law, preventing crime, apprehending criminals—has a very long tradition of existence. I don't know where it started, but for our purposes we can note that Augustus Caesar, born in 27 B.C., created the cohortes urbanae near the end of his reign, to police Ancient Rome. Policing in England takes rudimentary form with Henry II's proclamation of the Assize of Arms of 1181. In the 1600s England established constables and justices of the peace to oversee them. The Metropolitan Police Act created the first recognizable police force in the U.K. in 1829.

Meanwhile, in America the first constables were created in the 1630s in what came to be known as New England. Boston has the oldest “modern” police department. It was created in 1838. New York and Philadelphia soon followed.

They were not created to search for runaway slaves.

It is true that slave patrols were created in slave states and they were an early form of policing. How much that taints the police forces of modern-day Atlanta or Charleston or any other state is clearly up for discussion.

But it strikes me as somewhat far-fetched to argue that police in Minnesota or New York are imbued with the spirit of southern militias tasked with tracking down slaves. It even strikes me as a bit of a stretch to claim that the slave patrols of the 1840s have a lot of bearing on the actions of police departments in majority black cities like Atlanta.

Indeed, there's something uncomfortable to the idea that attempts to prevent rape, murder, robbery, etc., have some obvious racist intent behind them. Black people are just as deserving of protection from crime as anybody else.

Moreover, the attempt to paint policing—all policing "across America," in former slave states and free states alike—as the poisoned fruit of American slavery is problematic. First, every decent country has police, including the non-white ones. Second, the South lost the Civil War. Under Reconstruction, the Radical Republicans imposed the North's will on the South. The slave patrols were disbanded. Some patrollers did indeed become police. But so did African-Americans. Meanwhile, the evil energies of the patrols were primarily expressed elsewhere—in the form of vigilante groups like the KKK." Source: https://thedispatch.com/p/the-problem-with-claiming-that-policing — Preceding unsigned comment added by MonsieurD (talk • contribs)
 * Intentionally seeking out the "conservative point of view" and adding it regardless of relative WP:DUE weight is WP:FALSEBALANCE. We cover topics according to what is said about them in high-quality reliable sources, not by putting our thumb on the scale and saying "not enough conservativism, this doesn't reflect the liberal-conservative balance I, as an editor, personally feel to be correct!"  Basically, if you think this opinion is relevant, there should be more neutral WP:SECONDARY sources covering it, but intentionally seeking out conservative voices and adding them regardless of WP:DUE weight is the opposite of neutral. --Aquillion (talk) 15:33, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Does this mean, then, that the numerous times activist group Critical Resistance is cited should be removed and only replaced if there are secondary sources? Or does this only apply to some political POVs? Crossroads -talk- 15:50, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Some specifical police forces may have had this one function But well a police unit's function(s) may change.

2A01:E34:EC12:36C0:C5F5:A9E1:AFD5:E452 (talk) 10:21, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Non-American perspectives?
I've noticed that a lot of the discussion in this article relates to Americans protesting American police misconduct and suggesting solutions for American jurisdictions.

How much of the police abolition movement is American? Is there much call for it outside the US? Would the question of whether or not the movement is localized to the US be notable enough for the article?

70.77.36.121 (talk) 19:23, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * For now I've specified it's a US movement; I haven't seen calls for it in other countries. The US may be kind of an unusual case among western nations with our heavily-armed populace and militaristic police. —valereee (talk) 20:13, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Anarchists have been proposing police abolition for almost 200 years, in practically every region on earth. As is, the article seems to have a lot of WP:RECENTISM and WP:GLOBAL. -Tga (talk) 19:16, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * , totally open to adding this, we just need sources. —valereee (talk) 02:14, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, sources seems to be the rub. They seem few and far-between. Can anyone find anything there? 70.77.36.121 (talk) 04:45, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Adding on to this-- Although the current news is US-centric, I agree that the page would be improved through a discussion of more regions. To that end, I've added a blurb about Europe in the History section, but I'm struggling to find much more than that (wading through a lot of US articles). GettingCozy (talk) 01:52, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Biased language/formatting?
The use of the word "many" at the end of the final paragraph in the opener and the lack of examples of sociologists, criminologists, journalists, and politicians that support police abolition make this article feel biased against this concept. Full transparency, I am an abolitionist, so I don't want to make any changes that overly reflect my bias either. But that last part really bugs me since it seems to place the anti-abolitionist position ahead of the pro-abolitionist one. Criticism is fully understandable, but placing it front and center like it currently is does not seem right. Qster2323 (talk) 03:36, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

I've deleted it for now. It read "Police abolition has been criticized by many sociologists, criminologists, journalists, and politicians". Now that I've thought about it, I believe the opening paragraph should stick to explaining the gist of the ideology so visitors can get cursory knowledge. Criticism has its own section in the article. Feel free to revert or discuss here. Qster2323 (talk) 04:38, 11 August 2021 (UTC)
 * You were rightly reverted by . Per WP:LEAD, the lead is to summarize the article, including prominent controversies. Police abolition is a controversial idea to say the least. Having the criticism at the end of the lead was hardly putting the anti-police-abolition position ahead of the pro- position described earlier in the lead. If anything, the criticisms should be expanded upon in the lead. I see no evidence that, amongst criminologists and other relevant scientists, this view is held by any more than a small minority of researchers. Crossroads -talk- 04:01, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Partial/whole information re mental health first responders
Under Divest and Invest, the article mentions the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, Oregon and a reader might understandably think that was the only such program, which would be incorrect. I added the text pasted below here, and it was reverted.

Similar programs exist in Oakland, California and Portland, Oregon.

In June of 2020, Denver, Colorado began a pilot program, Support Team Assistance Response (STAR). A September 2020 paper by Taleed El-Sabawi and Jennifer J. Carroll of Elon University School of Law outlines the considerations in setting up such programs in other cities, and includes model legislation.

The 2021 American Rescue Plan included about a billion dollars available for reimbursing 85% of the costs for governments that implement these kinds of programs, and as of April 2021 at least 14 cities were reportedly interested.

Such programs are relevant to police abolition, which the page points out is a process, and the information given for WP readers should be as whole and accurate as possible. John_Abbe (talk) 18:01, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Per WP:SYNTH, the sources used have to be about police abolition, specifically. Is that the case with any of these sources? Perhaps the CAHOOTS program should be removed instead if few or no sources present it as part of abolition. It's possible that sources already in the article are just about defunding and are being conflated with abolition. The thing is that these programs are all designed to work alongside the police department; calls that they cannot handle are passed on to the police. This is why we need sources specifically tying it to abolition. Police defunding is much more relevant to these programs and such material is much more likely to fit at defund the police. Crossroads -talk- 02:42, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response. Even abolition's staunchest supporters are very clear that there are "defund" reforms which do not by themselves abolish the police, but which move us in that direction. It seems appropriate therefore for this article, as it does now, to overview such reforms here and then leave the bulk of it in the linked-to Defund the police article, so I would not support removing the Divest and Invest section if that's what you were thinking. But the summary of relevant reforms on this page should be accurate and whole. John_Abbe (talk) 20:44, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, but it should only be expanded here using sources that meet WP:RS and are about abolition. Crossroads -talk- 04:23, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
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History section
History section is about history of "militarized police." It does not define that and cites all of its sources from one book written by one alleged historian. I propose this book report, that clearly attempts to use said to book paint Aerican policing in a bad light, be removed and placed in an opinion blog where it belongs. In its place maybe someone who has the free time can write about the history of the movement to defund law enforcement. I was genuinely curious and expecting to see writings from England in the 1600s or something where they tossed around the blueprints for a society without armed enforcers. But that's not my schtick so I hope someone else can do that, and I will gladly read it, but having a blank history section is better than this. 2600:387:5:814:0:0:0:34 (talk) 01:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Much needed section: De-radicalization of the Anarchist's idea of abolishing the police
Meanwhile in the article an anarchist anti-police poster and anarchist protestors are shown, I can't find any wording of the original usage by anarchists to be found. Instead, the assimilisation of that idea into capitalism is visibly shown here, for example the "defund the police" movement by left liberals is mentioned, meanwhile the (once?) radical roots of anarchists aren't mentioned in this article as of this date, at all. Maybe this article can help in forming the new section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_criminology — Preceding unsigned comment added by DefendingFree (talk • contribs) 11:43, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Vandalism to editors who correct biases
This article is unfortunately very heavily biased, and the response to editors who try to improve it accordingly is troubling. Why are people removing relevant facts? It is a fact that Black voters where the ones instrumental in defeating the Minneapolis referendum as they exercised their voice at the voting booth, it was reported in NPR and elsewhere, election data confirms this, and yet this was erased. It is a fact that the anti- and non-capitalist alternatives sought by police abolitionists have historically (e.g., Marxism, communism, and socialism) had police forces with considerable human rights abuses, and this fact was erased from the page. It is also a fact that the example of the Robb Elementary police response (lack thereof) was contrasted with a swift Convenient School police response that saved lives, but this was erased. Also, Alec K is not a social scientist and his response to social science research came in the form of an opinion piece on a website with one reference for the entire paragraph. He should not be positioned among social scientists in that part of the article; readers unaware of this will be misled. The fact that he enjoys so much space in that section degrades he objectivity of this page. Broadly, if this aspires to be an encyclopedic entry, and not a page for partisan activism, these erasures are a form of vandalism. Readers need facts so they can think for themselves and they are depending on us. To have any credibility, this cannot simply be a long form argument for police abolition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1005:B0BB:4A30:F00E:EBB6:3952:1C70 (talk) 14:04, 10 April 2023 (UTC)