The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.
Since the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, America has witnessed a nationwide call to reexamine how our police, and indeed our entire public safety system, operate. Our communities are calling for our police to better protect and serve them by performing services they actually need, not only services the police are trained to give.
Across the country, including in Tucson, Marana, and Oro Valley, policing is the single largest line item in municipal budgets. Policing consumes more local tax dollars than schools, health care, parks, roads or fire departments. As the single-largest investment we collectively make in our communities, we must ask ourselves, “What is the best way to spend our tax dollars? Are we getting the services we need, or just the services police are trained to perform?”
Today’s police are trained and equipped to respond to dangerous and violent situations, yet fewer than 5% of emergency calls are for violent crimes. The vast majority of police time is spent responding to non-violent situations: traffic violations and accidents, substance abuse, and mental illness crises. Are these situations best resolved by sending in a heavily armed agent of our government? Law enforcement officers have neither the training nor resources to be social workers. These situations can escalate into the tragic use of unnecessary and even deadly force — an occurrence that has become too frequent in our nation.
The Pima County Democratic Party recognizes this disconnection, and recently developed a blueprint for the fairer and more effective use of police in Pima County. Passed as an official resolution, our blueprint lays out a series of 35 reforms to improve our approach to public safety. The words “defund” and “abolish” do not appear in the resolution. Rather, it is a constructive blueprint that contains reforms proven to reduce violence and fatalities — of residents and police alike. These include:
• Improved use-of-force and de-escalation training for law enforcement officers in the county.
• Crisis management training for 911 dispatchers to better route calls to police, fire, EMS and social services.
• Thorough background checks of police officer applicants.
• Police oversight by a civilian board and the mandatory use of body-worn camera.
The old ways of policing in America are not working. The deaths of unarmed, nonviolent people at the hands of police, people who are disproportionately poor and people of color, are proof. Communities of color are over-policed. Systemic racism and the impacts of poverty are reflected in the biases of our criminal justice system. Current methods of policing exacerbate these problems. When police departments evolve to meet the needs of the cities they serve, the benefits will be abundant: safer communities, better relationships with communities of color, more funding for needed social services, and cost-effectiveness.
Read PCDP’s policing reform resolution at www.pimadems.org.
