Crim 2400 Article Deconstruction w Marina Carbonell PDF

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After the death of George Floyd, many individuals have come to move towards reform ideas for the police, such as defunding the police. “Defund the police” does not mean to eliminate the police, however it means to give money to other organizations or groups who are better trained for the situation at hand. It just means that the public wants to see the rotten trees of policing chopped down and new roots replanted. In the article “Defunding the Police Will Actually Make Us Safer” written by Paige Fernandez, Fernandez describes a brief history of the police force in the US, where she states, “The first U.S. city police department was a slave patrol, and modern police forces have directed oppression and violence at Black people to enforce Jim Crow, wage the War on Drugs, and the crackdown on protests” (Fernandez, 2020). During the 1830s-1840s, Jim Crow was a racist theater character modeled after a slave and was written and popularized by the white entertainer Thomas Dartmouth Rice. To play this character, it is said “Rice darkened his face, acted like a buffoon, and spoke with an exaggerated and distorted imitation of African American Vernacular English” (Ferris State University, 2021). Throughout the article, Fernandez discusses the idea of giving money to more helpful services such as job training, counseling, and violenceprevention programs to be used to protect the public and lessen the chances of unnecessary violence towards individuals because of the police. I found this article to be interesting since I believe that policing does not keep the public safer. In a chart in the article “Not just “a few bad apples”: U.S. police kill civilians at much higher rates than other countries” by Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer, the number of people killed by law enforcement per 10 million population for the United States is 33.5. The second highest in this chart is Canada with 9.8 deaths per 10 million people. I believe that police are not adequately trained for the jobs and duties that they do. Compared to other first-world countries such as Finland, the police there need up to 5x the training (BBC, 2021). Since police officer training mainly focuses on firearm use rather than de-escalation, police officers may be more inclined to turn to their firearms under pressure rather than consider another alternative. Rather, I think it would be more effective to utilize those who have the proper training in handling mental health crises, such as psychologists, psychiatrists, and/or social workers, before resorting to the police force. The Author, Paige Fernandez is the Policing Policy Advisor in the American Civil Liberties Union’s, National Political Advocacy Department. The ACLU is a non-profit organization that began in 1920. Their goal is to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States (ACLU, 2021). According to the ACLU’s website, “Fernandez develops and implements comprehensive strategies that advance the ACLU’s affirmative vision for reducing the role, power, presence, and responsibilities of the police in U.S. communities” (ACLU, 2021). It is also stated that her approach to policing advocacy places the communities first. Before joining the ACLU, Fernandez co-founded and directed multiple chapters of Together We Stand, which is a non-profit organization whose goal is to dismantle racism, discrimination, and police brutality. Fernandez also has a master’s degree in Public Policy from Oxford University and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College.

This article was published on June 11, 2020. Due to recent events, this article is recent enough for the subject being discussed, since the actions that police officers have performed to the public had made them want to defund them. For example, the death of George Floyd last year in May. Many individuals were upset by the unnecessary violence that the officers used against Mr. Floyd. Because of this recency, this article material relates to the Criminology 2400 course content. In week three of this course, we discussed the training, how officers take accountability, and as well as the topic of defunding the police itself. In our course notes it states, “Police officers spend a lot of their time handling matters that are not criminal in nature, and thus if we reduced that type of call for service, police may be better equipped to do their duties to keep the peace and maintain law and order” (Carbonell, 2021). If we place more funding towards other social supports other than officers, some people will not end up in horrible situations with police. I believe that this article contains just the right amount of information, however, I do think that the article would be a little less biased if it also included other individuals’ points of view on the subject matter. In theory, everyone can benefit from defunding the police, especially minority groups, however, because of this, police officers do stand to lose. The source of this article leans towards being more popular than scientific, however does contain criteria from both. For example, there are no advertisements on the page, the sources are hyperlinked, and the author's credentials are listed, yet the article does use easy to read language and as well as tries to inform and as well as persuade the reader into believing that defunding the police is an overall good idea to make the public safe. Throughout this article, the author uses sources such as Time, Urban Institute, and as well Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Although there is no bibliography or source list listed, all sources are hyperlinked within the article. By clicking the links in the article, one can learn extra information than what is written. Overall, there are a total of 10 sources listed, however, these sources only provide one side of the argument which is in favor of defunding the police. In conclusion, my overall opinion of this article is positive. I agree with the points that Fernandez had brought up in her article as I agree with defunding the police and funding other social support systems for the public rather than giving all these responsibilities to the police when they are just supposed to keep the peace. As stated earlier, the amount of training police go through is not adequate for the jobs that they are performing, it is stated that “In the U.S., training to be a police officer, and carry a gun on behalf of the state, ranges from as few as 10 weeks to as much as 36 weeks” (Graham, 2020) and police officers in Canada only spend 26 weeks in training (Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2019). When compared to the hours of training officers must go through in Europe, this is a far cry. By reading this article, I have found out that Black men face about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over the life course (Edwards, Lee, Esposito 2019), which is ridiculous when compared to how at-risk other individuals are, for example, “1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women” (Edwards, Lee, Esposito 2019). If I were to have written this article about why defunding the police would make us safer, I would have included information on how continents such as Australia and Europe generally do not fund their police forces. European police

officer training programs can last a few years, however, due to this training, the police violence against civilians is a lot lower when compared to the US and Canada.

Article: https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/defunding-the-police-will-actuallymake-us-safer/ Reference: ACLU News & Commentary. American Civil Liberties Union. (2021). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.aclu.org/news/by/paige-fernandez/. Carbonell , M. (2021). Week 3. Learn online at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://online.mun.ca/d2l/le/content/433395/viewContent/3876783/View. Edwards, F., Lee, H., & Esposito, M. (2019, August 20). Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. PNAS. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793. Graham, G. (2020, June 11). Some U.S. police train for just a few weeks, in some countries they train for years. CBS News. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-training-weeks-united-states/. Gun violence archive. (2021). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/?past-tolls. The origins of Jim Crow. The Origins of Jim Crow - Jim Crow Museum - Ferris State University. (2021). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/origins.htm....