Radley Balko has an interesting Opinion piece in The NY Times today. (Full article via the link):
...Golden Valley is a suburb of about 22,000 that in many ways is as idyllic as its name suggests. The median annual household income tops $100,000, there’s very little crime, and 15 percent of the town is devoted to parks and green spaces, including Theodore Wirth Park on its eastern border, a lush space that hosts a bike path and a parkway.
...“We enjoy prosperity and security in this community,” said Shep Harris, the mayor since 2012. “But that has come at a cost. I think it took incidents like the murder of George Floyd to help us see that more clearly.” The residents of the strongly left-leaning town decided change was necessary. One step was eliminating those racial covenants. Another was changing the Police Department, which had a reputation for mistreating people of color.
The first hire was Officer Alice White, the force’s first high-ranking Black woman. The second was Virgil Green, the town’s first Black police chief.
...Members of the overwhelmingly white police force responded to both hires by quitting — in droves.
An outside investigation later revealed that some officers had run an opposition campaign against Chief Green. One of those officers recorded herself making a series of racist comments during a call with city officials, then sent the recording to other police officers. She was fired — prompting yet another wave of resignations.
The typical Golden Valley police officer makes a six-figure salary with good benefits. The city has almost no violent crime. It’s a good gig. Yet in just two years, more than half the department quit.
This was before the new hires had even had a chance to make any big changes. Could it be that those who left simply refused to work for black superiors? (And how ironic is it that they were named Green and White, and the town is Golden Valley? So much for the law being colorblind.)
So, what happened, given the sudden shortage of police officers?
The interesting thing is that according to Chief Green, despite the reduction in staff, crime — already low — has gone down in Golden Valley. The town plans to staff the department back up, just not right away. “I’ve heard that the police union is cautioning officers from coming to work here,” Mr. Harris said. “But that’s OK. We want to take the time to hire officers who share our vision and are excited to work toward our goals.”
As the essay points out, Golden Valley was already relatively low in crime, and may not be the best case for generalizing that fewer police can reduce crime. As the essay notes, Golden Valley’s demographics may be a factor. Median income tops $100.000, the town is 85% white, 5% black. A bordering community — Willard-Hay has a median income of $55,000, is 26% white vs. 40% black, and has quite a bit more crime.
But…
There is reason to think it may. When New York’s officers engaged in an announced slowdown in policing in late 2014 and early 2015, civilian complaints of major crime in the city dropped. And despite significant staffing shortages at law enforcement agencies around the country, if trends continue, 2023 will have the largest percentage drop in homicides in U.S. history. It’s true that such a drop would come after a two-year surge, but the fact that it would also occur after a significant reduction in law enforcement personnel suggests the surge may have been due more to the pandemic and its effects than depolicing.
We already know the Republican view of the matter. America is having rampant crime wherever Democrats are in charge, and the answer is more police, more prison time — and no Democrats.
Radley Balko is the author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces” and the criminal justice newsletter The Watch. This would suggest he has a lot of information available. Balko doesn’t offer any explanations for the drop in crime aside from the pandemic — this is more about suggesting that maybe it’s not just about having fewer police in this town, it’s about an overall drop in crime across the country.
Still, it’s tempting to speculate. Could the drop in crime in Golden Valley be explained by:
- Does fewer police officers actively looking for people to charge with crimes lead to a drop in ‘manufactured crimes’ — actions recorded as crimes because a police officer chose to make it so?
- Is policing less aggressive now, and has that led to a calmer situation in the community?
- What kind of crimes have seen the biggest drop — or is it all across the board?
- What would happen if Willard-Hay had fewer police on the job?
- Are people simply not calling police because they believe it will now take too long to have an officer arrive?
- Is it possible the police who have remained are the most effective ones, and their jobs have been made easier in the absence of their former colleagues?
- Are we going to continue to see this happening across the country?
There are probably more questions that could be asked. Just the question that is this an outlier or something that could be replicated elsewhere deserves a look. And it's not the whole story.
As the essay points out at the beginning:
In a staggering report last month, the Department of Justice documented pervasive abuse, illegal use of force, racial bias and systemic dysfunction in the Minneapolis Police Department. City police officers engaged in brutality or made racist comments, even as a department investigator rode along in a patrol car. Complaints about police abuse were often slow-walked or dismissed without investigation. And after George Floyd’s death, instead of ending the policy of racial profiling, the police just buried the evidence.
The Minneapolis report was shocking, but it wasn’t surprising. It doesn’t read much differently from recent Justice Department reports about the police departments in Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Ferguson, Mo., or any of three recent reports from various sources about Minneapolis, from 2003, 2015 and 2016.
If you look at crimes committed by police, then having fewer police on the job would be expected to lead to a drop in those crimes at least…