A poor choice of words

Defund the Police?

Are you confused?  Yes?

So am I.

People have asked me how I feel about the "Defunding the Police" cause.  I don't even know how to answer the question.

• People on the right say that this movement wants to get rid of the police force and that leads to anarchy.

• People on the left tell me it doesn't actually mean getting rid of the police.  Instead the movement is about diverting funds to additional professional resources that are better trained than police to handle deescalation, non-violent crisis interventions and the like.

OK this really is confusing.

Maybe they have the wrong name for the movement.  

Let's first check the dictionary for the word "defund" - here is how Oxford defines it:

So, the phrase "Defund the Police" would literally mean:  prevent the police from continuing to receive funds.  

Hmmm.  That's funny.  The folks on the left that I talked to said it doesn't mean getting rid of the police. But according to the dictionary I will, indeed be advocating the elimination of the police.  Not what I had in mind.  

And the right says it will lead to anarchy.  Maybe that is a little dramatic?

Rhetorical Trap?
This is starting to smell like a trap.  

I proposed in my blog post of June 6 that there were three elements of a rhetorical trap.  They are Semantic Overloading, Costly Signaling and Vicious Cycles. Let's examine each of these these to see if we can get out of this trap.

Semantic Overloading

As we saw with the dictionary lookup, it appears as if both sides are semantically overloading the phrase, ascribing additional implied meanings which are inconsistent and well beyond the original intent of the terms.  

This is definitely part of the confusion, and perhaps explains why we can't seem to talk to each other about this emotionally charged subject.

 

Costly Signaling

It appears as if people on the left initiated the phrase in order to call attention to their cause.  And choosing what many people might consider a shocking phrase will certainly get them publicity but it comes at a cost.

In this case, these are not monetary costs but social costs.  And, incurring these cost will, in the long run, dramatically increase the overall cohesion of the group.

Here is how that works:  Initially, at the very beginning of the movement, the people involved will likely incur high social costs as a consequence of publicly committing to the phrase.  They will possibly risk friendships and family relationships, and can broadly loose respect.  

The other side of that coin, however, is that there is a gain of respect from and to others that are incurring those same social costs. The "it is us against the world" feeling will start to emerge.  

The group will have significantly more skin in the game and feel much more unified once they've used the term with all their friends. 

And a movement is formed.  People start to see momentum in a cause they believe in.  The term then gets used quite a bit and becomes ubiquitous.  It's on Facebook. It's on the TV news.  And the previously outrageous term starts to become socially normalized and more acceptable.  Fashionable even.  "Defund the Police" becomes a widely understood signal which signifies that anybody using the term is a member of the group.  

At this point the phenomenon of social proof starts taking hold - if all your friends start adopting it, you will feel obligated to adopt it too.

Vicious Cycle

Meanwhile, the folks on the right are not standing still. They have been handed a gift.  What could possibly be a better slogan than "our opponents on the left want to defund the police and create anarchy?"  This will surely appeal to the base and maybe more than a few moderates.  

You can be sure this will be subsequently answered by even more radical of the folks on the left.  Some of them have even said they want to actually disassemble police departments and use the money elsewhere.  You can just imagine how Republican election campaign advertisements will use this.  

And so on.

So my take on all this is that, although I strongly support the sentiment and some of the meaning of "Defund the Police," it might indeed be a very poor choice of words.   

Let's travel to Camden NJ to see if we can find a better way to move forward with this important and emotionally charged situation.

A Better Phrase?

In 2013, Camden NJ had murder rates 18 times the national average and a similar rate of excessive force use by the police.  

The mayor and the city council dissolved the police force and reconstituted it by basically firing everybody and then re-hiring a subset of the officers (and new applicants) after completion of a 50 page application, a series of psychological tests as well as an extensive interview process.  

One of the most fundamental changes that enabled these improvements to take place was that the community was given a voice in policing: they were allowed to come in and be part of the process.  Former Camden Police Chief Scott Thompson, who led the department during this transition, explained that a police force is only effective if it legitimized by the people by them giving consent.  

The results have been incredible.  Homicides have gone down from 67 in 2013 to 25 in 2019; Homicide "solve" rate went from 16% to 61% in two years.  Excessive force complaints went from 65 in 2013 to three in 2019.  There is much more to this and you can read (and hear) all about it in an excellent NPR podcast available here.

Chief Thompson called this movement "Policing with the consent of the people."  

As our nation's founding fathers so eloquently expressed back in the eighteenth century, legitimacy in governing ultimately stems from the people's consent.  It is time to apply this principle to the police, at the local level.

These are powerful words, very inspiring.  And a much better phrase.