Stuart Schrader is associate director of the Racism, Immigration, and Citizenship (RIC) Program and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
By aggressively pushing for higher budgets and salaries, police officers have insulated themselves from accountability while draining resources from essential public programs. It’s long past time to defund them.
During the Cold War, the US trained cops in more than fifty countries to suppress dissent. This “police professionalization” helped produce death squads in countries like El Salvador and mass incarceration in the United States.
Fights over both the Confederate and Rhodesian flags give us a glimpse into the reactionary mind.
The call to demilitarize police overlooks the longstanding link between policing and empire.