Making the case for abolition of the police state – Los Angeles Loyolan

During the trial of now-convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, Americans waited to see if the criminal justice system valued Black life. While the wake of the verdict was a cause for celebration for many, it was the opposite for the families of Daunte Wright and Ma'Khia Bryant. Wright was killed at the age of 20 during Chauvins trial. Bryant was killed at the age of 16 the day the verdict was announced.

Clearly, neither the national attention around the trial nor the guilty verdict of one officer prevented the police state from continuing to take Black lives. Yet, only 18% of Americans believe the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul because guilty verdicts of crooked cops are paraded, like bandaids on bullet holes, as proof that this system works. The problem is that murderers being held accountable after the fact will not prevent the execution of Black people by our institutions.

That is why we need to abolish the police state.

The idea of abolition has been stigmatized and made to seem radical, but freedom from policing is not unfamiliar to those living in White suburbia, who do not see police patrolling their streets in the same way that diverse, urban communities do. Dr. Sandibel Borges, a women and gender studies professor, explained to me that this is because of the police states role in upholding white supremacy. The way that law enforcement works now in the US is rooted in slave patrols, she explained, During times of slavery, people would actually volunteer to catch people who had been enslaved and who had ran away. And so that's sort of like the infrastructure of how law enforcement works today.

Police officers are trained to kill when feeling threatened. This, in conjunction with officers implicit bias and systematic targeting of Black people through Americas criminal law, is what results in the tragedies we see on the news far too often. Dr. Deanna Cooke, the director of engaged learning for LMU's Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, explained, There's an overall context where Black and Brown people in particular are impacted disproportionately at every stage of the injustice system, right? So stopped more, arrested more disproportionately. Consider that Black people are nearly four times more likely than white people to get arrested for marijuana possession, despite having roughly the same rate of usage.

Elaborating on that systematic targeting, many of our laws seem to be less oriented in preventing harm than they are about finding ways to feed the prison industrial complex. Those laws tend to impact minority groups most, because they prey on circumstances exacerbated by poverty. In America, poverty and race are intertwined through a long tapestry of economic injustice.

Dr. Borges highlighted that problem, asking, How is it possible that, in many cases, drug use is criminalized, but no support is provided for people who have drug addictions? ... How is it possible that sex work is criminalized when a lot of people engage in sex work because that's the only way that they have to make enough money to survive in such a capitalist, oppressive system? People are criminalized for migrating for searching for livable homes.

Despite the consensus among well-intentioned people that the criminal justice system is broken, abolition is still hard for many to imagine since the police state has always existed in this country. However, Dr. Cooke described ways to create opportunities for minority communities that could help obviate the need for policing in the first place. Incentivizing the development of entrepreneurship in small businesses that employ a majority of people, thinking about what a minimum wage should look like so that it's a living wage, reducing the barriers for people who do have [criminal] records to getting jobs, making sure that our educational system is really responding to the needs of our young people making sure that folks have access to mental health services and social services. she explained.

Finding solutions to societal problems is more effective than shoving people affected by those problems behind metal bars, or murdering them in cold blood. Its time to address these issues head on, from economic inequality to social justice, to make policing unnecessary to begin with.

Unprecedented societal changes like abolition may sound radical and absurd, but nothing is more absurd that our institutions blatant and systemic disregard for Black lives.

This is the opinion of Anish Mohanty, a sophomore applied information management systems major from Union City, California. Tweet comments @LALoyolan or email editor@theloyolan.com.

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Making the case for abolition of the police state - Los Angeles Loyolan