Spending So Much on Police Has Real Downsides
Budgets for law enforcement reflect political power, not a need to deal with record low crime rates.
Isn’t that overdoing it?
Photographer: RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFPThe question of policing will always bedevil a civil society. Policing is an essential means of reducing violence; in a state of anarchy, citizens will be forced to resort to taking personal security into their own hands, resulting in chaos and endemic violence. But ensuring that the police don’t become a criminal force unto themselves, victimizing the people they’re meant to protect, is a difficult task. As the Roman poet Juvenal memorably put it: Who will guard the guardians?
The U.S. is now painfully confronting this question. The brutal killing of black Minneapolis man George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin has sparked an unprecedented wave of protests across the entire nation, many of them violent. The protesters, which enjoy broad popular support, are demanding an end to racism in policing, curbs on police brutality, and a general reduction in funding and power for police departments.