T – Policing (NSDA Novice

Packet)
Neg
 1NC v. Implicit Bias

Interpretation: Policing is the use of state power for law

enforcement
Scott Tighe and William Brown 15 – [both from Western Oregon
University (“The Militarization of Law Enforcement: Bypassing the Posse
Comitatus Act” Justice Policy Journal ! Volume 12, Number 2 (Fall),
http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/jpj_militarization_of_law_enforce
ment_-_fall_2015.pdf]
The Bureau of Justice Statistics describes law enforcement as a collection of agencies responsible for
Michalowski (1985, p. 170) defines
maintaining public order and enforcing the law (BJS, 2015).
policing as “the use of state power by delegated authorities for the
purposes of law enforcemen t and the maintenance of order .” Law
enforcement is commonly perceived as the implementation of laws that accommodate the majority of
Maintenance order typically includes the management and control
people.

of minor offenses and behavioral/social disruptions that may threaten

the status quo, which includes individuals, businesses (including
corporations), and other organizations who benefit by keeping social,
economic, and political arrangements stable (Shelden, et al., 2016).

Violation: The affirmative changes an police activity, not

policing itself

Limits & Ground – allowing the aff to change anything

police do unlimits the topic to small administrative
changes, removing single officers, and a host of other tiny
affs that skirt neg generics and explode the research
burden. Independently, it undermines clash and depth of
testing, which link turns their offense.
 2NC – Interpretation Good
Their interp defines “police” reform, not policing reform –
only our interp removes the tiny affs their mixed definition
includes
Davis 16 [Ronald L. Davis Director, COPS, “ Police Reform vs. Policing
Reform,” community policing Dispatch, the e-newsletter of the COPS
Office, Volume 9, Issue 8, August 2016,
https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/08-2016/police_reform.asp]
Yetthe discussion of police reform seems to focus primarily on individual
officer behavior and ignores the operational systems that have an even
greater impact on policing outcomes. The great management guru William Edward Deming
captured this notion through his 85/15 rule, which says that 85 percent of the problems in any
organization are system-related while only 15 percent are worker-related.

Rank-and-file officers do not decide organizational policies and practices.

Nor do officers establish hiring standards or have the power to administer
discipline. They also do not decide whether an agency embraces crime-
reduction strategies that result in racial disparities. Yet when disparities or other
systemic problems do occur, rank-and-file officers are quickly demonized and blamed for those outcomes.

There is no question that rank-and-file officers must be held accountable for their actions. However, if the
systems in which they operate are flawed, even good officers can have bad outcomes.

our focus must shift

If we are to achieve real and sustainable reform in law enforcement,

from the police (those individuals sworn to uphold the law) to policing systems (the
policies, practices, and culture of police organizations). And through reform,
our policing systems must identify not just the roles and responsibilities
of the police but the roles and responsibilities of the community as well. After all, communities are a vital
part of the policing system. In the words of Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern law enforcement,
“Thepolice are the public and the public are the police; the police being only
members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties
which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”
To separate the community from the policing system is akin to separating patients from the health care
system or students from the education system. Indeed, even the best teacher cannot help a student who
refuses to study. Nor can a doctor cure a patient who refuses to take prescribed medication or to follow
the doctor’s orders. The same applies to policing. The level of community involvement in the policing
system and the level of personal responsibility each community member assumes by cooperating or
collaborating with the police greatly impact the outcome of the system. Focusing on the policing system
does not ignore or excuse the misconduct of individual police officers. To the contrary, the
stronger the policing system , the more likely bad officers will be identified and removed
the more likely the culture of police
from service. The stronger the policing system,
organizations will reject officer misconduct and embrace accountability and
transparency. And the stronger the policing system, the more likely recruitment and hiring practices
will focus not only on hiring diverse, qualified candidates who reflect the communities they serve but also
on hiring candidates who see themselves as members of that community.

As a veteran police officer with almost 30 years of experience serving communities in Oakland and East
Palo Alto, California, I feel optimistic about the future of the American policing system.
The reason I have faith in a positive future for American policing, even amid a growing chasm of distrust
between the police and many communities, is that I see firsthand the outstanding work the vast majority
of dedicated men and women in law enforcement do every day. I see them take great efforts to identify
the best ways to serve their communities. And I see evidence that many communities, even those that feel
the most disenfranchised, yearn for a stronger relationship with the police. People in neighborhoods all
across the country are working diligently and in collaboration with the police to make sure their
communities are treated fairly not only by the law enforcement officials who are sworn to serve and
protect them but also by the policing systems in which those officers operate.

We are at a defining moment in American policing history. Our collective efforts to meet the challenges
we have faced over the past few years have opened a unique but very small window of opportunity—a
window through which both police and the communities they serve see the need for policing reform and
recognize the necessity of working together to achieve success.

The Final Report of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing provides a roadmap for this
The task force report outlines 59 recommendations that, when
reform.
implemented, will result in positive changes in the American policing system
and organizational transformation within individual law enforcement agencies.
It is my hope that law enforcement officials across the country not only will read the task force report but
will also use its insights, information, and recommendations to reform the policing systems in their own
departments.

let’s forge
Let’s not waste this unique opportunity on bickering and finger pointing. Instead,

ahead together to reform the American policing system to meet the

challenges of the 21st century. Affecting change is never easy, but as President John F. Kennedy said,
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

Policing is the core activities done by officers in the

enforcement of the law
Collins Dictionary ND
[https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/policing]

Definition of 'policing' Word Frequency policing in British English (pə

ˈliːsɪŋ) NOUN
1. the activities carried out by police officers in order to preserve law and
order the policing of public places
2. the actions of a person or group in authority in order to ensure fairness
and legality in an area of public life the policing of new housing
developments a more rigorous policing of new developments independent
policing of clinical procedures

“Policing” can be defined narrowly as just the activities of

per se police, or broadly as any form of social regulation
Platts-Fowler 16 – Lecturer in Criminology, Victoria University of
Wellington
Deborah Platts-Fowler, The University of Leeds School of Law, Centre for
Criminal Justice Studies, 'Beyond the Riots' – Policing in Partnership to
Prevent and Contain Urban Unrest, 2016,
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/16063/1/THESIS%20FV_DPF.pdf
The distinction between police , police-work and policing is an
important one for facilitating understanding about the police role as it has
evolved and currently exists in England and Wales. It is also important for
understanding the relationship of the police to other public authorities, both
generally and in the context of urban unrest. In Anglo-American societies,
the term ‘ police’ refers to ‘a specialised body of people given primary
formal responsibility for legitimate force to safeguard security’
(Reiner 2010, pp.4–8). ‘Policing’, narrowly defined , refers only to the
activities performed by the police , but there is also a broader
definition, which is used to signify social regulation , recognising the
term’s etymological link with politics and governance (Rowe 2013). To
avoid policing becoming a catch-all for every institution and activity
contributing to social regulation , which might include schools and
schooling, Reiner (2010) practically suggests narrowing it down to ‘the
creation of systems of surveillance coupled with the threat of sanctions for
discovered deviance’ (p5). Thus, what the police do is policing, but other
institutions, groups and roles also contribute to this activity.
 2NC – Limits
Policing is a broad term, but the only coherent limit
defined in any theoretical lit on the subject is the literal
activities of police while enforcing the law – broadening it
to other issues tangentially related to law enforcement is
no limit at all – prefer a review of the lit
Rowe 8 [Michael Rowe is Professor of Criminology at Northumbria
University. "Introduction to Policing."
https://www.corwin.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/19049_01_Rowe_Ch
_01.pdf]

The difficulty in thinking about policing in these broad terms is that it

becomes difficult to know where the category can be closed . It might be
important to recognize that policing is not just the business of the formal police

service and that other institutions play a crucial role in developing, for
example, public perceptions of criminal or deviant behaviour, but the same
could be said for almost any and every aspect of social life . For this
reason, much of this book will focus on the narrow approach to policing and
concentrate primarily on the activities of the police service and so this initial
discussion of ‘What is policing?’ is also cast relatively narrow . Other agencies, both in the
private and the public sector, play an increasingly important role in the business of policing and, where
relevant, these are included in the discussion and analysis in chapters that follow. Since the police
service cannot be understood in isolation from broader social developments the wider dynamics of
policing are crucial to many of the topics featured throughout the book. For the purposes of
it is to the narrower role of the police
understanding ‘What is policing?’, however,
service that the analysis now turns.

That’s consensus in the lit

Britannica ND [https://www.britannica.com/topic/police]
Police typically are
Police, body of officers representing the civil authority of government.
responsible for maintaining public order and safety, enforcing the law, and
preventing, detecting, and investigating criminal activities . These
functions are known as policing . Police are often also entrusted with various licensing
and regulatory activities.

However, police scholars have criticized this popular understanding of the word
police—that it refers to members of a public organization having the legal competence to maintain order
First, it defines police by their ends rather than
and enforce the law—for two reasons.

by the specific means that they use to achieve their goals. Second, the
variety of situations in which police are asked to intervene is much greater
than law enforcement and order maintenance. There is now a consensus
among researchers , based on a definition first proposed by American
sociologist Egon Bittner , that the common feature among all the different

agencies engaged in policing is the legal competence to enforce

coercive, nonnegotiable measures to resolve problematic situations. Such
situations are characterized by two features: their potential for harm and the need to solve them urgently
before they develop that potential. Hence, the actual use of coercion or the threat of using it allows police
to put a quick, nonnegotiated, and conclusive end to problematic situations (e.g., keeping people away
from the scene of a fire for their own protection and to allow firemen to do their job).

Making “policing” broader than police activities implodes

the whole topic
Wisler 9 – PhD, Founder & Director of Coginta which has managed,
designed, and implemented police restructuring programs for many
countries; & Professor of Administration of Justice-TSU
Edited by Dominique Wisler, standing member of security sector reform
rosters of experts of the United Nations Departement of Peacekeeping
Operations, the United Nations Development Program, and the Swiss
Foreign Office, former professor in political sociology at the University of
Geneva, he has published widely in scientific reviews, and overseen police
and Ministry of Interior restructuring programs in countries including
Afghanistan, Chad, Sudan, Iraq, Turkey, Mozambique, Haiti, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the Occupied Territories of Palestine and the Democratic
Republic of Congo, member of advisory committees of academic associations
(South Asia Association of Criminology), academic journals (Police Practice
and Research. An International Journal), and Editor of the Working Paper
Series of the International Police Executive Symposium, DCAF and Coginta,
and Ihekwoaba D. Onwudiwe, Professor of Administration of Justice in the
Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern
University, Community Policing: International Patterns and Comparative
Perspectives, CRC Press (Taylor & Francis Group): Boca Raton, FL, 2009,
Foreword, pp. xi-xii
In all cases, COP (or a related phrase) is the term used to describe what is
being done, even though the specifics of policing practices and the
interactions of formal and informal social control are unique and
widely disparate from case to case . What to make of this?

The book, especially the introduction, raises a fundamental question: What

should be the relationships between the police, who are employed by the
state, and informal or self-help forms of providing security? The editors
argue that COP can be viewed from the top-down as a state police-
sponsored form of participation by communities that is controlled, steered,
and guided (despite the rhetoric of partnership) by the police to protect
and promote the goal and interests of the police . In contrast , COP from
the bottom-up , includes all the civic society forms of providing
security, be these community efforts , informal vigilantism , or even
corporate and private security . Whether top-down or bottom-up, all of
these are forms of policing and are based on various political
justifications and influence. The question is this: How do these two basic
categories meet, or how do the police deal with informal policing structures,
and how does the community deal with the formal state police? Since
informal policing exists everywhere , in forms that reflect history and
contexts, top-down and bottom-up will always meet, clash, or cooperate, and
have to be reconciled politically.

On a slightly critical note here, it is not clear that a bottom-up form of

social control should be called policing. That widens the conception
of what constitutes policing so broadly that policing itself becomes
undefined . A more distinct language , which incorporates, but also
differentiates , state-provided policing from informal social control ,
could use the language of security as a field of action populated by many
actors having different powers, legal status, and goals.
The chapters as a whole provide extensive empirical analyses of the policing
problems and changes faced within their case study countries, as well as
sophisticated theoretical ruminations on the nature of this set of practices
called “policing,” of what constitutes “community,” and what constitutes the
“state.” It is a solid contribution to the expanding, and now vast, literature
on COP, as well as a useful and necessary corrective to the assumption that
community policing can be understood in a general way without taking into
account the contexts that shape how values, ideologies, and goals will
transform patterns of policing.
 1NC v. Defund the Police
Reform is changing practices- not abolishing
Miller, ND (Chelsea Miller, writer for States of Incarceration, a program
dedicated to exploring the roots of mass incarceration, No Date, accessed on
6-26-2020, Statesofincarceration, "Prison Reform/Prison Abolition | States of
Incarceration", https://statesofincarceration.org/story/prison-reformprison-
abolition#:~:text=%E2%80%9CReforming%20the%20prison%20entails
%20changing,to%20the%20prison's%20very%20existence.%E2%80%9D)
“Reforming the prison entails changing its existing practices to make the
system a better one. Abolishing the prison entails dismantling it wholesale.
Reformers object to how the prison is administered. Abolitionists object to
the prison’s very existence.” — Ruby C. Tapia, co-editor of Interrupted Lives:
Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States (2010). “A cage is
a cage is a cage. We want strategies that let people out of cages, not ones
that are for building nicer or better cages.” — Annotation in the meeting
notes of the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition (SHaRC) in Chicopee, MA,
2006. Activist work focusing on incarceration in Massachusetts has followed
two distinct , yet sometimes overlapping, philosophies: prison abolition and
prison reform. Prison reformers have uniquely focused on advocacy, policy
change, and healthcare support for people already in the criminal justice
system. Prison abolitionists have advocated for policy change and
community alternatives to incarceration, including community centers,
schools, and physical and mental health care resources. Where they overlap,
however, is in their work to expose the impacts of mass criminalization, to
change public perceptions of incarcerated men and women, and to serve as
advocates for people who are incarcerated.

Calls to defund are distinct from reforms

Weichselbaum and Lewis, 20 (Simone Weichselbaum and Nicole
Lewis, staff writer who focuses on issues pertaining to federal law
enforcement and local policing. She is also The Marshall Project’s co-chair of
diversity & inclusion, graduate of The University of Michigan and CUNY
Graduate School of Journalism. She was the recipient of the 2016 Education
Writers Association National Awards for Education Writing in magazine and
feature writing for her contribution to a series on desegregation in the
public school system, 6-9-2020, accessed on 6-28-2020, The Marshall
Project, "Support For Defunding The Police Department Is Growing. Here’s
Why It’s Not A Silver Bullet.",
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/06/09/support-for-defunding-the-
police-department-is-growing-here-s-why-it-s-not-a-silver-bullet)

Our reporting exposes injustice and examines solutions for a criminal justice
system in crisis. To support our journalism, please consider a donation to
The Marshall Project today. Minneapolis city council members made an
historic pledge over the weekend when they vowed to dismantle the local
police department and shift money to community-based strategies. The
pledge to develop a new system of public safety— supported by a veto-proof
majority — follows weeks of protests across the country in the wake of the
police killing of George Floyd. Officials in other cities, including New York
and Los Angeles, have also said they would cut police budgets, though
neither has echoed Minneapolis city council members’s statement that the
city’s police department is beyond reform. Once a radical notion, the push to
defund the police is gaining ground. Across the country, organizers,
celebrities,and former city officials are calling on lawmakers to reimagine
the role of police in public safety. Proponents of taking money away
from cops say cities cannot simply reform their way out of the current
policing crisis. And in the wake of the pandemic, some have highlighted a
deadly disparity: many cities spend millions more on law enforcement than
they do on most other services, including public health. Opponents say it is
too soon to abandon the progress police departments have made to curb
officer violence and improve their relationships in communities of color.
Some point to the effects of the 2008 recession, where cities cut police
funding with no real plan, with unintended consequences, including
increasing complaints over use of force. But what do people mean by
defunding the police? It doesn’t just mean slashing budgets. One of the
main ideas is that police departments are often the only agency to respond
to problems — even if the problems are not criminal in nature. Police handle
mental health crises. They enforce traffic laws. They patrol public school
hallways and contract with colleges and universities. In many small towns,
police answer 911 calls about barking dogs and loud parties. Advocates of
defunding the police argue that many of these functions would be better left
to other professionals, such as social workers. Decades of over-policing in
black and brown neighborhoods has led to black and brown people being
disproportionately victims of police violence and overrepresented in prisons.
A better approach, proponents of defunding the police argue, redirects law-
enforcement funding to social services programs such as public housing,
early childhood education and healthcare. By equitably distributing
resources, they say, the need for police could be dramatically reduced. Molly
Glasgow, a volunteer with MPD150, a grassroots initiative to abolish the
Minneapolis Police Department, said decades of previous reform efforts
have not broken a cycle of violence followed by unrest and promises of
improvement that have failed. “What we are asking is that we step out of
that cycle,” Glasgow said. “When we say dismantle: Yes, we mean divest
and defund, but also invest in community programs and initiatives that
are actually supporting people’s needs.” Past attempts to cut police
spending or alter police policies offer cautionary tales of how some efforts
backfire, and entrenched aggressive tactics and racially discriminatory
attitudes remain. Previous Marshall Project investigations into cases of
attempted police reform in cities like Memphis and Chicago found that
cutting law enforcement budgets did not reduce police violence or produce
healthier relationships with the neighborhoods they patrol.

Vote neg for ground- abolition is key neg ground- it’s the
only real critique of reform. Allowing the aff to claim the
best neg ground makes it impossible to be neg
 Ext – Interpretation
Abolition and defunding are distinct from reform
Lopez, 20 (Christy E. Lopez, professor at Georgetown Law School and a
co-director of the school's Innovative Policing Program, 6-7-2020, accessed
on 6-26-2020, The Washington Post, "Defund the police? Here’s what that
really means.",
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/07/defund-police-heres-
what-that-really-means/)

Defunding and abolition probably mean something different from what you
are thinking. For most proponents, “defunding the police” does not mean
zeroing out budgets for public safety, and police abolition does not mean
that police will disappear overnight — or perhaps ever. Defunding the police
means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of
what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to
meet that need. It means investing more in mental-health care and housing,
and expanding the use of community mediation and violence interruption
programs. Police abolition means reducing, with the vision of eventually
eliminating, our reliance on policing to secure our public safety. It means
recognizing that criminalizing addiction and poverty, making 10 million
arrests per year and mass incarceration have not provided the public safety
we want and never will. The “abolition” language is important because it
reminds us that policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to
perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black
people that has been with us since slavery. That aspect of policing must be
literally abolished. Still, even as we try to shift resources from policing to
programs that will better promote fairness and public safety, we must
continue the work of police reform. We cannot stop regulating police
conduct now because we hope someday to reduce or eliminate our reliance
on policing. We must ban chokeholds and curb the use of no-knock warrants;
we must train officers how to better respond to people in mental health
crises, and we must teach officers to be guardians, not warriors, to intervene
to prevent misconduct and to understand and appreciate the communities
they serve.

Defund goes beyond reform

Russonello, 20 (Giovanni Russonello, 6-9-2020, accessed on 6-28-2020,
The New York Times, "A Movement Meets a Question: Defund or Reform the
Police?", https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/us/politics/defund-police-joe-
biden-trump.html)

Defund, or just reform? That is the question now at the heart of this
moment. Protesters, along with progressive elected officials around the
country, are demanding that police departments be defunded, disbanded
and replaced by a newly anti-racist system of public safety and justice. In
Minneapolis, there are already signs that such a drastic change could soon
occur. Proponents of a more moderate approach support new measures to
exert oversight over police departments and regulate the use of force, but
not break up the departments. Democratic leaders in the House backed this
approach yesterday when they unveiled a sweeping police-overhaul bill amid
fanfare on Capitol Hill. The bill would make it easier to prosecute officers
accused of wrongdoing and would put new restrictions on the use of force.
Where does all this leave Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee
for president? Just a few weeks ago, he was still adamantly defending his
support for the 1994 crime bill — a law that put 100,000 new police officers
on the street, and spent nearly $10 billion on prisons. Biden’s campaign will
probably walk a fine line on matters of policing, as he works to shore up
support on the left while courting moderate voters. Yesterday, he threw his
support firmly behind the more moderate reformers. “No, I don’t support
defunding the police,” he told CBS News, in a similar statement to the one
that recently got Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis booed out of a rally. “I
support conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet
certain basic standards of decency and honorableness,” Biden said. It’s clear
what side President Trump is on. “There won’t be defunding, there won’t be
dismantling of our police, and there is not going to be any disbanding of our
police,” he declared on Monday. He spoke alongside law enforcement
officials and top members of his administration, including state attorneys
general, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the
president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and officials
from some police departments. “You’ll see some horrible things like we
witnessed recently, but 99 — I say 99.9, but let’s go with 99 percent of them
— are great, great people,” Trump said of the police. But polls suggest that
Trump’s hard-line stance over the past two weeks has not particularly
helped him. In a CNN poll released yesterday, just 38 percent of the country
approved of his job performance, his lowest marks since January 2019 —
even as the country proceeds with a cautious economic reopening. And only
31 percent said they liked how he was handling race relations — roughly on
par with past results to this question, and an indication that even some of
Trump’s supporters are uncomfortable with his positions on racial issues.
According to a new analysis by Nate Cohn of The Upshot, Biden’s lead is up
across the board, putting him in a stronger position than any presidential
challenger since Bill Clinton in summer 1992. Looking only at the most
reliable recent polls conducted by live telephone interviewers, Nate found
that Biden is now ahead of Trump by an average of 10 percentage points.
That’s a four-point increase compared with polls from the previous month.
Aff
 2AC – Counter-Interpretation – Implicit Bias
Interpretation: Policing reform requires change to police
practices
NAACP 19 --- NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, NATIONAL
POLICE FUNDING DATABASE Using Data to Promote Fair and Accountable
Policing Practices, Thurgood Marshall Institute, Website created 2019,
https://policefundingdatabase.tminstituteldf.org/policingreform (BJN)
Policing reform involves changing how police departments operate,
especially how they provide public safety services to communities. From a
civil rights perspective, the goals of policing reform are to change policing
policies and practices to ensure that individuals are treated fairly and
without regard to race, national origin, religion, age, gender, sexual
orientation, disability, or other characteristics protected by the U.S.
Constitution or civil rights laws.
Policing reform can focus on a variety of police policies and practices,
including use of force; stop, search, and arrest practices; and internal and
external systems designed to hold police departments and individual officers
accountable.
 2AC – Counter-Interpretation – Defund the
Police
Defund the police is reform– not abolition
Ray, 20 (Rashawn Ray, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University
of Maryland, College Park, and the David M. Rubenstein Fellow in
Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, 6-19-2020, accessed on 6-
26-2020, Brookings, "What does ‘defund the police’ mean and does it have
merit?", https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/19/what-does-
defund-the-police-mean-and-does-it-have-merit/)

George Floyd’s death has galvanized much of America to move the needle
toward police reform ideas—such as defunding police—that were previously
viewed as radical. “Defund the police” means reallocating or redirecting
funding away from the police department to other government agencies
funded by the local municipality. That’s it. It’s that simple. Defund does not
mean abolish policing. And, even some who say abolish, do not necessarily
mean to do away with law enforcement altogether. Rather, they want to see
the rotten trees of policing chopped down and fresh roots replanted anew.
Camden, New Jersey, is a good example. Nearly a decade ago, Camden
disbanded (abolished) its police force and dissolved the local police union.
This approach seems to be what Minneapolis will do in some form, though
the nuances are important. Different from abolishing and starting anew,
defunding police highlights fiscal responsibility, advocates for a market-
driven approach to taxpayer money, and has some potential benefits that
will reduce police violence and crime. Below, I outline some of the main
arguments for defunding the police. Data show that 9 out of 10 calls for
service are for nonviolent encounters. Now, this does not mean that an
incident will not turn violent, but police at times contribute to the escalation
of violent force. Police officers’ skillset and training are often out of sync
with the social interactions that they have. Police officers are mostly trained
in use-of-force tactics and worst-case scenarios to reduce potential threats.
However, most of their interactions with civilians start with a conversation.
Advocates for the defund movement like Phillip McHarris and Thenjiwe
McHarris argue that shifting funding to social services that can improve
things such as mental health, addiction, and homelessness is a better use of
taxpayer money. This approach further enhances the push to decriminalize
and destigmatize people with mental health conditions and addiction
problems. Ever since the overcriminalization of people addicted to crack
cocaine in the 1990s, some scholars, practitioners, and policymakers have
said that this shift is long overdue.
 Policing = Broad Changes
Defining “policing” based on their discrete functions is
bad – aff’s reform must address the deeper political and
social dynamics
Alan Wright (lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the
University of Portsmouth, Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University,
and former police officer) 2002 “Policing: An introduction to concepts and
practice” p. 31 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781843924708
These inquiries show that it is not possible to make an institution more
effective by ignoring the ambiguity inherent in its practice. Indeed, they
illustrate why the whole modern idea that institutions are rational structures
defined by their functions is deeply flawed. Political, economic, social and
technological change means that we can no longer associate policing with
the police alone. In fact, reference to the functions of the police can no
longer answer the question, 'What is policing?' at all. The only way to do this
is to provide an account that interprets policing practice in terms of its
social and political purposes. Such an account will point to the rich pattern
of relations between policing, the state and other agencies, groups and
individuals. It will recognise that policing can only exist in an 'informational
society' of the kind discussed by Bell ( 1980) and Castells (1989). We will
discuss this further in Chapter 7. In the light of the evidence, therefore, we
should abandon any attempt to understand policing as a range of functions
of the police. Instead we should develop an account which recognises the
diversity of meanings which now characterise the terms 'police' and
'policing'.
Diversity of meanings
Functionalism has not led to a unified scientific account of police work. Nor
has it produced practical measures for police reform. As we have argued
above, the reason for this is that we can no longer simply understand
policing in terms of the functions of the police. We need to look anew at the
meaning of 'police' and 'policing' to establish new ways of approaching these
questions. It is true that there is a rapidly expanding literature on the police.
However, it seldom discusses the deeper meaning of the concept. Studies of
police work regard policing as a transparent concept. Those who recognise
the difficulties, however, are aware that there are problems associated with
the meaning of the term 'policing'. Indeed, it is now unsafe to use the term
as if it refers to the activities of a single institution.
The fact that the meanings of 'police' and 'policing' are ambiguous makes
them difficult to define. The context in which they are used makes a
difference to the meaning. For example, the use of the term 'police' by
criminologists discussing police accountability may not be the same as its
use by the police or those who make complaints against them. Its meaning
for practitioners will not be the same as that in the minds of those who
consider themselves 'policed against'. The concept of policing may have had
very different meanings for protesting students who faced the Compagnies
Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) in Paris in 1968 than for the members of
the CRS who were on public order duty at that time. This is so, despite the
fact that both may have believed that they were influencing the future and
very legitimacy of the French state. It is all the more problematic in such
cases if theoretical accounts assume that the meanings of the terms 'police'
and policing' are unequivocal. However, even where the meaning is elusive,
'police' and 'policing' cannot simply mean anything we want them to mean.
For this reason, we need to clarify the way in which the various forms of
discourse use the concepts, both in theory and in practice.

“policing” should not be rigidly defined – prefer a more

abstract interpretation that denotes the its organizational
history and the associations between various police
practices
Alan Wright (lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the
University of Portsmouth, Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University,
and former police officer) 2002 “Policing: An introduction to concepts and
practice” p. 36-7 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781843924708
We can argue with some justification that the concept of 'policing' meets
Ryle's criteria for polymorphism. As already suggested in relation to
differences in meaning, there need be nothing going on in some kinds of
policing that needs to be going on in others. For example, the action content
of community policing need not be the same as the action content of law
enforcement. There is no necessary overlap between them, although there
may be overlap under some specific conditions. Technically speaking, our
use of the term 'policing' does not rigidly designate the action content of
policing practice other than the one we are specifically referring to at the
time. It is an abstract general term but it does not label only one thing. This
is not a complicated point. We often distinguish between forms of police
work in terms of their action content, as we also often distinguish between
them in terms of their context, both organisationally and historically. We can
talk about paramilitary policing and not get it confused with the kind of
policing which is concerned with putting identifiable marks on children's
bicycles. However, we still want to make use of the word to denote some
kind of association between these different kinds of practice. This indicates
that we should be looking for an understanding of policing in terms of a
modal logic of practice that recognises this variability. A provisional model
for such a modal logic of policing practice is set out later in this chapter.
Policing reform must effect every aspect of police
organization
Beyer 91 - Lorraine R. Beyer, Senior Constable (“The Logic and the
Possibilities of 'Wholistic' Community Policing”, McKillop, S. and Vernon, J;
Victoria Police, THE POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY IN THE 1990s,
Australian Institute of Criminology) ICW-AZL
The concept of 'wholistic' community policing is not anything mystical or
spiritual. It is, however, about a vision. It is a vision of a police
organisational structure and management which is organised around what
police actually do, rather than around only a part of their duties---that is
crime fighting. Where police at every level can be efficient, effective,
responsive and accountable in all their duties. This is not a 'pie in the sky'
ideal. It seems that the 'wholistic' approach to community policing is
essential for the future of policing. So first, what is wholistic community
policing? There are three types of approach to community policing currently
discussed in the literature. In the first approach community policing is seen
as just one pattern or unit within the police organisation. In the second
approach community policing is the name given to smallscale initiatives,
usually local, which are designed to bring police into non-confrontational
contact with the community in some way. The third approach is the
'wholistic' approach. This approach sees community policing as affecting
every aspect of the police organisation, including being reflected in the
informal corporate culture. It would involve the police organisation being
organised in such a way that it could be demonstrably effective and
responsive in its service and peacekeeping tasks and in its prevention of
crime and disorder. It makes sense for the police organisation to be
organised around what police actually do and around what the community
wants them to do. Instead though, police appear to be organised around
assumptions which, at the very least, are open to question. These are
discussed below.
 Reform = Transformational Change
Criminal justice reform includes both incremental and
large-scale reforms
Blanco et al 4 (Rafael Blanco, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Richard
Hutt, Cook County Public Defender, Hugo Rojas, Universidad Alberto
Hurtado, Issue 2 Spring/Summer 2004, "Reform to the Criminal Justice
System in Chile: Evaluation and Challenges", Loyola University Chicago
International Law Review,
https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1132&context=lucilr, JRB)

IV. Evaluation of the Reform Process The process of criminal justice reform , as in the
case of all political processes, requires periods of evaluation which permit modifications

and changes in both strategic planning and day-to-day systemic

operation . The idea is to identify advances and successes, as well as
challenges, as the process moves onward. Indeed, all such political processes must pass
the test of public scrutiny as well as being tested by political scientists and economists. During this
period, the administration of President Eduardo Frei and the current administration of President Ricardo
Lagos have closely followed the reformation of the Code of Criminal Justice. 3' At the same time, there
have been ongoing studies by universities and private organizations that have contributed immensely to
both a financial and political understanding of the entire process. 32 These studies have identified
significant successes in this process in the following areas: (a) transparency; (b) speed; (c) contact; (d)
orality; (e) due process; (f) impartiality; (g) protection; and (h) professionalism.
 Reform = Reduce Disparity
Reducing disparity
Salinas 9 – MPA @ Texas State U (Gevena, “A Preliminary Analysis:
Prison Models and Prison Management Models and the Texas Prison
System,”
https://digital.library.txstate.edu/bitstream/handle/10877/3639/fulltext.pdf)//
BB
Reform is defined as progressive movement toward some social, economic,
or political outcome that is widely recognized as necessary and desirable
(Gottschalk 2006, 1695). Reform is also defined as reducing the vast and
growing racial and ethnic disparities in the incarnated population
(Gottschalk 2006, 1696). Prison reform in practical terms refers to restoring
civil rights and humane treatment, as well as other basic 47 rights to
prisoners, while showing prisoners respect and allowing them to maintain
their dignity (Gottschalk 2006).