WPSR Position Statement on Defunding Police
Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility stands in solidarity with all who demand an end to the systems of white supremacy that leave Black Americans and people of color the disproportionate victims of police violence, murder, and oppression at the hands of the criminal justice system.
We stand firm with the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and King County Board of Health in declaring racism and racist police violence a public health crisis. As an organization committed to fighting the greatest threats to human health, we recognize that systemic racism underlies and exacerbates the health inequities we see in our own work fighting growing economic inequity, the climate crisis, and the threat of nuclear weapons.
We recognize that the United States was built on a foundation of inequity rooted in slavery - the impacts of which extend deep into the criminal justice system. US police forces emerged from slave patrols, which were responsible for tracking, brutalizing and catching Black enslaved people in the South escaping to freedom in the North. Historians have tracked the development of racist policing through segregation, Jim Crow south, repression of the Black power movement in the 1960’s, and the establishment of the mass incarceration state.
The continued violence Black Americans and communities of color disproportionately face at the hands of police has forced a national conversation about the role of law enforcement in protecting community health and safety. A growing body of evidence shows that attempts to reform police through the mandatory use of body cams and implicit bias training fail to produce structural change in policing behavior.
We have seen the inadequacies of criminal justice and police reform play out time and again across the country. In our state of Washington, Charleena Lyles, a Black, pregnant mother of four with a history of mental illness was shot by police in her home by officers who had completed required crisis intervention training. Neither officer faced any charges. In Tacoma, Manuel Ellis, a 33-year-old, Black father of two was killed while being restrained by police in what the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office deemed a homicide. Despite occurring on the heels of police accountability reforms, the Sheriff’s Department investigation into the murder of Mr. Ellis has been marred by lack of transparency, oversight, and internal conflicts-of-interest.
We are concerned about the escalation of police brutality in Washington in response to the recent Black Lives Matter protests and George Floyd uprisings. We have seen police deploy military tactics and weapons against protesters including: tear gas, sound weapons, flash bang grenades, brutal physical force, and mass arrests of people defending the lives and rights of Black communities. The deployment of the national guard to quell protests is illustrative of the interrelationship between US military and police departments in US cities.
In the absence of sufficient public investment in health-protecting social and human services, we have come to rely upon police departments to respond to myriad social crises - housing insecurity, mental health, addiction, trauma, and poverty to name just a few - for which they have neither the training, capacity nor the mandate to address. At the same time, millions of dollars of federal funding is funneled annually to militarize local police departments at the expense of our inadequate and eroding social safety net.
Current public funding structures that prioritize police and militarized intervention over investments in much-needed social programs constitute a threat to human health, by diverting funding that is urgently needed to reduce systemic economic disenfranchisement, mitigate an irreversible climate catastrophe, and prevent nuclear annihilation. For this reason, WPSR calls for reallocation of a substantial portion of funds designated for the military and local and state police departments towards:
Community organizations and other professionals that are both equipped to respond to social and health crises, and understand the context of systemic racism within which they work.
Upstream public investments that reduce social and economic inequality and promote peace, health, and equity.
Public health services to face the current Covid-19 pandemic via community-led entities as well as city, county, and state public health departments. Public funds should be directed towards case tracking and contact tracing, low cost vaccination programs, worker relief, food assistance, and economic relief for families and low-income people.
WPSR recognizes the important role that police do, and must play in ensuring public peace and security. As such, we do not call for, nor do we support, calls to abolish the police. We recognize, however, that across the country violent crime represents only a fraction of annual calls to police. These justified requests are far eclipsed by calls for mental health, traffic accidents, and non-criminal complaints for which non-militarized governmental bodies or state funded social services can offer a more appropriate, effective, and cost-efficient response.
As an organization of health professionals concerned with preventing that which cannot be cured, the reallocation of funding from policing towards health-protecting social and health services is a common-sense approach to addressing what is a long-standing crisis of public health.