ON MAY 25 in minneapolis, George Floyd lay handcuffed and face down for almost nine minutes while police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the back of his neck and head. Floyd repeatedly said that he could not breathe. But Chauvin did not relent, and Floyd died of asphyxiation.
Floyd’s murder, captured clearly on video, has led to months of protest both at home and abroad. The size and intensity of these protests reflect the pervasiveness of injustice for people of color in the United States. Now more than ever, the role of policing in perpetuating this injustice is being acknowledged and subjected to public scrutiny. There have increasingly been calls to abolish or defund the police.
Such radical rhetoric has made moderate liberals uneasy. They would prefer instead a healthy dose of reform. Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College, is one of the foremost critics of this reformist approach. In his book The End of Policing (2017), he comprehensively details the failure of liberal reform efforts to rein in policing- reforms invariably aimed at producing “better” policing. What this program ignores, Vitale contends, is that the very institution of policing is only a symptom of a larger problem. We must stop funding violent and ineffective policing, Vitale argues, and instead direct that money toward providing social services that underresourced communities need.