What do people think police do on a daily basis? And what is it that they actually do?
On Monday, October 22 as part of National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality, an anthropologist will lead an exercise to explore these questions at the “Re-Investing in Public Safety” event held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Deaconess Center for Child Well-Being, 1000 N. Vandeventer Ave.
Jara Connell, an anthropology doctoral candidate at Brandeis University, will have attendees write down all the jobs that they understand police to take on. Those typically include solving crimes, stopping crimes and helping people, Connell said. Then she will have them write down the times in their lives that they have encountered police and what they police were doing – which often includes writing reports for insurance companies at accidents or traffic stops.
“Police already don’t do the sorts of things that we think of when we think of policing,” Connell said. “That realization makes it easier to think of alternative forms of public safety.”
The second presenter at the event will be Marbre Stahly Butts, co-director of Law for Black Lives and a major contributor to the platform of the Movement for Black Lives. She’ll be speaking on the need to “divest and re-invest” and explore a long-term vision of a world without police.
Connell, who recently taught a course called “The Anthropology of Policing,” said she hopes the event will help taxpayers better understand what they are funding. Safe, accessible housing and many other underfunded services are equally as important to creating a strong public safety model as policing, she said.
“An arrest-and-incarcerate model is not effective,” Connell said. “It doesn’t keep people safe. It does not prevent violence. It often causes violence.”
The Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression (CAPCR) will also roll out its campaign to Re-Invest in Public Safety. The campaign’s goal is to shift priorities in the St. Louis city budget for 2019, pulling money from policing and putting it into job training, housing, education and other services that help prevent crime.
“St. Louis already spends more than half its general operating fund on arresting and incarcerating,” said John Chasnoff, co-founder of CAPCR. “What have we gotten for all that money? A high violent crime rate and destroyed communities, particularly communities of color. We need to support people and build community if we truly want to get at the root causes of crime.”
