by Maria (Maki) Haberfeld, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Being a life long believer in the police profession and its essential role in preserving and guarding our cherished democratic principles, as well as the co-author of Introduction to Policing: the Pillar of Democracy, I cannot shake off the horror and dangers embedded in the defunding the police movement.
As long as I can remember, I always looked with the most profound admiration at this most noble of professions and saw, either literally or figuratively, the thin blue line that they represent. As an academic in the field of Criminology and Criminal Justice, as well as a former police practitioner, I can attest to the fact that violence and violent criminals are a real thing in our society and that the police has nothing to do with the sources of these destructive behaviors.
On the contrary, it is my profound belief that the police, good, professional, bias free and impartial policing, is what separates us from mayhem and as Durkheim and Merton have brilliantly coined – anomie, a total and complete anomie. Furthermore, as Charles Reith (1975), the British historian pointed out some decades ago, beginning with the prehistoric times, when people decided to come together for the purpose of safety and security, the first set of laws was created and, at the same time, the first rule breaker was born. What followed was the creation of the first police officer, or the strongman who was deployed to deal with the rule breakers. Please note, first a criminal then the police, not the other way!
Fast forward to the year 2020, the loud and uniformed voices, representing various personal agendas try, and amazingly enough are quite successful in, trying to defame the profession and in a dangerous and misleading manner point to its existence as the source of all evil.
Well, beyond my personal conviction, there are decades of research pointing the to the contrary. People commit crimes, violent crimes, for a variety of reasons, none of them have anything to do with the police department, be it the most professional or the most corrupted one.
After studying police misconduct for over two decades now, I am the first one to say that there are many problems with the profession, primarily due its decentralized nature, one that contributes to a total chaos and dysfunction. Years ago, I have conceptualized a model for police integrity and effectiveness that is predicated on 5 prongs. My Pentagon of Police Integrity requires attention given to its 5 prongs: recruitment, selection, training, supervision and discipline. If applied properly, in a more centralized police environment that is an absolute must for more effective and professional police response, we will see more effective deployment and less violent behavior on the streets.
How do I tie professionalization of the police force to the level of violence? Well, it is a combination of a number of criminological theories paired with some solid research findings. Routine Activity Theory (Felson & Cohen, 2003) posits that people commit crimes when there is a likely offender, a suitable target, and absence of capable guardians. Add to this Deterrence Theory, both individual and general, which is based on the assumption that people will not commit crimes if deterred — either through actual incapacitation or the threat of the consequences — and you will have the formula that explains why we are seeing the surge in violent behavior and how the police can contribute to its containment.
The absence of capable guardians, the police, as in the case of the NYPD dissolving its very effective Anti-Crime unit in June, resulted in an immediate spike in violent crimes and shootings around the city. This was very lamely blamed, by various politicians, on the Corona virus. It is not the virus that made people commit the violent crimes. It is the well publicized, through various media outlets and word on the street, absence of “capable guardians.” This combined with recently enacted set of new bail laws that — possibly well intentioned but implemented in a totally uninformed and misguided manner without input from police or prosecutors — contributed to the demise of both personal and general theory of deterrence.
The absence of capable guardians, the police, as in the case of the NYPD dissolving its very effective Anti-Crime unit in June, resulted in an immediate spike in violent crimes and shootings around the city.
What can be done then in the immediate and short term manner? What will stop the violence and restore our faith in the democratic principles? Appoint a Tsar for Law Enforcement in the United States whose main responsibility will be overseeing a great centralization of the American Law Enforcement. This can be based on my Pentagon of Police Integrity model and allows police executives, aided by social scientists, to create a set of effective deployment tactics that will mitigate the violent behaviors in the short term. This must be followed by a long term goal: to reevaluate the laws that eliminated the deterrence theories.
I would be remiss not to mention that policing is a profession, a very complex and complicated one, that evolved and continues to evolve based on solid empirical research and not the loud voices of various agenda-driven stakeholders. As the founder of the Metropolitan Police Force in London England, Sir Robert Peel has famously stated in 1829: “Take the Politics out of Policing and take the Police out of Politics” (Gash, 2011). Let’s celebrate this almost 200 years old insightful and brilliant quote by moving in this direction.
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Dr. Maria (Maki) Haberfeld is a Professor of Police Science, in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. She was born in Poland and immigrated to Israel as a teenager. She served in the Israel Defense Forces in a counter-terrorist unit and left the army at the rank of a sergeant. Prior to coming to John Jay she served in the Israel National Police and left the force at the rank of lieutenant. She also worked as a special consultant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in the New York Field Office. She has conducted research in the areas of public and private law enforcement, integrity, and white-collar crime in the United States, Eastern and Western Europe and Israel. In addition to her research, she has also provided leadership training to a number of police agencies. Since 2001 she has been involved in developing, coordinating and teaching in a special educational program at John Jay for the New York City Police Department. A list of her publication can be found here.
