‘Should Oak Park defund the police?’
These are the words in the single referendum you will find on your municipal ballot in April.
For some the obvious answer is no. For others it’s just as obviously yes. What’s equally obvious is that whatever the outcome of the referendum it won’t provide a clear answer to how Oak Park views police reform.
The issue lies with the word ‘defund’. It’s a chameleon of a word, taking on the meaning it needs for a given context. In the activist context it means radical downsizing of police forces, sometimes even abolition. When you are trying to persuade crime averse voters, it simply means replacing some police with well trained social workers and social services.
It’s an easy bet that the majority of Oak Parkers are open to some level of reform of the police. It’s also a good bet that most Oak Parkers are not willing to accept a significant increase in the level of crime in the Village. Because of this, I doubt activists are likely to be able to achieve radical reform.
But is radical reform needed? Activist organization, Freedom to Thrive Oak Park, has called out two major issues: 1) Oak Park spends 40% of its general fund on the police and only 5% on social service, and 2) A large racial disparity in police stops: 94% of Young People Stopped by Oak Park Police Are Black — Freedom to Thrive Oak Park (freedomtothriveop.com).
#1 is misleading. The general fund is just a portion of the Village budget and amounts to about 1/3rd of the expenditures of the total Village budget. Further, there are five other units of local government that together spend more than the Village. These other units of government also provide a number of different social services.
But it is fair to ask, ‘Is the Oak Park Police Department the right size?” We do have a somewhat large police department for the size of our village, but not abnormally so. For cities in Illinois (excluding Chicago), the average number of sworn officers per 10k population is 20. Oak Park has 26 officers per 10k. Evanston has 29, Berwyn has 30. Chicago has 52 officers per 10k residents.
Here are the top 25 cities, excluding Chicago, ranked by per capita sworn officers.
See: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics - Illinois - 2019
Oak Park does not stand out as being particularly exceptional. Activists however are challenging us not to anchor in the status quo, which is what these statistics represent, but to imagine a new way of policing.
Fair enough. Along those lines, let’s address point #2, which is concerning. It suggests that there is bias in police stops. Some would say this is proof of bias, but I don’t believe the data supports that strong claim. But there are enough anecdotal reports of black and brown kids being stopped by the Oak Park Police while their white friends look on, that I think this bears further research and action.
Also let’s not discount the perception of bias. Even the perception of bias can be an issue that adversely impacts communities that have historically poor experiences with the police. But it shouldn’t take a radical restructuring or ‘defunding’ to address the issue, and we can act now.
The most common interpretation of ‘defund’ is to replace some fraction of the police budget and staff with a new social services budget and staff. This is what Freedom To Thrive is driving at when it exaggerates the size of the police budget relative to other social services. But those social services do exist in Oak Park, and the OPPD already engages with those services when appropriate.
But what about crime? Many will point to rising crime stats and say ‘this isn’t the time to experiment or make changes, if anything we need more police.’
Is that perception of increased crime true? It’s complicated. Here are the 10 year stats for Oak Park.
Burglary and Robbery are actually down, significantly. Total crime counts are down about a half of a percentage point.
Theft is up 10% over ten years, a non-trivial increase. Aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft, murder, and sexual assault are all up very significantly, but from very low bases compare to other crimes. This is not to say that these trends aren’t concerning, but they are infrequent, and not the sorts of crimes that are subject to deterrence by higher policing.
Carjackings get a lot of press, but we don’t have 10 years of history. There were 5 recorded in 2015, but in 2016-2020 we’ve averaged about 20 a year, they are pretty flat over the last 4 years.
It’s a bit of a mixed bag. Total crime is down, but some classes of more infrequent but impactful crimes have increased significantly. But in 2010 we had 111 officers. In 2019 we had 109. It’s not clear that crime correlates with the number of officers all that strongly.
For example, look at the historical chart below. Total crime didn’t go down because we increased our officer count. Nor has it trended up recently because we’ve decreased the officer count.
Crime is surely a consideration in any reform we make, but it’s not at all clear that we need to worry much about recent trends.
Can we do a better job of policing in Oak Park? Yes, there is room for reform here, there is room for re-imagining how policing is done, and generally strong support in the community for doing so. We can rethink when and where calling the police is appropriate. We can better fund our social services and make it easier for citizens to engage with the proper social service, rather than always calling the police. And we should be able to do this without increasing the incidence of crime.
We don’t need this referendum to tell us what to do, or that we should do it. We should likely ignore the results as everybody understands that damned word ‘defund’ differently.
We need to move beyond the fights over the meaning of that word and define what we want to see as a community from our police department.
Here are some suggestions:
- Develop a community survey based approach to measuring police impact that targets minority members specifically. Engage the minority community in developing these surveys and setting goals and developing solutions.
- Drive transparency in police data collection and reporting. We should not have to FOIA police stop data or documentation on police procedures. All readily available metrics should be published on a regular basis. Examples for reporting: Police stop data, arrest data, use of force complaints, general policies such as engagement rules and de-escalation procedures.
- Pilot lower impact policing options. An officer with a gun is rarely needed for most interactions. We can look at alternative models that other communities have attempted and adapt them locally. See CAHOOTS model in Eugene Oregon. CAHOOTS FAQ - White Bird Clinic.
- Task the OPPD with doing education and outreach to non-minority community members on the impacts and appropriate use of policing. Only just recently did the OPPD remove their ‘Call us for anything suspicious’ page. We need to go beyond removing negative messaging and develop a positive communication model for when the police should be called and when alternative services should be engaged.
These four ideas, if engaged with seriously by the Village Board and the police department, would go a long way towards ensuring that citizens get the right social services when they are need, and decreasing the negative impacts of policing when the police are needed.
The data for all of the reports in this document can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IjA6gAdBH8RQQ8ujujpfODjebicg15dip-mYjrGOocY/edit?usp=sharing
